Edition: U.S. / Global


By Dave Kehr
Published: January 17, 2003

Always Be Prepared

''I went to Omaha a few weeks before we started shooting, for a costume fitting,'' Kathy Bates said, describing her first day on the set of ''About Schmidt,'' Alexander Payne's film about a Nebraska businessman, played by Jack Nicholson, who must reinvent his life when his wife dies shortly after his retirement. ''Jack was there, and I got to see him, but mainly I got to travel around Omaha with Alexander. He's very proud of Omaha. He showed me where he grew up.''

In ''About Schmidt'' Ms. Bates plays Roberta Hertzel, a feisty Midwestern proto-feminist whose son (Dermot Mulroney) is to marry Schmidt's daughter (Hope Davis). In the course of the film Roberta conceives a powerful crush on the befuddled Schmidt, leading to a midnight encounter in a hot tub that seems destined to become a classic scene.

''While the agents were first negotiating, Alexander and I got to talking about the nude scene,'' Ms. Bates remembered. ''We sent lots of e-mails back and forth, like, 'I'll do this, but I won't do that,' and it was kind of unusual because I'd never actually met him. And here we were writing about very explicit details.''

Though in the film Roberta lives in Denver, her home was chosen from the healthy stock of 1920's frame houses in Omaha. ''It was very helpful for me to go and experience being in Roberta's house because the set was so evocative of that character,'' Ms. Bates said during a visit to Manhattan. ''It was an unusual but interesting way for me to get inside her.

''Jane Ann Stewart, the production designer, asked me if there was anything else I thought Roberta should have in her home, and since I myself had been trying to learn how to play the harp, I said, 'Can we just have a dusty harp over there in the corner?' Because she's unashamedly and unabashedly a dilettante. She'll try anything.''

Ms. Bates, who won an Oscar for her leading role in ''Misery'' (1990), said she believed in thorough preparation before stepping in front of the camera: imagining a life for her character, working with movement and vocal coaches to find the right walk and the right timbre. ''But it always involves the basics,'' she said, ''Internalizing the character and internalizing the dialogue, so it's something you don't have to think about.''

Increasingly, Ms. Bates said, she has found pressures from the business side encroaching upon the work. ''You have less and less time to prepare because they don't want to pay,'' she said. ''It's the soapbox I always get on. We're spending millions of dollars getting ready to photograph things that often aren't ready to be photographed or worth photographing.''

''I was taught in school that the Greeks had a religious theater that transformed people spiritually through catharsis,'' Ms. Bates said. ''At its very best, I think film can do that, but it's very rare. And that's what I like about this one.''

Musical Phrases

Where Ms. Bates's performance in ''About Schmidt'' is a triumph of modern, Method-based acting, Christopher Plummer's no less impressive turn in ''Nicholas Nickleby,'' in which he plays the mean, miserly uncle of the title character (Charlie Hunnam), demonstrates the virtues of formal vocal training in the classical style. Reading his Dickensian lines, Mr. Plummer turns them into musical phrases, richly varied in timbre and rhythm.

''Sadly, it's not encouraged very much these days,'' Mr. Plummer, 75, said from his Connecticut home. ''When I grew up of course it was a requirement. You had to learn how to speak because one grew up in the theater. And the theater -- though it will last forever of course -- no longer has the same importance as it did when I was young. I grew up with people who had to speak well, and it was also a fashion to speak well.''

''Of course,'' Mr. Plummer said with a laugh, ''it's good to learn to speak well because then you can always speak badly if you have to.''

More important than the voice, perhaps, is the ear. ''I was lucky because I did have an ear,'' Mr. Plummer said, ''and I did study music for a long time. I wanted to be a pianist. So music was a first love, and I kind of tackled everything musically, including acting. I instinctively knew where the codas were and where the crescendos were.''

Mr. Plummer credited Douglas McGrath, the director and adaptor of this ''Nickleby,'' with a crucial insight. ''I think he did remarkably well to cast the bad and good fellow as sort of one person, to think of the two Nicklebys as one person,'' he said. ''There's one who has a black side, being Ralph, my character, and another with a God-given good side, which is Nicholas.''

Cue the Kangaroo

It's startling to find Jerry Bruckheimer's name on a children's film like ''Kangaroo Jack,'' a tale of a kangaroo who makes off with $100,000 belonging to a couple of hapless mob flunkies (Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson). Mr. Bruckheimer is more widely known for producing blockbuster action films like ''Black Hawk Down'' and ''Armageddon.''

But there is an explanation for ''Kangaroo Jack,'' which opens today nationwide (review, Page 37). ''It really didn't start that way,'' Mr. Bruckheimer said, speaking from his car on the way to his Los Angeles office. ''It started out as just a cop movie called 'Down and Under.' What we found is that when we screened it for test audiences, the kangaroo was the biggest hit. The kids flipped over it, so we went out, spent a little more money and added a lot more kangaroo.''

The kangaroo, which is partly computer generated, was always a character, Mr. Bruckheimer said, just not as big a character.

''We've added a dream sequence where he talks,'' he said. Making sure that his family film instincts were accurate, Mr. Bruckheimer consulted closely with the ratings board of the Motion Picture Association of America in changing the film's original PG-13 rating to a PG. ''And even when we finally satisfied all of their demands, we screened it for parents and made additional changes,' he said. ''There were some words they objected to.''

Mr. Bruckheimer seems to have enjoyed the experience: ''We just saw the reaction of the kids, and you know, kids' laughter is so genuine, right from the gut, just wonderful. It was like when I used to take my daughter to the movies, and I'd watch her rather than the film because seeing those big saucer eyes and hearing her laugh was the real fun.''

''You learn a lot,'' Mr. Bruckheimer said. ''You learn what kids like and what they go for. If I had it to do over again, I'd add a lot more physical comedy because that's what they really gravitate toward.''

Photo: Kathy Bates's role in ''About Schmidt'' included a scene in a hot tub. (Associated Press)