Mr Flibble Talks To... To Play The King
As the King in season VII's Stoke Me a Clipper... Brian Cox lost his wife to one 'Lister of Smeg'. In The Long Kiss Goodnight he helped Gina Davis find her lost identity. But as the original Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter he wasn't going to lose to anybody.
16 March, 2001
Brian Cox
Mr Flibble's right hand provided by
Andrew Ellard

Mr Flibble settled comfortably into a chat with a fellow thespian. Andrew passed on his first question: Do you enjoy doing COMEDY?

I do a lot more now, subsequently. I didn't do a lot - I always wanted to do more when I was younger, but somehow it never came my way. I was always cast in serious stuff. But I always wanted to do comedy - my biggest influences were people like Jerry Lewis. When I was a kid I loved Dean Martin and Lewis, Hope and Crosby, all that stuff.

One of the reasons I did Dwarf was because it was a sort of send-up. If it had been a straight version of the Camelot story I don't think I would have even bothered. It was because it was sort of off the wall that I did it.

You enjoyed the send-up aspect of it?

I've done so much of that drama anyway. I had a great time. I did a wonderful series on radio about Patrick Barlow's theatre company, I played a visiting Shakespearean actor, there to do Henry V or something. It was great fun sending up the Bard and sending up the 'Carsical Arcting' stuff. (Laughs) I loved that.

How did the part of THE KING come to you?

They rang me up, and the guy was so nice - the director, Ed Bye. He's the reason I wanted to do it; I'd heard a lot of very nice things about him. He has a very good sense of humour, and a very good equilibrium. I knew Robert [Llewellyn] because I'd worked with his girlfriend [Judy Pascoe] - she was in a thing I did called The Big Battalions. Robert's a nice fellow. I didn't know Craig, but he was very charming.

We did it and it was terrible, typically English, weather. We were doing it in this awful rainstorm. They thought they could use it, but it was unusable - I mean, I knew it was unusable. [Because of that] we had to do it all over again. There's nothing worse than being in medieval armour in a soggy field in the mud. It gave me a chance to have another go at it. I think it was slightly better second time around. These things are always kind of rushed. There was a long shot, and I remember Ed and the others were under this dripping tent. I think the poor man was pulling his hair, he didn't know how it was going to work.

Mr Flibble has a fascination for female co-stars - especially beautiful blonde ones. How did you find your queen, Sarah Alexander?

She was fine. I don't work in England much - has she gone on to other things?

She was in Smack the Pony...

Was that her? I've seen Smack the Pony, I've seen that show. I didn't really speak to her very much. She's the girl with the almond eyes, very distinctive. But I had absolutely no idea that was the same girl! Poor lassie - we were all soaking wet, bedraggled.

As Mr Flibble well knows, filming is quite a DISJOINTED process. But SF films are particularly difficult, with blue screens and CGI...

I think it tells. I think you can tell. I think that's why [The Phantom Menace] is maybe not as good as the original. Because you didn't have so much to distance [you from] humanity. That's the good thing about Red Dwarf of course, it's very human. I think that's been its appeal. These guys going around the universe forever and ever and a day.

They used historical recreation societies on the location - did that help give a level of authenticity?

I wasn't aware of them! I was sitting on my little dais, so I wasn't aware of what was going on. The disadvantage of filming is that it's all so disconnected. There could be a whole world going on that you're not even in - but because you're at the other end of the forest you don't have any sense of that. Until you told me I didn't know the Plantagenet society was involved - I thought it was a load of extras running around in funny costumes! (Laughs)

Moving on, what about LONG KISS GOODNIGHT...

The Long Kiss Goodnight is incredibly funny - that whole [scene] with the dog. It was funny, because I arrived on that movie and, believe it or not, that part was supposed to be played by Dustin Hoffman! And Dustin Hoffman didn't turn up, apparently - just didn't turn up. So they rang me on the Thursday to say, 'Dustin Hoffman was supposed to turn up on the Monday, but he's not doing it. Would you do it?'

I went out and was in Toronto on Saturday. They were charming. I thought it was a rather good script by Shane Black, really interesting. The woman who played... well, she was supposed to be my sister, but the woman was in her nineties! (Laughs) I don't know what they were intending. They'd cast her well before they'd cast either Hoffman or myself. She'd started acting when she was 75. We'd worked out that rather than being my sister she was my aunt.

