Wim Wenders: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Wim Wenders.


WIM WENDERS: MILLION DOLLAR BABY
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the February 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

One of the world's most influential and innovative filmmakers, Wim Wenders was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, Germany. The son of a doctor, Wenders was one of the leading directors of the young German cinema of the early 70's, making an astonishing feature debut with The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971), a moody psychological study of a man losing his mind, which employed three frequent themes that would go on to punctuate much of his later work: alienation, wanderlust, and American pop culture. Having directed nearly 40 films, just a few highlights of Wenders' career include: Kings of the Road (1976), The American Friend (1977), Lightning Over Water (1980) a tribute to his mentor, director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without a Cause), Hammett (1983), Paris, Texas (1984) for which he won the Palme D' Or at Cannes, Tokyo-Ga (1985), Wings of Desire (1987) for which he received Best Director at Cannes, Until the End of the World (1991), Faraway, So Close! (1993), Beyond the Clouds (1995) which he co-directed with the legendary Michelangelo Antonioni, The End of Violence (1997), and the documentary The Buena Vista Social Club (1999).

With such a vast, and diverse filmography to his credit, one never knows what to expect next from Wim Wenders, and his latest, Million Dollar Hotel, certainly serves up the unexpected in spades. The story of disparate characters in a skid row Los Angeles hotel, the story revolves around Jeremy Davies, whose best friend has mysteriously jumped (or been pushed) to his death from the hotel roof. The man's wealthy father brings in the Feds (Mel Gibson) to investigate. Throw into the mix a wild bunch of characters (and actors) played by the likes of Jimmy Smits, Milla Jovovich, Peter Stormare, Bud Cort, Amanda Plummer, Donal Logue and Gloria Stuart, and you have what has to be one of the wildest cinematic rides of the year. Oh, and did we mention that Bono (yes, that Bono of U2 fame) wrote the film's original story?

Wim Wenders sat down with usat his Hollywood Hills production office recently. It was a suitably surrealistic environment with scaffolding covering all the buildings, construction workers pounding away, frazzled-looking office and production workers doing their own thing and in the middle of all the chaos comes Wenders, tall and patrician in his dark suit, exuding an air of European elegance and élan. Much like the angels in Wings of Desire he seemed amused by the frantic activities of the mortals scurrying around him. Without further adieu, a few thoughts from a cinematic immortal...

Tell us about the genesis of Million Dollar Hotel.
Wim Wenders: Years before I got involved, the real moment this movie was born was when U2 shot the video for "Where the Streets Have No Name" here in Los Angeles in the late 80's. They shot it downtown and Bono found the Frontier Hotel, which is the former Million Dollar Hotel. They shot on the roof and he was very taken with the hotel, thought it was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen. He even came back after they were through and started to write a story that would take place in the hotel. (Guitar player) The Edge had a bet with Bono that he could jump from the hotel roof to the next building, which was about a ten foot jump. So the idea of that jump started something in Bono's head, and he shared the story with his screenwriter friend Nicholas Klein, and they worked together on the script. Soon enough, they were looking for a director. Bono said "I know the right guy," although he didn't give it to me saying "I think this is a script you should do," because he knew I'd probably say 'no,' since I've never worked from an existing script. So Bono was very smart and sneaky, came to see me in Berlin and said "I've got this project that I'm in trouble with. We don't know if it's a studio picture or an independent. It would be great if you could help me out and read it and maybe help us choose a director." And that was a very smart approach...and at the end I was about to give him my short list for directors, and Bono didn't want to hear it. He just smiled because he knew I was hooked, and I was. Bono stayed involved all through the process of making the film. He was great.

You got an amazing cast together.
You can say that again. I don't think I've ever gotten such an amazing group together in front of my camera. And not just Jeremy and Milla and Mel, who were great, but the residents of the hotel who were surrounding them. I found this incredible ensemble. I knew from the beginning it had to be an ensemble film because it had from the very beginning a certain resemblance to the ensemble of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Because the hotel's more an asylum more than anything else. For the people really living there it is very much an asylum, with 800 people living there while we shot. We had one floor to ourselves, but the rest, the lobby, the elevators, the staircases, we shared with the residents of the hotel.

Tell us about working with Gloria Stuart (Titanic), who's been around Hollywood almost since sound came in.
That right, since the early 30's. I did not even dare to offer the part to Gloria. I thought of her, but thought I was way out of line. Gloria showed up on her own in the casting office one day, and said she wanted to read for the part. She read and it was obvious she was the one, gave a very funny reading together with Jeremy. I think basically she wanted to be able to say for once to say all the curse words she was never able to say in those old movies! (laughs) She went at it with a vengeance. She was very, very funny.

How was it working with Mel Gibson?
Mel hadn't thought about being in the film originally, but had an option on it to direct himself before I got involved. He's really fabulous in it. We had him for just three weeks and he had to work very, very hard. Usually he works for 30 weeks. He worked his ass off every day. He was fantastic. It really wasn't easy, though. After a few days of shooting he turned and mumbled "This is more difficult than Hamlet." (laughs) And he knew what he was talking about.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born right after the war ended in Germany. My father was a surgeon. We moved quite often, until he became head surgeon at a hospital. Catholic. Middle-class, although the first few years of my life we were very poor. After the war, the lowest paying jobs were assistant jobs...Had heavy-duty American influences in the 50's. The only radio I listened to was the American Forces Network. Rock and roll was the only music I liked.

When did you fall in love with film?
When I was a kid, I inherited an 8mm projector from my father. We were very poor then, had no toys really. So there was just this projector and this little box of film reels, all about one to three minutes long: Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, early Disney. They were my father's films from when he was a kid, they were all scratched up, but were all little treasures, you know? So I was a favorite at all the birthday parties of my friends, with this little hand-cranked projector. I had an 8mm camera when I was 8 or 9 years old, and made movies all through my childhood, but never thought of doing it professionally. I studied medicine, but didn't finish. Then I studied philosophy for a while, and finally went to Paris to become a painter. Then in Paris I discovered the cinematheque, where you could see a movie for 25 cents a show, and they showed the entire history of world cinema. I saw five to six films every day, from German silents to American classics. I saw in one year more than a thousand movies and became totally addicted, and got a crash course in cinema. From then on, painting was over and I wanted to make movies.

Your first feature, The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick was an amazing portrait of madness.
That was exactly thirty years ago. I wouldn't know how to do that film today. We were just sort of inventing our own filmmaking techniques as we made it. I was heavily influenced by Hitchcock when I made that film, in terms of how he used film language, his framing, his pacing. Hitchcock was my filmmaking hero then, he and Anthony Mann. Although the content of the film was anything but Hitchcock.

Kings of the Road is both an homage to road movies and one of the best of the genre.
We shot it in chronological order with no script, just an itinerary...I like to find the story and the characters through improvisations and every now and then it's nice to let somebody loose, like Peter Stormare in Million Dollar Hotel, singing "I Am the Walrus." That was all improvised. Peter didn't even play piano and he said to me "Give me a day." The next day at the end of the shoot we had just half an hour left. So we decided to try it. Bud Cort was in the scene, and had nothing to do but sit there and get drunk as his character and listen to Peter sing. At the end of the scene, Bud was so moved that he demanded Peter accept the gift of his gold watch because he said "I've never been in a better scene in my life as an actor." So sometimes through improvisation, you can get things you never dreamed of.

Is casting the most important part of the filmmaking process?
Yeah, very much so. With your casting, I would say 80% of your decisions are made, much more so than by your directing actors on the set.

The American Friend was the first film I ever saw of yours. I didn't realize 'til much later that the Dennis Hopper character was the same "Tom Ripley" character from The Talented Mr. Ripley. That film also featured two legendary directors, with whom you became very close, in supporting roles: Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller. Tell us about them.
That's how I first met Nick Ray. The script demanded a number of scenes in America. What we did not have in the script is the character in the Patricia Highsmith novel who is the painter of all these paintings. In the book, he's already dead. So I met Nick Ray through a mutual friend in New York, and then again through Dennis. So Nicholas and I wrote the part of the painter in the script almost overnight, and it was a reunion for Nicholas and Dennis. I remember Sam Fuller came into the room, and they met for the first time. That was a great moment to see the two of them shake hands for the first time. Isn't that extraordinary? These two men who were so much alike, both in person and in the sorts of films they made.

Lightning Over Water was a wonderful tribute to Nick Ray, who was dying at the time of its production. What was he like?
Nicholas had wasted a very precious part of his life through drug and alcohol abuse and his career in Hollywood had ended because of that. He was down and out for a number of years, then got himself back together, started to teach acting and filmmaking. He was a great teacher. He regretted, I think, that in the public eye he was regarded as the guy who had failed and ended up in the gutter. He very much wanted to correct that image and was longing to make another movie, and that became, in the end, Lightning Over Water. As we were making it, it became very obvious that he wasn't going to live long enough to finish it. He co-directed with me in the beginning, but then the cancer took over and the script was re-written by his illness. The film then became about his death, and that 's what he wanted in the end: he wanted to die working. Nicholas was one of the greatest men I ever knew, and one of the most youthful. It's no mistake that he discovered James Dean.

What's your favorite Nick Ray movie?
Wind Across the Everglades (1958), which isn't so well known, or maybe The Lusty Men (1952), which we referred to in Lightning Over Water. Of course, Rebel Without a Cause (1955) is a great film, too.

Tell us about Sam Fuller (The Steel Helmet, The Naked Kiss, 40 Guns).
I had the privilege of knowing Sam during the last 30 years of his life, and worked with him as an actor in four of my films. Sam was one of my best friends, and a great adviser, and the greatest storyteller I knew in my life. In the hundreds of hours I spent with him, he never repeated the same story, which is an incredible feat. He could read a script and instantly put his finger on what was wrong. He'd written so many scripts. He told me he wrote whole books in two nights, scripts in a week.

What's your favorite Sam Fuller film?
Probably The Naked Kiss (1964) or Shock Corridor (1963). I also like a lot of his later work, like The Big Red One (1980), which is an extraordinary war film and White Dog (1982), which was so unfairly attacked. If you ever needed help or advice from Sam, all you had to do was knock on his door. He was a great guy.

Tell us about what happened with Hammett, which was a troubled production.
Francis Coppola, who was the producer, and I went through some hard times during the production, which lasted four years. We went through about 40 drafts of the script with four writers. I shot the film twice. First, I shot it on location mostly, in San Francisco, and in the course of shooting did change a lot of the script and in the end, was suggesting a very different film than the one we'd set out to do, but which made sense based on all the changes I'd made. Francis wasn't so sure about the whole thing, but I made it the same way I made The American Friend, and the rest of my films: based largely on intuition and changes that I made during the shoot. So we had one last scene left to shoot, and Francis wasn't sure that was the ending the studio would accept, we were shooting for Orion at the time. So he wanted to wait to shoot the ending until after we edited it. He said "If you can convince me based on your cut that this is the right ending for this picture, then we'll shoot it." So I went and edited it, and when I showed it to him, everyone realized that it was more about a writer than a detective story, which is what people thought it was about. So they wanted more action in it, and basically demanded a total re-shoot. I had to wait another year to shoot the new ending and everything else that went with it because Frederic Forrest, who played the lead, had gained so much weight for One From the Heart (1982), that we had to wait another year for him to slim down again so he'd match what he looked like before. In the end, we wound up re-shooting almost all of it, and only about 10% of the original remained. All the other parts were re-cast for the second version as well, new crew, all down the line. Two different films.

What did you take away from it all?
Well, the amazing thing was that Francis and I stuck by each other and ended up having a great deal of respect for one another. And just the fact that we finished it, I think, was a tremendous achievement. I think of all my films, it's the least personal, but I still think it's a good film. Contrary to many stories out there, Francis did not take the film away from me and re-shoot it himself. He didn't do a single shot himself.

Tell us about the genesis of Wings of Desire.
I had been away from Germany for eight years. After Hammett, it was time to go home. I was rediscovering my own country, so to speak. It's a film that's very much about how I connect with Germany and my childhood. It was made without a script, with lots of notes, and one big wall full of ideas. It was made very much the way you would write a poem. It was very much made on instinct, and really doesn't have much plot to speak of, if you think about it. I did it with a great old French cinematographer called Henri Alekan who was 80 years-old at the time, and really put his stamp on it.

You worked with Antonioni on Beyond the Clouds. How was that?
It was a very wonderful and strange experience because he had a stroke ten years before the film and had lost his ability to speak, but not at all his intelligence or his mind. He was as sharp as ever. He was never able to put a film together after that, because the insurance companies figured a director who couldn't speak was too big a risk. So finally, the only way he could make a film was with a stand-by director. He approached me, and I agreed. They came up with a concept of Michelangelo shooting four episodes of the film, and I would be his assistant and the stand-by director in case he couldn't do it. Afterwards I was to do a framework that would tie these four stories together. Well, from day one, Michelangelo proved that a lack of speech was no handicap for him at all. I didn't have to step in once. I was really more of a first assistant director, a voice and an organizer. It was an amazing thing to see a director who can't speak insisting on what he wanted, and getting it!

Any advice for first-time directors?
I think the hardest thing, and it's getting harder, is to have a vision and see it through to the end. It sometimes takes years now before you get to make a film. It's difficult today not to drop the ball with all the pressure and expectations that are placed on young filmmakers today. It's hard with all that to sometimes hold onto the ball, and see their vision through. At the end they don't know why they want to make it anymore, because there are so many elements. So make sure you know why you want to make it, and try like hell to hold onto that ball while you do.

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Willem Dafoe: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Willem Dafoe.



"BEHIND THE SHADOW:
Willem Dafoe on portraying cinematic legend/enigma Max Schreck, being directed by Steve Buscemi, and how one prepares to play the Son of God"
by Terry Keefe

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the February 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

Max Schreck. It’s a name that to film fans conjures up the unforgettable images of the cinema’s very first vampire, played by German actor Schreck in director F.W. Murnau’s 1921 silent horror masterpiece Nosferatu. Schreck holds the dual distinction of being both one of the most recognizable figures in film history and also one of the most enigmatic. Besides "Nosferatu", few, if any, of Schreck's films even exist anymore and almost nothing is known of his life.

Willem Dafoe. It’s a name that to film fans conjures up unforgettable images of his acting performances in some of the best films of the past 20 years. And it is Dafoe who has brought the mysterious Max Schreck back from the grave in Lions Gate Films’ Shadow of the Vampire, a deliciously macabre tale of historical fiction about the making of “Nosferatu”. The film’s hook is that Max Schreck was an actual vampire hired by F.W. Murnau for the purposes of realism. Dafoe turns in a terrific performance as the vampire Schreck in a role that might have been very one-note in another actor’s hands. But throughout his entire career, Dafoe has specialized in adding layers of depth and humanity to challenging characters. Along the way, he’s also been unfairly saddled with the image of an actor who specializes in playing odd or peculiar roles. A closer examination of his career reveals a deeper truth - that he’s a daring artist who simply refuses to be satisfied with the creation of the bland or ordinary.

Willem Dafoe was born on July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin, the second youngest of eight children. After leaving the University of Wisconsin, Dafoe made his way to Manhattan in the late 1970's where he became one of the founding members of the Wooster Group, a now-famous theater company which has been a pioneer in incorporating experimental elements of multimedia into the theatrical language. Dafoe still performs with them today.

Dafoe made his screen debut as a featured extra in Michael Cimino's legendary cinematic disaster Heaven's Gate. Things could only go up from there and they did, as Dafoe was cast as a beatnik biker named Vance in Kathryn Bigelow's little-seen 1982 feature The Loveless. Dafoe's next big role was also as a biker, of a very different sort, as he played the evil Raven in Walter Hill's underrated rock 'n roll fable Streets of Fire in 1984. But if Raven was a great villain, he was only a warm-up for Eric Masters, the counterfeiter/painter that Dafoe portrayed in William Friedkin's brilliant To Live and Die in L.A., which was released in 1985. Masters is the perfect L.A. villain - a talented artist who also happens to be a merciless killer - and Dafoe colors Masters with so many realistic mannerisms that he becomes far, far scarier than the average criminal antagonist.

Then came the film that changed everything for him, Oliver Stone's Platoon in 1986. The shot of Dafoe as Sergeant Elias, riddled with bullets and his arms stretched towards the heavens, would become the defining image of the film. And "Platoon" would finally bring Dafoe both worldwide fame and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. It's perhaps ironic that Dafoe's good-hearted Sergeant Elias is derisively referred to as a "water-walker" by another character in the film, because the next major role Dafoe would take would be as Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. This choice as a follow-up to "Platoon" is all the evidence you need of Dafoe's daring as an actor. While it's true that this was a lead role in a film directed by Martin Scorsese, "Last Temptation"'s controversial subject matter was guaranteed to offend many, and for an actor who had only just broken through with mainstream audiences, it was a risky move. But it was also very characteristic of the path Dafoe's career would take during the next decade. With the possible exception of 1997’s Speed 2: Cruise Control, rarely will you see him in a big studio blockbuster that was done just for the exposure or the paycheck. The one thing you can always count on from a Willem Dafoe project is that it will be interesting, at the very least, and usually much more than that.

His next film after playing the Son of God would be an acclaimed teaming with Gene Hackman as a pair of mismatched F.B.I. agents investigating a hate crime in 1988's terrific Mississippi Burning, directed by Alan Parker. Other notable performances include Wild at Heart (1990, as the vicious hit man Bobby Peru, for director David Lynch), Clear and Present Danger(1994, as government operative John Clark), Tom & Viv (1994, playing poet T.S. Eliot), The English Patient (1996, in which he was the mysterious war veteran Carravagio), Affliction (1997, as Rolfe, the long-suffering brother of Nick Nolte's Wade), and American Psycho (2000, playing Kimball, the police detective hounding the serial killer of the title).

This past fall, Dafoe starred in Animal Factory, the second film to be directed by Steve Buscemi. Dafoe plays Earl Copen, a lifer con who is the top dog in the prison yard, and who enters into a relationship with Edward Furlong's much-younger character Ron. It's a definite love story, but the film skirts the usual genre conventions by keeping the relationship almost entirely cerebral. "Animal Factory" is based on the book by Edward Bunker, a former con turned writer-actor who many also remember as Mr. Blue in Reservoir Dogs.

Which brings us to the present and "Shadow of the Vampire", directed by E. Elias Merhige from a screenplay by Steven Katz. As mentioned earlier, little is know of the real-life Max Schreck and this has led to endless speculation about his true story by fans of "Nosferatu" throughout the years. The most famous quote on record about Schreck is that a prominent German film producer once referred to him as "an actor of no distinction". And then there's the name - the word Schreck in German loosely translates as "shriek" or "scream", and it seems likely that it wasn't the man's real moniker. "Nosferatu" is shot almost like an early documentary and the film has a creepiness that stays with you for days. All of these factors provided fertile ground for "Shadow of the Vampire"'s take on what really happened during the making of "Nosferatu". In fact, watching the original again after seeing "Shadow" is a very unsettling experience. You're left thinking "what if?"

As Schreck, Dafoe is a quivering, scheming mass of long claws, fangs, vanity, and loneliness. Remarkably, Dafoe creates a Max Schreck who is not only scary and sad, but also very funny. Although he's uncomfortable in front of the cameras at first, Schreck soon becomes something of a prima donna, asking for more make-up and questioning parts of the script. Dafoe also re-creates the real-life Max Schreck's original performance beat-for-beat in the "film within the film". It's a multi-layered, tour-de-force performance worthy of an Oscar.

In January, Dafoe began shooting the much-anticipated Spider-Man with director Sam Raimi. He'll play yet another icon in this one: Norman Osborne, who any good comic book fan knows is also Spidey's arch-nemesis -the sinister, pumpkin bomb-throwing Green Goblin. One imagines that the make-up required for "Shadow of the Vampire" will have been a good warm-up for what Dafoe will be wearing as the Green Goblin - in the comics, the Goblin is covered with green scales, has pointed ears, and flies around Manhattan on an airborne "goblin glider"! And it’s a safe bet that because it’s Dafoe behind the mask, the Green Goblin will have a lot more depth than your typical wisecracking comic-book villain. We sat down with Willem Dafoe this past December to discuss his career and all things Schreck.

Can you tell us about your preparation to play Max Schreck?
Well, there wasn't a lot I could do until I got in the make-up, in the costume. I read about Murnau. I looked at his films. I certainly acquainted myself with "Nosferatu", because I had to be well acquainted with the film...I had certain sequences that I knew we were going to replicate that I had to know very well. Also, I knew I wanted to have an accent, so I got some Slovakian accents from the Tatrus Mountains (in the South of Poland) and listened to them, then scored out an accent with a dialogue couch in New York. And then just made certain adjustments for clarity and what felt right. And through that, I found the voice, which of course had to be invented because there's nothing to copy in that case. Then it was really about dealing with the costume and the make-up, which was everything because that became the key, that became the mask, that became the mode to find the character, because it was so extreme that it informed everything you did.

When you finally did get into the make-up then, did you have to spend a lot of time finding the character further or was it immediate?
It was fairly quick. We did some tests. Then every morning of the shoot, I'd be the first one there. And it was three hours of make-up, which was always a great preparation for the day. Because you're sitting there every day for three hours and you have to be quite still because some of it is quite delicate work. And you look in the mirror and it was a process of seeing 'you' as you know yourself, what you identify with individually as yourself, starting to recede away and having this other character come forward, as you became more and more obscured. So you start to look less like yourself and then you start to feel less like yourself and then you start to even think less like yourself, because you're encouraging that transformation willfully. Then you apply yourself to the story and certain impulses come.

When I tried to find out more about the original Max Schreck, the only thing I really learned is that he was once referred to as "an actor of no distinction". Is that pretty much what you found out?
That's pretty much it. But to tell you the truth, I didn't feel that compelled to find out that much about him because, although any information can be useful, I was most interested in the Max Schreck of the performance, of the performance as Count Orlock. That's what I was dealing with. The other part was really the invention of Steven Katz' screenplay.

I was just curious about what you thought about Max Schreck as an actor.
Oh, I think he's great. You know....traditionally, silent film acting is considered hammy and unsophisticated and amateurish. But if you kind of let go your criteria for what is 'acting', which is usually based on our notions of realism and naturalism, there's some very beautiful things that happen (in Schreck's performance). In his awkwardness, there's a grace. There's a poetry to his simple actions. We aren't handing out prizes here, and it's particularly not important when the guy's been dead for so long. So whether he's a good actor or not, I don't know. But I do know that in watching him, there is some poetry.

How was working with your director, E. Elias Merhige?
It was great. An actor wants a good set-up. He gave me a good set-up, and he kept me on track. And then some. He's very supportive. He's very passionate about what he does. He paid alot of attention to the technical aspects of it, to create the conventions in the "film within the film" sequences. He's quite ambitious and quite driven and I think on some level he identified with Murnau (laughs). But in other ways he's not at all like Murnau, because he's very sweet and very warm.

You recreated Schreck's performance flawlessly for those "film within the film" sequences. How many times did you watch "Nosferatu"?
We had it on the set. I mean, we watched it a lot, but then...we had a cassette of it available always. And sometimes we'd huddle around it and there'd be debates about actually what we were seeing. We would get together and it would be amazing how some people would see different things than other people, watching the same thing. It was a lesson about perception. And sometimes we'd argue about what we actually saw. Because the rule was that, as much as possible, we'd try to recreate those moments.

Murnau and the Vampire are very similar people. It's very hard to say who's the real monster and also who's really directing the project.
As Schreck says in the movie, "We are not so very different, you and me." (laughs)

I wanted to talk about another film of yours that was just released, "Animal Factory". Could you tell us a little bit about working with the director Steve Buscemi?
Sure. Steve's an old friend and I only mention that not to name-drop, but that does make a difference in this case. I've known him for many years. I knew him when he was a fireman, before he was an actor...he was a New York City fireman in Little Italy. And he was doing his comedy sketches with Mark Boone Junior in the clubs. And I went off to do "Platoon" and he filled in for me at the theater, at the Wooster Group. And then I've known him through the years and we've kept in touch. And when this project came up, he said he wanted me to do it and I thought it was a beautiful story. It was fun being directed by someone you knew very well because you could skip to the chase on alot of stuff. And he directed me like an actor, because the language is there. I also felt like sometimes it was almost as if he was doing the role, but he was doing it through me.

Let's talk about your background a bit. You were raised in Wisconsin and you're the second youngest of 8 children. That's a big family - were your parents or any of your siblings also artistic?
They're all artistic but professionally they did other things. It's the old story - I'm the actor but when we get together for a family reunion, they're all far more talented than I am (laughs).

When did the acting bug get a hold of you?
When I was quite young...I was in school plays, and I was in summer stock. Then I went to Europe for a little while and I went to New York. And 23 years ago I started working with the Wooster Group and I still work with them now.

