A Conversation with Gérard Rudolf: Episode 2
Welcome to Talking Movies, I’m Spling…
We continue our conversation with actor, writer, director, photographer and poet, Gérard Rudolf, who has been working and creating for three decades now…
You have been behind the camera in a lot of those instances, but you also probably have an empathy for the subject, because you yourself have been a subject many times.
I think I counted about 44 film credits on IMDb for you as an actor. So, you know, just jumping back into the world of cinema, which performance would you say you’re proudest of, and why?
That’s an interesting question. And I think Kanarie, I suppose, because that was a particularly hard shoot for me. I mean, it’s an extraordinary film in many ways, and people who saw the film will know exactly what I’m talking about. The concept behind it was we would shoot each scene in the film in one continuous take. And the working method was basically we’d come in in the morning, rehearse the scene with a with a steadicam until lunchtime, and then start shooting after lunchtime.
And the commissioning editors had this weird rule that we had to get 15 good takes in the can before we could wrap. So if you’re working on continuous takes, there’s always something that goes wrong somewhere. So we ended up doing sometimes 25 to 30 takes.
And I’m the kind of actor who, it’s going to sound a little bit controversial, but I hit my peak around take three or take four in terms of performance.
With energy and everything.
Exactly. So I worked very, very hard at building myself up through two, maybe three to a fourth take, and then I peak. And what was exceptionally difficult was going to take 15, 20 sometimes. And that’s… it’s a hard thing for an actor to do. That’s a very hard discipline to adhere to, because you start forgetting your lines after a while. That was the hardest thing. And I’m proud of that performance, actually.
It was one of the hardest shoots that I ever did. And the other one was many years ago, in 2007-ish, around there… I did a TV series called Transito, where I played a hitman. And that had its challenges as well, especially in the dialogue, because he spoke a highfalutin Afrikaans.
And the lines were incredibly hard to memorise because of that. And because it’s not the kind of Afrikaans that we speak every day. So I’m very proud of that performance as well. So that’s two performances out of like 34 years of doing this thing.
They’re like, you know, a handful that probably sort of make that the top 10, and then the top five, and you just sift down.
Yeah, I suppose that’s the reality of being an actor is most of the stuff that you do, you do because you have to do it because you have to earn money. You know, we’re not in the position in this country to, even if you’re a very popular performer, to pick and choose whatever you want, because there’s not that many products being filmed. So it becomes a story of survival rather than a story of art. A story of actually expanding your horizons as a dynamic artist, as one might do in the more established film industries around the world, you know, where you can actually build a career on performances and get better roles.
And so that’s a sad thing for me. And also, yeah, as you get older, I suppose you’re looking for more challenges. And I don’t think the challenges aren’t necessarily always there in terms of the quality of the scripts and people’s perception of you when they cast you. It’s a very strange world.
With that casting business, does it ever annoy you when you get approached with certain roles that seem to be very similar or have like a specific trend?
Not really. No, no. I mean, people think I’ve played more bad guys than good guys. And simply not true. If you go and look at my filmography, the thing about playing bad guys is they’re the most memorable roles in any story.
The good guys are boring, but playing a bad guy is a very complex thing. And you have to do deep dive there. You need to find the empathy for that character and the questionable things, even disgusting things that they sometimes do.
And that is the hardest journey, to actually find the empathy, to see this person as a person. And the success is always that, you know, when people hate you, then you know you’ve done a good job. You dive into the shadow of being a human being that we don’t always get the chance to do and live out.
And they just have so much more complexity.
Yeah.
Because they think they’re right. It makes sense to them, even though the audience can see clearly that this is wrong. Their sense of morality is maybe warped or whatever. But let’s dial back, rewind back in time and find out, where did your love for film actually begin? Where did it all start?
Oh, that’s pretty easy. I grew up in a family where I had a mother and father who loved movies. And they took us or me and my older brother, my late brother to the drive-in in Pretoria. And the first film that I remember seeing was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone.
And I remember as a little boy of probably about three or four, that I just fell in love with that world because I’ve never seen that landscape before. I’ve never experienced anything so powerful because it’s a drive-in screen, you know. A widescreen. Yeah. And just the impact that these images… I didn’t understand the film at all, but I just knew I liked what I was seeing. And I fell completely in love with movies then. And I said earlier that I’m a dreamer. And so film is the perfect device, vehicle to transport me out of this world.
