Interview: Kevin Spacey Schools Us on School, Vegas, Theater, Kate Bosworth and the Rocky Road to 21

Kevin Spacey’s appearance in a film these days is a rare treat, as he’s devoted himself almost entirely to running the Old Vic Theater in London. But thanks to a decade-long production process, from secrecy to studio buyouts, he’s back as a producer and star of 21, based on the true story of genius math students from M.I.T. counting cards at Las Vegas casinos and raking in piles of cash. He talked with us about the process, his third movie with Kate Bosworth, the Old Vic and even his time at Julliard,

After all the series and poker shows and Vegas movies and Vegas series and all the stuff that happened in the last six years, how do you make Vegas interesting again?

It’s a movie that’s a popular mainstream entertainment in which one gun goes off and nobody gets shot, there are no car crashes or car chases, and it’s about performances and it’s about the mind.

The truth is you work in the business for a long time, and sometimes you work with people you really enjoy working with and then you never work with them again. You only see people at events or award shows. Everybody thinks you’re great friends and you hang out all the time, and the truth is you don’t.

I don’t feel like I’m trapped in the cog of the wheel anymore, and so I’m much happier and I feel the work I’m doing there is the most important work I’ve ever done.

Read all of Kevin Spacey’s words after the jump.

21 clips on Fancast:
The Trailer
The M.I.T. Team
Researching the FIlm
Filming in Vegas

On being the producer:
My job as producer was to try to make sure that we would be able to try and shoot Vegas in a way to make Vegas interesting again, because since we found the book five or six years ago – we thought ‘hey man, we’re ahead of the curve.’ Then we sold it to MGM, and then we went into a kind of a tailspin holding pattern while they got bought. It was fortunate that Sony ultimately picked up the movie. After all the series and poker shows and Vegas movies and Vegas series and all the stuff that happened in the last six years, how do you make Vegas interesting again? We were actually very welcomed by the casinos and I suspect that’s because they’ll rather like this movie going out there and saying to audiences “Yeah, you can come to Vegas and break the bank. Come on!” I think they like that.

The casinos adore the idea of thousands of people coming here thinking they can beat the house, because now it is a little bit different. We included it in the script, because all of this stuff happened way before this ‘face recognition’ stuff started to happen. The truth is, while it’s not illegal, they can stop you from playing in their casinos. So I think they’re actually loving this movie, and one of the reasons why they were so willing to let us shoot in their casinos is because they want people to think they can come here and beat the house. I think they dig it. I think they’re delighted.

On how the movie came to be:
I always thought this was just a story that was ripe for a film. I first started hearing about this about a decade ago from friends in Boston. It was kind of this known secret, but we couldn’t ever get any information, nobody would ever really go on the record. We even wrote a treatment about it, probably a decade ago, and it ended up in a drawer. About five years ago, Dana [Brunetti, producer] was walking down the street in New York and he passed a magazine stand and on the cover of Wired Magazine was this cover article that said “The True Story of the M.I.T. Students Who Went to Vegas and Made Millions,” and he went “Fuck!” Pulled it out, didn’t even read it and he called me right away and said “I think I fuckin’ found the story!” So I said “well, track down the writer.” We didn’t realize that Ben Mezrich wrote the article and subsequently a book that was about to come out, Bringing Down The House. Dana, because he’s a genius on the internet, somehow googled and got a number for Matt and cold-called him. He hadn’t even read the article, he was just trying to find the guy. We both knew that this story was ripe. Left a message for him, Ben thought it was a friend of his playing a joke. Then Ben googled Dana’s name and discovered he actually did work for my company, called, and he was on a plane the next day to Los Angeles, and we basically just took him in the back and strong-armed him and said “We want to make your movie.”

So I always believed in the story and thought it was great. I didn’t know until there was a script whether or not there would be a role for me or not. I was just really pleased that this is the first major studio film that Trigger Street has done, and it’s a movie that’s a popular mainstream entertainment in which one gun goes off and nobody gets shot, there are no car crashes or car chases, and it’s about performances and it’s about the mind. I was really pleased about that, and I think it’s in many ways a morality tale in terms of what his character goes through, but a movie that I think people can enjoy and have a really good time at.

On the Vegas life:
I enjoy Vegas very much for about two or three days at a time, but we were here for a month and that’s a long time to be in a place that’s just sort of encourages gambling, drinking, strip clubs. So I did a lot of things that were off the strip and tried to keep myself occupied in other ways, because when you’re shooting a movie, you just can’t live the life. At least I didn’t.

