Gary Oldman has reflected on the on-set tensions that troubled the production of 1992’s Bram Stoker's Dracula, joking: “We’re all a bit nuts.”
Oldman, now 68, played the lead role in The Godfather and Apocalypse Now director Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of the classic vampire novel.
During an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, per Entertainment Weekly, Oldman accepted that the pair had “clashed” but said ultimately making the film was a “good experience.”
“The interesting thing about it was that it was Francis Coppola’s Dracula, and how he would see it and what vision he’d bring to it,” said Oldman. “We sometimes would come together and we’d butt heads.”
He continued: “We sometimes clashed, but then — and this is the funny thing — when I later directed, I used a clip from Apocalypse Now. I obviously had to ask permission, and he gave me that clip for free. He said, ‘Gary can have whatever he wants.’ Later, I ran into him again in Cannes. Whatever differences we had at the time, we made up.”
The Slow Horses star went on joke that filmmakers can be an unusual breed. “We’re all a bit nuts,” said Oldman, to laughter from the audience. “Directors, they’re all very strange. They’re brilliant. Some of them are very good friends, but they’re all a bit nuts. What you do is just slip in and go, ‘Oh, she’s like this. Okay. He’s like this. Ah, he wants to do 100 takes. I’ll surrender to the process.’”
Bram Stoker's Dracula also starred Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins and Keanu Reeves. The film was a major box office hit, making over $215 million against a budget of $40 million.
It also delighted critics, with The Independent’s Anthony Quinn writing at the time: “They call it Bram Stoker's Dracula, but that won't kid anyone for long. One look at the hypercharged Gothic fantasia unfurling across the screen and you realise this Dracula is the creation of someone very much of our time, someone extravagantly talented and hopelessly muddled - someone like Francis Ford Coppola, in fact.
“While the form of Stoker's fable has largely been retained - a patchwork of journals, letters and newspaper reports - it's been shaken down and souped up as a luscious spectacle. Coppola's pyrotechnics have gatecrashed the novel and overturned its fin de siecle furniture.
“From Corleone to Kurtz, Coppola has often been drawn to the enigmatic overlord who exercises a terrible and absolute power over his domain. In Dracula he may have found the type's most fearsome embodiment.”
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