Thanks for listening. This interview is kindly brought to you courtesy of Brightburn Studios. For movie reviews, podcasts and interviews visit splingmovies.com and remember… Don’t wing it, SPL!NG it.
That’s an interesting question. And I think Kanarie, I suppose, because that was a particularly hard shoot for me. I mean, it’s an extraordinary film in many ways, and people who saw the film will know exactly what I’m talking about. The concept behind it was we would shoot each scene in the film in one continuous take. And the working method was basically we’d come in in the morning, rehearse the scene with a with a steadicam until lunchtime, and then start shooting after lunchtime.
And the commissioning editors had this weird rule that we had to get 15 good takes in the can before we could wrap. So if you’re working on continuous takes, there’s always something that goes wrong somewhere. So we ended up doing sometimes 25 to 30 takes.
And I’m the kind of actor who, it’s going to sound a little bit controversial, but I hit my peak around take three or take four in terms of performance.
With energy and everything.
Exactly. So I worked very, very hard at building myself up through two, maybe three to a fourth take, and then I peak. And what was exceptionally difficult was going to take 15, 20 sometimes. And that’s… it’s a hard thing for an actor to do. That’s a very hard discipline to adhere to, because you start forgetting your lines after a while. That was the hardest thing. And I’m proud of that performance, actually.
It was one of the hardest shoots that I ever did. And the other one was many years ago, in 2007-ish, around there… I did a TV series called Transito, where I played a hitman. And that had its challenges as well, especially in the dialogue, because he spoke a highfalutin Afrikaans.
And the lines were incredibly hard to memorise because of that. And because it’s not the kind of Afrikaans that we speak every day. So I’m very proud of that performance as well. So that’s two performances out of like 34 years of doing this thing.
They’re like, you know, a handful that probably sort of make that the top 10, and then the top five, and you just sift down.
Yeah, I suppose that’s the reality of being an actor is most of the stuff that you do, you do because you have to do it because you have to earn money. You know, we’re not in the position in this country to, even if you’re a very popular performer, to pick and choose whatever you want, because there’s not that many products being filmed. So it becomes a story of survival rather than a story of art. A story of actually expanding your horizons as a dynamic artist, as one might do in the more established film industries around the world, you know, where you can actually build a career on performances and get better roles.
And so that’s a sad thing for me. And also, yeah, as you get older, I suppose you’re looking for more challenges. And I don’t think the challenges aren’t necessarily always there in terms of the quality of the scripts and people’s perception of you when they cast you. It’s a very strange world.
With that casting business, does it ever annoy you when you get approached with certain roles that seem to be very similar or have like a specific trend?
Not really. No, no. I mean, people think I’ve played more bad guys than good guys. And simply not true. If you go and look at my filmography, the thing about playing bad guys is they’re the most memorable roles in any story.
The good guys are boring, but playing a bad guy is a very complex thing. And you have to do deep dive there. You need to find the empathy for that character and the questionable things, even disgusting things that they sometimes do.
And that is the hardest journey, to actually find the empathy, to see this person as a person. And the success is always that, you know, when people hate you, then you know you’ve done a good job. You dive into the shadow of being a human being that we don’t always get the chance to do and live out.
And they just have so much more complexity.
Yeah.
Because they think they’re right. It makes sense to them, even though the audience can see clearly that this is wrong. Their sense of morality is maybe warped or whatever. But let’s dial back, rewind back in time and find out, where did your love for film actually begin? Where did it all start?
Oh, that’s pretty easy. I grew up in a family where I had a mother and father who loved movies. And they took us or me and my older brother, my late brother to the drive-in in Pretoria. And the first film that I remember seeing was The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone.
And I remember as a little boy of probably about three or four, that I just fell in love with that world because I’ve never seen that landscape before. I’ve never experienced anything so powerful because it’s a drive-in screen, you know. A widescreen. Yeah. And just the impact that these images… I didn’t understand the film at all, but I just knew I liked what I was seeing. And I fell completely in love with movies then. And I said earlier that I’m a dreamer. And so film is the perfect device, vehicle to transport me out of this world.
