Will this go onstage too?

Kenneth Branagh: Who knows?

Michael Caine: Well, this version?  That’s interesting. I never thought of that.

Kenneth Branagh: I bet Harold would be thrilled if it did.

Michael Caine: I think it would go very well onstage, yeah.  Yeah, I think so. I don’t want to do it.  I don’t want to do stage again.  No.

Why is that?

Michael Caine: Well I like to go out in the evenings.  I like to go out to the theatre.

You’ve know Jude prior to this, I mean you’ve been friends for awhile.

Michael Caine: Oh yeah, since the Academy Awards.  I met him at the Academy Awards.  What year was it…I’m up for Cider House Rules and he lost. 

Kenneth Branagh: As pretty as he was.

Michael Caine: As pretty as he was he lost.

What do you have in common with him and do you see a little bit of yourself at that age?

Michael Caine: Yes I do. Yeah, yeah.  I see a young actor from a dodgy background.  He’s not judged fairly in his abilities. I remember I read a review of his work.  He’s very good and he got slaughtered by this critic and I thought back to this…the very first review I read of Alfie I was almost suicidal.  It said this is a brilliant play transformed to the screen and destroyed by the performance of Michael Caine in the central character.  That’s the first review I read, I swear to you on my daughter’s life I swear, that’s a direct quote. I thought my life is over.  My career is over.  I’m crap, you know?  Then the next couple weren’t that great either, you know?  And then suddenly someone said something then someone else because there’s always a kind of personal thing. There’s this company upstart they come along here thinking he’s going to pull the wool over our eyes.  He’s not going to do that and then there’s an envy barrier.  I remember I went through all this for a long time and I was very good friends with David Lean and I was talking to him about him. I never did a picture with David otherwise we wouldn’t have been good friends.  I said I never get this terrible press anymore that I used to get. I went to America and became a success and left England behind and all this.  You have no idea what the British press are like.  He said, “yes you’re all right now, Michael.  He said you’ve gone through the envy barrier”.  And it’s true.  And I said “what does that mean?”  He said “well, nobody envies anybody who’s old.  They only envy the young.” 

So you are back working with Pinter now.  How is that compared to when you were young?

Michael Caine: What do you want me to say?

Kenneth Branagh: Yes, I’m reading something into that.

Michael Caine: He’s starting to go through the envy barrier. 

Is he intimidating in any way?

Kenneth Branagh: Is he intimidating?  Oh Christ, yes. I mean, he was intimidating when I was 15 and I got my copy of The Caretaker and on the back of this blue rimmed thing—this little biography and this picture of him like this…I mean he looks at me and it was so the classic tortured artist.  It was thrilling.  I thought I hope I grow up to be that angst ridden.

And did you?

Kenneth Branagh: In some ways I did but thankfully I’ve gone through that barrier at least.  No, but meeting him how can you not I mean having then spent the subsequent 30 years watching these plays and screenplays and you know and then he gets his Nobel Prize and also struggles against very, very severe serious illness and is still fighting away and then comes into our rehearsal room and the first thing he says is ‘I like this. I like this soundstage.  I shot The Servant here and I shot Accident and I shot The Go Between” and you’re aware with him and Michael and just the vast…

Michael Caine: Hey, I shot on that soundstage…I shot Zulu and Alfie on that same soundstage. 

Kenneth Branagh: Made me and Jude Law feel a bit funny for awhile I can tell you.

Michael Caine: They didn’t shoot anything. 

Kenneth Branagh: The odd voice over here and there.  No, but he like all great artists like this gentleman on my right here, once you start working with them it all falls away.  You are working with them.  They approach things in a very youthful way.  I think that great artists have a kind of youthfulness of spirit. There is a childlike quality and a great desire for and aptitude for camaraderie.  We enjoy it and we work very, very hard and we also played very hard.  We enjoyed that so they…

Michael Caine: And of course we drank very hard.

Kenneth Branagh: We drank very hard.  So it was intimidating in prospect, but in practice is was absolutely delightful.

I, of course, have to ask the question have you wrapped on the new Batman movie?

Michael Caine: I have but they wrapped this week in Hong Kong. At last, they started in April.  Yeah, yeah, they’ve finished.  The great surprise of that will be the thing we thought…you know it’s like life…the thing we thought was gonna be the biggest problem is we’re doing a movie about The Joker and Jack Nickelson has already done it superbly and quite extraordinarily and along comes Heath Ledger and does it completely differently and absolutely terrifying fantastic.

What was the experience like going back to the franchise? Was it…?

Michael Caine: Well it’s like going home will all your old friends.  I hadn’t been very far away because I was with Christopher Noland and Christian Bale in The Prestige, you know?  So we’re sort of like a family there and so the makeup’s the same, the hair is the same and everything so it was a bit like going home and it was Chicago again.  It’s always Chicago which I know so well now.  I feel I live there in Chicago.  But I thought and I can say this because I’m only the butler, that the 1^st Batman was the best one I’d ever seen and I think the 2^nd one will be better than that.  I’m not saying that for publicity reasons, it just is.  Wait ‘til you see it.  You’ll see.

I wanted to ask you about Kenneth as a director.

Kenneth Branagh: Oh, do ask. 

Michael Caine: Wait until he’s gone, wait until he’s gone!  No, Kenneth’s a director because he’s an actor so he knows exactly how you feel and what’s going on with you and he can see and what he does is he never belittles you like some directors, you know they’re being the big I am and that sort of the governor.  He will whisper and he will whisper quietly what he wants done and the way he does it you wind up thinking it was your idea and also he gives you a break.  If you’ve got a 9 minute take and you fluff after 8 ¾ minutes, he doesn’t like a lot of director’s say “cut, back to the beginning and do it again” he says keep going, keep going, keep going.  We’re going to shoot it from all different angles.  He gives you complete relaxation and that’s what I like because my basis for all my acting which is especially handy for films but I started in theatre in Stanislavski, the line that I took from Stanislavski’s book was that before the rehearsal is the work.  The performance is the relaxation—which if you can think of a camera can spot tension instantly, you know?  If you can just relax into just working in front of a camera that’s what all the…it’s a whole load of hard work trying to look like you’re not doing anything. I figure that’s why we’re all nuts.