Finding Gosford Park
"We normally shoot a few takes, even if the first one was terrific, because what I'm really hoping for is a 'mistake.' I think that most of the really great moments in my films were not planned. They were things that occurred and we thought, 'Wow, look at that that's something we want to keep!' That's where you hit the truth button with the audience, and I want anybody seeing Gosford Park to get excited about recognitions of truth."
Once on the set, cast members working with Altman for the first time (which constituted the vast majority of the troupe) found themselves active participants in a filmmaking style that surprised and exhilarated them. Kristin Scott Thomas (cast as Lady Sylvia McCordle, wife of Gosford Park owner Sir William McCordle) comments: "The way we worked here was very different from many other films where you prepare and you know exactly what you're going to do. We didn't rehearse, we just all turned up! Robert described it like throwing pearls onto a parquet floor we would see who was going to bump into whom and how it would all fit together. It's very creative in that you are allowed to take risks and try things that you are not sure will work. Robert has managed through casting, writing, and the way he directed us in this improvisational fashion, to create a real feeling of family between the three sisters [played by Scott Thomas, Geraldine Somerville, and Natasha Wightman] and their husbands [played, respectively, by Sir Michael Gambon, Charles Dance, and Tom Hollander]."
Altman's camera work is always distinctive. Making Gosford Park, he lived up to his reputation for an inventive shooting style, choosing to work with two cameras shooting simultaneously for much of the production. On the set, U.K. cinematographer Andrew Dunn's two cameras would track around different sections of the action, ensuring that the cast members in a scene were always potentially in the shot. Altman, who had never before worked with Dunn, found the director of photography "terrific to work with."
Emily Watson (who plays Gosford Park head housemaid Elsie) had worked with Altman once prior but as producer, not director. On the Gosford Park set, the actress found the director's way of working "liberating and different from a lot of other ways of shooting where you know precisely when to deliver a certain thing. On Gosford Park, you didn't, so you just had to keep working all the time and hope that Robert's getting some of it. The cameras are like two ranging beasts scavenging for food, looking around and seeing what's going on."
Elaborating on the approach, Stephen Fry (cast as Scotland Yard Inspector Thompson) comments: "It's a fascinating process. He's a great shaggy bear, big Bob Altman, and he has a style very much of his own. One or both cameras will be moving and you somehow go in between them and say your dialogue off-camera and think that it's making no sense. You do four camera rehearsals, which are absolute chaos, and you think you are in a nightmare.
But by the sixth rehearsal, suddenly this kind of ballet has emerged. Bob has a calmness and the ability to have the whole film inside his head he's quite remarkable."
Jeremy Northam (who portrays real-life British matinee idol Ivor Novello) explains, "Robert has this amazing knack for choreographing scenes, so that scenes can be encapsulated in a single shot he'll watch what people naturally want to do and then find a place for it within the shape of the shot where it's seamless and shown to its best advantage. So, even in a story like this where there are so many separate stories going on, there isn't one predominating plot and all these different moments and episodes are caught."
The cast's Altman veteran, Richard E. Grant, confides: "Robert wants to be surprised. He doesn't want to know what the actors are going to do, or to see what he's seen before. There are not many directors who ask that of an actor they claim to at the beginning of jobs, but usually people want you to do what you're known for doing. But Robert goes out on a limb every time."
Among the actors who most found Altman's way of working liberating was one of only two Americans in the cast, Ryan Phillippe (cast as visiting valet Henry Denton). Phillippe says that the interplay in a scene "feels like it's happening instead of being staged. A lot of choreography goes into a movie like this because of the large cast. But at the same time it feels organic and like you're living it, which is the best experience for an actor. The circumstances on a film set are so false sometimes the light is obtrusive and there are so many people on set, it can be hard to detach. When you're working with Robert, you're not quite sure what the camera is picking up, so you're constantly on and everyone else is too."
Helen Mirren (who plays Gosford Park housekeeper Mrs Wilson) adds: "Robert has a very idiosyncratic style. It's very specific and interesting for an actor because he pays as much, if not more, attention to the apparently inconsequential details as to the main push of the scene. He'll let the scene take care of itself, and often concentrates his attention, imagination, and energy into everything that's going on around the central theme of the scene.
And that's wonderful, because the whole scene around you is full of detail and interest. Very often, it is one of the actors who provide the detail. We're all onscreen in Gosford Park nearly all the time there were no extras so if the scene needed to be filled up in the background, it was we who did it!" Overlapping dialogue among an ensemble is another hallmark of Altman's films. To achieve this, all dialogue during all takes must be picked up by the production's sound recordists. Sound mixer Peter Glossop oversaw the outfitting of all the actors with radio microphones and at times there were sixteen radio channels recording dialogue. It is because of such thoroughness that Altman can, in final editing, pick and choose what he finds interesting: "Great pieces of dialogue are often improvised. I try to encourage actors not to take turns speaking, but to deal with conversation as conversation. In the end, they learn that it's fun, and that it's no big deal if it goes wrong because we can shoot it again and do it another way."
Speaking as a working actor himself, Fellowes states, "Bob has a real, unfeigned love for actors and an eagerness and respect for their contribution. This in itself is rare in the extreme: it is extended to every player in the piece, and it is not an act. On top of this, Bob has a grasp of visual narrative that I have never seen equalled. I remember one particular scene, where the women are assembling before the shooting party lunch: after running through it a few times, he suddenly suggested to all of them that they should move, speak, and do everything else simultaneously, without regard for cues and without leaving any space around the lines of dialogue. At the time, I freely admit that I thought, 'What is going on?' The next afternoon, I watched the dailies and every key element in the scene, every nuance of character, was as clear as day but all set in the context of real chaotic life, as opposed to a false stagy screen world. To take this kind of risk, with humor and confidence, is genius."
Sir Michael Gambon (cast as Gosford Park owner Sir William McCordle)
states: "It was terrific. Gosford Park is funny, it's brilliantly written, it's directed by the best director, and all my mates were in it, so every day felt like a party!"
Altman concludes, "I had the time of my life making this movie."
