Hugh Laurie: ‘I Don’t Care What Happens to House’ Хью шутит о свой роли, победе в конкурсе теледокторов над Клуни и возможном участии Фрая в House.

Hugh Laurie Won’t Return to The Stage Хью о том, что не хочет больше выступать на сцене

Теперь доступна полность тут - viewer.zmags

Tell us, Hugh - for people who've never seen House, what's it about?

Hang on, my brain is like porridge from shooting! I do know it's medical and that people get ill in it and we try to cure them when nobody else can. Most of the time we succeed, because it's make-believe - but not always. Seriously though, it's a procedural medical show set in the department of diagnostic medicine in a fictional hospital, Princeton Plainsboro. But underneath all that it's a character study of the guy I play, who is called House. It's a very funny show but it's also very interesting, philosophical and poignant -it's all kinds of good things. And it's also good because each episode has complete stories and ongoing stories as well. I like to think people can start watching the series at any point.

The 100th episode airs on Sky1 HD and Sky1 next month. Did you celebrate?

We had cake. I'm not sure it was real - it may have been made out of shaving foam!

Have you done much medical research for the show?

Unfortunately there isn't a lot of time for preparation. It was a feature film, someone like Daniel Day-Lewis would probably go and qualify as a neurosurgeon and spend 6 years doing it to prepare - but it's just not viable in television. We've done whatever the equivalent is of 45 feature films in 5 years - it's immense! So really it's the writers and the doctors we have on set who are doing the research. I'm well supported by very clever people, which is just as well.

If you're ever ill, it must be handy having doctors on set?

It is! I had ear wax in one ear - I couldn't hear. A doctor came to set, looked at me and said there was nothing he could do. Then he thought, "Oh wait a minute, this is a medical show - do you have props here?" I said, "Yes!" He went on to ask me for some bizarre medical implement. We asked the props room, and they had one. We plugged it in, it worked and I could hear again!

Do you get on well with other members?

Very well. It's a real blessing. They are an absolutely fantastic bunch. Although ever time I say that I think of that saying, 'If you look around a group of people and you can't identify the jerk, it means it's you!' We don't have a lot of time to carouse around in nightclubs, but we do hang out. I get on particularly well with Robert Sean Leonard, who plays Wilson. He's a fantastic bloke. Without him, I probably would've gone insane long before now.

The friendship between your characters is a big part of the show...

Well, House is this great analytical brain - the great brain with the questionable heart. It's all a bit Sherlock Holmes - deliberately so. There's a play on Watson with Wilson. Their friendship is the great alliance on the show. It's Wilson's account of his brilliant friend in the same way the Dr Watson would tell stories about his brilliant friend Sherlock Holmes. House is nothing without Wilson.

Is that what made you want to do the show?

When I first read the script, I thought Wilson was the main character, the guy with the 'handsome, open face.' Then there's House who comes in and is sort of barbed. It never occurred to me that they would actually do it the other way round with 'Barbie', as I'm now going to call him, at the centre of it and Wilson as the character who arrives occasionally to comment or support or counteract. In a way, that was the boldest thing they did - put the 'damaged, weird person' at the centre and the conventionally heroic person in support.

How do you get into grumpy mode to play House?

I guess I'm grumpy anyway, so I don't have to worry about it - I arrive pre-grumpied. No, not really. There's no time to go through anything than just getting on and doing it. I arrive at the studio at 6am and by 7:15am we are shooting. So I better be ready, and off we go! We don't have any tea ceremonoies or shake out for an hour. It's breakneck speed.

Any Hints about Season 5?

At then end of the fourth season, there was a big rift between House and Wilson. The first half of the fifth season has been about the healing of their relationship. But House unravels in the course of Season 5.

The show is shot in Los Angeles - what do you miss about the UK when you're over there filming?

