[Note: This article is currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine]
Filmmaker and actor Bob Balaban on his newest directorial feature, Bernard and Doris, “an imagined relationship between two very real people.”
By Terry Keefe
Even folks who watch just a few movies a year know the face of Bob Balaban, although they may not know his name. Film fans know his name and also know that he’s in that rarified space between star and character actor which few performers occupy. For this writer, seeing Balaban’s name in the opening credits of actors always gives me something extra to look forward to. He may not often be the lead, but he’s guaranteed to steal or at least carry a few scenes. This hasn’t been lost on numerous top directors, and as an actor, he’s never really stopped working in major productions since Midnight Cowboy in 1969, where Balaban and Jon Voight created perhaps the most squeamishly great scene in a movie full of them, playing the first trick of Voight’s clueless young hustler in a Times Square theater. Here’s just a partial list of some of the films Balaban has appeared in since: Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Catch-22; Prince of the City; Altered States; Ghost World; Capote; and of course, he’s a key part of the Christopher Guest ensemble which has given us Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and For Your Consideration. Balaban’s work behind the camera, as a producer through his ChicagoFilms company, has been prolific as well and garnered him an Oscar nomination for producing Gosford Park in 2001 for director Robert Altman. He’s directed a number of features also, including Parents, The Last Good Time, My Boyfriend’s Back, and The Exonerated. Balaban’s work as a director has been of consistently high quality (Parents is a particularly great dark comedy), but certainly less high-profile than his acting work. That balance is about to change somewhat with the HBO debut of his newest feature, Bernard and Doris, which stars Susan Sarandon and Ralph Fiennes. The arrival of Balaban’s newest has also landed like a meteor in the upcoming Emmy race, and the film is likely to be nominated in most of the top feature categories.
The film centers on six years in the lives of the late billionaire tobacco heiress Doris Duke (Sarandon) and her gay, alcoholic Irish butler Bernard Lafferty. And as little is known about the real-life specifics of those years, the filmmakers readily admit that this is only their take on what might have occurred. What is known for sure is that when Duke died, she left Lafferty in control of her immense fortune, leading many to believe that a Svengali-like manipulation had taken place, or worse. Lafferty was accused of murder, although the charges never stuck, and he himself died just a few years later, leaving his 3.5 million dollar inheritance to Duke’s charity foundation. No one knows what really happened between Doris and Bernard, but Balaban’s film takes the view that this wasn’t a con or murder, but a true friendship between two very odd characters who fit perfectly together. The film was made quickly on the slenderest of budgets, but you could never tell. Balaban’s previous directorial experience with lower budgets obviously came in handy, as he makes this look like a production worthy of the billionaire at its center. The filmmaker shot at the mansion of the Old Westbury Gardens in Long Island, formerly the Phipps estate, and, in true guerilla fashion, decked it and his stars out with every favor he could call in. Of particular note is Balaban’s wise choice to allow these two actors to be the special effects driving this story. Confident in his script and casting, he never gets flashy with the camera, but instead directs and chooses shots which serve the performances most of all. In fact, it’s a style at times reminiscent of one of the great directors he has acted for, Sidney Lumet.
Had you known much about the tale of Doris and Bernard before getting involved with the film?
Bob Balaban: I only knew about Doris Duke and Bernard Lafferty from some of the headlines. That’s it. I knew there were a lot of rumors and I knew there were a lot of hysterical fingers being pointed. I didn’t really know anything else about them when I was sent the script, by a friend, Ileen Maisel, who’s a producer and executive at New Line. I thought it was a really interesting idea for a movie. It wasn’t a biopic, but instead it would focus on the six years of a relationship that was forming between a butler and a rich lady. I happened to be working with Susan Sarandon at the time, on The Exonerated. We had been friends for years prior, but, you know, it can be dangerous working with friends. It can be the end of your friendship. But we had had a great time on that film. So, I didn’t have financing for this, but I said to her, “If you like the idea of playing a part like Doris, let’s work on this together, and let’s get it to be something.” So we started working with the writer on the script. And we both decided that if Ralph Fiennes would do it, that he’d be our dream casting for Bernard. And fortunately, it was Ralph’s dream to work with Susan [laughs], so it all worked out really well. Then we were lucky, on our no-budget, to find a mansion in November that was available for shooting the exact minute that Susan and Ralph were available, and the exact minute that I got my $500,000 together to make the film.
Was that really the budget?
Yeah, in the neighborhood. It was under a million and a little more than half a million.
The film looks like it could have cost 10 million, easily.
