"That's like asking which one of your children you like best," replied filmmaker Keith Gordon to my question concerning what pleased him most about the way his new movie, The Singing Detective, turned out. Gordon is the brave man who agreed to direct a movie adaptation of Dennis Potter's acclaimed BBC miniseries -- a television classic with many fans on both sides of the pond during the 1980s. 

"There are so many things," he stated. "I'm especially proud of Robert's impressive performance and that I had some part in helping him achieve it."  Robert, of course, is Robert Downey Jr., who plays a hospitalized writer suffering hallucinations (which sometimes turn into musical numbers) while imagining himself as a private detective from one of his books.

Gordon explained he had no fears about working with Downey Jr. as a result of the actor's drug history. "I wasn't worried about his acting," Gordon said. "The drug thing never stopped him from performing (at least until Ally McBeal), but I was worried about him on a human level. I was afraid he might die. Physically, he can't continue on drugs and survive. But he's doing well, staying clean and dealing with his problem."

Continuing with his list of what pleased him most about The Singing Detective, Gordon added, "I'm also happy about the look of the film -- it's hyper-noir, sort of a surreal version of noir. But the biggest thing is I think Dennis Potter would have liked seeing this piece. I think it would have made him smile."

There's no doubt about Gordon's admiration for Potter. "He's one of the great dramatists -- right up there with the likes of Harold Pinter," he declared. Potter wrote the screenplay for The Singing Detective before his death, and Gordon wanted to remain true to the originator's re-visioning of his story.

Potter even selected the musical numbers to be included. "The only one we didn't use was 'Blueberry Hill' and that was because it was too expensive. I substituted 'It's Only Make Believe," Gordon explained.

According to Gordon, fans of movie musicals should not expect The Singing Detective to be a regular musical. "It's more of a satire of musicals; it makes fun of them," he admitted. Even the choreographers, Bill and Jacqui Landrum, were chosen because they had "the right sense of humor. " They've worked with Coen Brothers and did the Klan number in O Brother, Where Art Thou? "We wanted the dance numbers to look homemade and a little rough -- not too serious, but showy," Gordon pointed out. He didn't know how to talk about dance, so he just said to the Landrums,  "This should be sexy or funny," and they came up with exactly what he wanted.   

It's no surprise Gordon became a director after starting out as an actor. "As a teenager I was a huge movie fan; I saw everything that came out," he recalled. "In fact, I was one of those camera nerds. But someone saw me in a school play and asked me to audition. An agent signed me and then I had an acting career -- which I tried to use as a film school." 

After appearing in such films as All That Jazz, Dressed To Kill, Christine, and Back to School, Gordon turned to directing. "Because I worked with some great directors when I was acting, I had the opportunity to follow them around and learn from them," he said. Gordon's directorial efforts include A Midnight Clear, Mother Night, and Waking the Dead. 

The Singing Detective is a Paramount Classics release. Gordon has called the film "your basic comedy/drama/surreal lip-synched 1950s rock and roll musical/expressionist/absurd film-noir/naturalistic character study of a man facing a terrible disease in a hospital in the early 1990s."

I can hardly wait to see it!

(Information for this article was obtained in a November 4, 2003, telephone interview with Keith Gordon, who spoke from San Diego after a San Diego Film Critics Society screening of The Singing Detective.)