Harvey Keitel is a tough interview. Ask anyone who’s tried it. It’s not that he won’t talk to you. It’s just that, for the most part, he will only talk about what he wants to talk about, no matter what you ask him.
The first time I met him, in October 1994, he started by telling me why he didn’t want to discuss the character he played in the film he was there to promote because ‘I’d like your readers to see the film with their own hearts, to see it without my influence.’
Neither did he want to discuss his work methods or his personal life. Nor would he talk about the taboos on male frontal nudity in films – ‘I wouldn’t know because I’ve never done a nude scene.’ All evidence to the contrary.
Instead, he wanted to discuss how he had discovered the joys of reading as a young man in the Marines, when, out of boredom, he picked up a book of Greek mythology and transformed his life. And to complain that ‘we’ve lost the art of story-telling for the most part. We’ve lost the art of sitting around the table and sharing stories about life. We’ve lost the art of the caveman who painted on walls to express his own fears and desires.’
Most of all, he wanted to discuss the journey inward, the journey to self-knowledge that drives him onward as an actor and as a man. It was the kind of discussion that could have sounded pretentious; well, actually, it did sound pretentious. But Keitel also made it sound heartfelt:
I still struggle at times not to escape from the inward journey. I can never weigh for you how hard that is, the temptation away from doing what is right. The problem is we give short shrift too often to the devil in us. We shun it instead of making its voice divine and accepting our goodness. The problem is in accepting the dark side. People don’t understand that they can accept it – but they don’t have to act on it. There are ways of expressing the dark side without hurting anyone. It can take a lifetime to learn – but it doesn’t have to.
Harvey Keitel’s journey to self-knowledge and his career as an actor have both been bumpy, sometimes frustrating trips, that eventually led to creative breakthroughs and newfound success in the 1990s.
He came to acting late – in his mid twenties – and was already in his thirties when he had his first burst of fame in Mean Streets. But subsequently he couldn’t find parts worthy of his talents, playing colorful but small character roles before suffering a kind of career meltdown in the late 1970s that lasted, more or less, through the 1980s. Then, in 1991 and 1992, Keitel was reborn as the risk-taking king of the American (and, indeed, the international) independent film scene.
When I started this book, I assumed I understood Keitel’s career, having followed it since he emerged in Mean Streets in 1973, the same year I left college and started working professionally as an entertainment writer and critic (after several years of practicing in college). Acting, as it turned out, was an escape from a life so unsatisfying that Keitel had sought refuge in work as a court stenographer, where he could sit without speaking or being spoken to for days at a time. Yet that proved to be the opposite of what he wanted and needed: the ability to explore, understand and express the riot of emotions roiling within him.
To chronicle Keitel’s career required watching close to sixty of his films. Though I’d seen most of them when they originally came out, I doubt that even Harvey has seen all of them; many of the lesser outings – the ones he made in the deep, dark eighties with directors no one will ever hear of – are impossible to find on video in the States.
Watching as many as I did, however, was a revelation and an education. The young Keitel of Mean Streets or Blue Collar was so energized, his potential practically oozing out of his ears, yet with an edge of desperation – he was, after all, almost thirty-five when Mean Streets came out. He was playing characters so feverishly caught up in their own lives that he seemed to give off sparks – he created friction and electricity just by walking through life.
Compare that with the older, sadder, more confident Keitel of Reservoir Dogs or Smoke: here are characters who have lived long enough to know which lines they will and won’t cross – and what each of them costs. That smooth, slightly wolflike face has gained wrinkles and lines, making its planes and valleys a landscape of unexpressed emotion. And his always forceful physique has, if anything, become even more solid and formidable.
I’ve gained what is probably a permanent appreciation for Keitel the actor and the way he has grown and achieved mastery of his craft over the last twenty-plus years. To my mind, there is no one else working today who has the same courage and daring as an actor, the same restless urge to explore uncharted territory of the human soul. No matter how unworthy of his talents a movie might be (and his taste certainly isn’t flawless), you can trust him to bring everything he has to whatever role he’s playing.
To get a better idea about Keitel’s career, I talked to as many of his friends and colleagues as I could, some of whom I can thank by name, some of whom I can’t. But I would like to acknowledge, in no particular order:
Ulu Grosbard, Mike Kusley, Yaphet Kotto, Howard Bershod, Paul Lynch, Gina Richer, John Badham, Anthony Harvey, Chuck Patterson, Stockard Channing, John Sayles, Mike Moder, David Dukes, Michael Dinner, James Gammon, Joel Tuber, Arvin Brown, Tom Reilly, Ian Bryce, John Fiedler, Steve Rotter, Peter Medak, John Pierson, David Proval, Matthew Carlisle, Harry Ufland, Ron Silver, Steve Brenner, Joel Schumacher, Peter Scarlet, Stuart Cotton, Arthur Brook, Giancarlo Esposito, Marc Urman, Ann Wedgworth, Ernie Martin, James Toback, Allen Garfield, Martin Sheen, Ellen Burstyn, Bertrand Tavernier, Tom Davis, David Sosna, Zina Bethune, Jack Mathews, Roger Ebert, Bruce Williamson, Joe Queenan, Harlan Jacobson, Peter Travers, Janet Maslin, Amelia Kassel, Marlin Hopkins, Cynthia Kirk, Andy Shearer, Jeremy Walker, Marian Koltai-Levine, Susan Kaplan, Jennifer Bretton, Marian Billings, Elizabeth Pettit, Scott Siegel, the San Francisco International Film Festival, The Charlie Rose Show, the New York Public Library, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, the White Plains Library, and video stores too numerous to mention.
I also want to thank Alan Rudolph, who didn’t ask whether the book was authorized until midway through the interview, and then kept talking provided I mentioned the circumstances.
My gratitude to Dr Emily Stein, my favorite expert.
A big ‘thanks for listening’ to my colleagues Ross Priel, Georgette Gouveia, Barbara Nachman, Mary Dolan, Elaine Gross, Bill Varner and Ed Tagliaferri.
An added thank you to my friends Larry Sutin and Joey Morris, who provided counsel, humor and the occasional advice to ‘Stop whining.’
Finally, all my love and gratitude to my wife, Kim, and my sons, Jacob and Caleb, for giving me their considerable support and understanding while I was writing this book.
‘Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.’
Edward Albee, The Zoo Story
Step off the Number 4 subway at the Eastern Parkway stop in Brooklyn, climb the stairs out of the station and hang a quick left. Suddenly you’ve escaped out of the crush of New York and into Eden: the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
On this particular Sunday, a week before Father’s Day 1996, the garden is suffering from the greenhouse effect as a gaggle of people elbow each other in heat and humidity that have both hit eighty-five, trying to stake out their little piece of paradise on the garden’s Celebrity Path. Though the weather is sticky as overcooked rice, many of them are dolled up: suits and dresses and pantyhose – the whole Sunday-best rigmarole. They are milling with a certain impatience.