It seems like it's a great balance creatively to be able to do both the Wooster Group and the films.
It is. Sometimes it's frustrating because sometimes I feel like I'm cheating one world when I go to the other one. It's like having two lovers. But at the same time, being with one makes you better for the other one (laughs). Not sure if I should say that - get me in trouble! (laughs again). No, for me, sometimes it's hard because you have two masters. But sometimes it's good because when you go back and forth between the two it always forces you to find out why you do what you do. It really is a great insurance against falling into a routine.

One of your first major film roles was in 1985, when you played Eric Masters in William Friedkin's "To Live and Die in L.A.". It's a terrific film which was kind of overlooked at the time it came out.
It was. It's actually a film that directors have responded to. And I think I got alot of work in my early days from that movie. That was a very important movie for me. People, key people, really responded to it. It was seen as a failure. It was an independent at the time, when independents seldom got that kind of release, with a prestige director and basically an unknown cast. But the thing that I remember about it was that a lot of the reviews said the same things and I think it was ahead of its time, because they basically said, "We don't know who to root for. Everybody's so horrible in this. There's no one that we can identify with. This is a crummy movie because you've gotta have someone to identify with. These people are so corrupt." Well, I think Billy Friedkin somehow prefigured the coming of the kind of love affair with the anti-hero that someone like Quentin Tarantino knew so well and audiences responded to.

In 1986, you filmed a role that really catapulted you into the national spotlight, that of Sergeant Elias in Oliver Stone's "Platoon". Could you talk about the production a little bit?
I just remember meeting Oliver and thinking, "God, I don't know anyone in Hollywood like this guy!" (laughs) I loved the preparation for it, the training, it was very tough. We had people that really cared about what was being conveyed, so there were really high stakes in making the movie, Vietnam Vets that wanted their story to be told. So the training and the whole movie was done in a spirit, a very intense spirit. I loved making it. But I thought, because you've got to remember the climate at the time, I thought, "This movie is not going to see the light of day. There aren't any big stars in it. It's the kind of war movie that could be seen as depressing to some people. It could have political problems for some people. This is going to get misidentified and wind up on a video shelf next to kung-fu movies." I really did think that. And that's no judgment on what I thought we were making. It's a judgment on how I thought it would get to an audience.

The next major role you took after “Platoon“ was “The Last Temptation of Christ“. Did you have any reservations about taking the role?
No. And I've said it before, I don't know why I didn't (laughs). No, I didn't because the way Marty approached me...saying what kind of Christ he wanted it to be. I thought, "I'm the perfect guy to play this." And I think that movie probably had a profound influence on me, professionally and in my life. It was a great experience. It was a movie where I really felt used, I mean “used” in the best sense of the word. As an actor, I want to be used. I want to use my body and my mind, my voice, whatever I've got, for something. And Marty had this beautiful story to tell. He made this movie in his head for many years, and I felt privileged to be involved in it. It was a deeply felt experience, and when I finished it, I felt really spent. And that's such a good feeling.

What type of preparation did you do to play Jesus?
As little as possible. I mean, the thing that I'm always struck with is that it was more a process of elimination rather than accumulation. Because you wanted to cleanse yourself of any kind of expectation. The whole notion of the way the story goes, Jesus is a very reactive character. He's dealing with what is being presented to him. So you want to be in a place where you could receive that without knowing the outcome too much, you wanted to be very open-hearted and open-minded about it. So it's like sometimes I think I like to start from a place of not knowing, probably end up at a place of not knowing too (laughs) but in that one (Jesus) deeply there was an aspect of him that was like an innocent, so I didn't want the overview. I didn't want the information. I just wanted to deal with it as it was presented to me. And because it was so well-designed and it was framed so beautifully, that was a good place to be.

You made a lot of comic book fans, including myself, very happy when you agreed to play the Green Goblin in the "Spider-Man" film that you're about to shoot with Sam Raimi.
I'm excited about it. But there's not a lot I can say about it right now. Not purely for secrecy, but because I'm just starting. There's a lot of comic book fans we've got to make happy. The stakes are high (laughs).

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Taylor Hackford: The Hollywood Interview

Director Taylor Hackford.


TAYLOR HACKFORD:
GIMME SOME PROOF
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 2000/January 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

Taylor Hackford was born in Santa Barbara on December 3, 1944. Raised by a single mother, Hackford went to college at USC, where he graduated with a degree in International Relations in 1967. Soon after, Hackford joined the Peace Corps, and lived in Bolivia for two years. After returning home to the States, he got an entry-level job with Los Angeles' PBS affiliate, KCET, and quickly worked his way up the ladder to cameraman and investigative reporter.

After winning an Academy Award for his short Teenage Father (1978), Hackford made his feature directing debut with The Idolmaker (1980), a stirring drama starring Ray Sharkey as a Brooklyn hustler who makes teen idols out of local street kids in 1950's New York. An Officer and a Gentleman, two years later, was one of the biggest box office hits of the year, making stars out of leads Richard Gere and Debra Winger, and solidifying Hackford's reputation as an accomplished cinematic storyteller. Against All Odds (1984) was another hit, telling a modern film noir story against the backdrop of bookmaking, real estate and pro football in contemporary L.A. White Nights (1985) was a cold war thriller starring Mikhail Barishnikov as a defected Russian dancer who finds himself back behind the Iron Curtain when his plane goes down. Hackford formed New Century/New Visions productions in 1988, producing films for other directors like La Bamba (1987), as well as his own projects like the documentary Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll (1987) and the romantic drama Everybody's All-American (1988).

1993 saw Hackford's most ambitious project come to fruition. Blood In, Blood Out (aka Bound by Honor), was an epic, three hour story of three cousins (Benjamin Bratt, Jesse Borrego, Damian Chapa) from the barrio of East L.A. and the wildly divergent paths their lives take. An intimate study of a culture on the streets, as well as the subcultures that exist within America's prison systems, the film was dumped by its distributor, Disney, after the L.A. riots broke out, fearing that it would cause copycat violence in theaters. It has since found a second life as a major hit on video and cable TV. Dolores Claiborne (1995) was Hackford's filmization of Stephen King's novel dealing with family skeletons, small town repression and murder. He followed this by co-producing, and re-assembling Leon Gast's brilliant documentary When We Were Kings (1996), about the legendary Muhammad Ali-George Forman "Rumble in the Jungle" boxing match in 1974 Zaire. The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary. The Devil's Advocate (1997) was a satiric thriller starring Keanu Reeves as a neophyte lawyer who goes to work for a sinister law firm, run by Old Nick himself (Al Pacino).

Hackford's latest is the thriller Proof of Life. Starring Russell Crowe as a professional hostage negotiator/retriever who is enlisted by Meg Ryan to free her husband, an American engineer stationed in South America, played by David Morse, who has been kidnapped by a band of extremist rebels. A riveting thriller expertly performed by the fine cast, which also includes Pamela Reed and David Caruso, the Warner Bros. release is currently playing throughout southern California. Taylor Hackford, who resides in London with his wife, the esteemed actress Helen Mirren, was in town recently and took time to sit down with us to reflect on his past, present, and future.

How did you get involved with Proof of Life?
Taylor Hackford: I saw an article in Vanity Fair called "Adventures in the Ransom Trade" by a guy named William Prochnau about the kidnapping and ransom, or k & r, business that's becoming prevalent in Eastern Europe and especially in South America. It's really a business that's come about as a result of the changing world economy, and it's a multi-million dollar trade in those regions. And the amazing thing is, the people who are sent from the west to work in countries such as these, especially from Fortune 100 companies, they're automatically covered by their firms with kidnap insurance--usually without their knowledge. After all, why would you tell an employee, whom you want to keep happy, that he or she has a high probability of being kidnapped? When I read the Vanity Fair piece, I was just blown away by the dramatic possibilities there. This was a story that I'd never seen before. I called my creative partner, Tony Gilroy, who I'd collaborated with on Dolores Claiborne and The Devil's Advocate, and told him that we should really come up with a story around this, so we did.

Russell Crowe proved again in this film that he's both an actor and a movie star.
I had seen Russell in L.A. Confidential and was just blown away by his work. There was something really special going on behind his eyes. But L.A. Confidential was also a period piece, and Russell very convincingly evoked a man of that period in the film. Our film was contemporary, so I wasn't quite sure if he'd be right for it or not. Among colleagues in our business, there's sort of an unwritten rule that we can look at each other's works in progress if there's an actor that we have our eye on. At that time, two friends of mine had just finished films with Russell: Ridley Scott with Gladiator and Michael Mann with The Insider. Both let me see footage from the films while they were still in post (production). As soon as I saw how Russell so brilliantly played these two completely diametrically opposed characters, I knew that this was our guy. He's got it all.

It was also nice to see Meg Ryan playing a more dramatic role.
Meg is a truly gifted comedienne, but that's also sort of typecast her as America's sweetheart, and when that happens, it's tough to show your true range as an actor. I've known Meg for a long time, and knew she was anxious to do more dramatic work. I think this is the best dramatic work she's done since When a Man Loves a Woman. Meg really crosses the spectrum here: she's vulnerable, she's tough, she's smart, she's romantic, she's volatile. It was a tremendous experience watching her work and grow into her character.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born and raised in Santa Barbara by a single mother, who was a waitress. My mom's been my biggest inspiration in my life. I grew up very blue collar, but being blue collar in Santa Barbara wasn't so bad! (laughs) I was always very active in sports and student government at Santa Barbara high, then I went to USC and graduated in '67 with a degree in International Relations. I was very active in student government there also, and was Student Body President my senior year.

When did you fall in love with film?
My senior year at 'SC, I started hanging out with a lot of film students, and really started thinking a lot more about movies, and in a very different way than I had previously. That's at a time when there were about a dozen arthouses in L.A., most of which are gone now, and I saw films by people like Truffaut, Kurosawa, Godard and really realized what the medium was capable of achieving. Prior to that, I was never one of these kids that grew up in a movie theater, because I had so many other interests, so it all changed for me then.

After graduation, you joined the Peace Corps.
Yeah, I went to Bolivia for two years and really fell in love with Latin culture. I'm of Scottish descent, but I think there must have been a Latin in my bloodline somewhere. I also hung out a lot with Latino kids growing up in Santa Barbara, so the interest in the culture had been there early on. Then I returned to L.A., to go to law school at 'SC, but after two weeks, I dropped out, lost all my tuition, and realized that I was supposed to make movies. I didn't have any film school background, so I went to the PBS station, KCET, who knew me from when they'd done an interview with me as Student Body President at 'SC. They gave me a job in the mailroom and I worked my way up to cameraman and eventually investigative reporter. I was there for several years, won a few awards for investigative journalism, then left toward the end of the 70's when the emphasis was shifting from hard news to "human interest" and "happy" news. Then I did a short film called Teenage Father, which was an educational film for high school kids, and it wound up winning the Oscar for Best Short Film. That's how I got my first agent and was able to get my foot into the door of Hollywood.

Then you did your first feature, The Idolmaker, starring Ray Sharkey, who died of AIDS in 1993. What was he like?
Ray was a wonderful guy. He was incredibly smart, incredibly talented, but he had very dark roots. He came from Brooklyn, and I went back with him to his old neighborhood when we were researching the film. Ray insisted we travel in a limo, which I didn't want to do, so he could arrive in style. At one point, Ray screams for the driver to stop, and he jumps out of the car, starts talking to this guy in his car. It turns out that this guy was the football star of Ray's high school and an old pal, and he'd just come from court where he'd been sentenced to Attica for dealing heroin. And here Ray's telling him that he's starring in his first movie, living in Malibu with his beautiful girlfriend, and so on, and I'll never forget the look on this guy's face. He was this really handsome Italian guy, and you could just see him thinking "Wait a minute, I was the star. I was the big man on campus. How come Ray is a movie star and I'm going to jail?" The Idolmaker did well critically, but didn't make any money, and Ray had a lot of powerful people blowing smoke up his ass, telling him that he was going to be a big star after the film hit. Well, he never was, and I think that really tore him apart. I've met a lot of people over the years who have been destroyed by drugs, some like Keith Richards are able to beat it. Ray didn't. I miss Ray every day. He was a great friend.

An Officer and a Gentleman was the film that really set your career in motion.
Yeah, that was a script that had been around for over ten years, that nobody knew what to do with. In those days, Paramount was led by these very type-A people who were all in competition with each other, and here I was stuck in the middle! Don Simpson, who was head of production, gave me the script. Jeffery Katzenberg, who ran the studio itself, wanted me to do White Dog (eventually directed by Sam Fuller, 1982). I liked Romain Gary's novel much more than I liked the script, so I decided to do An Officer and a Gentleman, which I thought was a terrific script and a really hard-edged, blue collar love story. It's so funny to me know when people tell me how tender and soft it was, because it's not! It was full of sex and profanity and was about very gritty, edgy people. It was a tough film to make, with all the strong personalities involved--Don Simpson actually tried to fire me two weeks into shooting--but we stuck it out and I'm very proud of the final result. I think it still holds up.

Against All Odds also holds up well as a real touchstone film of the 80's.
I was a big fan of Out of the Past (1947), which is sort of viewed by many people as the ultimate film noir. (Screenwriter) Eric Hughes and I wanted to make a film noir in the sun (laughs), and we used that film as a model, so it's really not a true remake in that sense, although it would be fair to say Against All Odds was inspired by Out of the Past. I loved the idea of doing a detective story where the protagonist isn't a real detective. In this case, he's a pro football player who's saying "What do you mean you want me to find this girl? I would never do something like that." And he's forced to become a detective in order to survive the situation he's in. That was also a time right before all the sports books became big in Vegas, and people were betting millions on pro football through bookies every weekend.

White Knights is notable for being one of the only films shot (partially) in Russia at the height of the cold war, and also as the place where you met your wife. What was that first meeting like?
Well I had been a big admirer of Helen's work for a long time, although we hadn't actually met until White Knights. I thought her work combined incredible depth, intensity and unmatched sexiness. We met on the set, became friends, and then the relationship just progressed from there. We've been together fifteen years, and there's nothing quite like finding your true soul mate. I've been trying to find another film for us to do together, but so far, nothing has come to fruition.

Chuck Berry Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll is one of the best documentaries ever about a rock musician.
Thank you. I loved doing that film and it was fascinating watching Chuck Berry and Keith Richards interact. I mean, Keith was so sweet and deferential to Chuck, saying "I stole every lick he ever played," and Chuck just shits on him through the whole thing! It really gave me a lot of admiration for Keith, I mean he is the backbone of the Rolling Stones, no question. Mick Jagger is a great performer, a very smart businessman, but without Keith holding things together, that band never would be what it is today. Chuck Berry is a very complex, very brilliant guy who's been through some hard knocks, but has endured. I loved going back to my public TV roots and doing a documentary. I had a great experience putting When We Were Kings back together, also. I hope to do more documentary work in the future.

Everybody's All-American was a heartbreaking portrait of the American dream collapsing, another terrific film.
I loved Frank Deford's novel and it reminded me a lot of guys I had known who all peaked in high school or college and the rest of their lives could never measure up to that one brief moment of glory they had had as kids and young adults. Dennis Quaid was really brilliant in the lead, I thought. It was also about a much simpler time that's now past, although that football fever in the south still very much exists.

Blood in, Blood Out is an overlooked masterpiece. How did the project develop and why did the studio dump it like they did?
Floyd Mutrix wrote the original script but it was really Jimmy Baca, who's one of our greatest poets, that contributed the most to the story. Jimmy's from the streets, he did time, and he really knows that world inside out. I really saw it as a story about the birth of a crime family, but unlike The Godfather, this family is born within the prison system. We got permission to shoot inside San Quentin. The warden there was a Latino, and he thought we were telling a really terrific story that ultimately had a very positive message for young Latino men. I was very lucky to get a great cast: Benjamin Bratt in his first major role, Jesse Borrego, Damian Chapa, Delroy Lindo, and Billy Bob Thornton in his first movie role.

Were you ever scared, shooting inside Quentin with real inmates playing roles?
Sure, there were a few moments initially where we were all a little nervous, but I was able to use that in a lot of the work that the actors did. We literally took each of the actors, Billy Bob and Tom Towles went over to the white guys, Damian to the Latinos, Delroy to the blacks and we said "Here's your guys," and we left them there. Everyone knew that we were there to make a movie and that the warden supported us, so it was fine. It's the warden's house and his rules, and the cons know that. As far as what happened with the release, it came out right after the L.A. riots, and Disney refused to release it, fearing that gang violence would break out in theaters. I understand why they did what they did, and I'm not bitter about it, because I got to make the movie and it's out there, but I think it really would have been a successful film had they given it a wide release, especially based on the huge impact it's had on cable and video. It was originally supposed to be part one of a two-part film that I started, but wasn't able to complete after what happened with the first. So I've got hours of great scenes that would be great on DVD, where Jimmy, Jesse, Ben, Damian and I could do a commentary track. It was one of those great life experiences, making that film. That's why I do what I do. None of my films are in the same genre and I want to move into new territory each time because I view each film as a two-year odyssey of new experience where I can keep growing.

You were raised by a single mother. Was Dolores Claiborne your salute to your mom?
Absolutely. My mother was very independent, very tough, very strong, certainly the overwhelming influence in my life. Tony Gilroy adapted the book and did an amazing thing. The Jennifer Jason Leigh character didn't exist in the book. Only the past existed in the book. It opened with Dolores going into the police station, saying that she hadn't killed her employer that day, but she did kill her husband 20 years earlier, and the remainder of the story was told by Dolores in flashback. Tony realized that wouldn't be a very interesting cinematic story, so he created an original screenplay for half the film, and the other half was already there in the book, especially the character of Dolores, which was all Stephen King's. She's a brilliant character.

Any advice for first-time directors?
The important thing is to listen to everybody, and then make your own choice. You're so often humble in the presence of those who have more experience than you: your whole crew, the actors, everyone has more experience than you when you're first starting out. On the other hand, it's your movie. I didn't do this until my third day on the set of The Idolmaker. At the end of the second day, I looked at the dailies and said "I don't like this. I'm not going to be able to sit in the lobby and say, as people walk out, 'Well that wasn't my idea, it was the D.P.'s, or the A.D.'s.'" I finally had to go in and say "I'm sorry, I have to make this movie my way. That's why they hired me to make it." Billy Bob Thornton, who's a good friend of mine, called me a few years ago and said that he was directing his first movie. I said 'That's great! You must be really excited.' He says, "Taylor, can you come down to Arkansas to the set for a few days?" I said 'Billy Bob, the last thing you want is an experienced director standing around while you're doing your first movie, because everyone will be looking to me, not to you. You have to make it your movie.' And we all know how Sling Blade turned out, right? (laughs) So that process of having to finally face yourself and having a very talented group of collaborators around you asking 'What's your vision?' is what it's all about. Know what your vision is, and follow that.

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Steven Soderbergh: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.


STEVEN SODERBERGH:
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the July 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

Steven Soderbergh was born January 14, 1963 in Atlanta. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was still in high school when he enrolled in a film animation class at Louisiana State University, where his father was dean of the College of Education. Soon he began making film shorts with equipment he had borrowed from students at the university. After graduating high school early at 17, he decided to skip college and headed for Hollywood in a frustrated pursuit of a movie career. Back in Baton Rouge, he worked as a coin changer at an arcade and in his spare time made a humorous short called Rapid Eye Movement, about his Hollywood non-experience. Eventually, he landed a job at a video production house and enjoyed some success as the director of a music video for the rock group Yes, which was nominated for a Grammy. He began writing screenplays and directed a short called Winston, about sexual deception, which he later developed into his first feature Sex, Lies and Videotape, which was the hit of the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, winning the coveted Palm D'Or as Best Film, as well as the International Critics Prize and Best Actor for James Spader. It also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Soderbergh followed this with Kafka in 1991, a surrealistic mystery/suspense film which combined fiction with elements of author Franz Kafka's life. He followed that with an adaptation of A.E. Hotchner's memoir King of the Hill in 1993, a heart-rending coming-of-age tale set in the depression-era midwest. Despite not fairing well at the box office, it remains one of the best-reviewed films of that year. 1995 brought The Underneath, Soderbergh's take on Raymond Chandler-esque mystery, set in present day Austin, Texas. 1997 saw two Soderbergh releases: Schizopolis, a low budget, experimental comedy in the spirit of Richard Lester and Buñuel, and Gray's Anatomy, a filmed version of Spalding Gray's comic monologue.

Soderbergh's latest is one of his best, and certainly his most commercial efforts yet. Out of Sight, from the novel by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), reunites Shorty screenwriter Scott Frank with the author and boasts an all-star cast featuring George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks and two huge stars (who will remain nameless) in very crucial cameo roles. Out of Sight is a treat for the brain, the eye, and the funnybone, a film which combines the best of 1970's American film grittiness and a 90's hipness that makes for one very refreshing celluloid cocktail. Universal opened the film wide on June 26. Odds are you'll want to check it out more than once. Steven Soderbergh sat down recently to discuss his latest film opus, as well as his past triumphs, tribulations and disappointments.

I'm a big Elmore Leonard fan and I thought you really captured his voice with Out of Sight, which isn't easy to do on film.
Steven Soderbergh: It's tricky. It's an odd tone. We had two things going for us: Scott Frank, who understands that tone, and we put together a cast that I made sure understood that tone.

Have you always been a fan of Leonard's work?
Yeah. I've read probably six or seven of his novels. I've seen almost all the movies that are based on his work. So I was very familiar with his work.

I was excited when I heard you were doing this film, because like Elmore Leonard's novels, most of your films have subject matters that seem very serious when you first hear about them, but they always seem to have undercurrents of humor. Even with Kafka, a writer whose work most people find to be completely bleak, but I've always found to be blackly hilarious, you seemed to find that same humor and absurdity.
I think Kafka's work is extremely funny in an absurdist way. With (the film), I think a lot of people took it much more seriously than we intended, dealing with that character and all, leaves you open to that. But we really saw it as a carnival ride.

The Underneath struck me as sort of an homage to a Raymond Chandler-type crime story, whereas Elmore Leonard definitely has a more modern take on the genre, more straightforward.
Well, ultimately (The Underneath) was kind of a mess. I didn't quite unlock it or figure it out. Some things about it are interesting, but others are...if there's a successful element to The Underneath it was finding a way to use color in the same way that noir films used to use black and white. That was the one part of the movie that worked. Everything else about the movie I can't defend. It was a failed experiment, but a good experiment to attempt. The results of that experiment were necessary in making (Out of Sight). They can't all be gems. It's a process.

I noticed you were very specific about the color palates in Out of Sight, depending on what city the scene took place in. Did you use a blue filter in most of it?
No. More often than not we shot with a half-85, which cools things off a bit. Then on some stuff we'd just pull the 85 completely, and let it go blue, then print it back. And what happens when you do that is there's a patina of coolness in the blacks. And that gives you a different feel than if you shot it with an 85 and then tried to tone it down, trying to get it to look like winter, for example. We did a lot of experiments, depending on how the light was that day. I love that look. It's very evocative. It's what I saw when I read it. It had that feel...It felt like a real 70's movie to me.

Another filmmaker that comes to mind when I watch a lot of your work is Antonioni, especially in your specific use of color.
I think a big problem with The Underneath was that I was in danger of becoming too much like Antonioni. I think he's terrific, but I think at some level, it's not an appropriate style for an American filmmaker because it runs so counter to our zeitgeist. I appreciate the rigor of that style of filmmaking, but what I felt Out of Sight needed was a combination of being that thorough, with a much more jagged energy and a much more rough style.

Out of Sight didn't feel "slick." I noticed you didn't use many dolly shots, did a lot of hand-held stuff, and a jarring editing style that was very effective.
Yeah, for this material I felt that if the movie smelled like Hollywood it would just fall apart.

You had a star-studded cast in this film right down to the smallest parts. How did you attract such a stellar group?
Well, Elmore Leonard's got a reputation for writing great parts, even great small parts. But in the case of the two cameos, we were really lucky. Both actors were intrigued by the idea of doing these small roles that were extremely important to the story in spite of their size, and also they did it as a favor. But, particularly in the last scene, if it weren't (this actor) it had to be someone who had an extremely powerful presence. Because you're talking about a guy who you have to establish in no time at all that he's "the dude." The break-out artist of all time, otherwise the last scene of the film wouldn't work--if that guy didn't have that power.

The other great thing was that everybody in the film underplayed, very naturalistic.
That's Leonard's style, too. The characters have no self-awareness at all, so if you cast an actor who comments on their performance while they're giving it, you're dead.

Talk to us about George Clooney, who I think is an incredibly underrated actor.
He absolutely is. He's in that weird spot, which I hope he won't be in much longer, where people are saying "He should be a movie star!" He makes four movies and they do okay, but they don't set the world on fire, and everybody blames him. I've always thought that the guy was ready to happen, and there was no question in my mind that this was that part for him.

