Original-Cin Q&A: Alan Cumming on the Canuck Trauma-Drama Drive Back Home
Inspired by a true story, Drive Back Home might inspire a road trip with a loved one.
Set in the the winter of 1970, Weldon, (Charlie Creed-Miles) a cantankerous, small town plumber from rural New Brunswick, gets a phone call in the middle of the night to discover that his estranged, gay brother Perley (Alan Cumming) is in jail after being arrested for having sex in a public park.
So Weldon must drive his beat-up work truck 1000 miles to Toronto to pick him up and bring him back to their childhood home. It’s a road tip of self-discovery and tense emotions.
Bonnie Laufer spoke with Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Alan Cumming about why he was intent on being a part of this film, which opens in theatres Friday, December 6.
Alan Cumming and his estranged onscreen brother Charlie Creed-Miles.
ORIGINAL-CIN: Alan, you have had such a long and varied career, so how does a nice Scottish guy like you get involved with this independent Canadian film?
ALAN CUMMING: Just a funny old thing called life. These opportunities come up. Mike Clowater, who wrote it and directed it, had a bee in his bonnet about me doing it.
He sent it to my British agents rather than the American ones. I read it, really liked it. Then he came to New York to meet me, and I said, all right, just like that. I sort of go with my gut, and I've loved this script. I think it's so amazing and I really think he's such a great new Canadian filmmaker.
O-C: The film is loosely based on Michael’s uncle and grandfather. After you read the script what kind of discussions did you have with Michael about it, because it's such a personal story for him. Does that ever scare you because you really want to do it justice, or do you put that aside?
CUMMING: You have to put it aside. We obviously talked at great length. But when someone is being so personal and telling a story and about something that had, sort of, not altogether rosy memories, you just want to do it and want him to be happy with it.
You're sort of playing with his memory and so I think it's something for him, this film was a way of making sense of it.
It's really difficult when you're playing someone who's alive. And if they're around, it's a bit weird but yes. I just wanted to do it justice. It's always difficult when you're doing an accent and you're doing something from another time.
You know, I just want to be authentic and good and put a lot into it. I put on a bit of weight, I got my head shaved, and I wanted to look like a hot mess, like this character was at the start of the film.
O-C: Have you ever taken a long road trip with a family member?
CUMMING: I have done that with partners over the years. A couple of years ago, I did a sort of road trip in America, because I had some concert dates so we decided to drive. I had a band, but there were like five or six of us, and we stopped off at the hotels.
I have done cross-country in America a couple of times, once with an ex-boyfriend who we'd known each other for about a month, and we decided to stop smoking cold turkey and then go on a road trip together across America.
O-C: Not smart, Alan, not smart.
CUMMING: Nothing was smart about any of that scenario. (Laughs).
It was par for the course. When you travel with someone you really get to know them, and you find out things about the person that might surprise you.
It's interesting. I travel all the time and I’ve learned that I've been able to say over the last few years to my husband that I'm going to go on my own, because sometimes you just travel at a different pace, or want to do and see different things.
I think it's really important to be honest and be vocal about what you like and what you want to do. I love traveling but in all honesty, I actually really love traveling alone because it gives you so much freedom. It’s really quite liberating.
O-C: You spend most of your screen time in this film with your co-star Charlie Creed-Miles, who plays your estranged brother. What was it like spending that much time with him, especially being cramped in that old truck?
CUMMING: The whole thing was so intense because we shot it in a month and we'd never met before we started shooting the film.
I remember arriving in North Bay and I was going to try and go to the supermarket to get something, because I was living in this apartment. It was freezing, and I knew I was going to have drinks with Charlie and Mike the director later, and I sort of staggered through the snow and I saw Charlie across the street, who must have thought I looked like a crazy person!
The way we work together, we got on really well. We were working a lot in the dead of the night doing these crazy scenes that are super intense and just exhausted. It was sort of a funny way when you work with someone in such close quarters for most of a movie.
I always think that when you're an actor and you have these intense relationships with people it's like having a longtime friendship condensed into a short time. We haven't seen each other since but I am sure that the next time we see each other we will always go back to that moment, have that connection.
But it was a super intense thing to do, just to be driven by someone who is an erratic driver in this rickety old truck in the middle of nowhere surrounded by snow. It sure was an interesting experience.
O-C: Your character speaks French. Are you fluent or did you learn French for this role?
CUMMING: I wouldn’t say I'm fluent, but yes, I can speak French. I can totally get by. I'm actually going to do a movie in Belgium next month and the whole thing is in French, so that should be quite interesting!
O-C: You never cease to amaze! Is there anything you can’t do?
CUMMING: I can't do spreadsheets. I'm now the artistic director of the Balochi festival theater in Scotland, and just today, I said, “I'm just not going to do spreadsheets.” I will never be able to do spreadsheets, they’re too complicated with all of the different tabs on the bottom of the thing.
How was I supposed to know that? Just write me an email and tell me what you want, or how about a list? Can we just do a list? ( laughs)
I think it's quite liberating getting older and not doing things I have no interest in doing or trying. I make NO exceptions for spreadsheets. I don't think they make things more easy and efficient.
O-C I listen to a lot of audio books and I have listened to both of yours, which were extremely personal and candid. As I was watching you in this film I wondered if it made you think of your own childhood and your fractured relationship with your father, and if that might have been one of the reasons you took it on.
CUMMING: Yes, definitely. A lot of these stories aren't being told, because there isn't a forum. They're just not discussed, particularly in the LGBT area.
You don't hear about stories of middle aged men in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s and their families and what it was like to live in Canada (or anywhere for that matter) in those days, being a closeted gay man.
But also stories of domestic violence or child abuse, basically, that happened to me, are just not told.
I really thought that the subject matter in this film was really beautifully handled in the script and shocking. We eventually learn what happened to these men as kids. And I, of course, wasn't on set when these scenes were shot because they were younger versions of us. But when I saw the film for the first time, I found it unbearably moving, and so sad.
They're both so scarred, literally actually, by what happened to us and by our father. So, in a way, the story of the film is kind of a coming together for the brothers, even though it's kind of pitted with disaster and bad behavior. I definitely did feel such a connection to that in many ways.
O-C: Congratulations on your Emmy Award for hosting “The Traitors.” We now have Season 3 coming out in January with a whole new cast! Did you ever think when you took that on that it was going to be what it was? We have it here in Canada too, with Karene Vanesse hosting. It’s insanely popular.
CUMMING: Yes, it is insane. The success of the show in general, all over the world is mind boggling!
When I did it, it was the American and British one done at the same time, and we do them in the same place. I was just kind of asked to do it.
At first, to be honest, I couldn't quite understand why they wanted me to do this. I had no idea what it was. A competition, reality show set in a castle, and they want me to talk. Then I realized - I mean for me, I don't know how the Canadian person does it - but I sort of play a character and I’m not me.
So I think that was my way around. It turned out that was sort of what they wanted me to do, they were the ones who sort of suggested it, and then I ran with it. I was to play this character. So in a funny way, I'm sort of subverting the form of a competition reality show by making it theatrical and I love that. I really do love it, and it's been a great thing for me. Obviously, it's been very successful and has opened other things for me, not just in the Traitors world. It's been great because it’s taught me that you should stay open to things that are not necessarily in your wheelhouse.
This is not at all where I thought my career was going, or anyone thought my career was going. And yet, here we are.
I think it's a healthy thing for life, as well as for one’s career.