(Credits: Far Out / Press / YouTube Still)
Like any actor with a career that rumbles on for an extended period of time, Michael Caine has played more than his fair share of real-life characters in several biographical productions.
The two-time Academy Award-winning legend has embodied soldier Gonville Bromhead in his breakthrough movie Zulu, World War II veteran Joe Vandeleur in A Bridge Too Far, French doctor Antoine-Athanase Royer-Collard in Quills, Hatton Garden ringleader Brian Reader in King of Thieves, and D-Day survivor Bernard Jordan in his cinematic swansong, The Great Escaper.
One person he definitely didn’t play was John Lennon, even though the two were firm friends. First meeting at the Cannes Film Festival, the pair eventually became regular acquaintances and drinking buddies, painting the town red during their frequent trips to the nearest boozer.
Being one of the most well-connected men in British showbusiness, Caine was naturally familiar with every single member of both The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but he never based one of his performances on Paul, George, Ringo, Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Bill, Charlie, or the rest of the influential rockers.
However, the one character he did base on Lennon comes with an asterisk, after Caine opted to portray Children of Men‘s eccentric isolationist Jasper Palmer on his vision of what kind of person the late musician could have potentially evolved into had he not been gunned down by Mark David Chapman in December 1980.
Lennon was 40 years old when he was killed, whereas Caine was in his early 70s when Alfonso Cuarón called action on his staggering dystopian thriller. That gave the veteran plenty of leeway to use his old friend as a jumping-off point, although he did throw in a couple of creative flourishes that saw Jasper make history twice over in relation to the star’s filmography.
If invoking the spirit of Lennon wasn’t enough, what else made Jasper blaze a new trail for a performer who was already half a century into their career at that point? Obviously, the answer, according to Cuarón, is that it was the first time Caine had ever passed gas or puffed a joint in a motion picture.
“It is the first time that he farts onscreen and the first time that he smokes joints onscreen,” the filmmaker told Moviehole with an obvious sense of pride. In addition to baking fresh air biscuits and getting as high as a kite, Caine went all-in by sporting long, bedraggled hair and dressing like an ageing hippie, refusing to let go of flower power, which was integral to his mindset.
Cuarón recalled that Caine didn’t think he was the man for the job until “we were doing makeup, hair and costume at his house.” By the time he saw himself as Jasper for the first time, he was sold. “Once he had the clothes and so on, on, and stepped in front of the mirror to look at himself, his body language changed,” the director explained. “Michael loved it. He believed he was this guy.”
Take a pinch of John Lennon, a deep drag of a doobie, and a distinguished elder statesman’s first-ever cinematic farts, and what comes out on the other side? Children of Men‘s Jasper, apparently.
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