How do you direct actors?
I try not to ask them how they like to work, I try to find out, and that's where rehearsals come in...I try to have a week to ten days of rehearsal, which is really for me, not for them. It's for me to watch them, and get a sense of how they like to be treated, how to communicate with them so that I don't have to figure it out on the set, where I'm not as patient. (All the actors) are different, so you have to treat them accordingly.

What sort of space do you like to rehearse in?
We just had an open space, sort of a holding room, over at Universal that was fairly good-sized. I'd bring in some props and tables and things, do a read-through for a while, then put it on its feet, do a little blocking.

Do you have a clear idea of how you're going do shoot beforehand? Do you storyboard at all?
No. Figuring out where to put the camera is usually the easy part. It's coming up with some way of staging the scene that's interesting, that's the hard part...the only thing I boarded on this movie, because we shot the whole sequence out of order, was I took stand-ins and moved them through the entire mansion sequence from beginning to end, and then with a still camera with a zoom lens, shot from every angle I could think of, then put those up on a big board. Every time we did a shot, I'd put a piece of red tape on that corresponding picture.

Hearing you talk, you seem to have a natural affinity for filmmaking. Did you always love movies growing up?
Oh yeah, I always loved movies, but I don't think...I think it's something I like to do and something I feel comfortable doing, but I don't think I have an innate ability for it. There's certain things I think I do well, but I see films by other people all the time where I say "Jesus Christ, I could never do that!" There are a lot films that just leave me in awe...Something like Titanic, you could put a gun to my head and say "Direct this." I'd say "Go ahead and pull the trigger," because I wouldn't know where to start. My mind just doesn't work that way. But, odds are that (James Cameron's) version of Sex, Lies...would be pretty strange. (laughs) But he's good at what he's good at. It takes a while to figure out what you're good at. Part of maturing I think is recognizing what you're good at and refining that and focusing on that, instead of spreading yourself out too thin and trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. And that takes a while to learn, because the ego part of you wants to say "I can play on anybody's court, anywhere, anytime." Instead of saying "Hey, you know what, I'm not very good on clay, I'm gonna stick to grass." And it's true.

Were your parents involved in the arts?
My dad was a college professor who drew a little bit, and he loved books, and he loved movies and he loved music. My mother when she was younger painted, but by the time I was growing up had stopped. It was certainly a household where I was encouraged to explore that stuff and supported endlessly by them.

Any siblings?
Yeah, I have three sisters and two brothers...I was the fifth.

You didn't go to a formal film school, so how did you develop yourself as a filmmaker?
Trial and error...I was hanging out with these LSU students when I was in high school who had access to some university film equipment and we were all sort of experimenting with this stuff. And some of the people I'm still working with. Paul Edford, my production sound mixer, was one of the members of that film class. It was a pretty unique group, all have gone on to do interesting things.

Did those early films that you all did get you attention early on?
Not really. They were just résumé pieces for me that I'd show to people for specific reasons.

I heard your first move to L.A. wasn't so pleasant.
Well, I came out here when I was 17, was here for a year and a half and I was getting some editing work for a TV show called Games People Play that got canceled. It was a dreadful show, but the segments that we got to do were interesting. They were filmed segments, which in the early 1980's was a new thing to do, shoot 16mm negative, transfer it to tape, and then post on tape. So, the show got canceled, I kept doing piddly jobs and figured, 'Well, I can starve a lot more comfortably back in Baton Rouge.' So I moved back, kept making shorts, kept writing and...writing is really what kept me going. I eventually wrote enough stuff to get an agent and get work, and with that money I financed a short film...and eventually did Sex, Lies.

How did you get the job for the Yes concert film?
I had been doing freelance work for Showtime and someone there recommended me to the band. They wanted to make a little "on the road" documentary, so I figured what the hell, I'll never see these people again, so I edited it into this sort of snarky, cheeky 30 minute film about life on the road with the band. They really responded to it, thought it was really fun. So they called me up and asked if I wanted to do the concert film. I said "Shit, yeah!" Here I was, 22, a pretty big thing to do...So I got an agent out of that and had been writing now non-stop for five years and had just started writing stuff that didn't completely suck.

How many did you have to write before they stopped completely sucking?
Probably one a year, from '80 to '85. Then in late '85, I wrote three back-to-back in like six months. I finally just crossed a line where something unlocked and I wrote these three...and that's when things started to open up. The first paying writing job I got was to re-write a one hour Disney TV movie that never got made.

Was there any one movie that really captured your imagination growing up and inspired you?
There were lots, tons. I'm editing a book of interviews right now that I did with Richard Lester. He was a huge influence, still is.

One of my favorite movies is Robin and Marian.
Great film. Look at this guy, talk about underrated and under-appreciated. He invents rock video with A Hard Day's Night and Help. The Knack, How I Won the War, Petulia which is a masterpiece, the Three Musketeers films which are hilarious and fun, Juggernaut, which is a great movie...Great filmmaker, with a wide range of films and genres.

I even liked Cuba, which got killed when it was released.
That's a fascinating movie. Flawed, but really the things that people disliked about it when it came out are what makes it interesting now, it's refusal to sort of play to the idea of a war-torn romance. An absolute refusal to be sentimental or easy about anything. Brooke Adams' character was really fascinating. Here's a woman who says "Look, I don't know what little fantasy you've got in your head, but don't play it out on me, because I'm not that." And this guy (Sean Connery) who wrestling with the fact that the kind of guy he is is obsolete now...It's a really interesting movie.

Why did Lester stop making films?
It was a combination of things triggered by the death of (actor) Roy Kinnear during the making of Return of the Musketeers. Lester was absolutely devastated by that and hasn't made a feature since. But he's an incredibly bright, kind, funny man. For my money, I wish he was still directing movies because I think he's still got movies in him.

So many great directors from that era that inspired your generation seemed to have just vanished. What happened do you think?
Well, as we know from reading the Peter Biskind book (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls), a lot of them just self-destructed. It was their own damn fault for the most part. Part of it was the business changing, but the lion's share of it was them. They just went out of their heads...I watched a lot of 70's films preparing for Out of Sight: all of William Friedkin's films, all the early Hal Ashby films. It was a great time.

Let's talk about King of the Hill, which reminded me of some of the best of Truffaut and Louis Malle.
They were definitely in our minds, especially The 400 Blows...Everything about that movie went flawlessly during the shooting. Then once it was done, everything went wrong. We finished the movie, took it to Cannes, got our heads handed to us. They fuckin' hated it. Hated it! Just a disaster. Not good long lead reviews, very mixed. Then we're coming out in August of that year on the heels of ten movies with children protagonists. Ten! Then the daily reviews come out and they're as good as I've ever gotten, but by then it was too late. It was a disaster.

I think it will be one of the films that you're remembered for.
It's the movie that people always bring up to me the most as their favorite of mine. As a classical piece of American narrative, that's about as good a film as I know how to make. But what happened afterward doesn't affect my memory of making the film, which was a great experience.

Let's go backwards and talk about Sex, Lies. Walk us through winning the Cannes Film Festival.
Well, the great thing about it is that it's a surprise. You don't take out ads to win the Palm D'Or. We screened very early in the festival, within the first couple of days, and notoriously that's not a good spot. But, the film went down well, we did our press, and then we went home, back to L.A. A couple people said that I might have a shot at the Camera D'Or, for best first film, and that they'd let me know. Then I got a call from Mike Watts, who was running Virgin at the time, and he said "I think you better get on a plane. I think you're gonna win the Camera D'Or and it's worth coming over for." So I got on a plane on Sunday, get off Monday afternoon and get handed the International Critics Prize, which I would've come back for anyway! So I thought, 'Wow, that's great.' They rush me into the ceremony. Then I see Spike Lee and say "What's going on?" And he says he didn't get anything for Do the Right Thing. I couldn't believe it. It's a great movie and should've won something. So we sit down, then James Spader wins for best actor. And nobody's there but me, so I run up and accept for him...Somebody grabs me as I walk offstage and says they need to get me back to my seat. Sits me down in my seat as Wim Wenders is speaking, I don't think in English, about the Palm D'Or winner, saying it's a film by a young filmmaker, this is all being translated for me...and I'm thinking okay, could it be Mystery Train, could it be Do the Right Thing...and he says "Sex, Lies and Videotape." And immediately it's like you leave your body and watch yourself trip and stumble over people as you go on-stage. And at that point, I know I stood at the podium and said "Well, I guess it's all downhill from here," and I have no idea what I said after that. It's all a complete blank. I know that I was taken and put on live French television immediately afterwards, next to Denys Arcand and Bertrand Blier, neither of whom looked very happy, and I gave this interview, got up in a daze and walked out of the building, and left the Palm D'Or under my seat! (laughs) And as I was walking out the door, somebody says to me "Uh, do you think you want to take the award with you?" (laughs) It's more amazing to me in retrospect than it was at the time. It was almost like someone hitting you with a wand and saying "You're John Lennon for three hours," with that kind of attention focused on you. Having been back to Cannes a couple times since and watching from the outside, I think 'Man, that must've been nuts!'

Many people credit Sex, Lies with jump-starting the independent film business in this country.
They key word there is 'business.' If Sex, Lies had made half a million bucks, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It made money, and as we know if something makes money, people are suddenly interested. As far as its cultural impact, it comes down to just that: money.

Do you have any advice for first-time directors?
Don't wait for permission. There is a long list of reasons you can give yourself not to start: "I don't have enough money." "I have some but I need a little more." "I don't know anyone." There are gonna be so many people who will tell you 'no,' don't add yourself to that list. Whether you do it or not, nobody gives a shit. The only person who gives a shit at the end of the day is you, and you can't worry about how it will look, or anything, you've just gotta go. You've gotta go. The rest of what happens to you will rest on the film itself, which is how it should be. But I always tell people, people are their own worst enemy. We know that. They key is to remove yourself from the enemy list.

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Sigourney Weaver: The Hollywood Interview

Actress Sigourney Weaver.


SIGOURNEY WEAVER:
PORTRAIT OF A HEARTBREAKER
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the April 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

Revered as the leading American actress who combines indomitable strength with old world elegance, Sigourney Weaver comes by both naturally. Born Susan Alexandra Weaver October 8, 1949 in New York City, the daughter of legendary NBC TV President Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, and English actress Elizabeth Inglis. During his tenure at the network, Pat Weaver is credited with, among other things, inventing the desk-and-couch talk show format that still dominates the airwaves today, as well as creating both the "Tonight" and "Today" shows. Her uncle, the late "Doodles" Weaver, was a popular comic character actor whose face was familiar to both film and TV viewers through the late 1970's.

Re-christening herself "Sigourney" after a character in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Weaver attended Stanford university as an undergraduate, majoring in English, moving on from there to Yale Drama School, where Meryl Streep was a fellow student. After working for several years in well-received Off-Broadway productions, Weaver made her film debut in Woody Allen's classic Annie Hall (1977, she's Woody's date outside the movie theater towards the end). It was in Ridley Scott's groundbreaking Alien (1979) that Weaver became a bona fide star, playing Lt. Ellen Ripley: part sex symbol, part Earth mother, and part double-barreled action hero, the first film heroine of the post-feminist era. Weaver reprised the role in three sequels: James Cameron's blockbuster Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1996).

Weaver followed Alien with an impressive filmography of diverse work: as Mel Gibson's lover in strife-torn Indonesia in Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), the object of Bill Murray (and a nasty entity)'s affections in Ghostbusters (1984) and Ghostbusters II (1989). Two completely divergent roles in 1988 brought her Oscar nominations (and Golden Globe wins) as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress respectively: as doomed naturalist Dian Fossey in Michael Apted's Gorillas in the Mist and the cutthroat corporate exec whom secretary Melanie Griffith tries to emulate in Mike Nichols' Working Girl. She did a charming turn as a disillusioned First Lady who finds love again with Kevin Kline's Dave (1992), and gave a chilling portrayal of vengeance stretched to its limits in Roman Polanski's Death and the Maiden (1994). Copycat (1995) had her visiting similarly intense territory as an agoraphobic psychiatrist caught in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with a serial killer, while Ang Lee's The Ice Storm (1997) showcased her patrician qualities to their utmost in a chilling turn as a bored upper middle class housewife in 1973 Connecticut. In Map of the World (1999) she gave a powerful performance as an educated woman out of place in her rural community, while Galaxy Quest (1999) gave her opportunity to flex her comedic muscles again as a former sci-fi TV show sexpot who is forced to fight off real-life alien monsters!

Weaver's latest firmly establishes the actress as a gifted comedienne. Heartbreakers tells the blackly comedic tale of Maxine "Max" Conners (Weaver), who along with nubile daughter Page (Jennifer Love Hewitt), have made their living conning some of the country's wealthiest men out of their fortunes. When their latest con against sleazy chop-shop king Ray Liotta doesn't quite go as planned, the women decide to hit Palm Beach, the Mecca of the rich, and make one last big score before retiring for good, setting their eyes on repugnant, ailing tobacco kingpin Gene Hackman as their mark. When Page falls for a good-hearted local tavern owner (Jason Lee) who might, or might not, be harboring a major bankroll of his own, things get complicated. Heartbreakers is a funny, down-and-dirty comedy that will leave you with a smile on your face long after the end credits have rolled, and Weaver is a delight to watch, working her magic alongside fellow acting heavyweights Hackman, Liotta and (in a wonderful cameo) Anne Bancroft. Sigourney Weaver sat down with Venice recently over lunch, looking every bit the elegant lady in a tailored red suit.

Tell us about what drew you to Heartbreakers.
Sigourney Weaver: I think I've been looking for a comedy for a long time, and to find a comedy that has two powerful, sexy, funny devious women...I just thought it was wonderful, and (director) David Mirkin just kept encouraging both of us to be as ruthless and confident as we could! (laughs) I was also drawn to the mother-daughter aspect of the story. Underneath all the sort of Dirty Rotten Scoundrel elements of the story, I thought there was something very real going on between the mother and daughter. This is going to sound terrible, but I can understand conning your daughter to get her to stay home a little longer! (laughs) I know, because I have a daughter. Even thought she's only 10, I can understand not wanting to let her go.

How was it working with Gene Hackman, who I understand is a real hero of yours.
I was worried, because I thought 'How can I play someone who's so repulsed by him?' because I think he's fabulous! Then he came in wearing this horrible make-up, oozing smoke. (laughs) You'd never believe it, but Gene's never smoked! He's been a total non-smoker his whole life. But he was able to do all those things that smokers do, having the cigarette just hang there, not getting the smoke in his eyes. It just got all over me! This is definitely a non-smoking movie.

Is it true that comedy is the hardest thing for an actor to do?
I don't think it's the hardest thing for me to do. I think I feel more at home in it sometimes than drama, probably because my father did a lot of early television drama, so there was a great priority in our family on being funny, and telling jokes, stuff like that. It's just harder to find a good film comedy and a director who understands how to shoot and cut it. Getting all those elements to work is what's hard, and when Heartbreakers came along, I knew how special it was...also working with Jennifer was wonderful. I felt that we really could have been mother and daughter. We had about three weeks of rehearsal, so we really got to know each other pretty well. She was also really sweet with my daughter.

I could see a little bit of your Working Girl character in Max.
Well, I actually felt a little sympathy for Max. I think in her heart, she knew what she was doing was wrong, but still felt that the end was justified. Luckily, she's redeemable. My husband saw the film again last night and said "You know it's really hard for us to like her in the beginning." But, if you get caught in these situations, I think a mother will do anything to protect her daughter...If you think about it, what they do is a combination of acting and psychology. I never realized how much psychology was involved in conning. You really have to be able to disarm people, and get them to trust you. It's fascinating, really.

Your scenes with Ray Liotta looked like you guys were having a lot of fun.
I think Ray really steals the movie. He's so out there! Because he has such a big heart in reality, he plays the comedy really well. He's also a real gentleman. There are many times in the movie when Jennifer and I had to be in intimate situations with Ray, and he was always so considerate. That can make a big difference.

Show business runs in your family. Are you an only child?
No. I have an older brother who lives in Salt Lake City. He has four kids.

What was it like growing up around television's "golden period"?
I think most children in those days were sort of sheltered from what their parents did. We did have people drop by the house sometimes. I had chicken pox once and Art Linkletter came by. We have a movie of it, actually. (laughs) As far as I was concerned, everyone's father ran a network. My father clearly loved what he did. He had come from radio, then started running TV stations, and would always come home laughing. I knew that it was not a fair business early on, because dad had some real ups and downs. He started the first cable company in '63 and was put out of business illegally. I knew that it was a rough business, but a great business. So when I came into the business, my expectations were really low. I never thought that success or fame would make me happy. Fame looks much better in the movies than it does in real life.

Were you always drawn to acting?
No. I was very shy as a kid. I'm always amazed when I hear people say things like "I've always wanted to be an actor since the age of eight," because I would have never had the confidence to say that. It looked impossible to me. I was hesitant to follow in my parents' footsteps, but it was in my blood. Being an actor is all about communication, sort of the same thing as being a journalist in many ways. You sort of go into the middle of a situation, suck it in, then come back and tell us what it's like.

What was Yale Drama School like?
Well, I made some good friends there, but didn't get a lot of encouragement from the faculty, more like a lot of discouragement. So it was not a very happy time for me. I learned a lot about how to survive. I think the world will tell you soon enough that you're not cut out for a career. You don't need to pay people to tell you that you're no good.

Tell us about your transition from "Susan" to "Sigourney."
That's when I was 13. I was about (6 feet) tall when I was 13. I was called "Susie" or "Sue." I felt too tall to have a short name like that and I saw this name in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." I thought 'That looks good. I'll use that until I figure out what to do with my name.' I had the middle name Alexandra, which I thought was pretty, but too long. It's so funny, I found an old letter from my father. He always used to write me, because I changed my name, and begin the letter "Dear 'Dra," "Love Drad." And he wrote me that way for years.

Between Yale and your film debut in Annie Hall you did a lot of theater.
Yeah. I came to New York and all my friends kept hiring me to be in their plays. Christopher Durang, Wendy Wasserstein...it was great. Then about a year later, I was in the background of a Budweiser ad, I always tried to stay in the background, that way I'd still get paid, but nobody would have to see me (laughs), and I got a call for this thing called Alien. I almost didn't go. They gave me the wrong address. I called my agent and said 'Science fiction?! Must I do this?' (laughs) So I went and met with Ridley Scott. I was wearing these over-the-knee hooker boots, and must've looked about eight feet tall. I think because I didn't care at all whether I got it or not, that intrigued him. (laughs)

Let's go back to Woody Allen and Annie Hall. We just see you briefly in long shot at the end.
He actually offered me the second female lead in the movie, the girl he brings to the beach after he and Diane Keaton break up. I was in a Chris Durang play and I didn't want to leave it, because it was such a great part. I was playing this multiple schizophrenic in a play called Titanic. So I turned down that part. Woody gave me one day in this smaller part, and a lot of it got cut out in the end. I had this scene where we were in bed. I was reading the National Review and eating crackers in bed and he's on the phone with Annie Hall in California, and we also did The Sorrow and the Pity scene.

With Alien, did any of you even have in inkling of how influential this film would be?
When I met Ridley that day, and I'd read the script, I didn't really have a picture of what the alien was like. I just thought it was this mass of yellow jelly or something, not really very inspiring. Even though there was a spareness about the script that I really like. Then when I met Ridley he showed me all the conceptual sketches for the alien and the eggs that H.R. Giger did. Originally the eggs were going to have these little, baby faces on the outside. I knew that I'd never seen a film like this before, so I knew it was going to be something very special. For me, I wanted to concentrate on theater and dabble in film. This was not what I expected...They built these sets that were like an entire world unto themselves. In my naiveté I thought they'd built all these sets for us, so we'd get into character more! (laughs) I think the film still holds up very well. It doesn't seem dated at all.

The evolution of the character of Ripley over the course of the four films has been fascinating.
I think to be able to come back to the same character every few years, having learned that much more about filmmaking and acting was such a please. I felt so lucky. By the time we did the last one, the memories that Ripley has are my memories. It did happen that long ago! (laughs) It was a very weird experience, but a very rich one. People now are asking about Alien 5...I've never been big on sequels, but these days there seems to be a whole generation of people who don't see them as sequels, as much as episodes in the same adventure. Certainly I left the character in an interesting place because I never got to find out which side ended up dominating. But if it doesn't happen, that's okay too. The morning after it was (erroneously) announced that Alien 5 was going to be made, I got a call from my agents saying "Is this true?" I said 'If I were getting $22 million to make Alien 5 don't you think I'd call you guys first?' (laughs)

The Year of Living Dangerously is one of the best films of the '80s.
Yes, and it also marked the beginning of my appreciation of filmmaking and for what an actor can do on film, just for the fact that you do work out of sequence and you do never quite know what you're doing, you don't get rehearsal, there is no audience. I hadn't really embraced it philosophically before then that you have to throw yourself off the cliff and just jump into it sometimes. Life is really like that more often than not. You never know what's going to happen next. To bring that feeling to film is something I learned working on that with Peter Weir...Peter had us watch the love scenes between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946) so our love scenes would have that same, sort of old-fashioned quality. The censors back then dictated that you could only kiss for so long, so they were kissing, then talking, kissing, then talking. Peter was very adamant that he didn't want to see any tongues! (laughs)

How was working with Mel Gibson?
He's both gorgeous and a regular guy, which is a great combination. He was always trying to stay out all night, so the next day he would look tired and haggard, and look older. He was 26 and I think the best looking person I'd ever seen. We all said 'Give it up Mel!' (laughs) The Australian crews are very small, so the whole film was a very intense, intimate experience. So by the end of it, Mel, Linda (Hunt) and I all became very close with each other and with the crew. It's my favorite kind of film to work on. The Alien films had that same kind of feeling.

Tell us about working with Mike Nichols on Working Girl.
He's the best. He's so much fun, so astute. You're granted admission to a very special world when you work with Mike. We loved (my character) Catherine Porter, and modeled her after people that we knew. Mike is so smart and really understand the structure of a script. He believes in treating the material roughly, and not being too sentimental, which is why even in something like (the stage production of) Hurlyburly, you got tremendous laughs. He's able to give you one direction that liberates you for the whole piece.

Gorillas in the Mist was an amazing film and Dian Fossey must've been an amazing character to portray. You spent months in the jungle of Rwanda actually filming with wild gorillas.
Yes, we spent hours and hours with them. What a gift that was. Talk about join SAG and see the world! I knew about Dian, had read her book and was interested in primatology, but to actually travel there and be with the gorillas was one of the greatest gifts I'd ever received...We spent about three months in the mountains and would have to hike for hours a day to find the gorillas, or to even get to where we were shooting...I would say the one quibble I have with the film is that it's hard to tell a story of 18 years in a person's life in two hours. I think things really crystallized for her in the last five years of her life. That's when she really dug her heels in and became quite intractable about saving the gorillas. I think certainly that she was a lonely child, who felt closer to animals than to people. To this day, I think just being in her skin for a while made me understand that there are many people for whom there is no difference between people and animals, that animals are equal citizens of our world. Once you get used to that philosophy, it really changes the way you look at the world.

What did you learn from the primates?
I envied them, the simplicity of their lives. I remember being covered with baby gorillas jumping up and down on me, urinating on me, trying to steal my bag. I had just gotten married a couple years before and I said to my husband afterward, 'I think we need to have children. I just got a taste of it.' I miss it there. I would love to go back in any capacity. It's funny, I'm not a "channeling" kind of person, but I always felt Dian's spirit there, and because of that, was never afraid of the gorillas. You characters oftentimes become friends in a way when you spend a lot of time with them, and that was certainly the case with Dian. She was a good person.

Death and the Maiden was an amazing film. Tell us about working with Polanski.
I think Roman's probably the greatest director I've ever worked with. I don't think anyone else can do what he does, especially with that kind of claustrophobic, chilling, perplexing story. In some ways, although it was the most challenging thing I'd done at the time, it was also the easiest: we got to have one set, we worked chronologically, it was only the three of us in the cast and a tiny crew. That was a real milestone for me. I started to work in a different way and never went back after that...At the first reading, and this is a European tradition, Roman read all the parts while we sat and listened. I remember Ben Kingsley getting sort of restless, but I thought it was fascinating. He understood all these people because he'd been all these people at various times in his life: he'd been the torturer, the rapist, the helpless husband, the hunted one growing up in the ghetto in Poland. I like Roman a lot, but he's also a lot to take. I'd work with him again in a second, though. It's funny, after I wrapped Maiden, I did Copycat, where I played another very disturbed woman. After that was over, I flew home for Christmas Eve and was cooking for about 14 people. I had never wanted so badly to be domestic in my life, because I'd totally fried myself! I just wanted to hold linens and open ovens and do things that were completely real, and stay completely out of my head. That was very intense, doing those two in a row.

