Friday, Jul 4, 2008
The actor, novelist, playwright and director talks about what it was like to follow in Mark Twain's footsteps -- literally.
Aug 24, 1999 | As I sit down to chat with actor, writer and director Sir Peter Ustinov, someone whispers that he's getting peeved because every interviewer on his current publicity junket -- from Regis and Kathy Lee to the BBC -- keeps asking the same two questions: What was it was like to be knighted? What was it like working with the late Stanley Kubrick on "Spartacus"?
To get on his good side I mention upfront that neither query is on the agenda. "Thank goodness," he replies. But I press my luck when I inquire if there's anything he'd like to discuss that no one's asked him about. "Look, bub, I'm not here to do all the work," he conveys with a stern expression. Then comes a devilish smile.
"The function of silence," he intones with a chuckle, before pursing his lips, easing back in his plush chair and closing his eyes. Interview over.
Pause, two, three, four. Gotcha.
Such mischievous geniality accounts in large measure for the appeal of "On the Trail of Mark Twain with Peter Ustinov," a four-hour documentary that airs on PBS beginning this week. Twain took a round-the-world trip in the late 1890s that he documented in his book "Following the Equator." Sir Peter retraces Twain's steps a century later and compares notes.
On its surface, "On the Trail," a co-production of WNET in New York and Granada Television, is a lighthearted travelogue. Sir Peter bathes at a Maori communal spa, speaks about Mercedes-Benzes with a young Tibetan Buddhist who's revered as the reincarnation of an 800-year-old deity and drops in on the personals department of a Bombay newspaper. Cumulatively, the episodes at once illustrate the lingering effects of colonialism and the tenacity of indigenous cultural conventions -- India's ancient caste system and marriage customs, for instance -- in the face of both imperial domination and modernity.
In "On the Trail," Ustinov, who for three decades has been a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), poses some larger philosophical and political questions about how we can best settle old squabbles and right past wrongs. He hints in "On the Trail" that the answer sometimes lies in accepting that the idealized precolonial past never existed -- or at least that it has been irretrievably lost. And bucking the standard liberal line a bit, Ustinov suggests that a country's attempt to "reclaim" its heritage as a way of casting off the psychological shackles of colonialism will in most cases be futile, if not also counterproductive.
Another Ustinov project in current U.S. release is "Stiff Upper Lips," a lame parody of period British films of the Merchant-Ivory variety. He doesn't have much to say about his featured turn as the libidinous owner of an Indian tea plantation. Fine with me, as he's done better work -- most notably in "Spartacus" and "Topkapi," for which he won best supporting actor Oscars, and in "Billy Budd," which he also directed and co-wrote.
Our chat at Manhattan's Regency Hotel feels at times more like a private performance than mere conversation. Sir Peter's never met an accent he didn't want to tackle, and as he recounts his global journey, the opportunities for doing so are limitless.
What made Twain a great travel writer?
He was a very good journalist. He had an individual way of looking at things and he noticed everything. I don't regard "Following the Equator" as a very good book -- it's meandering and it came out at a time when picturesque qualities were more important than the discussion of social issues. But he did say one remarkable thing, which is that there's no square inch of the world that hasn't been stolen. For the period, it seems to me to be the most extraordinary way of advancing a view of the world. It's absolutely true, of course.
Twain warns an ascendant America not to follow Britain's lead as an empire builder.
Yes, and with the U.S. the imperialism is more of an anomaly. The U.S. is by definition anticolonial, and it had every reason to be anticolonial given how it was established. But when you look at the way Hawaii was annexed or how Puerto Rico was acquired, there were so many tricks involved. And more recently with Grenada in the 1980s -- they were a wonderful, innocent country and they had their adolescence taken away from them. They had to become adult overnight and they grew up in a different fashion than what they were expecting. What's sad is that the American students [whose safety was the stated rationale for the invasion by U.S. troops] were in no possible danger.
What did you learn about the world making "On the Trail" that you didn't already know?
One interesting thing, which I never knew, was that Fiji was never occupied by the British, but gave itself voluntarily because it had a big American debt at that time. Fiji saw what was happening to Hawaii and didn't want to suffer the same thing. So, it gave itself to Queen Victoria, but on the condition that she pay the American debt. Years later, they wanted to remain a colony because they knew their own natural dignity didn't make them victims of a colonial power. The British had to send a delegation out there to say, "We're getting into trouble in the United Nations for not giving you your independence. For God's sake, take it!" Emotionally, Fiji's still a colony -- people wearing English wigs in court and all that. They're more royalist than the English could possibly ever be. It's bewildering.
The attitude is somewhat different in New Zealand, where you follow a discussion among native peoples about reparation payments for fishing rights lost during the colonial period. And you drop in on a Maori man having his face tattooed in a traditional way. Did his action test your limits regarding people's attempts to reclaim the past?
It was absolutely a nightmare watching it being done. I said to the man, "Does it hurt?" He says, "No, it's rather like having a piece of broken glass dragged across your face." (Laughs quizzically.) Horrifying. Then I asked him, "Why do you do this?" "It's a statement." "Yes, but a statement of what?" "Well, it proves that I am what I am, and in any case with this on my face I can't get any work." Huh? It was an eye-opener to me.
What are your philosophical reservations about the scheme whereby the government will provide land to people who can prove they're at least 50 percent native Hawaiian?
That's Bosnia. That's Kosovo. "Is your mother Chinese?" "My mother was pure Chinese." "Well it shows here she's got Laotian blood." It's such an absurd way of doing things. Why should land be allocated in relation to the purity of your blood? This seems to me to be no different at all from ethnic cleansing.
You seem more mellow about this on camera.
One's polite. The alarming thing is that, as usual, the quota system was a decision of Congress [in the 1920s].
Get Salon in your mailbox!