Michael Caine accepted Sleuth for Harold Pinter

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Melbourne (ANI): Acting veteran Michael Caine has revealed that he would have turned down the proposal to star in 'Sleuth" remake had it not been scripted by Harold Pinter. The actor has revealed that, initially, he did not see any point in making the remake because he was unsure that anybody could improve on the tasks performed by Joe Mankiewicz, Larry Olivier, and Tony Shaffer in the original movie.

“It would have been had we been doing Tony Shaffer's script, but it would have been a very short relationship because I would have said 'no', as I didn't see any point in remaking Sleuth; I mean you could have made it a bit better I suppose, but not much. I mean Joe Mankiewicz did a fabulous job on it, Larry Olivier did a great job, Tony Shaffer did a great job, me you forget but those those three did a great job," Moviehole quoted him as saying.

“So you're gonna have to go some to improve on that, but what got me was the Pinter script. Because there is a rider to that in as much as Pinter used to be an actor called David Baron and we knew each other about 50 years ago, when he said he was going to write plays under his real name," he added. Caine also revealed that he was planning to do a small British picture 'Is there anybody There?", about a little boy of ten whose parents own an old folks" home.

“He lives in an old folks' home and all the people he makes friends with of course are old people and every time he makes a friend they die. So he gets a flashlight, a camera and a tape recorder and he starts to search the house for their ghosts and into the house comes an old magician who's come to die, so he becomes friends with the magician and the magician helps him find his ghosts," he said. “It really is the most enchanting story. I mean it's the reason I'm doing it, there is no money in it or anything," he added.