The Ice Storm was one of the great movies of the past decade. It really captured that era down to the tiniest detail. Tell us about that and also about working with Ang Lee.
They sent me a lot of magazines from the era so I could get a sense of what (my character) Janey Carver was looking at all the time. I think for Ang, it was kind of an Asian idea where you had children behaving like adults and adults behaving like children. It's unnatural to do that, so nature will have repercussions. It was a very Bhuddist way of looking at the story. We began the shoot with a Bhuddist ceremony where we burned incense and bowed to the four corners and yelled "Big luck!" It was an amazing experience.

Map of the World must've been an intense experience.
Yeah, we shot it in about 30 days and did several scenes every day. It was very challenging because (director) Scott Elliot just sort of let me go, whereas Roman kept me very reigned in. So it was like living through that experience. It was one of the most satisfying professional experiences I've ever had. It's a film that a lot of people are discovering through video. When it was released theatrically I think the theme of losing a child, especially so early on in the film, was difficult for a lot of people to take.

Is there anything you haven't done acting-wise that you'd like to do?
I'd like to do some more theater. I actually spoke to John Cleese last night about doing a restoration comedy, which would be fun. In many ways I'm looking forward to the strike. It might give me some time to develop some good projects. I'm working on something about Gypsy Rose Lee that begins after she stops stripping, her relationship with her son. She was a marvelous woman.

Looking at your filmography, you've been in lots of amazing films over a relatively short number of years.
I really have been lucky. With Heartbreakers, it's the kind of part I've been waiting for all my life. The other day I was thinking 'Wow, you've really managed to accomplish a lot of the goals you've set for yourself as an actor.' So now it's time to sit down and make up some new ones.

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Robert Benton: The Hollywood Interview

Writer/Director Robert Benton.

ROBERT BENTON:
ADVENTURES IN THE TWILIGHT ZONE
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: The following article appeared in the March 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

Robert Benton's films and screenplays make up some of the most important and defining works of the American cinema. From Bonnie and Clyde to Nobody's Fool, Benton's examinations of the common man thrown into extraordinary circumstances are viewed by many as some of the most quintessentially American films ever produced.

Benton was born September 29, 1932 in Waxahachie, Texas, near Dallas. Intending to become an artist, he served a stint with the Army as a diorama painter before landing an assistant's job at the art department of Esquire. In 1958 he became the magazine's art director, a position he held through 1964, then a contributing editor through 1972.

During that period, he wrote three books and began a long and fruitful collaboration with writer David Newman, first on special pop-culture projects at Esquire (among them the annual college issue and the Dubious Achievement Awards), then on "Extremism: A Non-Book" in 1964 and the short-lived Broadway musical It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman in 1966. They next tackled the movies, making a fortuitous start with their original script for Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, one of the most influential films of the 1960's. It earned them a nomination for an Academy Award. They followed this with screenplays for the western There Was a Crooked Man (1969) and the zany What's Up Doc (1972, with Buck Henry). Benton then ventured into directing with Bad Company (1972), a highly-regarded Civil War-era western. In 1977, he wrote and directed the critically lauded The Late Show, an homage to the hard-boiled detective genre. The following year, he collaborated again with Newman, Newman's wife Leslie and Mario Puzo on the screenplay of the hit Superman.

In 1979, Benton scored a major triumph with the child custody drama Kramer vs. Kramer, a box office smash and winner of five Academy Awards (Best Picture, Actor, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress). The film established him as one of Hollywood's most sought-after director-writers. He reaped more critical kudos with Places in the Heart (1984), a semi-autobiographical tale of survival during the depression in a small Texas town. Benton won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and the Berlin Festival Silver Bear as Best Director. In 1991, Benton directed the adaptation of E.L. Doctrow's novel Billy Bathgate, starring Dustin Hoffman as infamous bootlegger Dutch Schultz. He followed this with Nobody's Fool in 1994, starring Paul Newman. The film received numerous Oscar nominations.

Benton's latest is one of his best and is, in many ways, a companion piece to his masterwork The Late Show. In Twilight, Paul Newman plays Harry Ross, a tired private eye who's seen too much and gotten way too little from the City of Angels. When Harry agrees to help longtime friends, and former screen legends Jack and Catherine Ames (Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon) with what appears to be a simple favor, he becomes embroiled in a spiraling web of deceit, betrayal and murder. Twilight, which also stars Stockard Channing and James Garner is a delicious treat, smart, funny, nail-biting and easily one of the best films of still-young 1998.

In person, Robert Benton possesses the same warmth, depth and humanity as the characters that he writes and makes films about. Mr. Benton, who considers cinema an extension of painting, sat down recently to explain how he creates his masterly brush strokes.

Tell us about growing up in Waxahachie, Texas.
Robert Benton: I moved there when I was ten. It was my mother's home. When I was there, I really thought I couldn't wait to get out of there. But what I didn't understand then is that everything I've drawn on since then came from those eight years that I was there.

What did you study in college?
Art history. And the girl I was in love with was an English major, so I followed her around and took a lot of English courses.

What did you do after graduating from the University of Texas?
I left to go to New York. I had been in love with this girl. I thought we were going to get married, that I'd go to graduate school, stay out of the army and that she'd support me until I could get a job. She was smarter than that and married a guy who was a much wiser and better person than me. (laughs) So I went to Columbia for one semester, then ran out of money and had to drop out. I supported myself in New York by working for various art studios and trying to hustle freelance work. Finally I got hired to do some work for Esquire and got hired to be an assistant to the Art Director. Then I got drafted in 1954, went back to New York in '56, back to Esquire in '57 and in '58 I became the Art Director.

When did you fall in love with film?
I think when I was a kid, because I was dyslexic. It was hard for me to read. I had what they call today attention deficit disorder, so I could only read for short periods of time. Nobody understood how to deal with that then. And the one thing I found I could do was draw. That held my attention for a longer period of time. I wanted desperately to read, but I couldn't. And the only narrative structure I could deal with, was film, was movies. It was visual. I could follow the story. Now my father, who was a terrific man, would come home at night from work and would say, instead of "Have you done your homework?" would say "Let's go to the movies." Going to the movies beat doing homework anytime! I was a terrible student. The one advantage I had is that my mother played bridge with all my high school teachers and it would've destroyed their game if they'd flunked me! So I eked my way through high school and spent every summer in summer school. Fortunately as I grew older, the dyslexia started to fade. So I could read for longer periods of time. I also developed strategies for dealing with it. One was, I read books with a strong narrative line. I could trick myself into reading longer before getting that edginess you get from being dyslexic. So I read pulp science fiction, detective stories. My father used to get furious with me for reading this rather than reading something that was really good. And what I couldn't explain to him, was that I couldn't read anything else! None of us knew what was really going on. Then when I reached the University of Texas, I finally became a good student.

Did you take any writing courses there?
I took one creative writing course and flunked it. I didn't start writing seriously...I once wrote a novel in my late 20's, then did what a lot of people did, which is tear it up. Actually, I gave it to a friend, who read it and said, "You know, this isn't bad..." I thought, if it's that terrible...so I tore it up. I was then about to fired from Esquire and no other magazine would hire me. No advertising agency would hire me. And yet through all this, I'd gone to movies constantly. And in New York at that time, it was just when the (French) New Wave had hit. Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless, Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, and Shoot the Piano Player. I saw Jules and Jim...God, I don't know, twenty times...A friend of mine had written a treatment for a Doris Day movie and gotten $25,000. I could've lived five years on that, back then. But like I said, I took a creative writing course in college and I flunked.

Tell us about meeting David Newman and Bonnie and Clyde.
David Newman was a young editor at Esquire. He was an incredibly gifted writer, a good friend, and we both loved movies. I spun in these sort of dreams of glory of the life of a screenwriter and we decided to write a movie together. And by chance, we were both reading a book by a man named John Toland on John Dillinger. In that book there's a footnote about Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. My father had gone to their funeral. He was an absolutely straight-arrow upright man, wouldn't cross the street if the light was red but, he was a closet criminal. He had a brother who was a gangster, at least according to family legend. I grew up with all these stories about Bonnie and Clyde. So I started telling David all these stories about them. So we decided to write an American New Wave film for Truffaut to direct, since we loved his films. We didn't know how to write a screenplay, so we wrote a treatment, which was about 80 pages long, and I've still got it somewhere, and through a woman named Helen Scott, who was a friend of Truffaut's, got it to him...he liked it. Truffaut came to New York, sat in a hotel room for two days with us, Helen was there as translator, and gave us the only lessons we ever had in screenwriting. He said he would like to do Bonnie and Clyde if he didn't do Fahrenheit 451, which he did wind up doing, so he gave the script to his good friend Jean-Luc Godard. Godard came over to the States and said "I would like to do this film, but I'm supposed to do a film called Alphaville, which I don't want to do. I'll get out of it." Alphaville, of course, is now one of the greatest films ever made! The people who had optioned the script and had given us money to do more research and have more time to write it, didn't have any more money. They were doing something that's customary in the U.S., which is, you option a script, get that script to a director, from there go to an actor. The actor says 'yes' and then you go to a studio. Godard was used to the European way where the producer is really the finance man and has the money when you have the script and you just go right away. So Godard says "Let's go make the movie now. I'll go back to Paris and come back in six weeks and we'll do it." So those people were stuck. In hindsight, they should have been more straightforward up front. They said to Godard, "Look, this movie takes place in the summer. Wouldn't it be better to wait until the summer?" Godard said "I'm talking cinema, and you're talking meteorology." And he walked out of the room. So the picture just sat. It was submitted to every studio and countless directors for close to four years. It was turned down by everybody. Meanwhile, I'd gotten married. David and I would joke about how we were going to be 85 years-old and still slogging this script around! (laughs) One day Truffaut had lunch with Warren Beatty and told Warren about Bonnie and Clyde. Warren called me and...said he'd come over and pick up a copy of the script. Now my wife and I hadn't even been married six months. She opens the door, and there was Warren! (laughs) Her knees almost buckled. So Warren read the script and said he wanted to do it. I'm really very proud of that script, but it was Warren, and this is a great example of a collaboration, Warren and (director) Arthur Penn together, are really responsible for that picture. I can't tell you what a strong influence Warren was in making that picture. They were both just in the top of their form. And Robert Towne came in and did some work on the script, also. It was one of those times where it just worked.

What happened after it was released?
I remember turning to my wife after seeing a rough cut and just being thrilled with it, and saying "Look, as much as we love this picture, it's gonna come and go. It's a movie, it's gonna open, be gone three weeks later. Don't get upset about it. Well it opened, and it got the worst reviews you've ever seen. The New York Times, Newsweek, everyone. Just vicious. The only person who gave it a good review was Penelope Gilliat in The New Yorker. Then critics started to slowly reverse themselves and recant their original reviews. Warren got Warners to rerelease the picture. Then we got the Time cover story. Then by early '68, it was an enormous hit in Europe...and we were all nominated for Academy Awards. All our friends told us we were going to win. What we didn't realize then because we hadn't been nominated before, is that everyone's friends tell them that they're going to win! That year the Academy Awards were held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, which is a big, flat sort of set-up, not raised like the Shrine...We got to the part of the ceremony where our names were called. I started fixing my cuffs, doing my tie, remembering who to thank...and they started reading off the nominees. "And the winner is..." and I stood up, the only person standing up in this huge crowd, and I hear "William Rose, for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (laughs) You've never seen anybody sit down so fast! Subsequently, when I've won, I'm always very careful and ask my wife "Did I hear right? It's okay to stand up now?" (laughs) It's funny, because the whole experience with Bonnie and Clyde was like being run over by a train. It was just too much. And I became very depressed afterward, probably because I thought it was all downhill from there.

Of course that wasn't the case at all.
No. After years of eking out a living writing magazine articles and writing industrial films and dozens of things that never got made for every lunatic in the book, and borrowing money from my father-in-law, finally David and I were solid citizens and got signed to a three picture deal with Warner Brothers. We wrote There Was a Crooked Man, a version of Choice Cuts, and a picture called Hubba-Hubba for Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear, which was a terrific piece that never got made.

How did you move into directing?
David and I came back from the set of Crooked Man after watching Joe Mankiewicz work and David said to me that he wanted to direct. I just thought that was crazy. We were great friends and had a huge fight about this. I had visions of our partnership breaking up and me having to call my father-in-law again to borrow money...so I did the only thing I could to save face. I said, 'If you're going to direct, I'm going to direct. ' He said 'fine,' he didn't care...Remember, I didn't know how to write before I met David. He taught me and it was a long process. David could have written on his own at that point, I couldn't. Plus, we were told that no studio would hire us to write anything solo since we were known as a team...I wanted to do this little picture called Bad Company. The one rule of Hollywood I didn't know then is that if you want something badly, they won't give it to you, but if you don't give a shit, they'll give it to you. The phone rang one day. It was Paramount, saying they were interested in Bad Company. And if I'd been there alone, I'd have said 'Fine, take it it's yours. Now we have money.' But David was there, so I said, 'Of course you know I'm tied to it as a director.' And they wanted to talk about it. So I met with this executive from Paramount. I told him I'd never directed. So I waited for him to say, "Well, what makes you think you can direct?" so he could lower the boom and that would be it. But he didn't! He did ask me to do a screen test. So I worked with these actors, John Ritter and Barry Brown, for two weeks to prepare for these scenes I was going to shoot, and I didn't know what the fuck I was doing! (laughs) So on the way to the set to shoot the tests, I'm saying to myself, 'At least now I'll know not to lie and say things like 'I want to direct' when I don't mean it.' So I get to the set, expecting to fail miserably, and about an hour into it, I realize 'I love doing this!' Then I wanted to do it! And, with the help of the producer, Stanley Jaffe, I got to do the picture.

How was it working with Robert Altman on The Late Show?
Robert Altman (who produced the film) entirely changed the way I work with actors. He taught me to loosen up. He was a great teacher. He believes you allow a film to happen, that you stand there and control it, but don't make up your mind ahead of time and stick rigidly to that. Let the actor bring something to it. Altman's the one who said to me "The only heroes in movies are the actors." It's easy for me to stand behind the camera and tell you a lie. But if the actor can't make my lie into truth, then it won't work...He also taught me that editing is the last chance to rewrite. He said "Movies are not written on a typewriter. They're written in a camera." And that's the truest advice I've ever gotten.

Give us an example of how you direct actors.
What I try to do is talk with them a lot ahead of time. I try to talk it through the night before we shoot. Then if they do something the next day that I don't like, I make adjustments...I used to worry about the blocking and things, but now I don't. On The Late Show I remember I gave Lily Tomlin some direction on how to throw a pot at someone. She said, "I wouldn't do that." I don't know why, but I really heard her. I said to myself 'Okay, she wouldn't do that. She's the character. She knows the character.' What she was going to do was real, and much better than what I wanted. And in that moment, a door opened up for me about acting. I learned how to shut up and watch, and only interfere if I know it's not working and trust my actors.

Casting is 98%, then.
It really is. There are directors who can get performances out of people, but I'm not one of them. If an actor can act, then I can work with them.

So you don't do improvs or theater games?
We do improv sometimes, but I don't do theater games. I'm very classical about the way I direct. I try to rehearse for three weeks. We sit down and read the script through, twice without stopping. And then we go away. The next day we start working again and stop every time somebody has a question. Then we read it through again. Then we break it down into scenes and we sit there and read it and finally get on our feet. But we read it, and read it, and read it until the words fade away into the first idea of how it should be done, into the rhythm of it. And then we see what happens.

The main theme throughout all your work seems to be friendship and family.
It is. Family and community is probably the one consistent theme in all my work. But the one thing I have spent my life looking for, has been family. Not only my own family, but a larger family. Somebody asked me once when the Academy Award nominations came out and I'd been nominated, "What's the great thing about the Academy Awards?" I said "When you go to the awards and you see people, some of whom you've had bitter fights with, some of whom you're close friends with, some people you haven't seen in ten years, some people you just saw two days before--it's your family." It's home. And home is what I've spent my life looking for.

Speaking of family, let's talk about Kramer vs. Kramer. For my generation, it really taught us about our parents, all of whom seemed to be getting divorced at the time it came out.
My wife read the novel by Avery Corman and urged me to do it. What I decided to do instead was send it to Truffaut, who'd just done Small Change, and see if he'd direct it if I wrote the screenplay. Truffaut's schedule was such that he couldn't do it for two years. Stanley Jaffe had the book and he wanted to do it then...For me, Kramer became about a couple of things. One is, my son was about 12 years-old when I did it. I remembered the beauty of when he was about 4, 5, and 6. I remember taking him to nursery school. I remember sitting there eating breakfast with him in the morning, eating those Entemann doughnuts. He'd be watching television and I'd read the paper. Just the beauty of that. The other is, someone early on gave me great advice about that picture. She said, "The most important person in this film is Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep). If you make her a villain, the movie will never work. You must make her a great hero, an extraordinary woman." And that was very smart advice.

There were no villains in that film.
No. There couldn't be.

Speaking of villains, let's talk about Dutch Schultz and Billy Bathgate.
Dutch Schultz turned out to be a mistake. That book is a great book, and the film doesn't do justice to it. It was Tom Stoppard's screenplay, and he was terrific, a great friend, a wonderful writer and it taught me that I should do my own script. I tend to figure out directing while I write. I write my way through a picture. And when I don't do that, I lose control of the picture. I think it was a deeply unsuccessful picture, personally. I loved all the actors and a lot of the picture, but I was aware at some point that it needed a different director. I'm a director of smaller things. It needed someone who was used to a bigger canvas.

In many ways Twilight seems to be a companion piece to The Late Show.
It is. It starts the same way. It has a lot of relationship to Nobody's Fool. You have one man who was shot in the leg, the other man limps. In each picture a man has a best friend and is in love with the best friend's wife. I think what got me to this, is getting older I've really come to find myself thinking a lot about love and affection. It's much different than I thought it was, much more complicated and much more pervasive. Love isn't something that happens. Love is simply there, like the air. We sometimes pay attention to it, we sometimes don't. But it is in a kind of order in life. And in this film, it's about a powerful sense of affection that goes back and forth between these people. It's also about how dangerous love is. It's a, and this is a pretentious word that I hate using, it's a meditation on love. And it's also on finding their proper place in the world. It's about someone who's found a home, but it's not the home he belongs in. And he must now find a home where he fits. I think my other concern regarding finding family has changed to finding ones proper place within that family.

Some of the other parallels I saw in the film, and you might find this rather way out, was with some of the characters. Paul Newman could have been Lew Harper (from Harper, 1966) as an old man and Gene Hackman could have been his character Harry Moseby in Night Moves (1975).
That's not way-out, that's dead-on right! There's a scene in Twilight with Paul and Stockard (Channing) where she asks him if he's going back to being a private investigator and he says "Why should I do that? When I was a private eye, I slept in my office and showered at the YMCA." Harper, he sleeps in his office! Harry Ross, Newman's character, is Harry, for Harry Moseby, and Ross, for Ross MacDonald (author of the Lew Archer series, that Harper was based on).

I always felt that Harry Moseby lived at the end of Night Moves. He was too much of a survivor.
Oh, he had to! He had to live! And Melanie Griffith in that movie, she was so sexy! Night Moves was a great film.

Any advice for first time directors?
Know that there's going to be a second picture. Don't try to do it all in your first. Set a limited objective. Do the best you can. Shoot a lot of coverage. Know this much, what Truffaut said is very true: you start out wanting to make the greatest movie ever made, and you end up just wanting to live through it. Know that you're going to get very discouraged and that's just part of the process. It doesn't mean anything. Somehow it's about endurance. Exercise, because you're going to be on your feet all day. An enormous part of directing is simply physical stamina. Dustin (Hoffman) made me start exercising and it's one of the greatest gifts anyone's ever given me. Know this much: you're going to be working seven days a week, 12-14 hours a day. You're going to have no other life, nothing except that movie. The other thing is, when you're editing, start working on your next picture. Start writing your next picture, otherwise the first one will become too important. So plan on doing a whole bunch of movies in your lifetime. Do it, then let it go. Pick one or two people you can listen to, when you get so close to it that you don't have any distance. Find the people you can trust and trust them. Spend all your time casting, take all the time you want. Make sure you can talk to your cinematographer, that he understands you. Do as many tests beforehand as you can and do as much rehearsal as you can, then go into it and then walk away from it.

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Robbie Robertson: The Hollywood Interview

Musician and actor Robbie Robertson.


ROBBIE ROBERTSON IS MAKING SOME NOISE
by
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

Robbie Robertson achieved international fame and prominence with his groundbreaking work in the legendary 60's and early 70's rock group The Band. Known for their innovative blend of roots rock n' roll, blues and country, The Band forged the way for such eclectic groups as The Eagles, R.E.M., and Hootie and the Blowfish with their blend of musical styles and genres. Born Jamie Robbie Robertson on July 5, 1943 in Toronto, Canada to an Anglo father and Native American mother from the Mohawk tribe, Robertson was taught to play the guitar by relatives living on the Six Nations Indian Reservation where his mother was raised, outside Toronto. He spent his teens in various rock groups around Toronto, finally joining up with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in 1960. The group also included future Band members Levon Helm, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson. During his time with the Hawks, Robertson found time to work with other musicians as well, most notably Bob Dylan on his classic Blonde On Blonde album. The Hawks became The Band in 1968, and gained instant fame with their debut LP, Music From Big Pink. The group disbanded in 1977, documented in Martin Scorsese's now-legendary film The Last Waltz (1978). Robertson has led a troubadour's life since The Band's break-up, continuing to record new music, act in films, and work with pal Scorsese on the music scores of some of his most famous works, including Raging Bull, King of Comedy, Color of Money, and Casino.

Robertson has never let his fascination with different types of music leave him, this being evident with is newest album release, Contact From the Underworld of Redboy, which finds Robertson re-embracing the music of his Native American roots, and the hour-long documentary Robbie Robertson: Making a Noise, which airs on PBS this month. The film documents Robertson's return to the Six Nations Indian Reservation outside Toronto, Canada, reuniting with friends and relatives, many of whom he hadn't seen in over 30 years. Robertson is joined by other notable Native American musicians, such as Rita Coolidge, Buffy Saint-Marie, John Trudell, and Ulali. Robertson sat down recently to discuss his work, past, present, and future.

I thought Making a Noise was really terrific. It gave me an appreciation of Native American music that I didn't previously have.
ROBBIE ROBERTSON: Yeah, (the filmmakers) did a really terrific job. Making something like this is a little more delicate and complicated than it might seem from the outside. Several people in the Native American community couldn't do it, because they have to answer to their elders, and in Indian country, you do not cross that line. It's a very, very sensitive place. You don't want people from the outside there. It's like it's bad jiu-jiu.

So it's a very closed culture in that sense.
It is, and you have to keep in mind that for so long, a lot of this musicality and the culture has been very private, and in some cases sacred and secret. Like in the case of the peyote ceremony, it's been illegal for 100 years and now has just kind of opened up...after people have been punished and thrown in jail for the past 100 years, just for practicing their religion, that takes kind of a long time to believe again that it's okay to practice it openly. The Native American Church is still very sensitive about it.

When you say the Native American Church, is that a Native American religion that's actually organized like a white church would be?
There's this thing called the N.A.C. and it's an organization that goes from up in Canada, to Arizona, over to Oklahoma, all the way down to Mexico, it's called the "Peyote Belt." There are many nations in this area that are part of the N.A.C. which is another way of saying the peyote religion. I went to a peyote ceremonial a couple months back with this friend of mine, John Trudell, who's a poet and activist. And we went to meet Primo and Mike, these two young guys that I work with. And their attitude is "Come on, it's a new millennium. It's time to share these things, to let people know how beautiful and simple this whole thing is, that it's not threatening. That it's a beautiful way for us to take this sacred medicine and connect with our creator. And this is the way we've been doing it for hundreds and hundreds of years." The older people who may have gotten in trouble for it, are a little less trusting. So right now it's a little in between the two beliefs...There's this guy up in Canada who's the head of the peyote church. He has to approve everything to do with the ceremonial. And during the ceremony, they have a log, where they write down everyone's name, what their affiliation with the church is, what your native connection is...So it's not a lose thing because of the repercussions that vary from state-to-state and district-to-district. At this point, the doors to this world have opened just a little bit for the first time. But even me, going back to where I come from, I have to get permission from everybody to do this. They're gunshy.

Let's talk about your own personal journey. You grew up in Toronto, right?
In my early years I grew up going back and forth between the two worlds. But when I got older, I didn't go as much into Six Nations because I was starting to go deeper into my own existence and own discovery.

