That’s because people are starved for good talent.

Frank Langella: Oh, thanks. Thanks.

Do you have any anticdotes or little stories about what happened on the set?  Anything interesting or noteworthy? 

Frank Langella: Starting Out In the Evening was a very interesting set because we were confined, you know, that little apartment I had was a real little west-side apartment.  There was a room off camera literally 2 feet away where Lauren and Lili and Adrian and I changed.  There was a little curtain hung up and Adrian and I were on one side of that curtain and we’d run in and make our changes and Lili and Lauren and someone else who came into that set were on the other.  Then we would have to get in—one morning the producer called me and said the A.D.’s car broke down on the highway and I’ll be picking you up and she arrived with a sandwich in her hand, this old jalopy and I jumped in and we drove downtown to the village to shoot a scene in a restaurant--the scene where I come in very ill and Adrian takes me to the bathroom. I had to change clothes in that bathroom because there was no place else to change clothes.  The night before—one day I became violently ill.  I ate something I shouldn’t have eaten in a restaurant and I literally couldn’t get up off the floor of the bathroom.  I was lying on the floor and I called Andrew and I said “I’m really, really sick”.  And Andrew said “You have to…we only have the set today! I’ll come up and I’ll carry you there.”  So somebody came up—one of the assistants came up with Adrian Lester and they literally came into my apartment.  You know that nausea you have where you don’t want to move?  I took some anti-nausea things and I laid in the back of this van and I got down there and we shot the scene.

Now, given the low budget and Leonard’s rather frugal wardrobe, did you have what one suit and one shirt for the whole--?

Frank Langella: I had a cardigan sweater, a jacket, a couple of shirts and a couple of ties and that was—my own shoes I think-- I don’t remember and that hat which was a lucky find.  It was in a box with a bunch of hats and I went that’s it.  And the glasses, you know, a lady brought me over 4 or 5 pairs of glasses, and I picked one and he was nice to create that way, you know?  I knew his clothes weren’t going to be terribly important to him fashion wise.  They had to be comfortable and that was nice not having to concern myself with that costume style and all that stuff.

Now, when you were typing, were you actually typing or where you just typing mumbo-jumbo?

Frank Langella: No, I was typing.  I was typing words I wanted to say, but they weren’t on paper.  They were just for me typing.  I love the way the film begins and ends.  I think it’s very poignant.

So, I have to ask.  Do you think Leonard finished the book?

Frank Langella: You know, you’re only the 2^nd person today who asked me that and actually it doesn’t matter.  What only matters is that he got up and he started again. That’s the point of the movie.  Whether he finishes it, whether it’s well received, whether or not --he could start out as at the end of the picture he’s there typing and 5 minutes later he could have a stroke.  An hour later his daughter could be hit by a car.  That’s the whole point I think of what life is like when you get into these years is the result doesn’t really matter.  The outcome isn’t as important as the process.  And the point of the film is to say get up.  Just get up and do whatever it is, just do it and don’t worry about the outcome of it bad or good.

What is it like to hit a woman?

Frank Langella: It’s great. 

I was really hoping you would hit her much earlier in the film.

Frank Langella: Yeah, you would?  The smack is …oh I guess we shouldn’t give that away I guess but it doesn’t matter. 

Do you enjoy playing a good guy more or a bad guy?

Frank Langella: Well, he was good.  Good, good, good to his toes and I loved playing him and I adored playing Richard Nixon.  I just like to act.  I really love to create people and it doesn’t much matter because you know, they’re all good to me.  When you are a villain, you don’t think you’re a villain.   Other people do but you don’t.  You think everything you’re doing is right and correct and why don’t people see it your way—bang, bang.  So I like it all.

Do you know people in real life as articulate as Leonard, Heather and Ariel?

Frank Langella: Yes. I live in the upper west side of New York and it’s sort of on enclave for artists and writers and painters and actors and there’s always somebody who wants to talk profoundly about something in a coffee shop.  It’s a great city to live in for that particular thing.

It’s funny because when I was watching you in the performance a few weeks ago I interviewed an older writer and it was absolutely him.  Impeccable.

Frank Langella: Really?

Impeccable.  I don’t know if you know the author Rabbi Harold Kushner?  He wrote When Bad Things Happen to Good People. And also a gentlemen and the way you carried yourself and the old school kind of… was absolutely him.  I was going to ask you if you modeled it after someone you knew?

Frank Langella: No just as I said earlier those men all over my neighborhood.  They’re just everywhere and they’re so polite.  So unfailingly polite even to the point where I’ll be coming along Central Park West off my bike or a run or just walking, and I’ll get to the door of my building and one of these older gentlemen—and they’re older than I am and I’m old—and they’ll get to the door and he’ll go like that and not in any phony way.  I have all the time in the world you go in first and I’m very touched by that and it’s around more than we think it is.  It just is.  We don’t see them because they’re not all over television and they’re not pushing themselves on us in the media but they’re all there; that generation of really old world, old fashioned people who observe a Seder in my building.  Just lovely on the holidays.  Just wonderful.

Can I ask you what it’s been like working with Michael Sheen this whole time?

Frank Langella: Well, Michael and I have worked together now for 18 months—at least 18 months—and 2 days ago he came out to me on the set and I said “well, I’ll see you” and he said “I’ll see you”.  We’re going to see a lot of each other next year as well.  We both burrowed into our characters profoundly.  He’s a very strong savvy stage actor and you have to have that.  You have to have a partner if you’re going be in a hit on stage for a year and a half who feels the same way you do about maintaining the level of the performance and Michael felt that way very strongly and so did I.

I just interviewed him and he said he’s really going to miss the character.

Frank Langella: Oh, I bet.  I’ll miss Nixon a lot.  A lot.

Now had you read this particular Brian Morton’s book before?

Frank Langella: No, and I asked Andrew Wagner if I could read the book and I said I won’t read it if you tell me not to and he said “please don’t because the Leonard I want to create with you is not really quite the Leonard in the book.  I don’t want you to be confused.”  I said “but I can just pick things from it that work.”  He said “no don’t”.  I said “you’re underestimating me”.

Have you read it since or do you plan to?

Frank Langella: It’s sitting on the table in the room they got for me and I don’t think I will.  First of all I have to tell you and I’m not being disingenuous, I didn’t expect any of this from this movie.  I expected—I had a wonderful time doing it—but when I saw it I was stunned by how beautifully he sewed it together.  I’m just going to keep the memory of the movie. Thank you folks.

So did you always want to be in a Superman movie?

Frank Langella: No. I didn’t but I’m very happy now I was.