AVC: Walking onto a set of half-naked Penthouse Pets: fun or embarrassing?
MM: It's work! It's sort of funny. When they first arrived, I think they thought they were supposed to be in some sort of James Bond movie. There was one being shot nearby, but it was being shot in Malta. They were nice girls. They were pretty game. They were sent in because Guccione didn't think the extras we had been using were pretty enough. [Caligula director] Tinto Brass threw up his hands and said, "This is Rome, for God's sake! This is Fellini's Rome!" Rome is not full of beautiful people by any stretch of the imagination, and it still isn't.
But Guccione was very smart in a lot of ways. He headed an empire, a bit like a Roman emperor. And he lost it, just like a Roman emperor. It was really strange to be doing a movie that he was paying for. But when you're filming, that isn't what you're thinking. You're just trying to get the scenes to work. That was particularly what I was trying to do. I was just trying to work and figure out, logically, "What are we trying to say here?" I can't tell you how many times the scenes were rewritten and redone. That was endless. But we just tried to make it work. It still doesn't work, but, anyway, there's enough interest in it. My friends who know about that period, and who have read Suetonius, who is the historian of that period, think it is very authentic. And our director did a lot of research, and our art department was brilliant. It's Danilo Donati, Fellini's designer, no less, who did all the sets and the costumes.
AVC: Between films like John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, there seems to be a resurgence of films that try to grapple with how far you can go onscreen sexually: whether you need to put on enough of a show to make it look real, or you need to actually be explicit. As an actor, how do you feel about a filmmaker saying, "In order for it to be real, it has to be real"?
MM: I think that's crap. I think that's pathetic. Go get another job. Listen: We're in the business of illusion. We are illusionists. Seriously, that is absolutely pathetic. You're telling me to do a love scene, you actually have to have penetration? That's absolutely beyond pathetic. If you can't think of any way of making that exciting, you're in the wrong job. That's what I think. I remember when they did Don't Look Now, and they thought that Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie actually made love on camera. It's laughable. They were just two extremely gifted actors who made everybody believe they did and ran with it. There was no way there was penetration on the set. No way. Because that crosses over into a porno picture, and I don't care which way you dress it up.
AVC: Throughout the '70s, you seemed to land in films—like If…, O Lucky Man!, and A Clockwork Orange, and at the end of the decade Caligula—that were controversial to say the least. Were you drawn to that kind of material, or were the casting directors just drawn to you?
MM: I really had no say in it, except O Lucky Man!, for which I wrote the original storyline and original script. I lucked out that my first film [If…] was with a master, and he was just an extraordinary person in my life. When I met him, my life did a 360 completely. It was one of those extraordinary meetings that you have occasionally in your life. And I don't mean only work; I mean in friendship and loyalty and everything else. I learned so much from him. I think it might have been something like John Wayne had with John Ford, or Lillian Gish with [director D.W.] Griffith. Just such a powerful character in your life early on, it means so much. Stanley Kubrick cast me from seeing If… He saw it five times. I didn't audition, I just went to meet him, had a cup of tea, and he gave me the book and said, "Read it and call me." And that was it. Kubrick of course was extraordinary in a very different way, but if I hadn't worked for Lindsay Anderson, I wouldn't have been ready for Stanley. He gave me the confidence and he gave me the technique, such as it was in those early days, to survive. And to prosper.
AVC: Having worked with Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson right out of the box, did you find it more difficult to work with directors who are a little less inspired?
MM: No, not at all. I'm very pragmatic in that I know there are very few greats in anything. I got lucky just to have gotten two of the real greats very early on. Better to have had them than to not have had them. And I've worked with other good directors—some of them really good. I've been really fortunate. That's the key relationship on a movie: the director and the actor. Of course, you can't compare the experiences. When you're in your early 20s, you're a very different person. It was a very exciting time, and my whole world was changing. Now I'm looking back, and hoping I can still offer something. Still do good work.
AVC: In your recent filmography, you've worked in areas that people might not have expected you to go in: animation, sitcoms, superhero stories. You really seem to be open to whatever comes along.
MM: Yeah, I've tried it all. I'd love to do radio plays. I think that one should be open to everything and shouldn't limit oneself. I particularly love theater, but with my family situation, it's much harder for me to do that now. I just love a challenge, and always have, and will do anything to make it interesting. I'll try anything, really, as long as it's a challenge and you can have some fun doing it. I think, honestly, having fun and keeping it fairly light are the key elements.
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