Director Keith Gordon fell in love with Dennis Potter?s revisioning of ?The Singing Detective? 10 years ago when he first got his hands on the script. At that time, Gordon was basically told to forget about it. The movie version of ?The Singing Detective? was going to be a big-budget, big-name type of affair. Best known for ?Waking the Dead? and ?Mother Night,? Gordon nonetheless tenaciously held on until the project returned to what Potter had intended ? a smaller, edgier film rather than an overblown Hollywood production.

KEITH GORDON INTERVIEW:

How close is that script you saw back in '92 to what's on the screen?
Very, very, very close. Potter was, to me, really one of the best dramatists of the second half of the 20th century. I just felt like that was work to be honored. His intentions were to be honored, at least that was my feeling coming into it, so I changed very little. We made a few changes because production demanded it in terms of economics or whatever - a song we couldn?t afford or a location we couldn?t use ? but really in terms of anything material, we changed basically nothing.

As a writer, was it hard not to tinker with the script?
Oh sure. It was a choice that I made, and you could argue good or bad things about that choice. Normally I love to tinker with stuff, whether it?s my writing or somebody else?s. In fact, something I?ve said to my actors on every film I?ve made before this ? three of those four, I wrote the script ? I usually start the first day of rehearsal saying, ?This isn?t Shakespeare, it?s just dialogue.

Throw it out, I don?t care. Say what you want to say. As long as the ideas are there, I?m happy.? This is the only time I haven?t done that. I said to the actors, ?The rhythms are important and the words are actually important and we probably shouldn?t start changing things unless there is a real reason that something isn?t working in a scene.?

It was a very different approach and yes, there were times when I was going, ?I wonder if we should be rewriting this or changing it?? But I just decided as part of the experiment that was making this film - for me every film is its own experiment - I thought, ?I love this guy?s writing. The script is beautifully written. Let me try working with it almost as if it was Shakespeare, as if it was something that shouldn?t be screwed around with.? That was the approach we took. That didn?t mean we didn?t occasionally change things. Robert is such a phenomenal improviser that he would add stuff on occasion, but I didn?t let him do it early on. Early on he was saying, ?Oh, I just want to change all the dialogue.? And I was like, ?No, not on this one. Let?s start from working from the script.? Then once he got Potter?s idiom down and his rhythm down, then he was so good with it that he would come up with things. They would fit right into the script. [It?s] pretty seamless between what might be a Robert-ism that he?s adding in and what?s Potter?s original stuff.

Was it hard for Robert to accept that idea?
Oh, he was scared, definitely scared of it. He resisted the idea although we always did it in a very playful way. I remember writing him a note before we started rehearsal saying, ?Trust the text, Luke.? Now he always makes jokes about my Jedi Mind Tricks as a director (laughing). Basically, I knew that his comfort zone was to completely improvise. I remember back to ?Back to School,? how probably 80% of the stuff he said in that movie was just stuff he was making up. He?s great at it. I knew that would be taking away something that made him very comfortable, but I also felt sometimes for an actor that?s a good thing. Sometimes the director can do an actor a favor by challenging them in a fun way by saying, ?Listen, try something you haven?t tried a lot before.? I think in the end Robert had a really good experience with it. I always said to him, ?Look, the compromise is I will always, when we get to the time of shooting, if you want to try something, if you want to improvise something, I?ll give you an extra take. I?ll always do it. I?ll always let you do what you want to do. But I want you to give me one where you start from what?s there.?

He definitely was nervous with it, but then he got into it, which is sort of Robert?s pattern anyway as an actor. I think he has ? as most actors do ? a lot of vulnerability when he?s unsure. Then as he finds his footing, whether it?s with a character or with a style, he gets excited and suddenly starts loving it and wanting to really run with it.

My work with [Robert] was, as much as anything, holding his hand while he got his feet on the ground. Once he had it, then he was incredible and amazingly creative, and would just sort of start improvising stuff where I would start forgetting what were Robert?s line and what were Potter?s lines. But it had to come with having first worked with the material and understanding the rhythms that were there.

PAGE 2: Downey's Talent & Working Through the Make-up