TMW #34: Tom Burke interviewed, cinema ads, subtitles and a siblings quiz
Big names, long ads and the one-inch barrier...
Happy Tuesday cine-enthusiasts,
Another week, another dispatch from your pals at The Movie Wingman. Today we’re talking to the British actor Tom Burke – excellent in the recent(ish) likes of The Souvenir and Furiosa – ahead of his enjoyable supporting turn in Steven Soderbergh’s starry spy movie Black Bag.
Beyond the mysterious paywall, we have thoughts on the ballooning length of ads at the cinema - trailers, yay! Car commercials, nay! - and paying subscribers can also read our heretical take on subtitles (sorry, Bong Joon-ho) and take our fiendishly fun cinema-sibling quiz. Plus you can bask in the warm and fuzzy feeling unique to supporting independent film writing.
Not a subscriber? Why not test the waters with our free tier and get the bi-weekly Wingman direct to your inbox every Tuesday and Friday, or go all-in with a paid sub to receive bonus articles in every newsletter (and our eternal gratitude). We’ll be back on Friday with reviews of Black Bag, The Electric State, Opus, and our usual round of under-the-radar recommendations. Have a great week!
Jordan (Matt and Matthew)
Tom Burke interview
The Black Bag star on Soderbergh, spies and sci-fi
British star Tom Burke has been on a heater of late. Following a calling-card performance in Joanna Hogg’s 2019 film The Souvenir, Burke has been a scene-stealing presence in Mank, Living, Klokkenluider and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. This week he co-stars as Freddie Smalls in Black Bag, Steven Soderbergh’s sleek espionage thriller starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as married spies with trust issues. And after that: the highly anticipated streaming series Blade Runner 2099. Recently, The Movie Wingman caught up with Burke to talk messy spooks, Mank memories and stepping into the future.
When Steven Soderbergh calls with a role in a spy movie, is that an easy ‘yes’?
That would've been enough, but it was the character and the story and everyone else who was involved. Which I think at that point was Cate [Blanchett] and Michael [Fassbender].
Steven had recommended me for Mank. I hadn't realised that when I was cast. I didn't know Steven Soderbergh knew who I was. I was doing an EPK for Mank and they went, ‘Do you know how you got this part?’ And I went, ‘Yeah: blah, blah, blah.’ And they went ‘No, Steven Soderbergh recommended you.’
Do you know which of your roles brought you to Steven's attention?
It was Souvenir. I don't think he'd seen me in anything before that because I didn't really have a movie career. I popped up in the odd indie, but I'd never been a ‘star of tomorrow’ type. A lot of people were a little bit, ‘Where’s he come from?’ Which is quite a nice way to get into movies.
How would you describe your Black Bag character, Freddie Smalls?
He's a bit of a mess, really! But I think he's, in his own way, he's quite lovable. He's very into his girlfriend. And he's suffering a little from having not got a promotion that he was clearly expecting, but half of him not expecting. And I think he's trying to field all that in a particular social setting.
It all starts in a very interesting microcosm-y way, with minor resentments and relationship difficulties. And then it spills into this global emergency. I think it's an interesting film for that.
Is it closer to Tinker Tailor… in its approach to the espionage world than, say, Bond?
Yes, if you imagine a very Tinker Tailor-esque arc – or John le Carré arc – to things, but then the Edward Albee, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? world of dysfunctional relationships thrown in!
Did anything take you by surprise when working with Steven?
I didn't think it would be so quick. In terms of the speed of it, it was like doing a soap or something. And I didn't know how I'd find that but, actually, I think I'm a big fan of it. It just sustains the energy in a different way. You don't crash. There’s a lot of stop/starting with filming and he's done everything he can to minimise that, including operating the camera himself. That's just another way of not having to come in and out. I had a chat with him long after we finished about that and he said, yeah, that's all part of why he does that.
How do you look back on the experience of working with David Fincher on Mank? Everyone knows how uncompromising he can be as a filmmaker.
I was slightly out of my body and I'm a bit annoyed with myself for that because it's almost like I don't quite remember it. And I don't know if that was nerves or just unfamiliarity with the kind of rhythm he was working at.
He gives you about five to six notes between every take. And I mean between every take. And there are a lot of takes. And sometimes he's giving you that note twice or three times or four times because you haven't been able to incorporate it and you can't process it in a particularly intellectual way, which is what you'd normally do just to calibrate and try to glue it in.
But there's just too many. And if you think about them, they become these speed bumps in a scene that he doesn't want speed bumps in. He wants it to have a kind of freedom and an arc. So you don't know what you did at the end of the day, it's a kind of blur.
We’re about a year on from Furiosa. In terms of recent studio movie experiences, how did working on Black Bag compare?
They weren't entirely dissimilar in that I would say I felt incredibly free, and empowered and challenged in absolutely the right way by both of them.
How did you feel when the critical appreciation for Furiosa didn't translate into greater box-office success?
I was saddened. I did look a bit at what was going on with online comments and stuff. A lot of people going, 'Oh, I won't go.’ And there were a lot of ideas about what it would be. There was a kind of refusal to accept that this might be entirely idiosyncratic and original in the way that it, of course, is because it's George Miller and it's Anya. And they're both such unique people. So it was a lack of imagination to some degree, I think, that stopped people going. Everyone that went, as far as I can tell, seemed to really enjoy it. They might have had quibbles about this, that or the other, but I think they recognised that it was a legitimate bit of that whole story. And it does lead into Fury Road in a really great way.
You also have Blade Runner 2099 coming up…
Those two are like my top franchises: the Mad Max world and the Blade Runner world. I was like, ‘This is mad.’ Because if you'd said pick two, I'd have gone ‘Those two, please.’
Other than your fandom, what excited you about that show?
The writing was immediately very interesting. It was different. In the same way that the dialogue in George's Mad Max films has as much character and texture and otherness as anything else in that world, the dialogue in [Blade Runner]… everyone’s talking a bit like they're in a kind of high school soapy something. There's no leap being made to transport you with the dialogue. It was something very different. And then it was Michelle [Yeoh], who I’ve been a fan of for years. Hunter [Schafer], I'd seen in Euphoria, and she's just extraordinary. So that was very exciting. And the way they do the grey area of morality in the Blade Runner stuff is fascinating.
Both of the Blade Runner films are masterclasses in worldbuilding. Did you get the sense that the show will have a similar capacity to transport?
It was a while before I saw a set because I did have a lot of [costume] fittings, and then I was introduced to the story quite slowly. And then suddenly I was in the studios at Barrandov and taking any opportunity I could to wander around and look at it all. I don't think it's ever happened at Barrandov before where they had every studio being used as different sets, and even some outdoor bits. (Jordan Farley)
Black Bag opens in cinemas on 14 March and will be reviewed in Friday’s newsletter.
Ads infinitum
Sizing up the news that cinema ads are getting longer…
This weekend The Guardian ran a news piece on how pre-film ads have got longer over the past decade. According to market research, the pre-show show now lasts between 20 and 30 mins; cinema-ad company (and all-time jingle king) Pearl & Dean says it’s not the reels per se that have increased, but the length of individual product ads.
I’ll be honest: I hadn’t really noticed. Mostly because the ads have always seemed to me to last a small eternity. I have come to accept this as a fact of cinemagoing life, like confusion over which cup holder belongs to which seat, or that the first soap dispenser you try in the loos will always be empty. Has there ever been a time when celluloid and the (long) hard sell weren’t entwined? It wouldn’t surprise me if historical evidence was uncovered that before the seminal 1896 public showing of Arrival of a Train there was an ad for a boulangerie, “soixante yards from this cinema”…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Movie Wingman to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.