Well, we didn’t pay for anything, basically [laughs]. It was tricky to get the mansion, but we were also working during a time that they were closed. They happen to shut down for three weeks in November. So they didn’t have to turn away any of their museum business, and we were also phenomenally cooperative. For a little bit less than they usually get for renting the place out, we said, “Sure, decorate your house for Christmas. We’ll just shoot around it.” So, in addition to avoiding many other things, I also had to avoid Christmas decorations [laughs]. And then I went to friends for some of our clothing. I credit a few friends at the end of the movie, because they’re wealthy, fashionable ladies, and in 1989, they were wearing all the designers that our cast were wearing. Joe Aulisi is a very successful big-budget Hollywood costume designer, who did a lot of films for Susan, so as a favor to her he came on. And I said, “Well, Joe, I won’t leave you in the lurch. I’ll find you stuff.” [laughs] So I did. I found him a lot of stuff. I ran into a designer named Eric Gaskins when I was commuting [on the subway], and so we got a red dress from him for Susan which is now in Vanity Fair. I borrowed other things: Bulgari lent us jewelry; Cristolfe gave us silverware. I went to a furniture place that I had known was kind of interested in getting into the movie rental business. Having Susan and Ralph, although we didn’t have distribution at the time, lent an aura that “At least this movie could get seen by people.” So if you wanted to have your furniture place be in the movie rental business, I could give you credits all over the film and you could mention us on your website and I could get you a picture for you of Susan with the chair. So we did a lot of stuff like that, which worked. But we did have a few critical areas of inexpertise in the film. You could see the boom in a lot of shots. When it came time to cut the movie, I was able to cut it in about three weeks, because I wasn’t able to use most of the shots. But then, once HBO got involved…we were on the way to the Toronto Film Festival and HBO saw it. Colin Callendar said, “We love it. We think it’s great for us. Could we steal it away? Don’t send it to Toronto. We want to fix some visual issues.” We had some issues with grain and other things that happen when you’re rushing. You don’t notice them when you see it small, but when you see it projected, you would have. I don’t want to single anybody out. But probably about half the people who were working for us, whether they were experienced or not, were brilliant and tried, and I don’t care if somebody messes up a little. If they care and they try, that’s okay. Then about half the people didn’t know how to do their jobs, and didn’t care. It was kind of like….I taught in a graduate film department in the summer once and half the students were great, and the other half were like, “Do we really have to do this this weekend? I’m not quite ready.” And I thought, “Why are you in graduate film school if you don’t want to do this?” [laughs] And [on this shoot], I thought, “If we’re paying you $100 a day to come here, and you don’t want to learn anything, and you don’t enjoy doing your job, then why are you here? You can’t just be here to earn $100 a day!” So that was hard.
[Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon in Bernard and Doris.]
How much development did you do on the script, from the initial draft that you read?
It was nicely written when it came to us. It began with Bernard arriving and Doris leaving. And it had a few key scenes in it, but we also worked on it and changed a lot of stuff. Because truly, once we had Susan and Ralph, I realized that the strength of this piece was going to be getting these two exotic birds – I consider Susan and Ralph “exotic birds” and I also consider Doris and Bernard exotic birds – into the same room as much as possible. So I weeded out all the other stuff which wasn’t about the dance these two people do. Six years is a short time to get a woman, who is very untrusting, and a man who is an irresponsible alcoholic, to bond together like glue. We concentrated on that part of it. And, as such, it’s an invented story. We know when it began, and when it ended. But we don’t know what they said when they were alone together. So, it was fun. It was like a little treasure hunt. “What can we do that will get us to the next step, which will be believable, that she takes him into her life the way she did?”
Were there any steps along the way of the project development when you were going to keep it more ambiguous as to whether Bernard murdered Doris?
At one point, there was a cut of the movie where there were lots of newspaper headlines in the film. It was Bernard gluing newspaper headlines into his scrapbook, which he does occasionally in this cut. But that was a bigger part of the movie, and at the end, I showed like 3-4 minutes of headlines about how Bernard was accused of murder, and then how they dropped the charges because they couldn’t determine that a murder even occurred. But then I thought, “Well, if a murder didn’t necessarily occur, and she was 80, and she was pretty sick by all accounts, then I think it’s misleading to focus too much on that, other than to say that Bernard was a murder suspect.” And there are certainly a lot of people who think that Bernard was a sleazy murderer, who, from the beginning, came in and tried to manipulate her to get what he could get, and then killed her. And then there are people who think that he was a good guy and somebody in Doris’ life who actually liked her, who wanted to be with her for reasons other than her money. But I think that when you have 1.3 billion dollars, it’s very hard to tell who really likes you. How do you really know? So I wanted it to be ambiguous in that sense, but I didn’t want the potential murder to be a big deal, since I think it was all about selling newspapers and magazines. I don’t think there was much to any of that. And it wasn’t our story either.
Was there any attempt on the actors’ parts to imitate the mannerisms of their real-life counterparts?
