MICHAEL WINCOTT: THE INDIVIDUAL ALLURE

By Grazia d'Annunzio

(Translated from the original. I apologize for any errors.)

Michael Wincott is the right amount eccentric to portray and now and then artistically nail certain avant-garde characters, and to have on his arms a series of colorful tattoos that have absolutely nothing conventional about them. They include hearts, skulls, Coptic crosses, names of ex-girlfriends, and Japanese ideograms.  He has a canvas of Rothko, a detail of the work of friend Julian Schnabel, a portrait of mother which resembles a drop of water, and a sentence by Keith Richards, (“We are not old men, we have not your petty morals.”), that already sounds like a ticket to visit.

Sufficiently talented to succeed with one incredibly low hoarse voice, like the brush of several pieces of sandpaper, but in fact supported from the fundamental contribution of 30 cigarettes a day: a result of a second of the tone is maybe unnerving and sinister, but he is otherwise sweet, sexy, and dangerously provocative.  Then we do not speak of the face- those hollow cheeks, high cheekbones, darting eyes- he often gazes in the location van’s mirror, a little bit for narcissism, a little bit for studying various expressions, and give life to another of its unforgettable masks. In short, Michael Wincott is not one that passes unnoticed.

You arouse curiosity when a meeting by chance strikes if you happen to speak to him during a shoot, you certainly will not forget when you see more on the big screen. This great character actor and intriguing 49yr old Canadian, with Italian blood from his mother in the veins, is first of all a genuine artist. It is rare in a world where the mad rush to celebrity that he seems to enjoy talent more.

Recalls Michael, “Taxi Driver was the film that represented a turning point for me. When I saw Bob DeNiro in the role of Travis Bickle I was dazzled, exactly as when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I said, “No doubt this is what I want to do.” I was 18 years old, still living in Toronto, and British director Mike Newell was searching for someone of my age for a TV drama.  Two fortunate coincidences.” 

“To be precise, acting is what makes me feel good: exploration causes me great pleasure, develops the folds of the human soul, being able to express real palpable sentiments. Today, after 30 years, the old dream has finally happened: I have finished a shoot "What Just Happened" alongside Bob. An experience happily savored minute to minute.”

In the film directed Barry Levinson with a script by Art Linson, Michael is an English action film director who is convinced by Robert De Niro’s character to make a movie in America. No sooner said than done, when you have to deal with the studios to sell and distribute it which turns out immensely not so easy. The film is an interesting snippet on the “factory of dreams” viewed through the eyes of a newcomer and a navigator in difficulty. In addition to Sean Penn, also in the cast of “What Just Happened?” includes greats such as Bruce Willis, Stanley Tucci, and John Turturro.  “It was Sean who drew me to the part: we had already worked together in 2004 in "The Assassination of Richard Nixon", where I played his brother, and we very much related. Above all I appreciate Sean’s authenticity, a gift that in the end has more of everything.”

Insincere towards the cliché Hollywood system, (“More and more similar to a mega-corporation concerned only to make money.” says Michael.) and unresponsive to the agents, (“I don’t have one and don’t want to have one.”) Wincott over the years has chiseled a career that saw him experiment with a variety of genres and roles. The beginnings in different serial television, then in 1982 the admission to Julliard School of Drama in New York City, followed by a theatrical interlude with the great Joe Papp, (“A period of intense vibrant dialectic.”), where he appeared alongside Eric Bogosian in “Talk Radio”. It was his on stage interpretation of Kent, a young troubled drug addict, that earned him the same role in the cinematic version of the play. Michael was also signed to play in Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” in 1989, and “The Doors” in 1991. In the first as a disabled Vietnam veteran, and in the second as Paul Rothchild, the producer of the band helmed by Jim Morrison.

Wincott attributes his fame of scene stealer to his intensity about his recitation from obscurity, and to that of the critics who mention Michael as engraved in the mind, even if on the screen for a few minutes. He has worked with many of the best directors, Jim Jarmush, Ridley Scott, and Michael Cimino are just a few. But it’s his skill in creating treacherous criminal characters, like Top Dollar in the “The Crow” that adds to his fame of excellent character actor.

“You see”, said on the umpteenth cigarette, “I have a precise identity. I do not like acting to be mediocre or compromised. That is just being a puppet. One of my mottos is ‘obedience does not bring you to any particular part in Hollywood’ and it’s obvious that I do not have the requirements to represent the hero without stain and without fear. So then I can only become the bad of the situation, the guy that often ends up dead. But I enjoy assessing this type, not as a limitation: it becomes so only if you suddenly to get lazy, if you narrow your capacity. In independent movies I sometimes get to do anything.”

As for example, the cameo roles shaped on real figures: there is the poet-philosopher-intellectual Rene Ricard in “Basquiat” directed by friend Julian Schnabel, and in the role of Cuban writer Herberto Zorrilla Ochoa in “Before Night Falls”, also directed by Schnabel and in one scene in Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and The Butterfly”, that won awards at the latest festival of Cannes.  Michael reveals, “Julian, known him for years, I’m privileged be a friend. I consider him a unique person, with a faceted curiosity, an explosive creativity and a capacity to attract the entire world around him. He’s not only a great artist, and also a good director, but an excellent writer. With Julian as with me, the script really counts in a film, the one that offers the possibility for an actor to speak to the best of his art.”

Reflecting with a half smile for a brief point, Michael says, “There are few good scripts in circulation at the current time, and in the end you can’t make a silk bag from the skin of a pig.” Wincott concludes, “I know to be an actor may be considered cool, but to do a job that one feels deeply and ends up being part of you is equally important. To work for other objectives such as the fame, the villa with pool and other lavish things, believe me, that is not for me.”