Stone buildings. There's no stone there. Everything is wooden because it's prone to earthquakes - you don't want blocks of stone falling on your head! Buildings are made of plywood and nails. It's weird because they can build a whole block of flats in a day and a half - it's absolutely amazing. But I miss the solidness of the UK. I miss the stone. You come back to London and you can feel the sort of weight of the city. It's a fantastically heavy city - heavier, I think, than New York. London has got history, too. You can't shift it, and don't even try lifting it. And if you do, keep your back straight, knees bent and your feet shoulder-width apart!

За перетаптывание и расшаривание спасибо vicodin_martini

Interview

By Emma Thompson
Photography DAVID MUSHEGAIN

Ссылка на сайт журнала и на интервью

By Troy Patterson
Photography Raymond Meier

Да, про Итон действительно интересно! Это ж истоки всего НашегоВсего!

У меня открылось.

June 7, 2009

Hugh Laurie must hate House
(Sunday Times)

AA Gill
True news story: Israeli police have arrested a 62-year-old television presenter for allegedly having TV executives beaten up when they turned down his programme ideas. “Have I got a winner for you — Israel, You Call That Talent? No? Okay, well, what about a medical drama, Goyim with the Wind?”

The first thing that stuck me about this story was that it would make a jolly good TV series. Over-the-hill presenter starts killing ridiculous television people as a sort of vigilante critic while presenting an unwatched cookery show. Think Dexter meets Parkinson. But the best thing about the story was the presenter’s name: Dudu Topaz. You really couldn’t make that up. I expect he is now known as Deep Dudu.

Meet the British was a compilation of official tourist film, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s, made to be shown abroad to attract tourists to Britain, showing them helpful bobbies, cheerfully punctual bus conductors and lots of things that swung — fashion, pop music, shops and dolly birds. It was all quite amusing, but no more so than looking at old episodes of Nationwide or Tomorrow’s World. And it made me wonder what the statute of limitations on mocking yourself is; how long does the past have to sit in a cardboard box in the attic before it can be safely laughed at to its face? The things we remember as part of all our yesterdays grow to become ridiculously naive and aesthetically bilious.

Here were the unforgivable sideburns, the dolly birds in bikinis for no apparent reason except that dolly birds should always be in bikinis and mascara, preferably jigging from foot to foot on the spot. And here was the I’m Backing Britain campaign started by half a dozen secretaries who decided to work an extra half-hour for no pay. It caught on, and half the country did it — I had an I’m Backing Britain mug. At the time it seemed sensible, charitable and patriotic, a very contemporary mass movement. But seeing it again on TV, it looked risible and rather pathetic. And here were those absurd bowler hats and cheeky cockneys and patronised foreigners and, bizarrely, a pair of lost Africans in overcoats walking nervously in a ploughed field.

It was all a lesson, not in the foolishness and political incorrectness of the past, but in the vanity of the present; in us imagining we inhabit a moment of sophisticated good taste and wisdom, immune from scorn. Because as sure as mullets are mullets, you will live to embarrass your future self.

There was one enormous and enviable difference between now and then: the 1960s and 1970s projected a view of Britain that was openly, staunchly and joyfully optimistic. Despite the 20th century having more than its fair share of intolerance, it was 100 years of hopeful predictions. Ingenuity and technology were going to welcome in every new dawn and improve our lives. The future was always going to be a better place, and that made people happy.

We now, on the other hand, have misplaced our optimism. Although our recent current affairs have been relatively comfortable, peaceful and bountiful, we are relentlessly miserable about the future. Imagine a Tristram trying to resurrect Tomorrow’s World. The title itself would seem ironic — everything on it would be technophobic and about home-made ways of staving off inevitable disaster. We don’t bother predicting the future, we just hope we can die before it gets here. I will make a prediction: in 50 years, our self-obsessed, craven fear of things to come will look just as funny and pathetic as the 1960s do today, but mostly it will seem like a silly waste.

Talking of pathetic, miserable pessimists, House returned this week. Much as I enjoy Hugh Laurie’s gothic creation, I must say I am surprised he has managed to last this long. It’s not merely the number of times he’s been shot, had incurable diseases, taken overdoses and been in multiple pile-ups, it’s his narrow range of dramatic possibilities. He really has only one answer to everything. The programmes are somnambulistically repetitive, and the ever more improbable medical conditions add up to coin-tossers.

