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||| Joseph L. Mankiewicz |||
Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Mankiewicz directed 20 films in a 26-year period, and was very successful at every kind of film, from Shakespeare to western, drama to musical, epics to two-character pictures, and regardless of the genre, he was known as a witty dialogist, a master in the use of flashback and a talented actors' director.

The 1950 Oscar for Best Picture and Screenplay brought Mankiewicz wide recognition as a writer and a director, with his sardonic look at show business glamour and the empty lives behind it. This well orchestrated cast of brilliant and catty character actors is built around veteran actress Bette Davis and Anne Baxter as her understudy desperate for stardom.

One of Mankiewicz’ more intimate films, this highly regarded and major artistic achievement is a spirited romantic comedy set in England of the 1880’s about a widow who moves into a haunted seashore house and resists the attempts of a sea captain specter to scare her away. This is a pleasing and poignant romance that is equally satisfying as a good old ghost story.

Mankiewicz wrote and directed this witty dissection of matrimony that has three women review the ups and downs of their marriages (with all its romance, fears and foibles) after receiving a letter telling them that one of their husbands has been unfaithful. Once again Mankiewicz deftly utilizes the skills of a well-chosen ensemble, which includes a young Kirk Douglas at his dreamiest.

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Uma Thurman On...

By TheRealDickHollywood

October 3rd, 2003

Today, our LA correspondent Dick Hollywood speaks with "Kill Bill" star Uma Thurman about her character, working with Quentin Tarantino and how she chose to work with John Woo after completing this film.


Uma Thurman On...

The Birth of Kill Bill:
The day the project was born, the night that the project was born which could have gone away as well, but we were bantering together [Quentin] and I back and forth and going on about genre filmmaking, revenge films and specifically female revenge films. In genre filmmaking women were given these kinds of roles, before they had hit mainstream. The idea of the blood splattered bride was born right then. He got so excited about it that he went and wrote eight pages with this character and Bill. This was in 1992. About seven years later I ran into him and asked what he was doing and he was writing a war epic then and I asked, ‘Whatever happened to those pages that you wrote? Did you lose them?’ He’s like no, no I didn’t. I still have them, and for some reason he went home and dug them up and reread them and became infused with enthusiasm to go back to them. It was a few months later that we were in touch again and he wanted to give the script for my birthday, but it was two weeks away from being done.

Her character, The Bride:
The character is very much like a steel rod. She’s a very tough character. What he had me there to do was to bring her humanity to the situation. For the House of Blue Leaves sequence, there I was shooting that one sequence for eight weeks. The normal thing for an actor is you have scenes; you have dialogue and things that are familiar that you’re skilled to work towards your whole career. You know what to do when you get in a scene with dialogue, and here I was in this giant scene, him going mad with the blood and the this and the that. I just treated it like I was Lillian Gish. I was in a silent film and to keep my sanity, just go through the sequence moment for moment, close-up to close-up to fight moment and do what I do and make it real.

Her character’s Code of Ethics:
My [The Bride] ethics, my code of ethics, hers, cause there is one. There is a code. What she does really is sort of a suicide mission. I mean she basically asks each person to choose whichever weapon they feel they are best in. And she challenges basically to a duel and she gives them he advantage. That’s what makes it kind of a Kamikaze, like almost will to die sort of mission on her part. She wants to take them out, but she’s totally willing to give them the upper hand in winning.

Women fighting... sexy or empowering?:
Well, it depends how much you like long sharp instruments in your romantic activities I guess. I can’t quite say that would be my weapon of choice in bed. Going through that whole process and doing the three months of training with Master Wu Ping and his team. They trained me five days a week for three months from nine in the morning until five o’clock at night, and we were not to be late and I never got to leave early. Just surviving that is really empowering.

The toughest scene:
The toughest scene? It’s difficult to say. Everything had to be tough. I mean the character goes through an ordeal. And wait until you see the second half, okay. It’s not over. It goes on and on and on and [Tarantino] needs to feel that it’s real. He doesn’t want shortcuts. He wants to see it real. He wants to see it tricked. He wants to see it, which way. And I don't think he believes in the easy hit. He would laugh to me about the scene where I’m in the car, I’m struggling. He goes, “I was watching this footage and you were struggling and I see your tears run down your face and you’ve got this weird muscle you’ve developed in your hand, I never saw that. I loved when you’re sweating and you look awful, it was so great. And then I realized I made you do it 15 more times.” So we explored every single moment to the nth degree. It’s hard to tell you what’s the toughest.

Her role in John Woo’s "Paycheck":
“On "Paycheck," I was the girl. I wasn’t the action force in that movie. When we first talked about Kill Bill, Quentin screened John Woo’s “The Killer” for me. John Woo was a big inspiration. So, when I finished "Kill Bill" and didn’t know what to do with myself, John Woo called me and asked me to come and be a part for him and Ben Affleck was in it, and I thought that’s what I‘d like to do.