Remembering Christopher Plummer
Christopher Plummer as Hamlet, Stratford Festival, 1957
In 1992, I won the New Views Screenwriting award from British Columbia Film for my screenplay “Impolite”. It was my first screenplay, I was fresh out of graduate school, and with the princely sum of $500,000 (Canadian) in my pocket, I was going to make my first movie.
The quest story focused on an obituary writer, Jack Yeats, chasing down a dead guy, and on that journey, encountering the slippery twins, Paris O’Rourke, a Catholic priest, and his brother Naples (possibly Satan). The director, David Hauka, had cast everyone but the twins, when our producer, Raymond Massey, said “Christopher Plummer.”
Raymond’s grandfather, a great actor himself and after whom he was named, had worked with Plummer on Broadway in 1958 in Archibald MacLeish’s “J.B.”, a play about the Book of Job, and so that’s why Chris said “Yes.” He would come to Vancouver and appear in this low-budget Canadian indie made by absolute beginners. Another take, perhaps, on Job and his boils.
So, we used a substantial chunk of the budget to house Chris and his wonderful wife Elaine at The Sutton Place Hotel in Vancouver, and probably paid him less than what the hotel cost. And then we shot our first movie, in that lovely month of May. I got to spend my days sitting on folding chairs on set by day (we couldn’t afford a trailer, not even a U-Haul, and on one occasion, Chris and Elaine and I sat on a big rock in a park). And then, I sat in the Sutton Place bar by night with Chris Plummer, learning about his glorious life as an actor.
He had moved on from the days of rye and rye chasers to a glass or two of wine, and as I smoked at the time and he had given up, he would bum a cigarette from me, and hold it elegantly as he recalled great actors he had known, such as peter O’Toole and Albert Finney and Orson Welles and Michael Caine. Plummer was Oedipus and Welles was Tiresias, and they drank a lot. In Hamlet at Elsinore, Plummer was the student prince and Caine was Horatio, who cried so heavily over dead Hamlet that Plummer couldn’t stop twitching as Caine’s tear drops fell upon him, so they had to shoot the scene a few times. And we’d order another round and he’d tell me about acting Shakespeare in England, and starring on Broadway, and about his stellar life in the movies. He’d tell me about everything, except “The Sound of Music.”
Finally, seeing that I wasn’t going to give up, he said “I got paid a lousy $35,000 for that picture and had no percentage of the profits.” The film earned a total worldwide gross of $286,214,076, which, adjusted for inflation, is $2.366 billion today.[1] I could see his point. And this seemed to be his real source of animosity toward a film beloved by millions. I never heard him call it “The Sound of Mucus.” Just that “cheapskate Nazi musical.”
One night, when we were spending another chunk of the budget on a fancy meal for Chris and Elaine, a fan approached our table with great reverence, and said that she loved him and his work, and that in her view, he had reached his theatrical apex in The Sound of Music. I steeled myself for a quick slice and dice of this woman, as Chris was as sharp-edged eloquent and he was talented. However, he smiled sweetly and thanked her effusively and signed an autograph for her and her daughter. And when she was out of earshot, he said “$35,000 dollars.”
When he came to my apartment for dinner one night, he offered for dessert (as I had neglected that course) to read us all some James Joyce. And so we were sweetened by Christopher Plummer reading us The Dead, as if James Joyce himself was directing him, and if this was what he did at every incomplete dinner party. He was magnificent.
When “Impolite” played at the Independent Film Festival in New York City that autumn, Raymond and I came down from Toronto, where we had just appeared at the Toronto International Film Festival and had found ourselves up against films like “The Crying Game” and “Reservoir Dogs” and saw what you could do with a bigger budget. There was nowhere on earth like New York City to find ourselves that bigger budget.
Instead, we also found ourselves in the Angelika Film Center waiting with Chris for the trainee technicians to sort out the problem that was delaying the screening of our film (the problem was the trainee technicians). When it was clear that the repair was going to take some time, Chris suggested we head into the lobby and grab a coffee.
As soon as we emerged into the lobby we saw that it was filled with maybe a dozen men in drag. They were there to see a film about drag that was screening a little later than ours. But they all saw Chris Plummer at the same time, and so Captain von Trapp was once again in the crosshairs of delighted and screaming fans, some of them half-naked in feather boas. I thought he was going to flee on to Houston Street and never speak to us again. But he gave me a look that said “$35,000” and winked on that sly smile of his. And then he signed autographs for those delighted Sound of Music fans, until there were no more left to sign, smiling and joking with them as if indeed, “The Sound of Music” had been the apex of his splendid career.
Time passed. Raymond stayed in the movie business in Vancouver, and I wrote books, produced TV, and married an American and moved to New York City. Then the pandemic hit, and I went back to screenwriting. I wrote a COVID rom com set in Singapore with a pal who lives there. It’s not bad at all, and so we sent it to Raymond to see if he wants to pick up where we left off. All I ask is that he factors an extra $35,000 into the budget. And we’ll give it to something or someone who needs it, in the name of the great Christopher Plummer.
[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1965?amount=286214076