In this new season, the personal drama has grown more intense and unpleasant and strangely homoerotic, and the set is even less like a real hospital — there don’t appear to be any other patients or staff, just the intractable conundrum of conditions kept in a glass cage. It has a whiff of Frankenstein and fascism about it, with its medical experiments conducted on expendable donors, and it’s lost its sense of humour. Laurie seems to be not just angry and miserable as House, but angry and miserable being House. His vile temper is aimed at the baroque plots and nonsensical script. He’s just pissed off having to be on set. All the sexual tension has been frittered away into wary posturing. In the end, flirting has to make a move or find something else to do.

Part of the pleasure of House is noting that, without his American accent, Laurie is a type of Englishman you find in all the professions. There are doctors, lawyers, publishers, academics and journalists who are all at home in House. I’ve rarely worked for an editor who didn’t make him look like Mr Pickwick; only in America, where good manners and all-round niceness are the default setting, does he seem like a character of twisted psychopathic invention. My diagnosis is that House has something terminal and could jump the shark any episode. Of course, the shark will be suffering from delusions, have beriberi and will probably be incubating its own unborn twin. So enjoy the suffering while it lasts.

There is a moment in Katie Price: The Jordan Years when the cameraman-director, who is also the voice of this film, goes to interview her first plastic surgeon. The camera is welcomed into a plush consulting room; the doctor smiles and says, “I have something for you.” He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a pair of soft plastic pillows. “These,” he says, “are the first implants I ever put into Jordan.” The camera stares with awe, the director’s voice is husky with wonder. “These are the actual implants?”

“Yes,” replies the doctor.

“Can I touch them?” begs the camera.

And a hand picks one up and gives it a lascivious little squeeze. It is a culturally loaded moment, a YouTube grab, an image of surreal, vacuous depth. It’s the asking of permission that gives it its faux poignancy, as if these blobs of goo were still intimate parts of her, as if somehow, even disembodied, they held the aura and sexuality of Jordan. The tentative grope was grubby. This is, of course, what Jordan’s breasts must actually feel like. They are secular relics, Jordan a postmodern St Agatha, who is always painted carrying her own amputated breasts on a plate. Jordan’s implants could be donated to the Design Museum or taken round schools as a learning tool. Maybe, in time, women will want to touch them for good luck, for success in love or finance, as a protection against cancer. There is nothing private or intimate about Jordan. These breasts were made as a marketing tool, a chest billboard, a logo like McDonald’s golden arches.

This documentary was a recycled compilation of other documentaries by the same director, a second payday, cut with interviews and statements by people who had made money out of these bags of plastic — glamour photographers, agents, reality-TV producers. They were all as pointless and self-inflated as the breasts they suckled a living from. And each, to justify his or her silly and embarrassing role, had to inflate Jordan beyond being a humiliated, arrogant, aggressive, self-denigrating money-grabber. It’s fashionable and coolly counterintuitive to say Jordan is a role model, a self-made (oh the irony) woman; that to laugh at her or be mildly repulsed is to be a snob and an elitist. So the apologists and minders of Jordan have split her in two: Jordan, the sexless flaunter of cartoon breasts, and then Katie Price, businesswoman, dressage champion and Mother Courage.

How easily we are absolved from responsibility for our other halves. Hitler: vegetarian, animal lover. Katie Price: humanitarian, carer for the disabled. A million teenagers may want to be just like her, may see her nudity-to-riches story as an inspiration, but like an awful lot of things teenagers think, the wish doesn’t make it right. Jordan isn’t any of the things others would like her to be. She isn’t a hellish symbol of the spineless, workshy, oversexualised immorality of modern society, neither is she a postmodern image of popular culture and commerce and the work/life balance for strong women. She is what she aspires to be, what it says on the box — a topless model and an ageing aid to masturbation. Perhaps we could beatify her and make her the patron saint of cynicism.

Добавлено (11.07.2009, 14:50)
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Но тут о Лори совсем немного, а язык - мозги сломать можно.