Article 1: Hanif Kureishi Trades Pen For the Director's Lens

By MATT WOLF;

Published: July 14, 1991

In a West London house whose cream-colored elegance has been temporarily disrupted by camera crews, trailers and technology, the screenwriter Hanif Kureishi ("My Beautiful Laundrette") is becoming a director.

Mr. Kureishi watches avidly as the actor Roshan Seth -- playing Dr. Bubba, a teacher of Islamic Sufi principles -- leads 16 performers in a session of Sufi dancing. Urging informality, Mr. Seth speaks to the assemblage during a break in filming: "It might be even nicer," he says, "if it doesn't look like a class." Mr. Kureishi nods, the cast forms a circle and another scene of "London Kills Me" begins to take shape.

Minutes later, relaxing in a terrycloth robe and sandals, Mr. Seth draws on a cigarette and faces the inevitable question. Is this new movie, which marks Mr. Kureishi's directing debut and is to be released in the United States next January, a kind of "My Beautiful Laundrette II"?

"I like to think it's familiar Hanif territory," says the Indian actor, who was acclaimed for his role as the alcoholic Papa in "Laundrette," the 1984 film that earned its author an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay. "It's Hanif treading territory that he's keen on and likes to explore -- people of the street."

In the earlier film, those people included the young Pakistani Omar (Gordon Warnecke) and his English lover, Johnny (Daniel Day Lewis), a onetime member of the fascist National Front. This time around, the focus is on Clint (played by a newcomer, Justin Chadwick) and Muffdiver (played by the theater actor Steven Mackintosh). They portray two London youths -- aged 20 and 19, respectively -- enmeshed in a world of tough talking and even tougher living. While Muffdiver deals drugs, Clint yearns for both respectability and stability, and he remains fascinated, explains Mr. Kureishi, by "Dr. Bubba's self-possession, his ability to cope with the world."

On one wet afternoon, Mr. Kureishi was filming a scene in which Clint and his girlfriend, Sylvie (Emer McCourt), fall under Dr. Bubba's mesmeric spell. Dr. Bubba runs his Sufi center on the ground floor of the same four-story building in which Clint and his friends live as squatters.

"What a fab man, Dr. Bubba," Sylvie is saying, as the cameras roll on the fourth take of the scene. Near her stands a rather rumpled Mr. Kureishi, hair tousled, two sweaters wrapped around his waist, who breaks his silence only to confer with the cameraman, Ed Lachman, part of the international team making "London Kills Me."

"This has the approach of a European-style film in that it's not being made on an assembly line," says Mr. Lachman, an American cinematographer who has worked overseas for directors like Jean-Luc Godard and Wim Wenders. (Nor, at a cost of $2.4 million dollars, is it being made on an American budget.) The cameraman says he appreciates his director's desire to avoid "a glossed-over reality. Hanif is a born storyteller, but he doesn't give a Hollywood cosmetic view of this world. People have a real need and desire to talk about contemporary conditions because that's what we're living in, and Hanif is able to talk about them."

Weeks later, during a break in editing, Mr. Kureishi is describing his task as one of "getting the story photographed -- whatever happened that day." His decision to direct his screenplay came at the behest of his producer, Tim Bevan, who also financed "Laundrette." "I thought, 'I've got to explain all this to everybody, find someone I get along with,' and Tim said, 'Why don't you think about doing it yourself?' "

Mr. Kureishi's reaction? "I was frightened, terrified. I never wanted to be a director; it wasn't something I wanted to do all my life." What, then, persuaded him? "It would have been perverse to say no, if the only reason was that I was too frightened, which it was. Also, I'm not afraid of failure because writing's my main thing, anyway. If I don't direct again, it's no loss for the world -- or for me."

Mr. Kureishi says he had taken his screenplay to Stephen Frears, who directed "Laundrette" and the pair's subsequent collaboration, "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid," before turning to American projects like "Dangerous Liaisons" and "The Grifters," for which he was nominated for an Oscar.

"I showed it to Stephen," says Mr. Kureishi, "but I never thought it was something he would be up for, because his own career was advancing so fast." Mr. Frears, reached at his home just minutes from the "London Kills Me" location, says: "I read the script, yes. I didn't do it because the subject matter really did feel a long way from me. You can sense the gap; it would have been patronizing."

Referring to directing as "storytelling by other means," Mr. Kureishi found himself undergoing a baptism by celluloid fire. "There were times, for example, when using two cameras -- very complicated scenes, great big scenes -- when I thought, 'I've got no idea what I'm doing here; I can't control this because I don't have a bank of experience to draw on.'

"Normally in life," he continues, "you can look back and refer to other things. I couldn't in this; I just relied on other people."

In conversation, Mr. Kureishi emphasizes what's different about the new film, rather than seeing it as part of a protracted triptych focusing on a side of London that tourists never see. "This is much simpler, less ideologically oriented," says the writer-director, comparing it to his earlier films with Mr. Frears. "It's not about race; it's not about class. It's a story about these guys searching for these shoes" -- Clint needs a new pair of shoes to get a job in a trendy hamburger joint -- "and what happens to them."

The title, he says, conveyed the ambiguity appropriate to a city that Mr. Kureishi finds both exciting and annihilating. "It was suggested to me by David Byrne at dinner in New York," he recalls. "He'd just come back from Madrid, and I said, 'Madrid kills me.' He said, 'Oh, that's funny: New York kills me,' and I said, 'London kills me.' It's a pleasure to be there, but it kills some of the characters in the film."

In addition to Clint and Muffdiver, those characters include Headley (Fiona Shaw), a hashish-loving bohemian; Hemingway (Brad Dourif), the restaurant manager who promises Clint a job if he finds some shoes, and Bike (Naveen Andrews), so-called because of his favorite vehicle. Among those who won't be in the film is the novelist Salman Rushdie, a friend whom Mr. Kureishi has always wanted to put on screen.

"He promised to be in 'Laundrette' and 'Sammy and Rosie,' " says Mr. Kureishi, referring to the author whose novel "The Satanic Verses" resulted in death threats from the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that sent him into hiding. "In the end, he wasn't in either. He was going to be in 'London Kills Me,' but when he turned up, there were some press people outside who had got leaks."

For security reasons, Mr. Rushdie had to leave, and Mr. Kureishi says he still doesn't know what part his friend would have played.

"We were going to make it up on the day," says the director. "I thought being a writer, he should write his own lines."

Correction: July 14, 1991, Sunday

Two captions on page 12 of the Arts and Leisure section today are reversed in some copies. The actor Justin Chadwick is shown in profile, and the screenwriter and director Hanif Kureishi is facing the camera.

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