Renny Harlin has a kind of mixed reputation, but he won me over because he had fallen completely in love with this woman. And it turned out that she, as a child, had been on a boat called The Mongolia - which was the next boat after the Titanic! She was emigrating from King's Cross to Canada, and she remembers, as a child, going past the Titanic wreck site, and how they all came out on the deck and sang Abide With Me as they were going past.

In that movie you also had a full body replica made to play your drowned corpse...

It was a very frightening experience. They had to put all this stuff on me; they made a body [cast] of me. I had to sit for about two hours in the stuff, with two straws [up my nose]. It was very like being underwater - it might have been easier to be underwater!

That film's villain was played by Craig Beirko, who was actually Lister in the American Red Dwarf pilot.

I know Craig, he's a nice guy. He's actually on Broadway at the minute in The Music Man - which I did, funnily enough, in England in the mid-90s - and I went to see him. Sweet guy, and very good in that. He did a couple of movies, and then he decided... When you get to a certain stage in Hollywood, especially as a leading man, if you don't cut into it straight away you do suffer.

You end up in TV movies...

Or you go back to the theatre and re-establish your reputation. And that's, interestingly, what he's done.

Mr Flibble put on a face mask, which Andrew took as his cue to ask Brian about his time playing HANNIBAL LEKTOR in Manhunter. (The spelling from Thomas Harris' book Red Dragon was changed for the movie.)

It's extraordinary what's happened because a lot of the reviews that have come out [recently] have compared the two films [Manhunter and Hannibal]. It's interesting, because when the film was done, the status of the character was in exactly the right place. I think Thomas [Harris] fell in love with his own monster - he's sort of Baron Frankenstein who's fallen in love with the monster - and he's gone too far.

I think it's become risible. Elvis Mitchell - the main reviewer for the New York Times - he gave a rave review to [director] Michael Mann and myself [for Manhunter in his Hannibal review]. People kept ringing me up and saying congratulations on your review for Hannibal. I'm not even in it!

There's a new DVD just come out which is a director's cut with interviews . I don't really talk about it - particularly here [in the UK]. I don't want to compare myself with Tony [Hopkins] because it's two entirely different animals. My feeling is that Tony did a great job in Silence of the Lambs. I haven't seen Hannibal, I don't know what it's like, but I suspect that the problem with Hannibal is that there's no mystery in it any more. There's no, 'Who is this man? What does he do?'

Lecter is one of the great roles. For me it's like playing Harry Lime [from The Third Man]. If you went on playing Harry Lime, Harry Lime becomes meaningless because the character is essentially wrapped in his own mystery. For Thomas not to understand that this is what's he'd created and then suddenly blow the mystery on his character is, I think, a great shame.

Tony's laughing all the way to the bank and he'll be identified with the role - and that's fine. I never went into this business to be identified with any role. Orson Welles is known as Orson Welles, but he's also happened to play Harry Lime - he was known for other things because he was a great filmmaker.

I think it's an interesting phenomenon. Manhunter is a good film, [although] it's very much of its period - the 80s - [in] the music, the design and the look of it. It is a kind of document of a time when those characters were coming out - Ted Bundy and all of that. But it's become a sort of bloodlust now - and I don't think it's particularly healthy. But sometimes it's necessary...

Lecter seemed to be at his most effective when he was behind bars...

That's where his threat was. The guy wasn't out, the guy was [in] there - and he wasn't trying to escape. And from there he could do incredible damage. That's what's dangerous, that's what's frightening - because there's nothing you can do about it. 'How did he get out? How did he do that?' That's what was fabulous; and that's why a lot of Silence is very good, because a lot of Silence follows that. But then there's Chianti and favva beans and all that - it's jokey and he's getting off on it. But it's [Harris's] monster, he created it, and he can do what he likes with it.

Michael [Mann] is a great filmmaker with a great eye. I think The Insider is a fantastic movie. I've no doubt that his Cassius Clay movie will be wonderful. I was very iffy about Will Smith, but I've seen some footage of it and Will Smith looks amazing. I think it could be good.

Mr Flibble enjoyed talking to Brian Cox, and now that it's over... Mr Flibble ie very cross.