On doing his third film with Kate Bosworth:
To some degree, it’s a happy circumstance. When I was casting Beyond The Sea and I discovered Kate, there could not have been anybody that was a more perfect choice, and an experience that was more enjoyable and professional. Then, when I screened that movie, Bryan Singer came to my screening and then called me because he was in the midst of thinking about Superman and he called me and asked me what it was like to work with her. I won’t go into detail about what we talked about but it was all very good news, and the next thing I knew she was Lois Lane. Then this movie came around and she was always in our thoughts as producers and lo and behold, here we are.

I think it’s great because, you know, the truth is you work in the business for a long time, and sometimes you work with people you really enjoy working with and then you never work with them again. You only see people at events or award shows. Everybody thinks you’re great friends and you hang out all the time, and the truth is you don’t. You experienced maybe four or five scenes in a movie once a long time ago, but you haven’t worked together since, and I think it’s great when you can find ways to work with people you really enjoy.

On another Superman movie:
I’m scheduled to come back, meaning I made a deal to do a second film, and I think Kate did as well, and the truth is you probably know more than I do. I’ve had no discussions. Bryan and I spoke last spring, and I knew he was going to do this film in Germany and he was talking about doing another film after that. My suspicion is that, if they are moving forward, it probably wouldn’t start shooting until the spring of 2009, to be released in 2010, so there’s nothing that would happen this year. I just don’t think they’re ready yet.

On leaving film for theater:
My priorities just changed many years back when I made the decision that I wanted to go and start this theater company in London. Theater had always been my primary allegiance, and while I spent ten years being driven and having a personal ambition for a film career, I got to a point where that was just no longer of interest to me. While I love movies and I’ve been very grateful to them because without them I couldn’t be in the position I’m in in London and being able to do what I’m doing on behalf of the theater, I’m now doing exactly what I want to be doing. I don’t feel like I’m trapped in the cog of the wheel anymore, and so I’m much happier and I feel the work I’m doing there is the most important work I’ve ever done.

On his work at the Old Vic Theater Company in London:
At the moment, I’m doing Speed-The-Plow with Jeff Goldblum and we close the end of April. In terms of the broader goals, I hope to be able to leave, when I do leave, I’d like to leave the Old Vic Theater Company in a position where I’ve raised enough money for them that whoever takes over my role as artistic director won’t have to spend as much time fund raising as I’ve had to. A lot of people don’t quite understand that I didn’t step into a role that existed. The Old Vic Theater Company, for thirty years, was a booking house. It was a theater you could rent. When the National Theater left in 1976 under Laurence Olivier’s artistic directorship, it became a booking house. There was no theater company, there was no artistic director, there was no education program, there was no outreach program, there was no “Old But New Voices,” none of that existed.

What we’ve been trying to do is build a theater company that will survive in the commercial world, even though we are a charitable organization. When you have a thousand-seat theater and no subsidy from the government, it takes a lot to raise that money. So I hope to be able to leave an endowment so that the running costs of the company itself and all of the salaries and all of that stuff can work. I hope to be able to convince some of the government agencies by the time I leave that our education work and our outreach work does deserve to be paid for. It will continue to be the responsibility of the theater company to raise money in terms of investing for shows, because you do make a considerable amount of box office. All the money we make goes back into the theater company. I hope be able to raise the money to renovate the building, because it’s never been renovated. It needs to be brought up to 21st century standard, and that’s about a 30 million pound campaign. So those are my broader goals.

On his education at Julliard:
In the case of Julliard, there were probably five thousand or so young actors and actresses who applied for the school and 28 of us got chosen for a class. So you start off feeling like “wow, I’ve been chosen, I’m one of the thoroughbreds.” In fact, in my class – Elizabeth McGovern, Kelly McGillis, Ving Rhames, Evan Handler… the class just below me, Marcia Cross, David Hyde Pierce, Val Kilmer was there, Linda Kozlowski was there. You’re seeing a lot of people who you’re going to actually end up growing up in the business with.

The thing that I’ll say about it being life-changing is that it certainly does give you a tremendous amount of confidence, but I think what makes great training great is that it keeps happening. There are lots of things that you think you learn, or pieces of information that go into your brain, that actually don’t have any value for you until you have a place to put them into that’s a context for yourself personally. There were countless times where I’d find myself, years later, six years later in rehearsal for a play or a moment would happen between myself and another actor, or a conversation with a director, and someone would say something or something would happen, and like a flash card would come down over my eyes and I’d go “THAT’S what they were talking about!” The lesson isn’t necessarily learned while you’re in school. It’s actually only when you can apply it later. So, in many ways, I’m still learning those lessons. I think the thing that it taught me and that I’m most grateful for is the technical facility – the ability to be able to get up on stage every single night, eight performances a week, twelve weeks in a row, never lose your voice, always be alive, always be ready to take it somewhere else and be there for your acting partners. That’s still happening.