What was it like going between those two worlds? Did you encounter a lot of prejudice?
I didn't encounter a lot of prejudice because I could pass (as all-white)...the only predominant time was when I was playing with a couple of my cousins and they had come to Toronto to visit with me. We were playing up at these railroad tracks by this field. One of the things that impressed me so much as a little boy, was how my cousins could see a tree, a branch and could jump up, snap the branch off, and within moments, make the most beautiful weapon you've ever seen! It's such a boy thing! It's awful, but boys love it! So one of my cousins made a bow for me and I was trying it out, hanging by the field. Then these older kids showed up, and because my cousins looked more like Indians than I did, these older kids said "Hey redboy! Where you goin' with that bow in your hand?" And I saw my cousins, and their heads just dropped. And a chill ran through me, from them. I got to feel something through them this time, and it was this sick feeling. You could feel hate in it. And it's stayed with me my whole life. So when I was making this record, I wanted to be blatantly honest, and thought "This is a time for me to bring this out, and get it out of my system." Because of a certain boldness that I wanted to get across in this, that's why I used ("Redboy") in the title. I thought, "I can say this now, and it's healthy for me to say this." I grew up with a philosophy from my mother, which was "Be proud that you're an Indian, but be careful who you tell." And when my mother was growing up, the idea was "The whole Indian thing, it's gotta go." When my mother left the reservation to come to Toronto to live with her aunt, her aunt told her "Don't you tell anybody you're from the reservation. Let them think whatever they want, that you're from another country, but don't tell anyone unless you absolutely have to."

So they made this whole generation of people ashamed of who they were.
More than ashamed. It was like "It's over. You have to become white."

A lot of the archival footage and photos you used in the film showing these Indian kids in their lettermen's sweaters with short haircuts trying to look like Wally and the Beav', were such ironic images.
That's just it. They were trying to be white. This guy I met while we were shooting the film was telling me that as a kid he was taken away from his parents, sent off to a school to be trained to become a white person. He went to this school and within a couple weeks, he was so ashamed of his heritage, that one day he found himself in the boy's bathroom with this bucket of soapwater and an iron brush, trying to wash the Indian off his skin. He said he scrubbed himself raw all over his body trying to "wash the Indian off." For a little boy especially, that's as horrible a story as you ever want to hear.

We've done that to almost every culture in this country. Everyone's expected to assimilate into this little box.
Yeah. People don't like "different." I guess native people from all countries who were invaded by Europeans, had a horrible experience. There's this place I really love called Acoma in New Mexico. Acoma is the name of the tribe and is one of the oldest civilizations in North America, over a thousand years old. They live on top of this huge mesa in the desert. The original buildings from over a thousand years ago are still there, and are still lived in. There's a church up there that was built when the Spanish came. The Spanish made these Indians into slaves, and used to make these Indians run relay-style, with these logs that they had to get dozens of miles away, in order to build this church. So they had this reminder there. And some were affected by Christianity. And there's a place there that's sort of in between both worlds. The peyote religion is some of that, too. They think Jesus was a good guy. Here was a guy just trying to do his best to fight against oppression. But you look at that church, and just think, "God, how cruel," even though it's a beautiful structure.

When you reached your teens, had you begun to pull away from the Indian world?
It wasn't a pulling away. I was from this city environment. My mother didn't want me to have to grow up the way she did. I had this key to go inside these two worlds freely, with no one to check my passport. That was a wonderful gift. When I was very young, in my mind, I thought the cool action was on the reservation, because you were connected to outside, to a freedom. Your playground was the world, it felt like to me. In the city you were confined to a back yard. I didn't have any brothers or sisters. On the reservation, I had hundreds of them. Plus they were amazingly in touch with nature, in ways that never happened in the city. They'd take you out into this lush field and find this one little plant and pull it up, and yank this thing from the bottom and taste it, and it tasted more wonderful than anything you'd find in the city! It was amazing. They could all do shit that nobody else could do!

How did you get back into Native American music again?
It's one of those things that just creeps into your consciousness and creeps into your soul, and you don't have a reason why except that it's in the air, and it's part of this unknown magical thing in life that you're really thankful for, that these gifts come along. It isn't a calculated move. It isn't clever. It isn't intellectual. It's just something that comes from its own place. In music in general, a lot that you count on is based on accidents and discoveries that you trip over that leads you to do something you never would have been able to calculate and figure out. It's also something to do with the fact that parts of you that (are left behind) are almost always going to come back and want to be acknowledged.

It sounds like you were always drawn to music, from the time you were a kid, at a very deep, "soul" level.
That was due to these people on Six Nations. I was in a lot of bands growing up, many of whom were made up of people who were just sort of (playing around). It was never that way for me. From my earliest memories there was music behind me, music in front of me, music was a part of the celebration of these people being together. It got ingrained in me. When I reached puberty and rock and roll came along at the same time and these relatives of mine are already teaching me to play guitar, it was perfect timing! Then when I met Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, there was something about what they did that really pushed some buttons in me. There was a violence, an anger, a power...there was something that wasn't just happy-go-lucky (sings)"We're gonna rock around the clock tonight..." It wasn't like that. There was something mean and demonic and the music was like people really trying to play some shit and play it harder and faster than it had ever been done before!

Do you see the doors opening a little further to Native American culture in the coming millennium?
That's what something like this film is all about. I'm in the position to help out a little bit and say "There's something here in your own back yard that you don't really know that much about that happens to be the original roots music of North America. It happens to be something that's really quite beautiful and magical and for a long time it was your job to ignore it, but now I'm going to turn you on to it, but not in a stereotypical way. This is not the clichés you've seen in the movies. I'm going to do it the way I know people in the Native community hear it. This isn't about 200 years ago, or how it was 100 years ago, this is about right now. It's how we feel today. It's not over. It's not dead. It's not extinct, close enough, but not gone." People are so inclined to think anything to do with Native North America as yesterday's news. "Oh, that was beautiful. Those people, they used to be so wonderful 200 years ago." It's kind of a disregard for now. So I thought it was really important to say "No, no, no! We're makin' a noise right now, right today!"

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Quincy Jones: The Hollywood Interview

Composer/producer/renaissance man Quincy Jones.


QUINCY JONES:
FROM 'Q' WITH LOVE
By
Alex Simon

Editor's Note: The following article appeared in the February 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

Quincy Jones is to music what Steven Spielberg is to film. In a career that has spanned 50 years, Jones has been a musician, composer, producer, mentor, philanthropist and guiding force that has helped shape the music business, popular culture, and much of society's manners, mores and events as we know them today. In fact, Jones has led an almost Forrest Gump-like charmed life, utilizing his undeniable instinct for spotting raw talent in young performers, as well as his own talent innovations in musical composition and production, which has led him to collaborations and long-time friendships with everyone from jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Sarah Vaughn, to all-time great Frank Sinatra, to rappers Ice T, Big Daddy Kane and Melle Mel, to rockers Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson, to Presidents, Prime Ministers, and, yes, even his filmic counterpart, Steven Spielberg, with whom he produced the classic 1985 film The Color Purple (it was Jones who also discovered a talented young woman whom he cast in the film, named Oprah Winfrey).

Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. was born March 14, 1933 in Chicago, spending his first ten years on the city's tough south side. He and his younger brother, Lloyd, traversed the minefield-like landscape and managed to get out in one piece when their father moved them to Bremerton, Washington, outside Seattle, in 1943. In junior high, Jones took up the trumpet and sang in a gospel quartet, sticking with music through high school and earning a scholarship to Boston's prestigious Berklee School of Music. Before completing his freshman year, Jones was offered a spot in jazz great Lionel Hampton's band as a trumpeter, arranger and sometimes-pianist. Jones moved to New York where his reputation grew.

The imprint of the horrific things Jones witnessed during his early years stayed with him, however, most evident in his music for three groundbreaking films of the 1960's: The Pawnbroker (1965), In Cold Blood (1967) and In the Heat of the Night (1967). Jones also composed the theme for the hit 60's TV show Ironside, which was the first synthesizer-based pop theme song. Never before had music felt so "violent" in motion pictures and TV, laying the groundwork for the raw, violence-themed music of the rap artists whom Jones would mentor and produce twenty and thirty years later.

In addition to the aforementioned people and projects, Jones has recorded more than 30 albums of his own compositions since 1959, as well as producing for such artists as Lesley Gore, The Brothers Johnson, Michael Jackson (Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad), Miles Davis, and Frank Sinatra. He composed the music for the landmark TV miniseries Roots (1977), as well as organizing, producing and conducting the We Are the World benefit recording (the best-selling single of all time) in 1985. Jones has launched the careers of dozens of artists on his record label, Qwest Records, as well as publishing Vibe and Spin magazines, owning interest in radio and television stations around the country, was the producer of the hit TV series' Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, In the House, and Mad TV. Jones also executive produced the 68th Annual Academy Awards in 1996. In 1990, the documentary Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones was produced by Courtney Sale Ross, illustrating Jones' life, work and friendships. Jones' other credits, activities and endeavors would more than likely take up every column inch of this magazine, so just trust us when we say THIS MAN'S DONE IT ALL!!

The other prevalent theme in Jones' work has been love. Described by pal Spielberg as "a spraygun of love," Jones' latest endeavor is the compilation CD From Q, With Love, set for release in time for Valentine's Day, February 9. The two CD set features love songs from 1966 (Sinatra's rendition of The Shadow of Your Smile) to the present, from such diverse artists as Michael Jackson, Heavy D, Barry White and Qwest Records' newest artist, Catero. The collection's origins are surprisingly humble: they began as a mix Jones made to listen to while traveling. Following a 40th birthday party he threw for pal Oprah Winfrey, Jones gave out cassette versions of the mix as party favors. The response he got from the party guests was so strong, he was encouraged to release the set to the public.

In spite of his prolific and legendarily successful career, Jones has had some rough spots in his life, highlighted by two brain aneurysms that nearly claimed his life in 1974, when he was at the peak of his career. In spite of his doctor's orders to slow down after the second, successful operation, Jones continued his workaholic pace and lifestyle. The past year has been a tough one for Jones as well. His younger brother Lloyd died of cancer last summer (From Q, With Love is dedicated to him) and just days before this interview was conducted, Jones learned his mother had passed away in Seattle. In spite of the pain and personal loss he must have been feeling, Jones indeed proved himself to be that "spraygun of love" that Steven Spielberg described: hugging, kissing, and touching everyone in his path. After a few minutes alone with Quincy Jones, it's easy to see why everyone from Miles Davis to Hillary Clinton could claim him as a friend. His effusive personality and genuine warmth make him a man you want to be around, and want to please. Here now is one tiny chapter in the Biblically-proportioned life of Quincy Delight Jones, Jr.

The thing I love about the new record is how effortlessly it blends genres, artists and periods of time.
Quincy Jones: I am so myopic with this record, I have no objectivity about it at all. I just know I love it more than anything I've ever done.

Love is a theme that you've obviously always been very preoccupied about.
You know what it is about, and I just realized it because I'm going to bury my mother in Seattle tomorrow, it really is about (her). I'm sure it's about that. She was hospitalized when I was five, and I never knew her, really. And I'm sure that feeling was intensified because it's all about the inner child, like John Bradshaw talks about claiming your inner child. I'm sure it's about that. And you've got to be honest about that as you get older, because you don't have time to bullshit yourself about it anymore! (laughs) All the relationships I've had throughout my life, up and down, good and bad, have all really been based on what I went through in my childhood. There were times when I'd just seduce, seduce, seduce, and then just run away once I'd conquered. And that was all based on that parent-child relationship. Whatever the opposite of Oedipus is, it was very much like that...I'm lucky though, because I'm in a wonderful relationship now, and it's beautiful. It astounds me though, that it takes you so long to get it together, man! But what Bradshaw said is right, I think. That it usually happens from nine to eighteen months, where you have a male and female caretaker, not necessarily mother and father, who nurture you, validate you, love you, help you identify yourself within the microcosm of the world and guide you--from nine to eighteen months! There really are two kinds of people: those who have had nurturing with their own parents, and those who haven't.

Do you think it's easier to learn to love as you grow older?
Yes. Yes, because number one, you learn to surrender, and most of love is about surrendering your ego, because when you fall in love, you do some stupid stuff, man! (laughs) I mean really stupid! The best couples are those that are already 100% complete people. Because most of the time, the people are trying to get you to fill the percentage e that's lacking in them. That's the first mistake we make. "I need somebody to help me fill up my deficiencies." I don't know man, I just hope and pray that God gives me the ability every day to say "Okay, I was wrong and my life would be better if I could do it this way instead of that way, and not get stuck in anything and just keep going."

You can almost trace your own personal growth through your music. If you listen to the soundtracks from The Pawnbroker and In Cold Blood, for example, that's raw, violent music. No love in sight.
Exactly! Raw, angry. Subconsciously I guess I was really angry. It's interesting though, my brother Lloyd just passed away last July and we always used to talk about this, because the rage...well, here's an example, my daughter has two sons, my grandsons, who are now in their 20's. She still says "I've gotta get home and take care of the boys' dinners!" And I'm going "'Boys'?! They're practically on social security!" (laughs) And that's the way it should be, you know?

How do you balance career and family and still be successful in both?
The word "nurture" wasn't around in the 30's, 40's and 50's. Neither was "cholesterol." (laughs) I've learned more as I've gotten older what nurturing is all about. I can't undo the things I didn't do for my kids. All I can do is say "I'm sorry." I thought I was doing a good job if they were sheltered, had some good food, decent clothes, that was my understanding. My father didn't have time to nuture us. There were eight kids, he was making $55.00 a week. I thought I was doing a good job, not understanding that they needed a lot more of me than what I was giving. But they all turned out pretty great. I still can't get rid of them! (laughs) The girls you never get rid of! (laughs) But they're all beautiful, just wonderful. We're getting closer and closer every day, because they're all realizing, too, that this is stuff you can't take for granted. When Lloyd died, it really hit them hard. They lost two uncles within two months. Peggy Lipton, my ex-wife, her brother Kenny died two months after Lloyd. It shocked them.

What did your brother Lloyd do?
He was Chief of sound at KOMO in Seattle. He was with them 28 years. He'd go on the road with the Huskies for the games. He was just a great, brilliant human being. My other brother is a superior court judge up there. It was just such a shock losing him.

You dedicated the album to Lloyd.
Yes. He's organically tied to the album because in '66 I brought him with me when I recorded Sinatra. He and his wife Gloria met there and they were together until he died. Theirs was the greatest love story in the world.

The album has the greatest variety of artists I've heard on any compilation.
Thank you. You know if you think about it, Frank was a phenomenon of the 40's, Elvis the 50's, The Beatles the 60's, the 70's were about Star Wars, and then the 80's was Michael Jackson. And I remember introducing Michael to Frank, and seeing them come together was like seeing 40 years of legends come together full circle. I've got a strong connection with everyone on that record. Patti Austin's my Goddaughter since she was four. Luther Vandross, we recorded him before anyone knew who he was. Brian McKnight, Tevin Campbell, who I recorded at 12, everyone. It's funny I met Michael at 12, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder. Stevie's 48 now! I'm younger than him! (laughs)

Let's talk about your early years. When did you first realize that music was your calling?
I guess when I was about 12 or 13 years old. I sang with a little a cappella gospel group called The Challengers. A man named Joseph Towe put us together. He was a very elegant man, was a swing musician. I used to baby-sit for him for free so I could read his Glenn Miller book on orchestration. One thing led to another and I first picked up the horn in '45. I never stopped. I've been like a junkie, and orchestration is what I've always loved. It just fascinates me. Every band that came to Seattle, I just used to sit there right in front and lose it! (laughs) Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Barnett...Charlie Barnett came to Seattle when I was 14, and two dudes came out front and started playing. One was Clark Terry, the other was Maynard Ferguson. I almost had a stroke, man! I thought they were from Mars! The same with Woody Herman. When those bands came through, I just couldn't get enough. It was like dope, man. Pure dope.

When you joined up with Lionel Hampton in 1951, that was your first big break.
He actually asked me to join when I was 15 years-old. This lady named Janet Thurillo, a singer from Seattle, had been bugging him about getting me in the band. I was already to go and Gladys Hampton said "Get that young sucker off the bus! He's going back to school!" Then later on when I was in school back in Boston, they asked me again. I was there on scholarship and I said to the school "I'll be back soon." Biggest lie in the world! (laughs) I mean this band had Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Joe Newman, Jimmy Nottingham, Charlie Mingus, Wes Montgomery, it was like a college. That band was almost like the first rock and roll band, really. He also loved modern jazz, so it was the perfect world. It also took me to Europe for the first time, which is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

That first trip to Europe was the first time you hadn't encountered any racism, correct?
Exactly. It was so evident, because all the conflict (in the U.S.) was always white and black. I remember we were in Oslo and it was so beautiful. It was almost unreal, not like the south side of Chicago. And these beautiful girls would put all their purses on the bandstand! 800 purses on the bandstand! I said "Boy, they wouldn't do that in New York. The junkies would kill 'em!" (laughs) This girl invited all of us to her house for dinner, saying her parents wanted to make us dinner. It was midnight, but we said "Sure," still feeling a little suspicious from what we knew in the States. So we walked to her house, three of us from the band and three of the girls. And this car pulls up behind us, like trailing us, with a Norwegian guy behind the wheel. So coming from the States, our antennae went off, and our hands go in our pockets, getting our knives ready. And the guy calls something out to us in Norwegian and one the girls runs over to him, and the smiles on both their faces were so pure and so beautiful, I'll never forget this. She comes back and we said "What?! What?!" She says "He wants to know if you want a ride over to the party." (laughs) It turned me around to opening up your soul to one-on-one, that whole trip.

After you formed your own band you went through some tough times, right?
Oh please, almost suicide. I came back to the States after Hampton and freelanced and paid my New York dues. Did everything imaginable. Worked for Bassie, Ray Anthony, Tommy Dorsey, everybody...it ended with my band and I being stranded in Paris, completely broke. I had to finally get a regular job as an A&R man for Mercury Records and they made me Vice-President two years later...I'm glad now I did the corporate route, because I learned so much. I wouldn't be doing all I'm doing now had I not done that. What turned me out of that world was they offered me a lot of money to stay on for 20 years. And that freaked me out, man. I said "20 years, that's my whole life!" I quit my job, got divorced, went to California. I had just scored one movie at that point, The Pawnbroker, and thought that I'd be able to write my own ticket in the movies--not quite! (laughs) I did one TV show called Hey Landlord with Will Hutchins. James L. Brooks, Garry Marshall, Ed Weinberger and Jerry Belson were all writers on it. Richard Dreyfuss was on the show. It was amazing. It's like it just happens. If I'd gone around the block twenty seconds earlier, I'd have missed it.

You just reminded me of the most profound thing you said in Listen Up when you were talking with Ice T: "Twenty seconds in the other direction for any of us, and we'd have would up in the penitentiary."
No doubt. We were this close, man. We did all the same things. We were the biggest thugs that ever lived. I was right at that crossroads, man. Thank God for music...Chicago was the breeding ground for gangsters, white and black. The best in the world. The fascination with violence that kids have now, that all started in Chicago. It's not new to me. Hip-hop is not hard for me to relate to because of that. My father was a carpenter who worked for these black gangsters named the Jones Brothers (no relation), and we'd walk over to see him at Drexel Food and Liquor. I remember walking up the steps, they looked so huge. This was in about 1938. The Jones Brothers did policy rackets...all the stereotype Elliot Ness stuff you with the hats, suits, big stogies and tommy guns, it's all true. There were a couple dudes upstairs (at the liquor store) behind a one-way mirror with tommy guns, man! I thought that was great, man! It's funny when people think that gangsterism and that kind of violence is something new. Chicago in the 30's makes Harlem and Compton look like Disneyland. We had to leave Chicago when the Jones brothers got run out of town.

Tell the story about Joe Louis and the pair of boxing gloves.
My father also worked for Julian Black, who managed Joe Louis, and we were given a pair of gloves that Joe Louis won in. Three doors down from me was this kid named Waymond who had this BB gun I used to dream about. I wanted it more than anything in the world and I traded the boxing gloves for that pistol! My dad came home and my little brother Lloyd said "Daddy, Dewie got a pistol." (laughs) My dad said "What?!" So daddy went back to get the gloves and came back with the woman who became my stepmother and my stepbrothers and sisters. Then we left Chicago right after that. Life's a trip, man, I'll tell you. Once I had those two operations and lived, I said, 'Well, God must be keeping me here for something."

Tell us about how those aneurysms changed your outlook on life.
They made me more of a workaholic! (laughs) I thought before I was going to live 'til 200, now I'm not so sure. I've got that clip in my brain holding things together, so I figure now I can work twice as hard. (laughs) But you know, now what I do really doesn't feel like work. It's a lot of time, a lot of energy, but it's an adventure, man! I don't want to miss any of it! What else are you going to do, go fishing in Colorado, or something? Hell, no! Life's too short for that.

Tell us about when you first came to Hollywood.
That was scary because I'd left the security of my corporate job and just seeing history unfolding before my eyes every day. I knew the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Streisand, Brando, all these people before they hit it big. People say to me now "How come you only hang out with stars, man?" I say "Stars, my ass! I knew these people when none of us could afford a hot dog!" Harry Belefonte, Sidney Poitier, Ray Charles, everybody was payin' dues. They're just people I know from a long time ago.

Tell us about working with Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood) who I think is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
Richard used to say "We're all like a river, man. People cool their toes in you, throw their beer cans in you, swim in you, pee in you (laughs), fish in you..." He said "When we finish this movie we'll either be best friends for life or kill each other." We were best friends. He taught me how to use the Movieola (editing machine). Richard did something great. Truman Capote wanted Leonard Bernstein to do the music, and I don't blame him! Leonard was a genius. But Richard stuck to his guns and said "No, Quincy's doing this movie!" In fact, I suggested Scott Wilson to him. Richard would call me for advice before he'd call the actors. That meant so much to me, on a picture that big?! Please! Then after the premiere, Truman Capote called, apologized to me, was crying...it was beautiful. Richard had so much faith in me, there was no way I was going to let him down.

Tell us about Francis Albert.
This is his ring with the family crest that Tina gave me for Christmas. (shows the ring on his pinkie). I loved that man. But before we met, I was so in awe, I couldn't approach him. He was one of those people, you couldn't approach him. You'd just have to wait, man. (laughs) And you may wait all your life and nothing would happen. I never obsessed on it, or anything, but I would just listen to him and say "Damn! That's as good as it gets." So one day in Paris...Ava Gardner had told Frank I was living there, I don't know how she found out. So we went down to Monaco to play a gig for one of Grace Kelly's events and there he was, getting ready to perform. We met and I thought "Wow, he's real!" (laughs) But he was a bigger than life dude, man. He told me "Open with "Man With the Golden Arm," and keep playing 'til I go into "Come Fly With Me." So I had never worked with anyone that big before, right? I was used to starting up when the applause died down. So Frank comes out, all cool, we're playing "Man With the Golden Arm," people are just screaming, everyone in the audience you can imagine: Grace Kelly, Cary Grant, David Niven, Noel Coward. He stops and kisses and shakes hands with everybody. I'm looking at him like "Hurry up and get up here, man! The applause is gonna stop soon!" Not knowing who I'm dealing with here, right? (laughs) So he stops in the middle of the floor, takes out his gold cigarette case, lights it, walks real slow up on stage, hums the opening of "Come Fly With Me," sings it. My mouth is still hanging open, and just before the middle part that goes (singing) "...When I get you up there..." he takes a deep drag on the cigarette, and now there's just a pin spot lighting him, right? So he sings "When I get you up there, where the air is..." then he goes "raaarrrified..." and blows all the smoke out of his mouth! I had never seen anything like this in my life, man! He sang over the smoke! He was like a magician...I remember another time we were flying to Vegas and he said "You know, it'd be kind of kooky, man, if we could play 'Shadow of Your Smile' in the show tomorrow night." And I said "Do you know the lyrics?" "By the time you get the music, I'll know the lyrics." So he sat on that plane and wrote down the lyrics to that song 18 times on a yellow pad, force-feeding the subconscious mind. And the next night, the same song that's on the new album, he sang the shit out of it, man. Those are the moments you never forget. Some people played with him, some people worked with him, and some people like Steve and Edie and myself, got to play and work with him, and that was truly the joy of it.

You said that Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis were your two biggest influences growing up. Tell us about them.
Well, when you look at the evolution of the trumpet you've got Louis Armstrong, who begat Roy Eldrige, who begat Dizzy, who begat Miles along with the saxophone of Charlie Parker, and Clark Terry. Miles and Dizzy changed the sound of the trumpet. They were the Bachs and Beethovens of the 20th century. Please. To this day I play "Kind of Blue" four times a week. It's like Picasso.

