The Massie Twins recently got a one-on-one interview with director, actor and producer James Keach and his wife, actress Jane Seymour, who were out promoting their new film Blind Dating.
The Massie Twins: Which do you prefer
more Mr. Keach: acting or directing?
James Keach: I love acting, but I hate auditioning. So if you said to
me, “here’s the part,” I’d probably say “I
like acting more”, but that isn’t the way it works. I love
directing; I love working with actors. In a way, you vicariously act
when you direct; you can play parts in your head when you direct that
you could obviously never play. In my head I envision how it would be.
I love getting great performances out of actors.
MT: How did you, Jane Seymour get the
role, and what attracted you to it? Was it written specifically for
you?
JK: (cuts in) She slept with the director! (laughs all around)
Jane Seymour: My agent sent both of us the script and said that Theta
Films, who made it, wanted James to direct and they wanted me to play
Dr. Evans. We both read it, and we both loved the project. James did
an enormous amount of work, in terms of rewrites, and really tuned it
up and I thought this was a gem. This was one of those wonderful little
movies that when the audience sees it, they all love it, and I loved
the character of Dr. Evans. She’s not the largest role, but definitely
an important role.
MT: How much research went into this
project in terms of the main character’s blindness?
JK: Tom Sullivan, who’s blind, was one of the first guys I called
when we decided we were going to do the movie. At one point Tom was
a broadcast journalist and he’s a big spokesperson for the blind.
He went to Harvard; he’s a filmmaker, writer, a musician - he’s
a brilliant guy. He read the script and we spent several days talking
over several different things. Things like “I love the sound of
her smile.” I would ask Tom questions like “When you meet
a woman, what do you ‘look’ for?” And I felt awkward
saying that at first, but he would say things like “I saw a movie
last night.” He sees things in a totally different way. But I
embraced the different things he’d say to me. He can tell the
length of a woman’s hair because of the sound of it. “I
can hear it swishing.” Tom worked with Chris (Pine) on how to
walk and how to look away when he was talking to you, and he did things
that Chris did in the movie. All of that is stuff he shared with us
that he’d done in his life. I asked him about the plausibility
of this operation. There was a Wired Magazine article that came out
several years ago, and on the cover, there had been 15 [similar] surgeries
recently, as recently as last week. Jane was in a screening of the movie
in Connecticut and a woman came over to her and said “my daughter
was blind, and just had an operation and has 75% sight now.” This
isn’t science fiction. This is the real deal. It was really important
for Chris, for the credibility of the film. I think Chris is a great
young actor and I think he’s going to have a huge career, but
it was really important to him that this wasn’t any bullshit and
that he do this the right way. We had endless conversations about this
surgery and how that would work.
MT: It looks very realistic. I’m
glad to learn that it’s based on real current technology.
JS: It’s actually so accurate that we had technicians from the
hospital doing all the shots with the medical equipment.
JK: We have a friend in L.A. and I went and watched eye surgeries, and
then went to the University of Utah (it’s ironic that that is
the center for all the major blind operations in America), and I talked
to the top professors there. There are several different ways to do
this cortex operation. This was one of the first types of operations.
We don’t see with our eyes, we see with our brains. It’s
just like a camera. The lenses that we have, it’s the same basic
thing. The science of it was really cool, but it’s the entertainment
of the movie that really counts.
MT: Was the whole film shot in Utah?
JK: Yes. It was serendipity that we went there. We chose Utah, because
there’s a little town called Ogden that had trains. We didn’t
have a lot of money to make this movie so when you’re doing a
movie with a budget consideration, the one thing you don’t want
to do is move your trucks a lot. We were able to almost take over the
town, and keep our trucks in one spot. We built a restaurant and then
had a stage and built his bedroom. We used practical offices for Jane.
MT: Are the scenes shown from Chris’
point of view after the initial operation close to what might actually
be seen from a blind person with this operation?
JK: With all the reports that we read on it, the only way it would work
is you wouldn’t see in color, you’d see in black and white.
MT: Where there any wild or crazy things
that happened on the set? Any behind-the-scenes things you can share
with us?
JS: I think the neatest thing was right before we started, James suggested
that Eddie and Chris should travel to Utah on a road trip and they stopped
off in Las Vegas for three days, and Chris pretended to be blind the
entire time. They discovered very quickly that people didn’t talk
to Chris. They’d ask Eddie what his friend wants. People would
just leave him standing there, and walk away from him because he was
blind!
MT: What were the main advantages or
disadvantages between TV and film?
JK: I started in film as did Jane, and as a director and producer, one
of the great advantages you have with television is that you learn to
do things within a certain amount of time. Television is the best place
to fail. And you have to fail in order to succeed. You have to make
mistakes in order to achieve something. There’s an old saying,
“Cecil B. DeMille in the morning, and Starsky and Hutch in the
afternoon”, which means you come in with all these great visions
and then…One of the problems with television is that you stay
in what’s familiar, and you don’t push the envelope.
JS: It’s not so much the case these days. The boundaries have
been crossed and film and television actors are working in both mediums
all the time. You have to be a more seasoned actor to survive television
than in film because there’s more time in film. If I don’t
bring it all to the table, there’s not time to do 20 takes. When
you make a movie of the week, it’s basically a mini-feature and
you make it in 21 days. It’s a great training ground.
MT: How many days did it take to film
Blind Dating?
JK: 30.
MT: Had the script been written for a
PG-13 rating? Had you thought of going the R-rated route?
JK: The script had a lot of f-words in it, and I didn’t think
that was appropriate. Why turn off so many people to the movie? I like
movies that have some edge to them, some irreverence, but I don’t
like movies that are disrespectful.
MT: Can you tell us about any upcoming
projects?
JK: We’re casting a movie called “Waiting For Forever”
and “Knuckleball” which is a baseball movie about a young
woman who makes it to the major leagues.
MT: Will Jane be involved?
JK: She’s the young woman who makes it to the major leagues.
JS: (laughs)
JK: I’m going to produce both of them. We’ve got a lot of
movies in development in various stages.
- The Massie Twins
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