When the Chicago International Film Festival honored noted queer activist, actor, writer, director, singer and all-around renaissance man Alan Cumming as the first recipient of its newly created OUTrageous Award for Artistic Achievement, Windy City Times' film critic Richard Knight, Jr. was asked to conduct the Q&A with him. The lively discussion was held following a sneak preview of The Tempest ( now out in theaters ) with a packed audience.
Windy City Times: Can you talk about your process in preparing for The Tempest?
Alan Cumming: Well, we had rehearsal for this, which you normally get in film so we actually had time to discuss it which you don't usually get in film with the other actors—well, maybe while you're waiting for the crew to set up—but that's about it. So that was my process though I don't really have a process. I find the word "process" kind of anti-artistic. I think it makes me into a machine. I don't like it.
WCT: This is Shakespeare, which goes back to your training so, in a way, is this like falling off a log for you? Maybe your role in [ the TV show ] The Good Wife is harder because there's a Chicago accent and a cultural difference.
Alan Cumming: Much harder. Much, much harder. I think American people have a very weird inferiority complex about doing Shakespeare and I don't understand why and some of the American actors in this film were very nervous. Weirdly, because they're brilliant actors, they had weird issues about being in a film like that—partly, because I think it's not they're so used to it but once you get the hang of the verse thing it's not brain surgery.
WCT: Really?!
Alan Cumming: I find that Shakespeare is a gaping hole in the reparatory of American theatre. For me, I've been doing Shakespeare for a long, long time and at first I did find it hard to get the verse thing to feel natural but now it's no problem.
WCT: When you come onto a set with a director like Julie Taymor—someone with such an extraordinary vision—are you more excited? Are you thinking that things in general will get more creative, as opposed to someone who doesn't have her visual language, perhaps?
Alan Cumming: Yeah, I think when you go into it you know that it's going to be a more richer kind of visual thing and not just a film about people in a room talking. It's going to have magic in it so, yeah, though a lot of the magic happens, of course, after you've actually shot your stuff. I admire her greatly. I think of her as a horse with blinkers on. When she works she's very blinkered—she knows what she wants and she's very strong about getting exactly what she wants, and I really admire that. It's something a lot of people don't have.
WCT: I talked with Helen Mirren last summer and she talked about wanting to do more Shakespearean women, and so this idea of the gender switch incubated for a while and I noticed a lot of gender-bending stuff in the film. Was that intentional, other than Helen? There's certainly a subtext between you and Chris Cooper at one point that seems rather homoerotic.
Alan Cumming: When we're rather close together?
WCT: Yes. Was that intentional or did I just pick up on that?
Alan Cumming: I think that's just you. [ Audience laughs hard. ]
WCT: Speaking of homoerotic—can we move to Burlesque [ also currently out in theaters ] ? Cher, Christina Aguilera and yourself—three stars with their own fragrances. [ Audience laughs. ] I saw the Flip camera video you did of your last day of shooting. Can you share a story about working on the film?
Alan Cumming: I play the door whore. It's sort of a fairy tale in more ways than one and I'm hardly in it. I sort of bolt in and out, but the first time I met Cher it was the day that Stanley Tucci got nominated for an Oscar for The Lovely Bones. They had champagne on the set of the film—he's a lovely man—and we're chatting and he says, "Have you met Cher yet?" and I said, "No" and so I went up to the bar on the set and I was introduced to her. We started chatting and she said, "Do you like olives?" and I said, "Yeah" and she said, "these ones are really nice," and we had this whole conversation about olives—and I'm thinking, "My opening salvo with Cher was all about olives." [ Audience laughs. ]
WCT: Do you have a song in the film?
Alan Cumming: I do but it got cut—although it's on the soundtrack. So it will probably be on the DVD. It's a version of "That's Life," the song that Frank Sinatra recorded. It's kinda great—I'm on an album with Cher, and what could be better than that?
WCT: You have this new cabaret show based on your solo album I Bought a Blue Car Today that you're bringing here [ to the Harris Theater ] next spring. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Alan Cumming: I'd always kinda wanted to do it. I find it a really amazing way to connect with an audience when you're just being you. People had asked me to do it a few times and I was always too scared because usually when you're an actor there's always a character between you and the audience. [ However, ] I feel that there's kind of a warped perception about who I am because of some of the characters that I've played and partly because of that, the idea that I would just be, "Okay, it's me now" was really terrifying for me—really paralyzingly terrifying.
So when I did it, it was a huge thing but I've actually loved it and I've done it for the past year and a half or so all over the world, and it's been a really amazing thing for me as a performer. It's really reinvigorated me at this stage in my life about how you can connect with an audience.
WCT: You're here as the first recipient of this OUTrageous award, which, to me, says that your work and your life are outrageous because of the things that you encompass. There are so many projects, so many personal things, so many egregious outrages that you have put a spotlight on and are passionate about. Is there any particular area that personally means more to you than any of the others?
Alan Cumming: It's a bit like changing deck chairs on the Titanic, in a funny sort of way. If you feel that something's wrong in the world and you're trying to align yourself with it because you want to make it better, it's hard to choose one. But I have to say that I find it really annoying and crazy that as a citizen of America—I pay the same taxes as anyone else [ and ] probably more because I'm rich [ audience laughs ] —but I am not treated in the same way because of my sexuality. That really pisses me off and I get so annoyed when people say, "This is not a civil-rights struggle. How dare you call it that?"
It is a civil-rights struggle because [ there are ] people in this country who are not still, in 2010, not treated with the respect that other people are. Right now we have this awful problem with bullying and all these kids killing themselves. [ To ] me, I think these people have blood on their hands—these horrible right-wing people who say that gay people are not equal. I think the same thing about a government that doesn't tell its citizens that it's wrong to disrespect gay people. I think until we have equality from the top down, it's really hard to completely make people understand. So that's a big thing for me right there [ lots of applause ] .
WCT: I just want to say that you're a living example of the fact that "it does get better."
Alan Cumming: Thank you.