Did you know Chet Baker at all? Was he influenced by Miles? They both had such a tragic sound and you could hear how much pain they were in.
Oh yeah, I knew Chet and he and everyone else was influenced by Miles. The thing is, the subtheme of the whole be-bop period was black musicians saying "We do not want to be entertainers anymore. We do not want to sing and roll our eyes and clown for people anymore. We want to be artists." And they lived accordingly. But the consequences were the (established artists) rejected them. But they didn't care and went on anyway, blazing a path that has never been surpassed in the 20th century. Kids haven't even begun to catch up to Miles, Clifford Brown, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy. Not even close, man! I don't give a shit if you've sold 20 million records. It's not about that. It's about the fact that they changed the course of music.

What's the famous quote, I think it's from the Bible: "A prophet is never recognized in his own time."
Absolutely right. And we didn't care about money, or two ounces of cocaine or having airplanes. We didn't care about that stuff. We just wanted to be as good as we could be, or close to as good as they were. We didn't care about numbers and money. That's a stupid goal, you know, fame and fortune. If you are pursuing it, it's a stupid goal. Sure we like hit records. But I have a line I will not cross. I know how to make a hit record, and I love when it's a hit, don't get me wrong. But I won't go over that line. There's an integrity you have to hold on to...I don't care how hungry the musician is, you could put $100,000 on the piano, write a hit, take home that $100,000, but the subconscious mind doesn't care about that $100,000. It doesn't care about whether it's bad, or good, it just says "Do the work." It's blind. That's what always surprising to me when people say they do this for the money. Because if you don't believe in the music and if it doesn't make your hair rise and give you goose bumps when you listen to it, how do you expect anyone else to? So to me, it's not the commerciality, it's the sincerity.

All the classic work from any artist is classic because it's honest, and that will always come through.
That's right, man. The real stuff is coming from a place of personality and commitment. They're not saying "Well here's what the audience likes and the demographics tell us this," this is what I like. This is what I feel. And I want other people to like and feel this, as well. So I feel good looking back that those things were always in mind, going back to '66, on this album.

What's in store for you in the coming millennium?
I just had a meeting with the First Lady yesterday and Steven Spielberg, George Stevens and I are going to produce the Millennium celebration for the Clintons. I had all these plans for being on a boat somewhere with some champagne, but Hillary blew that! (laughs)

Tell us about your upcoming CD-rom project, Microsoft Encarta Africana.
It's really got its genesis from the dreams of W.P. DuBois, 90 years ago. He wanted to have in one volume, all the information on Africa and African-Americans. Because when I was a kid, there was no black history...so we made a deal with Bill Gates at Microsoft and they're going to put it in Sunday schools and history classes and it's going to be awesome! 2.2 million words. 3,000 essays from Buffalo Soldiers to Colin Powell, everything. It's really great and something that was vital and needed. It's being released sometime in February. I know Gates is really excited about it, because no one's seen anything like this before.

Where do you see the future of the media heading in the 21st century, and where do you hope to see it go?
I think the writing's on the wall in a way. I'm not trying to be glib about it, but I think when Bill Gates put down a billion dollars for Comcast, that cast the die. Clearly the computer kings are going cable...it's fascinating. We have to be sure that the further we get into technology, the closer we get to spirituality. Even the scientists, I think, would agree with that. It's fascinating. I remember taking $27.00 and flying on a prop plane to Oslo in the 50's. Then the jet engine came and revolutionized the world. The next phase was satellites, cellular and fax. Awesome effects! That technology is everywhere now. And now, we're moving into fiberoptics, and the potential is really endless.

Do you think it will be easier for us to be technological or spiritual?
I don't think we'll have a choice, you're going to have to become spiritual to deal with the technology. Otherwise we're going to go crazy. Maybe my imagination is off the hook, but I always try to look at the subtext. I look at Dolly (the genetically-cloned sheep) in Scotland. I look at the 22 mice in Hawaii and the eight calves in Japan two months ago. You know what's next. You know it, man. And it's going to be something civilization has never dreamed of before. With genetic engineering you can alter 2500 characteristics, there's microchips now that can disperse energy, medicine, all kinds of stuff. It's going to be freaky, man! Spirituality is going to be number one in the place, otherwise this stuff isn't going to be able to happen. I can feel it. Man just cannot leave that stuff alone. They're always trying to play God. Computers are designed like the human brain. When I was dying I saw a tunnel of gold and white light and I saw a computer read-out, that's exactly what the mind is like, only the computer is now better at it than we are! There's always been something like that dealing looming in the future. Man's always dealt with it.

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Talking with Larry Namer of EUROCINEMA: The Home of On-Demand Foreign Films

By Terry Keefe

It was approximately 8 years ago when I was at the Laemmle 4-Plex in Santa Monica on a Wednesday night and saw a huge line around the block for a screening of an Iranian film called Two Women. According to the usher, the film had been selling out every night, without the push of a major distributor behind it. A local, very small distributor (whose name I do not have, unfortunately) had booked the engagement and had an extensive mailing list of names in the Persian community of greater Los Angeles. I don’t know if this was accurate or not, but the usher said the film didn’t even have subtitles. And it certainly didn’t have a large ad budget. But here it was, kicking the box office behinds of films in the other theaters which had the likes of Miramax behind them. It was clear just from watching those tickets sell that there was a potentially huge business in exhibiting foreign films stateside to true niche audiences, but it seemed to be a business predominantly for the theatrical and DVD markets. Cable would likely be harder, as the audience numbers probably weren’t there to justify running Two Women or the equivalent on HBO or Showtime. Video On-Demand (VOD) technology has changed all that now, and one of the major players in the VOD space is Eurocinema, which specializes in providing foreign films On-Demand at $3.99 each on many of the major cable systems across the country, including Time Warner, Direct TV, Mediacom, and Atlantic Broadband. And, interestingly enough, one of the films Eurocinema is showing happens to be Two Women.



Eurocinema's Larry Namer

We had a chance to talk with Larry Namer, senior advisor and head of operations for Eurocinema, about the company. Namer’s resume in media speaks for itself, as he was the founder of a little cable network called E!, along with Comspan Communications and Steeplechase Media. On the origins of Eurocinema, Namer says, “[Chairman and CEO] Sebastien Perioche was the person who had the idea originally, to pursue being the HBO of foreign films. I came out of the cable world and I’m not a great believer in the longevity of mainstream networks, particular for niches. I suggested rather than being a 24-hour network, have Eurocinema be on-demand. My whole thing these days is how all this technology has created fundamental changes, and potential smaller niches were being born. We could target audiences as we go. Sebastien liked that idea and so we went VOD.”




Eurocinema feature Two Women


As we mentioned at the top, the economics of VOD are a nice fit with smaller foreign films, which would have a difficult time getting a theatrical booking these days. It’s not difficult to see that art houses are disappearing everywhere and the studio “indie” labels are dominating the bookings at the few theaters which have survived. Says Namer, “In N.Y. or L.A., you can still find the theaters [showing foreign films], but there aren’t a lot of them. Typically, it’s the Academy Award nominees, and you won’t get the real depth of foreign film beyond that.” The VOD model, though, allows for films that wouldn’t get seen theatrically, or on cable, to find an audience. Explains Namer, “With a company like HBO, with all of its overhead and infrastructure, to justify putting a movie on for 2 hours, it has to achieve a certain rating. It’s hard to find foreign films that can sustain that. By using the on-demand tech, we only offer 15 movies a month, but that’s more than enough to feed the appetite of the most voracious foreign film fan.” The VOD technology has also allowed Eurocinema to keep operating costs low. Says Namer, “For the size of our operation, we’d need 40-50 people working if this were a traditional network. With on-demand, we’re a company of 8-9 people.”



Eurocinema feature Kira's Reason

Eurocinema launched in 2005 and has quickly been adding cable systems carrying the brand. Says Namer, “We’ve been growing amazingly well.” With all the cable systems that have added Eurocinema, the company is able to deliver its films to a potential audience of some 20 million subscribers. Some of the current offerings on Eurocinema include the films Kira’s Reason from Denmark and Gille’s Wife from France. Two Women will be screening again on Eurocinema in May, as will Twilight, another Iranian film.

When I brought up my experience in seeing the audience that turned out for Two Women in the theaters, and will likely follow it to Eurocinema, Namer says, “That’s a great example. What we’ve found is that there is an incredible secondary audience, in addition to the traditional foreign film fans. There are lots of immigrants here from Bulgaria and Sweden and eastern and western Europe, and they want to hold onto their identity. It’s different from the previous generations. My parents’generation had the attitude of ‘Our children will be American.’ My father spoke Spanish, but they always spoke English to us. That’s changed unbelievably in the last 20 years. This whole new wave of immigrants want to hold onto their identity and to learn about the culture they came from. And films are a key way of doing that.”

Check out the Eurocinema website at http://www.eurocinema.com/, as well as their Myspace page.

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Natasha Richardson: 1963-2009

Actress Natasha Richardson.

The telephone is the bane of most interviews. Rarely does it allow the interviewer to connect with his or her subject, resulting in a less-than-stellar conversation fit for reproduction. When Venice Magazine Publisher Nancy Bishop asked me in December of 2005 if I'd do "a phoner" with actress Natasha Richardson, I was a bit surprised at how quickly I jumped at the chance. I had interviewed Richardson's sister Joely just two months before and, like many cinefiles, have had a lifelong fascination and admiration for their parents: the late filmmaker Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave. Joely proved a charming, bright and engaging conversationalist during our lunch at The Chateau Marmont, with one of the most fascinating topics of conversation being her sister Natasha, their relationship, and their unconventional, albeit loving, upbringing. Needless to say, my appetite was whetted for more.

Natasha's sons with actor Liam Neeson could be heard rough-housing in the background when she picked up the phone at their upstate New York home. Every once in a while she would kindly, but firmly, ask them to keep it down, and each time return to our conversation with a gentle hint of laughter in her voice. Like her mother, Natasha Richardson was a classic beauty, with eyes that belied a fierce intelligence, qualities that served her well in the variety of roles she seemingly morphed into, both on stage (winning a Tony for her turn as Sally Bowles in the revival of "Cabaret") and screen. If there were a single, defining word for Natasha Richardson that carried through her very diverse 35 film appearences, it would be grace. Grace of presence, of movement, of just being. A rare quality that, and one which will be sorely missed. In the words of Carson McCullers "This minute is passing. And it will never come again." Rest in peace, and thank you.

NATASHA RICHARDSON: CHINA DOLL
By Alex Simon

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the December 2005/January 2006 issue of Venice Magazine.

Natasha Richardson is the product of cinematic and theatrical royalty: the daughter of legendary director Tony Richardson (Tom Jones, Blue Sky) and actress Vanessa Redgrave (Blow Up, Julia, The Loves of Isadora). Born in London May 11, 1963, Natasha trained at the prestigious Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After cutting her teeth on the stage, Natasha made her screen debut as novelist Mary Shelley in Ken Russell’s Gothic in 1987.

Since then, Natasha has appeared in nearly 30 feature films, most recently in the final Merchant-Ivory production, The White Countess. Natasha gives a masterful performance in the film, set in the mid-1930s, as a former Russian aristocrat whose family has fled to Shanghai, and a life of poverty. Working as a cabaret girl, she meets American businessman Todd Jackson (Ralph Feinnes, also excellent), who was blinded in a tragic accident. Together they decide to open a nightclub that becomes the toast of Shanghai, but are seemingly oblivious to the growing Japanese presence that is encroaching on their doorstep. The Sony Pictures Classics release hits screens December 21.

Natasha Richardson, who lives with her husband, actor Liam Neeson (Schindler’s List), and their two sons in upstate New York, spoke with us recently by phone.

The White Countess is the final Merchant-Ivory production, after Ismail Merchant’s death last May.
Natasha Richardson: It was sort of a gift, really. We shot it last Fall, this time in Shanghai. The summer before I was doing a play in London, which Ismail saw. He came back to my dressing room, handed me this script and said “Here’s this wonderful movie we’re going to make and there’s a great part for you in it.” One part of me was thrilled, but the other part was thinking ‘Oh yeah, right!’ (laughs) as you often do when wonderful things just seem to fall into your lap. Then I still couldn’t believe it when I read it, because it was such a beautiful story and beautiful part. So I feel like it’s a wonderful gift from Ismail and Jim, Ismail in particular. I knew Ismail very well, for many years, so his death was very sad for me.

What was the Merchant-Ivory process like?
I think they were entirely different men. Ismail was very, very outgoing, avuncular and full of life force and Jim is much more reserved, soft-spoken and working with him as a director, he’s not a very talkative director. He’ll basically tell you when he doesn’t like something. I knew to trust him, because my mother had worked with him before and she said “Don’t get put off if Jim doesn’t rush up to you after every take to tell you how great you are. But if he tells you something isn’t right, then listen to him.” One thing I didn’t expect was that he’s very open to your coming up with ideas, improvising bits of dialogue and business, things like that. I expected him to be much more committed to getting every bit of punctuation from the script onto the screen. I think that the big thing with Jim is his aesthetic eye. His eye for detail is just uncanny. We used to joke that in a huge crowd scene, Jim would notice an extra on edge of frame whose belt buckle isn’t right. (laughs)

How long were you in China?
For just over three months, and it was pretty overwhelming, I must say. I didn’t get to see a lot of the country, because we were always working. It was incredibly difficult for everyone involved, particularly Ismail. The cultural and language barriers and making such a big scale film on a low budget was really a struggle. The crew, which was partly British and partly Chinese, I think the British crew was really in shock. They were the kind of people who had shot all over the world, but never encountered the sort of difficulties that they did in China. The conditions were very basic, to say the least. There weren’t the usual amenities. Also, Shanghai is a very modern city now, and there’s very little of old Shanghai left, which also created difficulties in terms of locations, which makes the achievement of the film that much more phenomenal.

You get to work with your mother and your aunt for the first time in this film, and in very close proximity. How was that?
I loved it. I just wish we’d had more to do together. I think we all felt we were up against it a bit, so there was a wonderful sense of camaraderie. We have the same vocabulary and the same sense of humor, so the few weeks they were there it was so lovely to be together and work together, then go back to the hotel at the end of the day and eat Chinese food and drink wine and talk about the next day’s work.

You and Ralph Fiennes obviously had a great connection. Tell us a bit about working with him.
We did. We have a sense of mutual respect and love for each other. We’ve been very close friends for some time and have talked about working together that entire time. It was a very special experience. It was difficult for me at first, because what I hadn’t bargained for with Ralph playing blind was that I was so used to connecting with another actor through one another’s eyes, and he wouldn’t look in my eyes! (laughs) So there was a sense of loneliness that set into the relationship because I think Sophia is a very lonely person.

Let’s talk about your dad, who’s one of my heroes.
Oh, thank you. He’s still one of mine.

You actually helped get his autobiography (The Long Distance Runner) published posthumously, right?
Yes, exactly. I used to watch him write it out longhand on these yellow legal pads at his house in L.A. When I asked him what it was, he said “Oh, just memoirs. Nobody will give a shit and they’ll never get published.” After he died, we found them in the back of his closet, along with his Oscars. (laughs) It was quite amazing going through all those pages, really getting to know my dad again. It was a real gift. And then, of course, the book ends with this message to his daughters to carry through life. I get choked up even talking about it now, actually.

I know you and your sister both spent a lot of time on your parents’ sets growing up. What did you learn from watching your dad work?
A lot. As an actress I suppose it was like being in training from year one. Number one, always serve your director and always trust him, that was drummed into me from the beginning. I suppose also a professional ethic and a love of being on movie sets: the different departments working together, the art department and the carpentry department, and the lighting cameraman. It gave a wonderful sense of a sort of traveling circus, of a family being together, with a very charismatic leader in the sense of my dad. I think he always created a great sense of family when he worked, and a great sense of fun, as well as hard work, like you were doing something wonderful. When he first came to see me in the theater, in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in London, he’d just come in for the night and was flying into L.A. the next day. So he came backstage, just kind of patted me on the back and smiled and I thought ‘Ooh, he hasn’t said anything…’ Then he said “I’d like you to pick me up in the morning and drive me to the airport.” And I’m thinking to myself ‘Oh my God! First he doesn’t compliment me on my opening night, and now I have to get up at the crack of dawn to take him to the airport?!’ So I pick him up, and he said “You’ve got a lovely voice and a lovely quality on stage, but that isn’t good enough. You haven’t been thought about x, y and z in this part, and I’m going to mark up a copy of the script, which I want you to read, think about, and get to work.” And I was just devastated. I thought, ‘How cruel can you be.’ In retrospect, it was the kindest, best thing anyone had ever done for me. I did study his notes, and by the end of the run, my performance was entirely different. When he came to see me again in something else, The Seagull, a couple years later, he was just sort of beaming afterwards, and so effusive in his praise that I knew it was really meant, coming not only from a father that I loved, but a director whom I totally respected. You know, when you look at the body of my father’s work, not all of his films were great, but some were downright brilliant, and almost always, the performances were top-notch. John Gielgud credited my dad with teaching him to act on screen.

What did you learn from your mother’s work?
Well, she’s just totally inspiring because she’s one of the greatest actresses that’s ever lived. Her absolute dedication to the pursuit of truth and her emotional life and her transparency. I learned an approach to work through her, which helped me, which was reading Stanislavsky for the first time, which was the key that opened the door for me. So I owe her an enormous amount, which is a very brief answer! (laughs)

Was it tough for you and your sister to carve out your own identities as actors with two parents who were such legends in the business?
I think it was particularly difficult in terms of my mom, because of other people’s perceptions when I was starting out, because you want to quietly work away and make your own name and place for yourself. Having a famous parent can sometimes result in a level of attention you feel that you don’t deserve and you don’t want and comparisons, so it was carrying a card around your neck for a while, but that time has passed.

Do you think either one of your sons is interested in carrying on the family tradition?
I hope not! (laughs) I do think that acting’s a vocation. It’s something you don’t have a choice in. When I hear people say “I want to be an actor,” I always think ‘Well, if you are one, you will be.’

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Anthony Minghella: The Hollywood Interview

Director Anthony Minghella 1954-2008.

I first met Anthony Minghella in January of 2000 at the press junket for "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Moments after sitting down with him, I knew Minghella was a different breed from most of the filmmakers I'd interviewed in the past, particularly those from this side of the pond. Minghella struck me as both a gentleman and a gentle man. He loved Bach as much as he revered the films of Hitchcock and the writing of Harold Pinter. He also listened as well as he conversed. I knew I would never forget my conversation with Anthony Minghella and, after a special American Film Institute screening of "Cold Mountain," he actually approached me at the post-screening reception, warmly shook my hand, and thanked me for the article and conversation we'd had three years earlier.

A gentleman, indeed. Rest in peace.



THE TALENTED MR. MINGHELLA
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the February 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Anthony Minghella never intended to be a filmmaker, so no one was more shocked than he was when he picked up a Best Director statuette at the 1996 Academy Awards for his work on The English Patient. Minghella's first love was, and in many ways still is, writing, and he had in fact been a successful playwright, with many of his works performed on London's famed West End. All pretty heady stuff for a lad of humble origins. Minghella was born to Italian immigrants January 6, 1954 on the Isle of Wight, in England. A lover of literature from an early age, Minghella graduated from the University of Hull, where he went on to become an instructor of theater arts. He then quit teaching to pursue playwriting full time.

After several moderate hits on the stage, Minghella decided to film one of his unproduced scripts, a supernatural romantic comedy entitled Truly, Madly, Deeply as a vehicle for his good friend, actress Juliet Stevenson. Co-starring Alan Rickman as Stevenson's deceased husband who just can't stop loving her, the film was a hit in England and did well enough on this side of the Atlantic for Hollywood to entice Minghella to its shores. The result was Mr. Wonderful (1993), a competent, if uninspired romantic comedy starring Matt Dillon, that did little to showcase the incredible talent that Minghella possessed. That all changed with The English Patient, the sweeping romantic drama that walked away with nine Oscars in 1996, including Best Picture.

Minghella's latest is, dare we say it, perhaps even better than the magnificent English Patient. The Talented Mr. Ripley is based on Patricia Highsmith's classic novel, and was filmed once before, as Purple Noon, by French director Rene Clement in 1960. While that fine film still holds up today, this latest version is not only superior, but is one of the finest films of 1999, firmly establishing Minghella as one of the most inventive and talented directors working today. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) is a men's room attendant in a fancy New York hotel in 1957. A social doppleganger, Ripley has no discernible identity or personality of his own, but survives by mimicking others that he views as superior and far more interesting than himself. When a chance encounter with a wealthy blue blood sends Tom off to Italy to fetch the man's wayward son (brilliantly played by Jude Law), Tom's true nature comes out: not only is he a doppleganger, he's also a sociopathic killer! And thus begins this Hitchcockian exercise in mistaken identity, sexual confusion, and class struggle (Highsmith also penned the novel on which Hitchcock's classic Strangers on a Train was based). Minghella has created a hypnotic masterpiece, blending his own deft directorial touches with John Seale's gorgeous 1950's Technicolor-style cinematography, Roy Walker's meticulous production design, Ann Roth's equally perfect period clothes, and a cast that dreams are made of: Damon, Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman (playing a womanizing preppie this time!), and the wonderful Philip Baker Hall. This is a rich, beautifully layered film that begs for multiple viewings.

The film is amazing. The recreation of the 1950’s Technicolor look is really remarkable.
Anthony Minghella: Well, I’d like to take credit for that, if I could, but I also managed to work with a really brilliant cinematographer (John Seale). I’ve been very lucky in that the people that I’ve worked with have stayed with me and I’ve borrowed a lot from them and learned a lot. I’ve found this amazing group of people: Ann Roth, who did the costumes, has done probably 100 films; Roy Walker, the production designer, has been working for 50 years in films and worked with David Lean and Fred Zinnemann; and Walter Murch, who’s my real mentor, is the editor. The smartest thing I’ve ever done is to surround myself with people who are more knowledgeable than I am, and try to learn from them. Also they insist on my being ready and prepared and having a point of view.

Walter Murch’s book (Blink of an Eye) is one of my bibles.
I can’t tell you what it’s like to have him waiting for the film to be finished. He’s so rigorous. I’m very compulsive. They had to snatch the movie away from us yesterday and go “Okay guys, that’s enough.” Otherwise, we both would have kept working on this movie for the rest of our lives. And because of that, I think the finish of the film is very detailed. He’s a wonderful sound editor as well as a film editor. You can keep building the film and refining it. I love working with someone who wants to see if there’s one more thing we can do to it, one more line we can find, or one thing that can make a difference.

You wanted to make Mr. Ripley prior to The English Patient, right?
Not prior to The English Patient, but for a while, it looked as though The English Patient wasn’t going to get made, which would have broken my heart. I was marooned, waiting to see if we could get financing. Sydney Pollack called me and told me that they had acquired the rights to the Patricia Highsmith novel, which is a book I love very much. I re-read it, and thought that it would be worth (adapting) while I was waiting to do The English Patient. While I was writing it, I thought ‘Wait a minute, why not direct it, as well?’ And Paramount was good enough to wait while I finished The English Patient.

What was it about the story that drew you to it?
(DON’T READ THIS ANSWER IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE!)
Several things. One was, I loved the audacity of a character who gets away with it. I thought it would be a challenge to pull that off. I also thought that implicit in pulling it off, was a moral phrasing. Film fiction in particular, always aspires to a neat resolution, and I really didn’t want to find that resolution, I wanted to find a resolution that was tragic. Getting away with murder in terms of a public accountability is one thing. Getting away with it in terms of the spirit is another altogether. What I wanted to say at the end of the film is that Ripley may not be caught by the police, but he’s trapped inside a prison of his own making, which is his mind, from which there’s no escape. It’s the cruelest sentence. And I think the punishment of escape is what interested me in the film. The other thing was that I felt the character was so recognizable to me, not in terms of what he did, but why he did it, and what he did that was at the heart of it, which was a sort of self-loathing, a sense of inadequacy, of being an outsider, a sense of yearning, to love and be loved. I recognized every single one of those qualities. And every time I went to write a new draft, it got more and more personal. I felt that everyone knows what it’s like to feel inadequate, and everyone knows what it’s like to wish they were someone else, to have the grace, the privileges, and the talents of somebody else. The idea of being a fake somebody rather than a real nobody is one of the testing temptations of life. Also, I think the fear that we all have of what people would think of us if they knew who we really were, if they knew what was in our hearts would they reject us? This idea of the basement where we hide our demons, which is the most interesting part of every person, and the thing that they’re the most frightened of. It’s so full of noise and terror. And that really, really intrigued me. And finally, it was set in Italy, the country where I’m most happy. So the chance to go there with the people who I made The English Patient with, was too great an opportunity to turn down. Plus, the story takes place during one of the most exciting times in Italy’s history. While we were shooting, I could fantasize that La Dolce Vita was being shot around the corner from us! (laughs)

The other thing that struck me about it, was that it was a genre-blending
film: it was a mystery, a thriller, a character study and a love story.
Well that’s one of my problems as a filmmaker, I want my films to be everything: a jazz film, an opera film, beautiful to look at, as dark as it can be, as tragic as it can be…I want all the volume controls turned up.