You couldn’t do that with Doris Duke. As far as I know, she didn’t appear on film much, or show up on TV in “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” [laughs]. She desperately avoided publicity all of her life. She hated the way she looked, and I assume she thought it was undignified and foolish and time-wasting [to do publicity]. She was celebrated certainly, but she wasn’t a celebrity the way she might be in 2008. So, in no way did Susan try to do an imitation of Doris, other than that we got her a blonde wig and she wore clothing of the period that might be appropriate for somebody like Doris Duke to wear. That was it. In Ralph’s case, we saw some footage of Bernard, but enough to know that we couldn’t copy him really. Other than the fact that I knew he had a light Donegal accent, so Ralph did a light Donegal accent. Which was really a hodgepodge, because Bernard moved to America when he was relatively young and didn’t have a heavy accent of any kind. More of a lilt. And we gave him a fat pad, in case you thought Ralph was being slovenly [laughs]. Ralph looked so debonair in his clothes all the time, that we had to add on about 15 pounds around the middle, very gently and subtly, so that he looks kind of out of shape. The real Bernard, by the end of the six years, was a blimp basically, but we couldn’t do a believable “blimp” and why would that matter anyway?
Have any friends or relations of Doris or Bernard seen the film?
We’ve had very few reactions, because we haven’t really screened the film for anybody, other than two test screenings. I’ve heard that a few people were concerned that we presented Bernard in too favorable a light. But then there were people who sort of knew them both and thought it was accurate. I think that no matter what you do, as these are real people, you’re probably going to offend a few people. That being said, I do know some relatives of Doris Duke, but they haven’t seen the film yet. But clearly they will and they’ll talk to me about it. What I hope they will say is “Well, she wasn’t exactly like the Doris we knew, but it is an affectionate portrayal of a woman.” Because my goal was never to trash either one of them. My goal was really to find whatever humanity might exist between these two sort of prototypical characters and then try to make you believe that you were seeing what really might have happened.
Have you found that what you’ve learned as an actor significantly informs your work as a director?
I wish it did inform it more. I think it helps that I’ve worked as an actor, because I’ve watched many more directors than most other directors have. I’ve worked with a lot of good directors as an actor. But working with bad people, you can learn more even than working with good people [laughs]. You learn the things that you should never do. And everything’s unique, you know? I suppose that is something to learn in and of itself. There is no system. No exact method. You have to play it as it lays. If somebody needs help, you’d better figure out some way to help them, and there is no one way. You can help an actor by giving them something physical to do in a scene, or by giving them another aspect of the character to think about. Sometimes you just need to give them a different idea in their head, after they’ve done four takes and things aren’t working anymore. You can tell them to do a take where they find something they really don’t like in the other person and do a take with that in mind. That wakes things up [laughs].
It was nicely written when it came to us. It began with Bernard arriving and Doris leaving. And it had a few key scenes in it, but we also worked on it and changed a lot of stuff. Because truly, once we had Susan and Ralph, I realized that the strength of this piece was going to be getting these two exotic birds – I consider Susan and Ralph “exotic birds” and I also consider Doris and Bernard exotic birds – into the same room as much as possible. So I weeded out all the other stuff which wasn’t about the dance these two people do. Six years is a short time to get a woman, who is very untrusting, and a man who is an irresponsible alcoholic, to bond together like glue. We concentrated on that part of it. And, as such, it’s an invented story. We know when it began, and when it ended. But we don’t know what they said when they were alone together. So, it was fun. It was like a little treasure hunt. “What can we do that will get us to the next step, which will be believable, that she takes him into her life the way she did?”
Were there any steps along the way of the project development when you were going to keep it more ambiguous as to whether Bernard murdered Doris?
At one point, there was a cut of the movie where there were lots of newspaper headlines in the film. It was Bernard gluing newspaper headlines into his scrapbook, which he does occasionally in this cut. But that was a bigger part of the movie, and at the end, I showed like 3-4 minutes of headlines about how Bernard was accused of murder, and then how they dropped the charges because they couldn’t determine that a murder even occurred. But then I thought, “Well, if a murder didn’t necessarily occur, and she was 80, and she was pretty sick by all accounts, then I think it’s misleading to focus too much on that, other than to say that Bernard was a murder suspect.” And there are certainly a lot of people who think that Bernard was a sleazy murderer, who, from the beginning, came in and tried to manipulate her to get what he could get, and then killed her. And then there are people who think that he was a good guy and somebody in Doris’ life who actually liked her, who wanted to be with her for reasons other than her money. But I think that when you have 1.3 billion dollars, it’s very hard to tell who really likes you. How do you really know? So I wanted it to be ambiguous in that sense, but I didn’t want the potential murder to be a big deal, since I think it was all about selling newspapers and magazines. I don’t think there was much to any of that. And it wasn’t our story either.
Was there any attempt on the actors’ parts to imitate the mannerisms of their real-life counterparts?
