When David Mamet’s Phil Spector premieres in the spring, viewers should not expect a precise impersonation of Spector and his defense attorney Linda Kenney Baden.
“It’s a strange amalgamation of imagination and reality,” noted Oscar winner Helen Mirren, who was on hand Friday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour to plug the HBO film in which she stars as Baden. To hear her and co-star Al Pacino tell it, the goal with this effort was not to impersonate the real-life characters, but rather to use them as inspiration in telling a fictionalized story about the client-attorney relationship between Spector and Baden during his first trial for murder of actress Lana Clarkson.
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In fact, Pacino never even tried to meet the legendary music producer because, as he put it, “it’s a different Phil Spector now.” Which is to say, the present-day Spector has already been indicted and living in prison, while the Spector Pacino set out to play was still participating in his first trial. (The first trial ended with a mistrial becuase of a hung jury; Spector was convicted of murder and sentenced to 19 years to life in the California state prison system in 2009.) Rather, the actor spent many hours watching footage of that trial and trying to make sense of the character -- a "mythical" Spector -- that Mamet had crafted.
Though Mirren insists she, too, never tried to become an exact replica of Baden, she did form a relationship with her character’s inspiration, who served as a consultant on the HBO project. "It's amazing to have someone available to you who knew those experiences, but we’re not exactly replicating Linda’s experiences," Mirren explained, noting that she had little time to prepare for the role as she stepped in to replace an injured Bette Midler once production was already under way. (Given the role of attorney-client privilege, Baden could share very little about Spector and his experience with the trial.)
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Mirren did a considerable amount of additional research for the part as well, a process made easier by her filmmaker husband Taylor Hackford's personal experience with -- and subseqent stories about -- Spector, having worked with him many years earlier on the film The Idolmaker. "You can’t exaggerate these stories. Phil Spector is a man of such incredible contradictions," added Mirren of a man she describes as half-man, half-beast. "He must have lived in a permanent dream."
Mamet was similarly captivated by those contradictions when he came across a Spector documentary that his agent recommended he watch. Prior to that, Mamet suggests he had little interest in learning more about the convicted music exec: "He was a freak; he killed some girl; he got locked away. Good riddance," Mamet said, noting that the doc made him question his preconceived notions about Spector -- and the desire to tackle his story. "A half an hour in, I began to think, the guy is kind of brilliant. There's something here."
