SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Rupert Everett, I just want you to know, I think "The American No" is the best book of stories I've read since Chekhov. There are great possibilities in here. We are all very excited, and you'll be hearing from us very soon.
RUPERT EVERETT: Oh, I'm speechless.
SIMON: The title of Rupert Everett's book, "The American No," is taken from the way American film producers lavish praise on a writer or actor during a meeting and then are never heard from again. He's written eight stories kindled by ideas that never quite caught fire after such meetings, and they may make you wonder why. Rupert Everett, the actor, has, of course, dazzled on screen for years - "Another Country," "My Best Friend's Wedding," a couple of "Shreks," "The Happy Prince," which he also wrote and directed. And he joins us from the BBC in London. Thanks so much for being with us, Mr. Everett.
EVERETT: Thank you very much for having me.
SIMON: Please tell us about this - I'll just say - distinctive encounter in SoHo that you had that led to this book of stories.
EVERETT: Well, actually, that - I have to confess - is also a story. But it was inspired by a kind of real event as well. What happened was I was sitting there one day wondering about my life and what to do next and how to make the next step, and, you know, frustrated because I had planned to have a career as a writer, actor, director. It kind of half happened. And then, you know, I pitched and pitched and pitched all my various ideas across this century and a bit of the last. And only one of them really ever managed to make it to the first night - my only film, "The Happy Prince."
And the others, of course, rested in either just in my head or in screenplay form. And the point about screenplays is, if they're not made, they literally don't exist. They're not even ghosts. And that's frustrating because you put in a lot of energy into ideas and stories, and then they just die. Then I had the idea of writing them up into a book of short stories to at least give myself a sense of some kind of achievement for them, that they could have some kind of flickering existence at least.
SIMON: The longest story in the collection - a lot about show business - first, it's entitled "Cuddles And Associates." That's a corporate name, isn't it?
EVERETT: Yes. It's called the CAA of the X sperm and womb world.
(LAUGHTER)
SIMON: We will explain. Well, I'll get you to explain it, 'cause, frankly, it's hazardous for me.
EVERETT: Well, all these stories are kind of autobiographical in a way because they all star me as the central character. And so the me in this story is a young, ambitious, useless actor who arrives in Hollywood in the early '80s and doesn't really manage to get any traction at all and ends up working in the mail room at William Morris, at which point he comes across a big matinee idol movie star who is kind of on the skids. This movie star's broke. He's got alimony from two marriages already. He's got mortgages, everything. He's got no money at all, and he's not working. And my character manages to sell his sperm to a Turkish supermarket owner's wife. The supermarket owner is a little bit impotent, and she's desperate. She's his second wife, and she wants to have a child. And so I arrange for this movie star to give her his sperm.
SIMON: Oh, mercy. Can I ask you about the way you grew up?
EVERETT: I grew up in a military family. A lot of my family are Anglo Indian. All - my grandfather was born in India. My great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather, I think, both died in India. But, yeah, I come from a military naval background - very, very straight, very conventional. And aged about 6, I discovered Julie Andrews.
You know, I think it's very difficult for people to imagine now what it was like for our generation, who had no recourse to moving images, no television at first. The cinema was in the local town. And my first visit to a - you know, a classic provincial cinema - you know, those huge, old places with dress circles and upper circles, slightly smelling of sex and toilet cleaner, and where couples would go and make out in the back row, and families would sit at the front. I saw "Mary Poppins," and it really - that was the - one of the most important creative moments, I think, in my life.
Julie Andrews became, well, my mother. I decided she was my mother, in fact. And I decided I was Julie Andrews' daughter. And my mother had thrown away an old tweed skirt, and I wore this skirt religiously. And years later, of course, I had a wonderful payoff to this childhood fantasy because I got the part in Andrei Konchalovsky's film "Duet For One," where Julie Andrews was playing the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, who died of multiple sclerosis. And I got to play her protege. So it was very exciting, and it was the beginning of a real relationship with Julie that has spanned three films. And I adore her. When she goes, I'm going.
SIMON: There's a line that you used to talk about how the theater, how film opened up a world for you - it was a world with all the dials turned up. Is it still that way?
EVERETT: Well, I don't really know what it's like now. Because, you know, when you get older in it, you're kind of settled within your own kind of inverted glitter ball. And I don't really know what's going on in the real world of show business anymore because, you know, I quite often, luckily, get wheeled out to do something. But I'm not really kind of in the thick of it, I wouldn't say. But I think the dials are turned up. Well, maybe they've been turned down a little bit more recently. In the old days, it was an extravagant world. It was very exciting. You know, you got totally lost in it.
SIMON: Writer, occasionally director, and actor, Rupert Everett - his new collection of stories, "The American No." Thank you so much for being with us.
EVERETT: Thank you very much for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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