Who are your biggest influences as a filmmaker?
I play a game sometimes, which is: who would be the best director of this movie? I always thought that David Lean would have made The English Patient and that Hitchcock would have made Mr. Ripley. It doesn’t change the way that I make it, it reminds me of what was wonderful about the movies that these men made. What Hitchcock did, was give you a sense of being disturbed. I kept thinking about Vertigo, how you’re never allowed to get your feet on the ground. You always have the sense that the ground is going to open up and swallow you. So that was very much in my head. But my biggest influences overall have always been Italian cinema, early Fellini, the Taviani brothers...When I first really began to study it one summer, I remember thinking ‘Thank God, I’ve found the place where I belong. I found the world that I understand in the humanism of those films. There’s a film by Ermanno Olmi called The Tree of the Wooden Clogs that had a profound effect on me. I had the great pleasure and honor of meeting him when I was in Italy. There were no words to express what a life-changing effect his work has had on me. The Bicycle Thief is another film that has been a big influence. As a writer, too, I’ve always related more to Italians. As a writer I’ve always felt sort of muddling and skinless, that I tend to deal more with feeling, whereas most English writers like Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard and Edward Bond are very austere. So I didn’t know where I belonged until I discovered Italian cinema, either as a writer or as a filmmaker.

Let’s talk about your background. You were born and raised on the Isle of
Wight.
I was, and lived there ‘til I was 18. At the time I was there, I couldn’t wait to leave, and now I would go back in a second. I had a wonderful first 18 years, which at the time seemed isolated and stark to me. I didn’t realize what a rich world I was in. That’s why I love Fellini’s I Vitelloni (1953) so much. I felt it was about my life (laughs). It’s about a bunch of guys living in a seaside resort, dreaming about going to Rome. I used to do the same thing with my friends, hanging out, looking over at the mainland. “What are you going to do?” “I’m gonna go to London and be a musician,” or an artist, or a writer, or whatever. In fact, most of them ended up staying there. Later when I read Samuel Beckett, he said “There are two types of fools: the fool that keeps moving and the fool who stays where he is.” I always wondered which kind I’d be, and I guess I’m the fool who keeps moving. (laughs) So I was very happy to leave, and became an academic, after graduating university. I taught theater history and all the time I was writing, and eventually resigned and became a playwright. Originally I thought I’d write music, but I stumbled into playwriting, just like I stumbled into filmmaking. That’s the way it’s always been for me. There’s never been a plan. When you talk about your career, it has all the authenticity of a career, but while you’re living it, it has all the mess of life.

You mentioned music. What’s some of the music that has influenced you?
Bach, who is my compass, I think. I couldn’t be more of a maniac for every possible type of music. I’m as in love with John Coltrane as I am with Mozart. John Martin, who’s a Scottish singer and has a song at the end of Mr. Ripley, Van Morrison. I love opera, which you can probably tell from the movie. When I’m writing, one of the ways in for me is to listen to music. When I was writing The English Patient, I listened to Hungarian music and Arab music, to Italian music from the end of the war. That was the sort of river that I was rowing. The same thing with Mr. Ripley. I surrounded myself with opera and jazz. It’s an incredible voyage, selecting the right music.

When you were growing up was there one film, or piece of music or play that did it for you, where you said “This is my calling”?
I was quite an unhappy adolescent. I was a much angrier person at 15 than I am now, and was a much more politicized person, and a rebel. I got into a lot of trouble when I was in school. I couldn’t even tell you why, which is why I get very bored with explanations in movies, which are always so simple: “He’s this way because of that.” If only we knew why we are the way we are, if only it weren’t so mysterious. What happened to me when I started listening to a lot of west coast music like Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead…I thought maybe through the piano, which I so despised learning, I could exorcise some of my demons. I mean if you gave me list of composers at that point in my life, Bach would have been put on the very bottom! I viewed him as the man who tortured me during my piano lessons!(laughs) So like some kids have a diary, I had a piano in my bedroom, and just banged away at it, and wailed at my demons. I think the first time I wrote a song when I was 15 or 16, that’s when I realized the way to escape: through creating something, through performing something. Through creation I could celebrate what was different about me, rather than apologize. The music was really the way out for me, and I think that’s the case for many people. I have this vision of my parents reading this version of my childhood, and not recognizing it, saying “We were very happy.” And we were! We were very happy, and I’ve always been very close to my family, yet I was miserable, and it would be a lie to say I wasn’t. And that’s what’s so intriguing.

What did your father do for a living?
He was and still is an ice cream man. My parents had a little café when I was growing up, and now they just run their ice cream factory and wholesale it. Neither of my parents went to school, were very poor. I don’t think they ever gave themselves the luxury of a lot of cultural exposure, but they’ve gained it as they’ve gotten older. They’re finally living the sort of life that they deserve. In fact, they’re both in Mr. Ripley. That’s my father playing bocci with Jude Law.

Tell us about some of your plays that you wrote.
I had just started to get some recognition as a playwright when I stopped writing plays (laughs). The last thing I did was performed on the West End, called Made in Bangkok. It was a fairly savage, but humorous look at why men in western Europe travel 6000 miles to behave in ways that they’d never behave at home. It’s a kindred spirit of Ripley. In fact, there’s a moment in that play when a man is confronted by his wife about what he’s been doing, She says “Why didn’t you come to me and tell me what you wanted. Why did you have to hide?” And he says “Because there’s a basement inside of me. And if I let you into it, you’d never be able to look at me again.” In effect, that was an early rehearsal for Ripley, about people who are so ashamed at who they are, they have to hide from it. So the secretiveness of men is very much at the heart of Made in Bangkok and Ripley. It reminds me of this guy I once met who said “I really hate people who cheat on their wives openly. I would never cheat on my wife within 50 miles of home.” And he said this with no sense of irony.

How did you make the jump from playwriting to directing?
It was less a jump than a lurch. (laughs) Essentially, what happened was I was writing plays for television, theater and the radio, and I worked with all these great directors and was always working with the same actors. But I was always turning my plays over to someone else, and I thought ‘Wait a minute. Why not do that myself?’ So I did Truly, Madly, Deeply with Juliet Stevenson, who’s a great friend and with whom I’ve collaborated probably nine or ten times. We shot it in 28 days for $600,000. It was a very “private film” in many ways. Doing it was a life-changing event for me, because I suddenly realized that this was what I should have been doing all along.

Any advice for first-time directors?
One thing that I’ve realized about making films is that when you get to the end of the movie, all the things that made your nervous about the idea of the film come back to you. So if you see something disturbing about the idea of the film in the beginning, try to fix it before you shoot. The fragility of the idea in its initial incarnation will be the fragility of the film. You always tend to think that some magic dust will sprinkle itself over the problem in the script and fix it, but it doesn’t, and the problem will still be there when the film is finished.

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Deconstructing Woody Allen circa '67, plus Woody deconstructs Billy Graham!

The first of these is a 1967 profile of Woody Allen, done by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It was done just as Woody's star was rising, and many of his comments echo films to come.

The second pair of videos has Woody interviewing none other than evangelist Billy Graham, on one of his television specials from the late 60s. Enjoy!

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Pierce Brosnan: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Pierce Brosnan.


BONDING WITH BROSNAN
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the November 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

There are several dangers in becoming a cultural icon, not the least of which is the stigma that your public will forever keep you imprisoned in the mold of your iconography, allowing the recipient a privileged, if imprisoned, existence, particularly if that person is an artist. Sean Connery faced just such a dilemma during the height of James Bond-mania in the mid-60's. A serious actor, Connery desperately wanted to break out of the action hero mold that was author Ian Fleming's British Superspy James Bond, agent 007, and tackle more "serious" roles, finding it an uphill and bloody battle the whole way. Since Connery's day, the torch of James Bond has been passed to four different men, the latest being Irishman Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan, also a serious actor with roots in the British theater, has also begun his own attempt at breaking the Bond mold, forming his own production company, Irish Dream Time, with partner Beau St. Clair, and producing small, personal projects such as The Nephew (1998) as well as commercial blockbusters such as last summer's The Thomas Crown Affair. Brosnan carries himself onscreen with the debonair flair of an Oxbridge gentleman, but in fact, like his predecessor Sean Connery, his roots are the antithesis of the iconography which has been imposed upon him.

Pierce Brendan Brosnan was born May 16, 1953 in Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland. Shortly after his birth, his father walked out on he and his mother. Soon thereafter, his mother went to London to work as a nurse, leaving her only child in the care of various relatives. Being the only lad in the tiny community without either parent at home, Brosnan found himself in the position of an outsider, and did his best to fit in by being an altar boy in his local parish. At the age of 11, Brosnan was sent to London to live with his mother in the city's tough south side. Again an outsider, he was labeled "Paddy," and "the Mick" by his classmates, and turned to humor to defend himself from harm's way, not always with success. Brosnan cites a life-changing moment at this period, when his mother and stepfather took him to see the James Bond classic Goldfinger (1964) in a swank London cinema. At 16, he left school, aspiring to be a commercial artist, but was soon diverted after tagging along to an audition with a friend, and was bitten by the acting bug. Needless to say, the bite never healed.

Brosnan spent the next ten years doing both experimental and legitimate theater, working with the likes of Tennessee Williams and Joan Plowright on the London stage. It was here Brosnan met his late wife, the actress Cassandra Harris (Bond fans will remember her as "Countess Lisl" in For Your Eyes Only (1981)), who succumbed to ovarian cancer in 1991. Brosnan credits Harris with pushing and encouraging him in his craft, saying "Without her, I would most likely still be back in London doing plays."

After some bit roles in British TV, Brosnan's first movie role came in the gangster classic The Long Good Friday (1981), in a terrifying turn as an IRA hitman. Brosnan had no dialogue and only two scenes, but the juxtaposition of his cheerfully boyish looks and his deadly behavior made an impression on everyone who saw the film. This led to his being offered the lead in the epic American mini-series The Manions of America (1981). The ratings hit prompted Brosnan and Harris to relocate their family to the U.S. Almost immediately, Brosnan was cast as the lead in the hit NBC series Remington Steele (1982-87), solidifying his fame as a sex symbol and a debonair leading man. Many fans hailed him as a modern day Cary Grant, prompting James Bond producer Albert 'Cubby' Broccoli to pursue him as the new James Bond, following the retirement of Roger Moore, in 1986. Just hours away from signing his Bond contract, Remington Steele was renewed on NBC, forcing Brosnan to abandon the lucrative franchise to finish his commitment to the network. Timothy Dalton donned the Aston-Martin for two Bond films: The Living Daylights (1987) and License to Kill (1989). After Steele ended its run in 1987, Brosnan did a variety of TV and film work, most notably the spy thriller The Fourth Protocol (1987) in a terrifying turn as a cold-blooded Russian agent, the miniseries James Clavell's Noble House (1988), Bruce Beresford's acclaimed drama of culture clash in colonial Africa Mr. Johnson (1991), a comic foil to Robin Williams' Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), and the other object of Annette Benning's affections in Love Affair (1994). 1995 finally brought Brosnan back to the role he was born to play. Many Bond scholars (for lack of a better word) consider Brosnan's debut as Bond in GoldenEye, the move that saved the series from extinction. A box office smash world wide, it was followed by appearances in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996, again as the "other man"), the spoof Mars Attacks! (1996), the volcanic thriller Dante's Peak (1997), then Brosnan Bond #2, Tomorrow Never Dies (also 1997). In 1998, Brosnan and St. Clair formed Irish Dream Time, producing the charming The Nephew (1998) in which Brosnan had a small part, and John McTiernan's (See Venice, August 1999) dynamite remake of the Steve McQueen classic The Thomas Crown Affair. Brosnan's latest release is Bond #3, The World is Not Enough, directed by veteran helmer Michael Apted. In this latest high octane adventure, Bond must guard the life of a woman (the excellent Sophie Marceau) against that of her former kidnapper (The Full Monty's Robert Carlyle, also wonderful), a psychotic terrorist, who is slowly dying from a bullet that didn't kill him enough. The World is not only the best Brosnan Bond, but one of the best films of the series, hearkening back to the earliest Bond adventures, Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963), with its hard-edges and wonderfully drawn characterizations. This is a thriller about real people that never stops moving, the best of both worlds. Fine support is given by Denise Richards, the marvelous Dame Judi Dench, the venerable Desmond Llewelyn, and former Monty Python (himself an icon) John Cleese.

Something of a renaissance man, Brosnan is active in many philanthropies in addition to his film work. A tireless campaigner for environmental issues, he is also a champion of women's health issues (particularly the fight against ovarian cancer), and even made the bold move of boycotting the French premiere of GoldenEye to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific. Brosnan spoke to us from his home in Malibu, where he lives with fiancee Keely Shaye Smith and their young son, about these, and other topics. Needless to say, the conversation left us stirred, but never shaken...

We felt that The World is Not Enough is your best Bond, and one of the best of the series.
Pierce Brosnan: Yeah, I think it's pretty damn good, actually. It's found a certain stride to itself. From my perspective, I was very comfortable with it. When it's your third one, you'd better know what you're doing, and enjoy what you're doing. Having Michael Apted there was great, too, because he paid attention to character and to story, not that the other guys didn't, but Michael just listened. So we had a good time with it.

I liked the moral ambiguity that was brought back to Bond's character.
When (Michael and I) met and talked about it, our conversations were about that exactly. Who is this man? What's at stake for him? Seeing behind the curtain of who he is a little bit more, making it so the writing has some meaning, some emotional cornerstone so the character has a motivation and can have more of a relationship with someone like 'M' (Judi Dench), for example. So you end up caring about them.

I felt like it was a throwback to the first two Bond films, which were more straightforward spy films rather than live action cartoons.
Good, because that's what we were going for. If anything, the bells and whistles around (Bond) have gotten so big, it was a challenge to make it a real drama within the context of a Bond movie. I was really impressed with the final result, especially the fact that Michael really paid attention to the casting of it, and used his cinematic flair. He's not the obvious choice, maybe, for a Bond film, but he's a wonderful filmmaker and has a touch with the camera and story. And he was clever enough to let the guys who do all the technical wizardry get on with it. He used them without interfering with what they did, and used them as a theatrical director should use them.

Sean Connery had to really fight for non-action hero roles during the height of Bondmania. Has it been difficult for you, as well?
No, not really. The last three Bond movies have come fast and furious. I deliberately when I did GoldenEye said to my representatives 'Don't go seeking the obvious action roles. I want to just work quietly on things like Mars Attacks! or The Mirror Has Two Faces. I just wanted to be tucked away in a film where I didn't have too much responsibility. I just wanted to see what else was going on out there...so there has been a game plan in there, especially since forming my own company. I'm aware of the vast kind of impact that Bond creates not only on my own career, but on the rest of the world. He travels well, this character, and he proceeds me. You have to live with this character and I kind of made peace with that at the beginning because I had the knowledge of what Connery had gone through. I grew up with Connery as James Bond, and contrary to what you might have read, I never dreamt of, or wanted to play, this character, until '86 when they offered me the role the first time.

How does your interpretation of Bond differ from your predecessors?
Well, that's a tough question, and I can't really give a good answer without shooting myself in the foot...but I guess if I had to say one thing, it would be that I try to make him human. Making him real for myself. When you come to play the role, you have so much fucking baggage, so much mythology. How do you make him real for yourself?

Your Bond seems to have the most heart of any previous interpretation.
He probably does. There's only one man that you want to take the belt from, and that's Connery. So you go into the ring to win. It's a challenge. Connery had a sadistic side to him. The killings in this film...I don't know. I live with more heart.

What accounts for the longevity of the Bond films?
There's so many...the music, Monty Norman. "The name's Bond, James Bond." The whole mystique. The women. The locations. The tongue-in-cheek humor. The stunts. The gadgets. There are so many different elements. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly why.

What you're really saying is that, politics aside, the elements that make it work are timeless.
Yeah, they are timeless. People say, "The cold war is over, who's he going to fight?" Well, you're always going to have bad guys. You don't need a cold war to make James Bond fly. They kind of met on the landscape back in the 60's, and that was the shit that was going on. But he was a spy. Spies still exist. MI6 and the CIA still exist. Countries still have secrets. Hopefully I'll do another one after this one. We'll see about a fifth after that, but at some point I'll have to give it up. But (the Broccolis) are still a young family, and it's a family enterprise, so they'll find someone else. But it's all those elements that make it work. It's family entertainment, that's been passed on for generations. People loved Roger Moore. Roger did a great job, did seven films and it was entertaining. His Bond was what it was. I think you've got to respect the role. You've got to really pay attention to that. You can't just walk through it and play it flippantly. You've got to have an aside to the audience and take those moments when they come. It's a very loved role. When you read the books, the guy was human. He was hard man, but he had fear, he had doubts. He was pretty brutal. I don't know, the next time out, it would be nice to get a little more dark. But, you've got a 'PG,' so I don't know how you do that. I know that Michael would like to do one again, and I'd love to go out the door with Michael because what we set down here is a foundation, I think, certainly for another Bond film, and I think it'll whet people's appetites who liked Connery. They'll say "Ah, this is good. It goes back to the old days, but we're still in a 1990's movie." Besides, Bond is universal now. I think if you tried to go back and play him as Ian Fleming wrote it (in the 1950's and early 60's) I don't know that it would work today.

Let's talk about your background. You spent your early childhood in Ireland.
It was a very tiny farming town called Navan, about 30 miles north of Dublin. I'm actually going back there next week, and they're giving me the keys to the town, which is pretty cool. (laughs) I go back there every other year, sometimes twice a year. I have a company called Irish Dream Time, and my intention is to go back there and work with young Irish writers and do Irish films to put back into my own country what I've garnered from living and being educated in England and having a career in Hollywood. Those are the intentions, those are the dreams, the desires. So far I've done it with one film, and we'll see where it leads us.

Up until the time you moved to England in 1964, you led a pretty solitary childhood, living with various relatives and so forth. Did that sense of isolation and loneliness help you develop your creative side?
I would say it played a big part in being a creative person and living within the imagination, and surviving within a community where you're the odd man out. In the 50's in southern Ireland in a tiny country town ruled by religion, to have your father leave and be the only kid without parents, yeah, that impacts your life in a very profound way. You do have to survive it, and you keep your own council, and consequently keep your own dreams. The first theatrical performance of being in front of an audience for me was being an altar boy. I didn't want to be an actor then, but thinking back on it, serving mass is a very theatrical experience. But it wasn't until I went to London, music is what pulled me into the arts. Music still plays a very important part in my life. Actually making movies and doing something like Thomas Crown has given me the opportunity to say 'Okay, we've made this movie, now let's put music on it.' So I guess living the life I've led has brought me to being an actor, yeah.

What are some of your favorite music and musicians?
The Who. I actually had dinner with Roger Daltrey the other night, and it was just amazing. The Who colored a lot of my life at that time with the mods. Pink Floyd is another band. (English) West coast music was very influential for me. Ska and bluebeat, with Desmond Dekker and the Israelites and all that. When I discovered Floyd, a lot of doors opened up (laughs) because of what it came with. Not that I was an acid head. Never done it, never will. But there was a consciousness and a freedom there where the doors just burst off their hinges. I discovered theater at the same time in this art lab. John Mayall was someone that I really dug, also. Then you have Buffalo Springfield, Love, Spirit, and then it moves on to Springsteen, The Clash...I was living in south London and the punk movement was happening. The apartment I was living in was full of punks. But then you drop the ball, and you don't know what's going on. Right now is one of those times for me. I don't know what the heck's going on in music because I don't listen to enough. My mind's somewhere else now and that kind of freaks me out because you think 'Shit, I'm not connected and I don't know what the sound is.' But you have to let that go and you find yourself listening to John Coltrane, or someone else you've read about for a long time, but never really paid attention to. Or Chopin, who reinvented the piano for himself.

London must've been incredible culture shock for a little kid from a small Irish town.
I was back to surviving again, surviving in the sense that now I was Irish. It's 1964 and you're a "mick," you're a "paddy." I was in a huge school with over 2,000 kids, whereas two days before I was in a classroom of maybe 20 kids in school with seven classrooms. It was a good time. The education was shit, but the survival instincts kick in, and you end up fighting, which is kind of a miserable thing to have to do, and so I turned to comedy. I survived through mimicking and finding the funny side of the situation. Plus, I was good at art. So I came out and became a commercial artist, which was going nowhere because I realized I wasn't that great, that I'd be sitting in a studio with guys who'd been there for many years, griping about the boss, their wages, their wives, and just generally griping.

I understand seeing Goldfinger was a life-changing event for you.
It was the first film I saw in London. I wish I could remember more of the story, but I think Pink Floyd sort of got in the way, there! (laughs) I saw Goldfinger one weekend and Lawrence of Arabia the next. So the seed was sown for the movies, because I'd never seen anything like either one. I was just blown away. I was used to two little cinemas that showed black and white movies. Suddenly, you're seeing this unbelievable character. Actually, it was Oddjob that captured my imagination in that film, he and Shirley Eaton, covered in gold paint. And the fight sequence at the end in Fort Knox, where all the money in the world was. The gold bars. The music. It was just kind of visceral. You could feel it. I was hooked on movies ever since. And that was the start of my movie education, so to speak, and I started going to the movies every weekend. The films of Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen were big influences, as well.

It must've been a thrill for you to re-interpret Thomas Crown.
I didn't know much about McQueen as a person until I was working on the movie, and on the plane they showed a documentary called Steve McQueen: King of Cool. And that always scared the shit out of me, because he was the coolest dude. How do you out-cool the king of cool? Well, you don't! (laughs) But when I watched that film, I was blown away by the similarities of our childhoods. But when I was making the movie it was just a lovely affirmation that maybe he would have dug what I was doing. He had an influence on me, without question, the way he moved, his style. At the same time, when I discovered acting, I wanted to do theater, I wanted to do Shakespeare. When I discovered the theater, I finally got an education in literature and life.

Tell us about some of your favorite theatrical work.
I did a play with Tennessee Williams called The Red Devil Battery Site. It wasn't one of his most famous pieces, theatrically...Tennessee was near the end at that point. He didn't know that. No man does, but he was very gracious and always this twinkle in his eye. He was captivating. Brando was a mighty influence on me when I started as an actor, but he wasn't accessible, because he was so gifted. Whereas McQueen I always felt was accessible. By the time I discovered Brando, he had a complexity and a spirit of nature that was from another planet! So here I am working with Tennessee Williams, who'd worked with Brando. And Tennessee was very gracious to me. I was understudying the second male lead in the play. I had two lines in the end, as a member of a gang. About eight days into rehearsal, the guy I was understudying, I could see he was in trouble. They called me into the office and said "Do you know this role?" I said 'I know it inside out.' So I went out to Tennessee's house to audition. And I knew then that a door to an opportunity had opened. You just know that shit when you're young, and you've got to know it when you're older, too. So I went round to his place in Sloan Square, and there was Tennessee. I did the scene and I got the role, and it was a huge break. Franco Zeffirelli saw me and cast me in a play that he did. Tennessee was there for me, so to speak. He sent me a telegram opening night which said "Thank God for you, dear boy. Tennessee Williams." (laughs) I still have (the telegram)." When I worked with Joan Plowright, I got to have lunch with her and the great Laurence Olivier. I did workshops with La Mama, which was an amazing American company that opened my eyes to a whole new learning experience...You find the people that you can learn from, sit at their feet, and learn. I've been very lucky.

Your first film was the gangster classic The Long Good Friday.
My agent called me up and said "You've got a job." That was it. I didn't get a script. They told me I was an IRA hitman...I had no idea what I was in. I knew Bob Hoskins was great. I knew the guy who wrote it, Barrie Keeffe, had written some good plays. I knew it had violence to it, that it took place in south London. That's as much as I knew. Nobody invited me to the premiere. I went to a regular screening, and it turned out to be a killer movie, a classic.

Then you did The Manions of America, moved to the U.S., and did Remington Steele.
Yes, it was the happiest, wildest, greatest time of my life. It had endless opportunities, possibilities and it also came with the disillusionment that I wasn't quite there yet. I came here with the idea that I'd work with Scorsese. Taxi Driver, one of my all-time favorite films, I saw it 12 times during my days at drama school. I had dreams of doing films. I came and they offered me a TV series. And I was very happy, very proud. I owe a lot to my late wife, Cassandra, because she was the one who spurred me on to do it. If she'd listened to me, we'd still be back in south London, doing theater work. But coming to America was mighty. I'd always dreamt about America. When I was a little boy and came to England from Ireland, I looked for all the big cars and high rises, thinking England was America. I confused it. It wasn't. (laughs) But The Manions of America was my ticket to America and the performance had a rawness and an energy to it that I haven't had onscreen since then, irony of ironies, which I'd like to get back to.

