Learning curve

You know how it is; first week on the job – you’re too nervous to ask for help and you end up making heaps of mistakes. Not a big deal in your basic office job, but when you’ve got Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening waiting in the wings and there are millions of studio dollars at stake it’s a major problem. That was the situation facing director Sam Mendes on the set of his debut feature film American Beauty. The film garnered extravagantly rosy reviews when it opened in the States but three days into filming Mendes admits the situation was looking pretty rocky. ‘There were more than a couple of sleepless nights,’ Mendes told the Observer. ‘I started with a wrong scene…and the actors played it way too big. And I thought “Oh My God” and it was my fault. It was badly shot, my fault, badly composed my fault, bad costumes my fault.’ Luckily for Mendes the studio honchos agreed to reshoot the first couple of days and despite the inauspicious start, Sam’s main star has nothing but praise for the British director. ‘I've been very fortunate in my experiences with either first-time or second-time directors,’ reveals Spacey. ‘If you sit down with somebody and they start drooling at the table, well, then clearly you probably shouldn't do that movie. But when you are faced with someone who is as articulate and clear about the cinematic ideas that Sam had for this film, I knew that the ideas would work…I was just flabbergasted by what Sam managed to do with his film, cinematically, visually.