You couldn’t do that with Doris Duke. As far as I know, she didn’t appear on film much, or show up on TV in “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” [laughs]. She desperately avoided publicity all of her life. She hated the way she looked, and I assume she thought it was undignified and foolish and time-wasting [to do publicity]. She was celebrated certainly, but she wasn’t a celebrity the way she might be in 2008. So, in no way did Susan try to do an imitation of Doris, other than that we got her a blonde wig and she wore clothing of the period that might be appropriate for somebody like Doris Duke to wear. That was it. In Ralph’s case, we saw some footage of Bernard, but enough to know that we couldn’t copy him really. Other than the fact that I knew he had a light Donegal accent, so Ralph did a light Donegal accent. Which was really a hodgepodge, because Bernard moved to America when he was relatively young and didn’t have a heavy accent of any kind. More of a lilt. And we gave him a fat pad, in case you thought Ralph was being slovenly [laughs]. Ralph looked so debonair in his clothes all the time, that we had to add on about 15 pounds around the middle, very gently and subtly, so that he looks kind of out of shape. The real Bernard, by the end of the six years, was a blimp basically, but we couldn’t do a believable “blimp” and why would that matter anyway?
Have any friends or relations of Doris or Bernard seen the film?
We’ve had very few reactions, because we haven’t really screened the film for anybody, other than two test screenings. I’ve heard that a few people were concerned that we presented Bernard in too favorable a light. But then there were people who sort of knew them both and thought it was accurate. I think that no matter what you do, as these are real people, you’re probably going to offend a few people. That being said, I do know some relatives of Doris Duke, but they haven’t seen the film yet. But clearly they will and they’ll talk to me about it. What I hope they will say is “Well, she wasn’t exactly like the Doris we knew, but it is an affectionate portrayal of a woman.” Because my goal was never to trash either one of them. My goal was really to find whatever humanity might exist between these two sort of prototypical characters and then try to make you believe that you were seeing what really might have happened.
Have you found that what you’ve learned as an actor significantly informs your work as a director?
I wish it did inform it more. I think it helps that I’ve worked as an actor, because I’ve watched many more directors than most other directors have. I’ve worked with a lot of good directors as an actor. But working with bad people, you can learn more even than working with good people [laughs]. You learn the things that you should never do. And everything’s unique, you know? I suppose that is something to learn in and of itself. There is no system. No exact method. You have to play it as it lays. If somebody needs help, you’d better figure out some way to help them, and there is no one way. You can help an actor by giving them something physical to do in a scene, or by giving them another aspect of the character to think about. Sometimes you just need to give them a different idea in their head, after they’ve done four takes and things aren’t working anymore. You can tell them to do a take where they find something they really don’t like in the other person and do a take with that in mind. That wakes things up [laughs].
[Balaban with Francois Truffaut and Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.]
Let’s talk a little about your family background. You grew up in Chicago in a family with rich show business roots.
My dad’s family started building movie theaters around 1908, and they wound up with a wonderful chain of theaters called Balaban and Katz in the Midwest. Picture palaces. And then Barney, the oldest brother, ultimately replaced Adolph Zukor and was head of Paramount for a number of years. And then Katz, who was my uncle and then became my grandfather, was head of production at MGM in the late 30s and into the 40s, and I guess the early 50s.
With that type of background, did you know early on that you wanted to do something in entertainment? Or was it the opposite?
I was pretty unformed, I’d say. I’d do my puppet shows and that was pretty much it [laughs], and I couldn’t do really much of anything else other than puppet shows. So I figured, “Well, that’s kind of like being an actor, or writer, or something.” [laughs] So that’s how I veered into it.
[Balaban and Ryan Phillippe in Gosford Park.]
Did you ever come out here to visit the Paramount lot as a kid?
I had a seminal moment like that, but it wasn’t at Paramount. Barney was actually never on the Paramount lot. The Paramount executive offices were always in New York. But when I was 10, I broke my arm and there was nothing they could do with me, as I couldn’t go to camp. And we took a big trip to the west to visit Sam Katz and he was head of production at MGM. I came out with my broken arm, and they took me to MGM. I can remember everything. I actually remember the way it smelled. I was a scenery addict, but my puppet shows had such pathetic scenery [laughs]. And then I got on the set of Meet Me in Las Vegas, starring Cyd Charisse, and they had created Las Vegas on the set! It was a casino on a sound stage with cars driving past. I was completely addicted at that moment. There was an extra-high chair with my grandfather’s name on it, and I would sit in it. I remember the moment where everyone was just standing around, and then the director would say, “Action!” and the casino came to life. I realized it was a new world for three minutes, and then the three minutes were over and it would stop. I was so excited and I’ve never gotten over that.
Bernard and Doris screens on HBO this month, including showings on February 12, 17, 20, 23, and 26.
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