‘Alfie,’ reinvented

NEW YORK — It’s a weary group staring at what can only be described as a legless limo.

The top half of the black car sits in a processing house deep in Brooklyn, and it poses a problem that has kept Susan Sarandon, Jude Law, director Charles Shyer and others waiting for hours.

They are in their final days of filming a remake of “Alfie,” and the mirror that was custom-made to aid in shooting the action in the limo’s back seat isn’t working. Now they have to rig up a replacement. The weather has made virtually every outdoor location a frigid one, everyone is tired, and Shyer, for one, is fighting the flu and ready to go home to California.

As if remaking a classic isn’t risky enough. Especially this one.

If ever a film seemed rooted in a specific time period -- in this the pre-feminist, pre-AIDS, anti-establishment ‘60s -- and tied to a specific actor, it’s “Alfie.” Made in 1966 and directed by Lewis Gilbert, this was Michael Caine’s breakthrough, in which he created the modern image of a cad, an unapologetic swinger who loved and left all the “birds” in his life without regret -- well, until he’s last seen standing on a bridge in London wondering “what’s it all about?” Even the theme song was iconic.

So what in the world were writer Elaine Pope and writer-director Charles Shyer (“Father of the Bride,” “Affair of the Necklace”) thinking when they decided an updating -- or, as they call it, “reinventing” -- was in order?

Pope, a former television comedy writer-producer (Emmy winner for “Seinfeld”) admits she was an “Alfie” junkie “from the age of 12, watching it over and over again.” And for years, she wondered what Alfie might be like today -- same guy, different surroundings.

When her agent introduced her to another client, Shyer, and suggested they do something together, she broached the subject. Shyer was intrigued; coming off an unsuccessful period picture (“Affair of the Necklace”), he was ready for a radical departure.

In reworking the original screenplay, which Bill Naughton had adapted from his own play, Pope and Shyer decided to keep the title character English but to place him in New York. “The fish-out-of-water thing gave us more to do,” Pope says. To place it in the here and now, however, meant one key thing: the “birds” in Alfie’s life had to be changed dramatically.

“They could never get away with having the women serve as just victims, objectified,” says Sarandon, who portrays the “older” love interest (played in the original by Shelley Winters). “I don’t think women would find a guy cute anymore who treated women like that. It would seem mean-spirited. Now we are much stronger and I think more fun.”

“This time, it’s the women who turn the tables on Alfie,” adds Jane Krakowski (“Ally McBeal”), who plays a Long Island married woman with whom he has an affair. There are also Marisa Tomei as the loyal single mom, Nia Long as a waitress-singer and girlfriend of Alfie’s best friend, and Sienna Miller as the one who seems closest to the real thing -- until emotional problems rise to the surface.

But the character it all hinges on is the commitment-phobic Alfie, played (in every frame of the movie) by Jude Law. Filling the memorable shoes of a character so associated with an actor is not an enviable task. But Law has shown an amazing range for one so pretty -- sexy amorality in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” magical zaniness in “Al,” dark menace in “Road to Perdition.”

“This role fits Jude like a glove,” Shyer says.

His predecessor agrees. “Jude Law is great-looking with a movie star persona,” Michael Caine says. “ ‘Cold Mountain’ has pushed him into major stardom ... he has it all.”

The two not only recently posed together for Vanity Fair, they have plans to star in a remake of “Sleuth” with Law in Caine’s old role.

And if the weight of a classic was weighing on his shoulders, Law didn’t show it as the filming wound down. On the set, Law seemed about as happy as a lark, joking with his stand-in while sitting atop Alfie’s blue Vespa and throwing snowballs with his girlfriend, Miller, and two of his children visiting from England. When a pair of heartsick female tourists approached in front of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he even posed for pictures. (Shortly after, a plastic curtain was hung around the VIP area.)

He laughs about his character’s persona not seeming out of date. “It’s depressing, isn’t it, that there are still lots of Alfies, afraid to commit,” he says. “Good for us, bad for many women. I guess it’s a double-edged sword.”

Part of what attracted him to the part was how far it is from Inman, his character in “Cold Mountain,” who risks everything to get back to the woman he loves.

“I liked the fact that it came after playing someone of such moral truth and spiritual enlightenment,” he says. “Now I get to play the other side. Here is a character whose relationships with women were a defining moment of the ‘60s and yet we’re putting a modern spin on it. It ends up making for a really interesting and exciting look at relationships today.”

Law and Miller, who met on the set, have been a paparazzi target while in New York, though it hardly seems to irk them. Law is certainly used to it -- before his divorce from Sadie Frost became final last fall, the rocky last years of their marriage were covered relentlessly. “It will be worse when we get back to England,” says Miller, 21. “The rags are so vile. They’ve already been hanging around my mum’s house there.”

The least known among the major players, Miller perhaps stands to gain the most from “Alfie.” “It’s rare to find a young character so complex, not the usual girl who has a crush on the guy,” says the British actress.

“Nikki meets Alfie on New Year’s Eve, he completely flips, but she turns out to be manic-depressive. For me, it’s almost like playing two characters in one film. With all the other women, you feel they’re better off after Alfie leaves. But with Nikki, it’s more ambiguous, because in a way, they were perfect for each other.”

There are so many women that Shyer had to find ways to vary the sex scenes: With Miller and Law, he chose to do a montage of stills; with Long, it’s seeing body parts in action; with Krakowski, it’s raw in the back of the car. With Sarandon, it’s the stoned variety. “I educate him in the art of absinthe,” she says with a smile.

The friskiest scenes are probably those with Krakowski, who’d just come off a Tony Award-winning turn as the sexy mistress to Antonio Banderas in Broadway’s “Nine.”

“I’d barely met Jude and our first day together was 13 hours of a scene in the back of a limo,” the actress says with a laugh. “And let me say it was one of the best days of my life! What I loved was that for the first hour or so, I sat there with Jude and Charles Shyer and we all came up with ways of doing the scene. I suggested we use the middle part of the back seat, Jude suggested we use the straps hanging down. And he and Ashley [director of photography Ashley Rowe] found a way to shoot us head to toe.”

“I had seen [“Alfie”] as a kid,” Shyer says, “and I liked the whole idea of the ‘60s vibe and finding how it might be relevant today. And I liked that it would be so stylishly different than anything I’ve ever done. I really wanted to infuse this with the feel of those movies from that time like ‘Darling,’ ‘Morgan’ and ‘Hard Day’s Night.’ ”

Perhaps the most daunting job, however, belonged to Sophie Becher, the set designer. All the interiors of the film were shot in England (for a variety of reasons, including expense and because Law’s children are there), and all reflect Shyer’s belief that these are brand-new characters.

“Charles wanted an homage to the ‘60s style, alluding to the original but moving on,” Becher says. “We used a lot of bridges here because this film is really about a man’s journey, about transience.” All told, the mood is high, if weary, as filming comes to a close, but a feeling of risk remains in the air. The movie remains untitled and there is as yet no release date.

“It’s a bold film in many ways,” executive producer Sean Daniel says, “style and subject.” For instance, Alfie still talks to the camera, a device that might seem off-putting. “If anything, we’ve maximized it,” Pope says. “Now he even does it when he’s having sex.”

“We’re all taking a lot of chances here and I think we’re pulling it off,” says Shyer, who insists audiences have to think “ ‘new,’ not ‘new version.’ ”

His star agrees: “You can’t remake a classic,” Law says, “so this is something very different.”

Last seen, he is fixing his traditional limousine driver attire of black jacket, pants and ascot and making sure his cap is on just so. “Hey, if the film doesn’t work out, it’s good to have a fallback,” he says with a smile.