Kevin Spacey

Whether Kevin Spacey likes it or not, 'The Shipping News' has Oscar written all over it

By BRUCE WESTBROOK

Spacey recently wrapped The Life of David Gale, directed by Alan Parker (Mississippi Burning). Its shoot was in Austin, where Spacey spent six weeks in the fall.

He plays a college professor who opposes capital punishment and is unjustly convicted of a crime and put on death row. Kate Winslet plays a reporter interviewing him. The tale is told in flashbacks.

"I'm not sure the film will take a position (on capital punishment) one way or the other," Spacey says. "But I know it'll take the issue and turn it on its head. Any time you hand Alan Parker a political center for a film, he's pretty mesmerizing."

This was Spacey's first filming experience in Texas, and he "really soaked up the environment." The New Jersey native says he loved Austin's music scene, food and filmmaking community.

"It's a great town for filming," he says. "I encourage people to keep shooting movies in places like Austin rather than go out of the country."

While visiting Austin's music clubs, Spacey just listened -- unlike actor Russell Crowe, who's performed many times there with his rock band. But singing is one of Spacey's passions, and he recently performed Mind Games in New York for a John Lennon tribute benefiting victims of terrorism.

"It was incredibly nerve-racking," he says. "I was going to sing on national TV and at Radio City Music Hall, which holds about 6,000 people, and I was singing a song I'd learned three days before."

Singing is "a completely different form of expression than acting, though you are telling a story in a song," Spacey says. "I find it incredibly liberating and have been doing it most of my life.

"I used to do musicals a lot as a kid. I just haven't done any professionally." (He did sing That Old Black Magic for the soundtrack of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.)

While Spacey's singing is a surprise for some, "it's not for my family or friends. They've heard me sing around the house for a long time."

He'll be at home more now. Spacey is taking a break from acting to produce for the stage and screen via Trigger Street, his film and theater company.

"I'll spend the next five months focusing almost exclusively on that work," he says of the projects, which will nurture young talent.

Spacey takes pride in being a good businessman in an industry in which, without such skills, "it's very easy to get locked into having to do movies you don't believe in."

But don't ask him to make a movie with an Oscar in mind.

"Sometimes projects are bought because they're impressive packages," Spacey says. "This (The Shipping News) certainly had been an impressive book and had won a Pulitzer.

"But that's not why I do a film. I just want to make good movies."