Interview with Jenny Agutter

GAME:

On Thursday 31st January I traveled into London, sticking to the road and keeping off the moor, to visit the star of An American Werewolf in London - Jenny Agutter.

I allowed her to read my questions in advance so that she wasn't surprised by anything, and to give me enough time to calm down. Good lord, I'm sat opposite a sex idol! I began the interview with a safe film-makers question as I asked her what director John Landis was like to work with.

JENNY AGUTTER:

'He's a terrific director, for an actor', begins Jenny, enthusing about her friend. 'I actually knew him before working with him. He brings a huge amount of energy to a film set. To make films is as boring as watching paint dry - you usually have to do little tiny bits here and there. You go off waiting for lighting, you come back - the energy dies. You hope you can find someone who can keep it going. John Landis never lets that energy go.'

'Also he's very good at recognising people the way they are, you feel very secure that he's going to make choices that make sense for you as an actor and he won't leaving you feeling you've got egg on your face.'

GAME: I asked how much of the script for American Werewolf was improvised and how much was tightly scripted before hand.
JENNY AGUTTER:

'It was a fairly worked script but he does encourage, almost like, improvisation - which is that the sense of the moment absolutely happening there and then.'
GAME: I must now ask her about a touchy subject for me, the woeful Werewolf in Paris movie. I'd heard a rumour that John Landis was trying to get a sequel to American Werewolf made incorporating Jenny's character before this awful film actually went into production. I asked Jenny if she knew anything about this.
JENNY AGUTTER::

'It was talked about. In truth I don't think when Landis wrote An American Werewolf he ever wrote it in terms as having an ongoing story, he wrote it as a complete piece. Clearly any film company that makes a film is always going to talk about sequels particularly if they see something as being successful, which Werewolf was. So I'm not really quite sure what Landis' plans were to make another one. The American Werewolf in Paris was a completely separate story…'

'It's such a strange combination that I'd be unhappy to make anything like that without Landis directing.'
GAME: I breathe a sigh of relief that Jenny recognises a great director when she works with one, and has scruples when it comes to film roles. I bring up the subject of the American Werewolf feature commentary again, this time something Griffin Dunne said. He mentions that they needed four American work visas and that they were having problems obtaining his. As a result Landis was scouting locations in Paris with a view to relocating the whole project.
JENNY AGUTTER: 'Yeah, he talked about moving the whole thing. I wonder how it would have worked in Paris. I guess there are places to go out to, it wouldn't have been quite the moors but they do have some very wild landscapes.'

'I don't think it was just an empty threat, I think he really found it a problem. He was not going to make two English guys seem American because the whole point of it was really Americans to set up the whole English thing.'

'Just as well because I don't think I'd have been able to be a nurse in Paris.'
GAME:

I've always considered Jenny something of a character actress and I asked her what research she did for the role of nurse Alex Price.
JENNY AGUTTER: 'I did do some research, but looking back I don't know if was necessary. I went on work for a week doing voluntary in a hospital to spend some time with the nurses...'

'I also wanted to know what nurses where like. What their attitude is, where they go in between walking between wards.'

'But John Landis wrote a good relationship which is really what the film's about. A very straightforward young woman who's very sure of herself and she meets a young man who needs some taking care of.'
GAME: She laughs as she realises the double entendre of her next statement 'And she decides to take care of him.'

As a man of childish intentions I battle to keep down the remarks and concentrate on the task in hand - getting Jenny's opinion on why American Werewolf was so successful.
JENNY AGUTTER: 'It wasn't being frightening for its own sake. You start off with a good story, with real characters that people can identify with because people can recognise them. It's sort of everyman - being in the bizarre situation, knowing that werewolves don't exist, except in this they do!'

'We're not being spooked by shadows and ghosts, we're saying there is someone who is 'undead' and that there is a werewolf. And that's both funny and frightening but it makes you identify with them as real people with circumstances.'

'I think its energy is part of its success - its use of music and sound, it's extremely well edited and it has extraordinary effects, even with all the changes there have been in make-up processes. What Rick Baker did with John Landis to create the change into the werewolf was extraordinary…'

 
GAME: I battle at this point to get a word in as Jenny seems to really enjoy talking about her fond memories. I ask her how she met John Landis before American Werewolf.
JENNY AGUTTER: 'Through an actor, a friend of mine. I met him and his wife Deborah and the two of them were young people in Hollywood. Both of them were very, very bright and really interesting. John is a real movie buff.'
GAME: As my mind wandered thinking about Landis' films, I remembered his work on Thriller and that Michael Jackson voluntarily underwent a werewolf transformation. I had to put it to Jenny and ask whether she was pleased not to have to undergo a werewolf transformation herself.
JENNY AGUTTER: She very quickly responded 'Very, very pleased, I was also very pleased not to be Griffin Dunne and have my make up done at 5.30 in the morning for three hours to look as hideous as he did.'
She laughs again as though she were embarrassed about having insulted Griffin Dunne.

'I guess being a werewolf would have been better than doing Griffin's job because that was an every day job whereas there was only one werewolf transformation.'
GAME: At this point I'm almost getting excited at the thought of my next question. I geekily ask her if she knows what the term 'See you next Wednesday' is all about.
JENNY AGUTTER: 'Yes, it's a reference to the movie within the movie that John Landis had put in, the pornographic film.' She laughs as she realises that she's talking about porn in an interview, and I think of the respect I'll get from one of my colleagues at GAME after getting Jenny Agutter to talk about porn.
Jenny tries to continue: 'And he's had it in other films as well hasn't he?'

GAME: I chatted to Jenny as we made for the exit and she told me that she spends a lot of time on the web and would check up on this interview at some point, so 'Hi Jenny if you're reading this!' She congratulated me on my first interview and it was with a degree of sadness that I departed, knowing that my brief flirtation with stardom had come to an end. But hey, I spent an afternoon in a small room with Jenny Agutter, that's time well spent.

I wonder which tube station the werewolf attack occurred in, I'm about to head back to Oxford Circus. I hope… nah, couldn't be.

Interview from GAME