David Heyman boasts a dizzying resume: he has appeared in so many films and series that it is easy to get confused and attribute roles to him that he did not do. So, for example, I also fall into the trap and believe his Wikipedia entry, which states in black and white that he participated in “Brave Heart”.
Although I don’t remember him from there, I ask him a question about his appearance in it during our conversation, and add to that a long introduction about my best friend from the division who watched the hit 50 times when it went to the cinema. “I apologize, Abner my dear friend, but I have never appeared in ‘Braveheart’,” the veteran Scottish actor tells me in response.
Fortunately, Heyman is a charming man, who calls me by my first name and adds “my dear friend,” even though we’ve never met before, and doesn’t take the wrong about his life story to heart. He has no ego, and he doesn’t care if you ask him about a movie he didn’t appear in. About the movies he did star in, and there are no shortage of them.
Now he stars in “My Neighbor Adolf”, an Israeli film internationally produced by Leon Prodovsky. We’re talking ahead of its release this weekend, and unlike the norm these days, the veteran Scottish actor asks that we do it over the phone rather than Zoom. “I don’t like talking on Zoom,” he explains. “For me, it’s much more intimate to talk on the phone.”
Hyman was born in Glasgow in 1948 and began his acting career in the early 1970s. He starred for 12 seasons in the famous police drama “Trial & Retribution”, played the legendary promoter Malcolm McLaren in the film “Sid and Nancy”, and also appeared in the films “The Jackal”, “The Tailor from Panama” and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”, whose plot takes place in an extermination camp.
The plot of “My Neighbor Adolf” takes place after World War II, and more precisely in 1960, just after the Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Heyman plays a Holocaust survivor who lives in South America, and as the name of the film implies, suspects that his new neighbor is none other than the Nazi oppressor Adolf Hitler.
The film reminds us that Adolf Hitler was also a painter. As an artist yourself, what is your view on the fact that a monster like him was also involved in art?
“Hitler was an artist, and he was also a man who loved his family and loved animals. that’s how it is. There is good and bad in all of us, and everyone has the ability to cause terrible violence, God forbid. Abner, my dear friend, I have been a pacifist all my life, but if someone harms my family, I will take 16-M and turn it into strawberry jam.”
What is your relationship with your neighbors?
“I live in a shared house, so this is a very important question. Bad neighbors can make your life miserable, Abner my dear friend. Basically, we are part of a great community. The upstairs neighbors are the nicest people you can imagine. They are real sweeties. However, there is one neighbor from hell. She has a good heart, but is very territorial. She is constantly barking at everyone.”
The premiere of “My Neighbor Adolf” took place at the Locarno Festival last summer. A group of Israeli filmmakers appealed to the festival and called on it to cancel the screening, because the film was supported by the Rabinovitch Foundation, whose terms do not allow funding for those who “hurt the symbols of the state” and the like.
“I wasn’t aware of this controversy, you’re refreshing me,” Heyman says about this. “For me, the film presents a great story that needed to be told, and artists should keep an open dialogue. In any case, I saw ‘My Neighbor Adolf’ as an international film, no Israeli movie”.
Indeed, “My Neighbor Adolf” is an international production. The Israeli producers Haim Meckleberg and Esti Yaakov-Meckleberg raised the Tower of Babel here. Behind the camera was Prodovsky, an Israeli director born in the Soviet Union, and the filming took place in Colombia.
The co-producers are Polish and so are many of the crew members, led by photographer Radek Ledzok. On the side of the Scottish Heyman stars the veteran German actor Udo Kier, who plays the dubious new neighbor. Most of the time the characters speak in English, but there are also dialogues in other languages, for example Yiddish.
“I have always loved Yiddish. I saw a performance by the Heidi Theater in Israel and it was so colorful and full of history and passion. Yiddish is like a song,” he says. “I had a private Yiddish teacher for the filming. She brought me together on Zoom with some Holocaust survivors from Glasgow, who wanted to talk to me about this film and the previous films. They had reservations about ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.’
“They thought that it focused on the German side and not the Jewish side, and that it had too much sympathy for the Nazis. I disagree, I think it’s a great film, whose humane message was passed on to every child in Scotland. In any case, it was inspiring to meet Holocaust survivors. They didn’t give for hate to destroy their lives. They had a sparkle in their eyes and a lot of sense of humor, and even at the age of 90, they were constantly flirting with me.”
I have to ask you questions about other roles, and this time about productions that you actually participated in. Did Malcolm McLaren ever give you feedback on how you played him in Sid and Nancy?
“We were supposed to meet, but then he saw the movie and it turns out he didn’t like what we did, so he canceled the meeting.”
It was in the 80s. Let’s move to the present day – you recently appeared in an episode of “Andor”, the Disney Plus series in question. I guess it was a different experience compared to “My Neighbor Adolph”.
“Probably. I went from a relatively low-budget production to a production that had 26 assistant directors and 500 people in total, not to mention the helicopters in the air and the protective measures against the corona. It is much more difficult to maintain your integrity as a player in such a situation.”
And what do you think of the series?
“I didn’t watch her. I don’t like to see myself on the screen. To make art is to compromise, and you are always disappointed. I am willing to see myself only in one case – when it is in a public screening in front of an audience. It’s a different experience. I saw ‘My Neighbor Adolf’ in its screenings at the Locarno and Tallinn festivals, and it was a pleasure. It’s fun to see that the art you made manages to touch people.”
I apologize again for the mistake with “brave heart”.
“It’s perfectly fine, Avner, my dear friend.”