Brandon Judell
Hanif Kureishi, Body and Soul
In Hanif Kureishi's latest novel, "The Body" (Scribner; $20.00), an aging playwright agrees to have his brain placed in a much younger, god-like man's body. Then in his most recent screenplay for the critically acclaimed "The Mother," a seventy-year-old widow has an affair with her daughter's boyfriend.
As you might guess Britain's one-time Wunderkind is now concerned with aging. Yes, although Kureishi's only in his late forties, this hasn't stopped this prolific author (e.g. "The Buddha of Suburbia;" "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid;" "Intimacy and Midnight All: A Novel and Stories"); screenwriter (e.g. "My Son the Fanatic;" "My Beautiful Launderette"), and director (e.g. "London Kills Me") from looking ahead and imagining his future wrinkles.
The following conversation took place ubder dim lights several blocks from an old-age home, in mid-Manhattan at his film's distributor's headquarters.
BJ: You once said, "Most obsessions don't come true."
HK: Most obsessions are worthless. I mean you're building the Eiffel Tower out of match sticks. But I would say all artists have that obsessive side to them. They go into their rooms, and they stay in their rooms, and they paint this face over and over and over again.
BJ: The characters in your screenplays, your novels, and short stories seldom get their time in the regular media: Indian immigrants, oversexed activists, gays running a laundrette.
HK: Yes.
BJ: And in "The Mother," an older woman having an affair with a much younger man, her daughter's boyfriend, is clearly not everyday fare. The idea, in fact, of a seventy-year-old woman being the centerpiece of a film would never enter a Hollywood studio's head's head. There was the recent Diane Keaton film, and then decades ago "The Whisperers." One could see this subject matter being handled in a novel. Doesn't it take some daring to try to make a film on this topic? After you wrote the screenplay, were you afraid the finances would never materialize?
HK: Yeah, you do. You say, "I want to write a film about a woman who's seventy. How is this going to play in America?" But if you thought like that, you'd never do anything. I mean I think I want to write this story. I'm interested in this woman a lot. I'll write it. If it doesn't get made, it doesn't get made. If it gets made, it will be good. Sometimes, it may be a disaster. You can't not take that risk.
HK: This marvelous character at one point says, "I thought I'd never be touched again." When you write a line like that, does it come from the outside? Are you looking at your character from a distance? Or do you become that character?
HK: Well, you are the artist telling the story. So you got to tell the story as an artist for it to work. On the other hand, you have to identify with the character because the audience has got to identify with the character as well. So you think, one day I'll be an old bloat. One day I will be maybe eighty. People are going to look at me and they're going to go, "He's an old man." Or I go to a school to pick up my kids, and I'm much older than the other parents there, the other families, because I didn't have kids until I was forty. So you can see what it is to be that person. There I'm 49. I'm not 80. But again . . .
BJ: You're a spring chicken compared to Michael Douglas.
HK: I am a spring chicken compared to Michael Douglas. But I don't have his money. Nor do I have his wife.
BJ: But I'm sure you're not complaining.
HK: (Laughs) No, I'm not complaining.
BJ: In America, you're highly respected and in specific circles, you are idolized. But one would think in England, you'd be considered one of the top artistes? Is that true?
HK: I would say that I probably had my day. I had a big day when "My Beautiful Launderette" and "The Buddha of Suburbia" came out. Around that time I was considered to be someone who was on the rise. I have been superseded. Now they consider me to be distinguished which is the next step to being forgotten. I'm making less money now then I ever did. I see this as a natural cycle. I'm not complaining about it. This is what goes on. It's fine. So it's downwards all the way from now on.
BJ: You might yet still have an upswing. Look at America's Edward Albee who has made his critical comeback.
HK: Yeah. Yeah.
BJ: And look at Thomas Hardy. He gave up writing novels because of the way his books were treated. Yet today the very same books are why he's venerated. Do you even worry about how you'll be thought of posthumously or are you just concerned about the here and now?
HK: Well, my main concern has been to be able to say the things I want to say.
BJ: By the way, how did "The Mother" do in England?
HK: It opened last year. It got good reviews. It did pretty well. It's a matinee film. It did very well in afternoon but badly at night, because older people don't go out at night. [Judell]
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