The feature film ‘Any Day Now’ showcases actor Alan Cumming’s remarkable abilities in acting alongside his skills as a singer. Cumming plays Rudy, a drag performer who suddenly finds himself in a new relationship at the same time that he discovers that a child who lives next door has been abandoned.
The emotional and thought provoking film offers a snapshot of 1970s attitudes to homosexuality and notions of family and makes you wonder if we have travelled very far at all in the last 40 years. OUTinPerth spoke to the film’s Director Travis Fine.
Where did you first come across this story?
I had finished a picture called ‘The Space Between’ and my music supervisor PJ Bloom was one of about ten or twelve people that I reached out to that I really know and trust and I let know that I was looking for a script. I didn’t have anything ready to go that I had written and yet we were sort of prepared and ready to shoot another picture.
He told me about this script that his father, George, had written back in 1980. He said, “Look my Dad never did anything with it, I think it pretty good do you want to give it a read.”
The script had been sitting in a desk for the better part of thirty years. He brought it out, dusted it off and sent it across the country to me and I read it and just was immediately taken to the story and was immediately taken by the character Rudy.
This was based on a true story, but through the writing process has it now travelled a fair bit from the original material?
George actually knew Rudy, lived there in the same neighbourhood as him in Brooklyn in New York city in the late 70’s. George knew Rudy, he also knew the kid upon which the character was based and what George did was take a real life situation where Rudy had kind of become the kids care taker, looked after him while Mom was in prison and while his Mom was out on the streets. He sort of did a professional leaping off of what would happen if Rudy tried to adopt this kid, how would it go down?
By the time it got to me 30 years later there were a number of elements that I wanted to, as a story teller. Of interest to me was some very personal stuff that I wanted to infuse in the story, so I had a personal way into the story. So the end result that you see has lots of elements of truths and a fair amount of fiction that supports a dramatic structure.
Alan Cumming gives quite an amazing performance that quite raw and emotional, how was the casting process for this film?
It was really interesting the way he came to be a part of this. We had a list, pretty short list of people that I was interested in and I called his agent to talk to him about another actor and this other actor was not available and as I described the character the agent said, “Well you’re not talking about that actor, you’re talking about Alan Cumming”.
It was literally one of those light bulb moments where I went, “Oh My God of course it’s Alan Cumming.”
Alan brings such a beautiful mix of drama, of comedy of musical of theatricality and obviously as an out gay actor he brings a certain credibility to the character and to the story that I thought was very important. Luckily I knew his manager who got him the script very quickly and told him he had to read it and he did and then he signed on. With him on board it became much easier to cast 99% of the other roles.
It’s intriguing that the message of this film is still so relevant even though it’s set in the ‘70s.
You realise that change really doesn’t happen overnight but is sort of this slow turning of a pendulum. Everywhere I go, the sense that I get even in the most conservative of places and in the most liberal of places is that pendulum has swung and will continue to swing to the point where everyone is allowed to love and be loved despite their orientation or anything else personal about them.
‘Any Day Now’ is showing at Luna Palace cinemas from Thursday Apri 10. Head to the giveways page at www.outinperth.com for your chance to score some tickets.