Losing the chance to play Bond in '86 because of the contractual obligation to Steele must have been devastating.
It was. It was a knife in the heart. And not just for me, for my family, because we moved our children back to England and got fucked over by very short people. You get over it. It's just being an actor. Shit happens like that. But Remington Steele, fond memories. It was scary, too, because I'd never worked so fast before. Bob Butler, who created Hill Street Blues, let me play with a lot of pace, and move dialogue around a lot, and consequently they wrote more dialogue for me. It was a wonderful learning experience, but I also learned bad habits that didn't translate to movies. But I created a character that I loved, and I hope that others loved as well.

Your Thomas Crown Affair is the only remake I can think of that's better than the original.
Yeah, I've gotta say, thank you. It is. (laughs) It was a glorious finding of each other, John McTiernan and myself. We had a good script and I came bearing gifts to this guy, and he's someone that I really respect and admire as a filmmaker. Once he signed on, it went to another elevation of story. We made it our own, and I tried to make it my own, and not be too fearful of "the king of cool." Somewhere I think he was looking over us going "Way to go."...but now it's time to shake that sort of cinematic confidence up and get down and be mean, or do a romantic comedy. It's an exciting time. It's been a great ride.

I know you're very concerned about environmental and women's health issues.
I think they go hand-in-hand. First of all, I've got a great woman in my life right now and lucky me that I found someone that can make me feel strong and want to stand up and face the world together. I've stood up for woman's health care because it pissed off and angered me to see my children go through the loss of their mother. It was one of the most devastating things that any person can go through, to lose their partner and the parent to their child. So cancer I would love to see eradicated. The environmental work I've done stems from that. The people I've met and the journey I've been on has taught me that we've got a small planet and we're growing very fast. I love the forests. I love the oceans. So I've lent my name to certain causes and issues and it's all come about at a time when I've become a little more famous than I was.

Do you think a lot of that environmental concern stems from your childhood in Ireland?
Sure. I grew up in the countryside in one of the tiniest islands on the planet. One of the lushest, one of the greenest, one of the cleanest. I love nature, but if we carry on the way we've been going, we won't have a lot of it left. I have children, and for my children's children, I'd like to leave something behind. I travel the world and see a lot of negligence. Negligence from corporations and people trying to make a fast buck by pulling the guts out of a forest, or down in Baja, Mexico at St. Ignacio lagoon, Mitsubishi wants to go down there and make it into a salt mine. It's where the gray whales go, their breeding ground. That's one of my things. You have to choose one or two things, otherwise you spread yourself too thin, and can't be effective.

I heard that you and Keely had an interesting meeting with Newt Gingrich not long ago.
Yeah, a couple years ago. We went to talk to him about the dolphin bill. We met up with him after we saw him on the Jay Leno show. We got to him through his mom, who's a big Remington Steele fan. So there you go. You use it anyway you can...Our meeting helped things for a while, but the dolphin issue bill is still pending, and they're still going out there, trying to kill dolphins.

Is there an address or website people can contact who'd like to get involved with these causes?
There are. You can go to the NRDC, the National Resources for Defense, for which I'm a board member. You can go to the American Oceans Campaign, for which I'm also on the board. They're both brilliant. Planet Ark, an Australian outfit, is also wonderful. They're non-confrontational, and just deal with information, and education for young people. If this planet is gonna survive, it's gonna be through the kids. Our forefathers really botched it up here, and didn't pay attention.

What's next on your slate?
I've got a film called Grey Owl that I did last year for Richard Attenborough. It's a true story. Grey Owl was an Ojibwa Indian who later became a well-known conservationist, wrote a great deal about the environment. It was a wonderful experience because I got to spend time in the Indian community and had a wonderful educational experience. I think it's a good film. It's a film that's close to my heart. I think it will find an audience, and already has up in Canada, where it's been released. It's a quiet piece, and I think it has resonance at the story's end. Grey Owl was a character I related to a great deal. His background was similar to mine. He was abandoned by his parents and brought up by his aunts. He left Hastings, England in the 1930's and dreamt about becoming an Indian, and did it. We portrayed the nice side of his life, but he was an alcoholic, a bigamist, a scalawag at heart. But he became an Indian, became an amazing trapper, then a young woman turned his life around and he began to write. She was a full-blooded Pawnee. She got him to stop trapping and start writing. He became a sensation and toured the world. In England, he was like a rock star. Then on his deathbed, they discovered he was a white Englishman! I think they're waiting to release it here until Bond and Thomas Crown die down. That's the wonderful thing about having a character like Bond in my back pocket: I can do these small films, big films, or anything I damn well please, really. It's a sweet time.

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Phillip Noyce: The Hollywood Interview

Director Phillip Noyce confers with actors Derek Luke (left) and Tim Robbins (right) on the set of Catch a Fire (2006).


THE ART OF NOYCE
By
Alex Simon

The following article appeared in the November 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

Phillip Noyce was born April 29, 1950 in Griffith, New South Wales, Australia. The son of a country lawyer, he moved with his family to Sydney when he was 12. As a teenager, he began experimenting with an 8mm camera. He turned the hobby into a passion after viewing a program of American underground films, when he realized one didn't need much of a budget to capture exciting images on film. With tiny donations by friends, he made his first short, Better to Reign in Hell in 1968. He then enrolled as a law student at Sydney University, but after a year switched over to the arts.

Throughout his studies, he continued making short films with equipment owned by the university's film society. He also became the manager of a filmmakers' co-operative and worked briefly as an assistant on professional productions. In 1972, he was one of the first dozen students enrolled at the Australian Film and Television School, where he made two shorts and a 50 minute documentary, Castor and Pollux, which won the Rouben Mamoulian Award at the 1974 Sydney Film Festival and represented the school at the Grenoble (France) Festival.

The success of his first professional film, God Knows Why, But It Works (1975), a dramatized documentary about the work of a Greek-born doctor among the Aborigines, paved the way for Noyce's first feature, Backroads (1977), a powerful drama about race relations. He followed this immensely impressive though low-budgeted film with Newsfront (1978), a heart-felt valentine to newsreel filmmakers before the advent of television. After a couple of lesser dramas, Noyce returned strongly with the suspenseful thriller Dead Calm (1989). That film won him an invitation from Hollywood, where he went on to make big budget hits, most of which display Noyce's fascination with technology, such as the Tom Clancy adaptations Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), the Joe Eszterhas-scripted Sliver (1993), and The Saint (1997). Noyce's latest is The Bone Collector, a tense thriller starring Denzel Washington as a best-selling author and former member of New York's finest who is paralyzed from the neck down, and is reluctantly recruited to aid a rookie cop (Angelina Jolie, excellent as always) in her investigation of a series of brutal serial killings.

Phillip Noyce is a bear of a man in person: 6'4, with a frame that would make most NFL linebackers cringe. He recently sat down in his offices, designed by famed architect Frank Gehry, to discuss his work.

When I first heard about this film, I thought 'Oh God, not another serial killer movie.' But you really made it about the characters, not the killings.
Phillip Noyce: Yeah, we've seen a lot of movies about serial killers, a couple of which have been special: Silence of the Lambs, and Seven. It's very hard to be original on that subject. To me, when I read the screenplay, the fact that there was a killer out there was the reason to bring these two people together. It's true, that the fact that the killings are brutal provides a tension outside the relationship between Denzel and Angelina that then sort of reflects back onto them. What happens to each of the characters individually and what happens to them together, fascinated me when I read the screenplay. I've always been drawn to brainy action heroes, like Jack Ryan, and Lincoln Rhyme, Denzel's character, also thinks with his brain as much as his brawn. They're almost cousins! (laughs) It's just that Lincoln Rhyme has this problem in that he's quardropalegic. And the fear that he has of losing the use of his brain, his most precious asset, I found very moving. It's a very uplifting story. When you go out and meet quardropalegics who, in spite of their handicap, lead full lives, Christopher Reeve is the most prominent example, it's very inspiring. It's funny, I kept getting the two characters confused during filming. Sometimes I'd say Lincoln Ryan instead of Rhyme! (laughs) I'm working on an adaptation for a new Clancy film now (The Sum of All Fears) and I've found myself calling the character Jack Rhyme! (laughs) So there you are.

I thought the relationship between Denzel and Angelina Jolie was very interesting.
Yes. In many ways it's a love affair that's 99% mental. I only realized why I felt that was interesting when I met a quadropalegic in England and I asked about his sex life. And he said 'Look, your genitals are your usual place where we feel sexual response. But, it's not where it originates. In spite of what many women may think, men's brains are not in their dicks, they're in their heads. When a woman turns me on, my head becomes a giant, swollen penis! (laughs) I experience orgasm up here just as strongly as I ever did when it was mainly centered in my loins. All the pleasure cells are still operating.' So the non-physical sexual relationship they share in the film, to me, defines the essence of a true relationship. There are some similarities to Rear Window (1954), but even more than that film, Denzel's character inhabits the mind and the body of Angelina's character. It's not just that she goes out because he's confined to the apartment. She walks for him. She brings him back to life. She sees for him, touches for him, smells for him. I just found the nature of that relationship fascinating, because he recognized at the beginning that she was him! Again, they don't have sex, but that's a wonderfully romantic and erotic relationship. In many ways, this is Pygmalion, with a twist, where Professor Higgins is a detective.

Angelina Jolie is a fascinating actress, and obviously Denzel is one of the great actors of his generation. What was it like working with them? How are they alike, and how do their techniques differ?
Denzel combines the best of two distinguished traditions: the English and American traditions of acting. The American modern tradition is called "method," where the actor immerses him or herself into the character totally. Denzel trained in the theater where you've got to do that every night. Obviously he could never truly realize the pain that a real quadropalegic goes through, so he immersed himself in the technical aspects of being a quardopalegic. Much of the decision to cast him was based on the belief that if this movie, which is basically a piece of escapist entertainment, if it was seen to be belittling the experience of being a quardropalegic, the audience would reject it and it would fail miserably. By casting Denzel, I felt that I had a man of great dignity, of great prowess as an actor, of great humanity, and someone who would never belittle the predicament of his character. Regarding Angelina, when I saw her in Gia (1998) I thought 'This is some spice that I've never tasted before, and it's hot!' (laughs) When you part come along calling for an actress in her early to mid-20's and one of such extraordinary talent comes along, it's very difficult to ever again think of anyone else, and we never did. She is gifted with her father's (Jon Voight) thespian skills. She is gifted with both parents' beauty. The camera loves her. She's charismatic. She's absolutely dedicated, constantly telling her stand-in not to worry about standing in for lighting...as complicated as we might think she is, but when it comes to acting, she's very uncomplicated, but is not afraid so much that she denies possibilities. She was fresh, hungry, eager, willing and unafraid. It was one of the best experiences I've had working with an actor.

Tell us about your childhood.
I grew up in a town called Griffith, 500 miles to the south of Sydney. It was an irrigation area in the middle of the desert, an oasis. It was a citrus growing area, the fruit bowl of New South Wales, and it was 60% Italian. My father had a lot of Italian clients who paid him in kind: fresh bread, cheese, salami, wine, which I became addicted to at a very early age. There was always an Italian wedding to go to every month. So it was a strange place. Later the area became notorious not as the fruit bowl, but as the marijuana bowl. (laughs)

How did you fall in love with movies in an environment like that?
There were two picture theaters. One screened Italian movies, subtitled. But the picture theater that I frequented was the Lyceum theater. I loved movies because I could escape into the stories, but I never imagined that I would make them. An even more important influence was traveling vaudeville shows that would come to our town. That was the main attraction for kids at these agricultural shows, the sideshows. I used to love these shows. I loved the life that I imagined the people that ran them lived. My parents used to give me and my two brothers one pound each over the three days of the show to spend. There was two ways to get in: sneak under the tent, or offer yourself as the stooge. They'd always ask for volunteers. I always did, because I got in for free. (laughs) I remember this guy took a piece of paper, stuck it on the end of my tongue. Then his wife, who was about 5 feet 2, took a sword that must've been 4 foot 6, raised it in the air, and cut the paper in half! So close to my tongue, that it wasn't funny. But I wasn't thinking of that. All I could hear was the roar of the crowd. (laughs) I just wanted to be part of the show. My earliest memorable experience seeing a film was when Psycho came to town in the early 60's. Big event. By the time it got to our 10,000 population town, it was notorious for scaring the wits out of people. I don't know why my parents allowed me to see this movie, because it wasn't on the usual Saturday matinee that I went to. That was an event, seeing people so scared by this thing. Also the shower scene was good for a young boy because it was so...sexy! (laughs)

Did you go to film school?
Yeah, I got into movies when there was no movie industry in Australia to speak of, there hadn't been since the late 30's, the beginning of the second world war. There was a thriving film industry during the depression years, largely due to one man named Ken G. Hall. He made up to four features a year, seventeen in all between 1930-1941. When I grew up, we suffered from a peculiar disease later diagnosed as "the cultural cringe," which basically told us we shouldn't bother doing anything (artistic), because the English, particularly the Americans could do it better, so why should we bother? Economically, it was true, because the picture theaters were owned by British and American concerns. When I was 17, I saw an advertisement for some American underground movies being shown by a group called Ubu Films in Sydney. I was struck by the fact that these were movies made cheaply where personal expression was the key. They basically said that anyone could make a movie. So I thought 'I'm anyone,' and I raised some money, sold parts to my friends, and shot a movie for about $600-$700 about the sex fantasies of a teenager. (laughs) I sent it to a film festival in Holland. At that time there was an anomaly in the Australian censorship laws. They seized my film when I put it in the post, and banned it, which was perfect! It was only banned for export, not screening in the country itself. It became quite notorious and did very well! (laughs)

You initially studied law, right?
Yeah, then I studied fine art at Sydney University. During that time I became manager of the Sydney Filmmakers' Co-op. It was short filmmakers pulling their films together, renting them out to theaters and showing them. We also started a number of cinemas in Sydney and Melbourne, and other cities, screening the short films of many Australian filmmakers who are well-known now: George Miller (Mad Max trilogy), Peter Weir (The Truman Show), Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant), Fred Schepisi (Roxanne), Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), and screening them to a very appreciative audience. They were thrilled that the images reflected their faces, rather than American faces. I then went to the National Film School, as one of the first students chosen, for a one year in an accelerated course in directing. I spent about a year showing the films, and living off the films that I made at film school, one of which was a documentary called Castor and Pollux, which contrasted a gang of bikers and a gang of hippies. It became quite a success, which led to my making my first short feature, Backroads, which was inspired by Wim Wenders' Kings of the Road (1976). The film was largely improvised by the actors, even though the action part of the story was scripted.

Dead Calm is the film that brought you to Hollywood. Tell us about the genesis of that.
It was quite a departure for me in that it came out of working in television. George Miller bought an old picture theater in Sydney with his partner Byron Kennedy. They founded a director's studio that was like Coppola's Zoetrope Studios, and a number of us were under contract there, and did television work. I did two miniseries there, one about a breakout at a Japanese POW camp during WW II. I did an episode on this series about a Japanese and an Australian pinned down in the jungle fighting each other. It was about the tension between the two of them. The result of that one hour was that I realized that I seemed to have a talent for what we call "thrillers." At this time, Tony Bill who I had met when I first came to America with Newsfront, had given me a novel by the American writer Charles Williams, and this was Dead Calm. Orson Welles had been trying to make it before he died. I brought it back and showed it to George, who expressed desire to make it. Tony was kind enough to let George approach Ojda Kadar, Orson Welles' last girlfriend, who had appeared in Orson's unfinished version of Dead Calm, because Tony had not been able to convince Ojda to sell the rights to him, for him to direct. George, who is a doctor, has a marvelous bedside manner, approached Ojda and convinced her that we didn't want to make a Hollywood version of the story, and that the adaptation would be done in the spirit of what we imagined would please Orson. She agreed, then Tony very generously allowed us to make the film without his participation. And that's the film that brought me to America.

You've always been fascinated by technology in your films. Where does this come from?
It goes back to those experimental films that were my first inspiration. One of those films from that period that I most fondly remember was called Burning Off, which was a silent movie that had a smell track. Burning off was something my father did every Sunday, which was burning the eucalyptus leaves, and this thick smoke would gather round the house. For Burning Off the movie, they brought in film canisters full of leaves which we burned while people were watching! (laughs) We also did things like have people leap out of the screen while people were watching, so the movie would become real. There was a term for this called "expanded cinema." I also had a light show company for a while that would do light shows at rock concerts.

Any advice for first-time directors?
The important thing I'd say is to try and look at your story for the elements that are not necessarily apparent, but which are going to connect with an audience. For example, with The Bone Collector, the story is apparently about hunting for a serial killer, but really the movie connects with audience on a deeper level because it's about resurrection, a story that, like the story of Christ, has been connecting with human beings for centuries. There's always something in every successful story that operates on a spiritual or gut level, far apart from what's apparently on the page or the screen, and you really have to find out what that one element is, and structure the whole movie around exploiting that. Secondly, nothing is more important than the characters in the story. Unless the audience finds someone to connect with, someone who engages them, it doesn't matter how many fancy shots you have, it's all for naught.

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Philip Kaufman: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Philip Kaufman.


KAUFMAN/SADE
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 2000/January 2001 issue of Venice Magazine.

Philip Kaufman might be the greatest American filmmaker you've never heard of. A director of uncompromising precision, instinct and intelligence with a sensibility much more European than American, Philip Kaufman was born October 26, 1936 in Chicago, the grandson of German-Jewish immigrants. After graduating the University of Chicago with a degree in history, Kaufman attended Harvard Law School, but returned to his alma matre after a year for a postgraduate degree in history. After relocating to San Francisco in 1960, Kaufman spent time traveling around Europe with his wife Rose (his frequent writing collaborator) and their young son Peter (who now produces most of his father's films). Inspired by the French and Italian New Wave films he saw there, Kaufman was determined to become a filmmaker.

Returning to the States, Kaufman and friend Benjamin Manaster collaborated on Goldstein, a mystical-satirical film based on a Hassidic folk tale. Shot over a period of two years, the film shard the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at Cannes in 1964, with Jean Renior hailing it as "the best American film I have seen in 20 years." Kaufman's next film was Fearless Frank (1965), starring Jon Voight in his film debut. A combination comic book/countercultural fable, the film took four years to find a distributor, and did little business. It took Kaufman until 1972 before he was able to secure major studio backing for The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, a revisionist take on the Jesse James-Cole Younger gang. After The White Dawn (1974), a whaling adventure starring Warren Oates, shot in the Arctic, Kaufman began work on his adaptation of The Outlaw Josey Wales. Originally hired by star-producer Clint Eastwood to write and direct the western epic, Kaufman was fired after two weeks of shooting, but retained screenplay credit. He scored his first box office hit with the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and further enhanced his growing reputation with the cult hit The Wanderers the following year. The Right Stuff (1983), based on Tom Wolfe's tongue-in-cheek look at the early days of the space program, was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won four. After a five year hiatus, Kaufman returned with the masterful The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), a sexually-frank portrait of a womanizing doctor (Daniel Day-Lewis) set against the politically tumultuous backdrop of 1968 Prague. It won Best Film and Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. Kaufman's next film, Henry and June (1990), also dealt frankly with adult sexuality in telling the story of author Anaïs Nin and her affair with fellow scribe Henry Miller in Paris of the 1930's. The first, and last, major studio release to carry the NC-17 rating (Showgirls notwithstanding), the film was a critical success and a box office failure. Kaufman next adapted Michael Crichton's culture clash thriller Rising Sun (1993), a murder mystery set in the Japanese-American underworld, starring Sean Connery and Wesley Snipes.

Philip Kaufman's latest film might rank among his best work, and is certainly one of the most important films of 2000. Quills, adapted by Doug Wright from his play, tells the story of the Marquis de Sade (Geoffery Rush, brilliant as always) during his final days in the notorious Charenton insane asylum in post-revolutionary France. The Marquis, still arguably the most controversial author in history with scatological literary works such as Justine and Salo: 120 Days of Sodom to his credit, finds his artistic freedom challenged when a progressive (and sadistic) new doctor (Michael Caine) is brought into run the asylum by the authority of Napoleon himself, usurping the rule of the liberal-minded young priest (Joaquin Phoenix) who allows the Marquis writing materials with which to create his perverse works. Throw into the mix a ravishing young laundress (Kate Winslet) for whom the priest and the Marquis both have eyes, and you have all the ingredients for one of the most thought-provoking, horrifying, hilarious and stunning films in many a moon. Since the Marquis is a subject from whom most filmmakers have tended to shy away (only Peter Brook's legendary film Marat/Sade (1966), based on his equally legendary staging of Peter Weiss' play, has dealt with the subject before, as well as a forgettable 1969 film starring Keir Dullea), this makes Quills all the braver as a work, as well as a still-relevant commentary on artistic freedom, and moral hypocrisy in our post-Kenneth Starr political age. Mr. Kaufman (as well as most of the cast and author Wright) should do rough drafts of their Oscar speeches between now and March, 2001.

Philip Kaufman sat down with Venice recently to talk about his latest work, as well as his career as one of America's most original and challenging filmmakers.

Tell us what drew you to this particular script, because this is first time you've directed a film that you haven't written.
Philip Kaufman: I thought it was a great story. I had read the Marquis in the 60's, although I'd never thought of making a film about him. I'd seen Marat/Sade on Broadway when it first opened, and it was one of the greatest experiences I'd ever had in theater. It just blew me away. Somehow we got seats right down in front, and the lunatics were surrounding me in the boxes. Glenda Jackson was on stage right in front of me and was just fantastic. Although the film version was very good, it was more like they were moving a camera through the staged play. It never really made the transformation into a movie that they might have done. The play was claustrophobic, but it was also like you were caught in the middle of this very grand, mad entertainment, almost like it was an Olsen and Johnson show like Hellzapoppin'! (laughs) You truly felt the madness around you. I also got to know Peter Brook later through our frequent collaborator, Jean-Claude Carrière. So there were all these little connections that were there, but I have to go back to the fact that Doug Wright wrote what I felt was a very potent and powerful fable. I thought it was almost a mythical tale, something you don't get to see much anymore. Those tend to get watered down nowadays with this endless quest we have for the happy ending, which denies the kind of liberating, curative, instructive powers of tragedy. We want comedies and happy endings, and consequently we resorted to a lot of violence in movies and we let the hero go off in the end, ready for a sequel. Commercial considerations I think have caused the ruin of folk tales. Also the subject of adult sexuality is not done very much, or very well in film. It's almost done on a pornographic level: beautiful bodies in bed together, without any sense of the content or resonances of the characters. The irony is that everyone, I think, thinks about sex all the time, whereas they don't think about violence all the time. Europeans are much more aware of that and much more open to portraits of sexuality in film, whereas they're much more wary of violence in film.

When I was watching the film, I kept thinking back to The Crucible both because of the subject matter and because of the relevance to the time in which it was written. With Quills, the correlations between the Clinton-Kenneth Starr hearings are quite evident.
I read Quills when that was all going on. It's funny because I'm old enough to remember seeing "The Crucible" on stage when it first came out, during the McCarthy era. I never thought of that correlation between the two before, but you're absolutely right. Like the army-McCarthy hearings, the Ken Starr hearings were disgraceful. When I was talking to Michael Caine about doing the part of the doctor, he was unsure at first, and said "I don't want to play some angry guy who just comes in to repress everyone." I said 'Michael, there's a guy in our country who goes out to the garbage cans and the press runs out and surrounds him as he goes through the trash. And he smiles in the most inappropriate way as he does it. His name is Ken Starr. He always says things that sort of ring true to the public, but it's that smile that's sort of inappropriate.' Michael said "I'll do it." I take Michael Caine's character, Dr. Royer-Collard, to be a modern man. They often say that after the French revolution, we get into the modern man. Royer-Collard goes into the house that he's been given, walks over the bloodstains up the stairs and says "I never look at the past, only to the future. And let's put bars on the windows," to protect the virtue of his young bride whom he's about to rape. Then he smiles, as if to say "every smart man would do something like this." There's something so deeply hypocritical in that, because he basically becomes a Sadian hero. As the Marquis says himself later on, "(Royer-Collard) is a man after my own heart." (laughs) The Marquis believed man to be an ignoble savage, the opposite of what philosophers like Rousseau believed.

You've always had a gift for assembling amazing casts, and Quills is no exception.
Geoffery Rush and all of these actors are great people, and you can't say that about every actor. They're all very bright, witty, great conversationalists. The greatness of Geoffery is that he goes from film-to-film and is almost unrecognizable in each one. It was great to have a Marquis who wasn't a leading, identifiable actor. I asked myself who the greatest actors in the world were when I was casting, and certainly Geoffery is on that list. When I met with Geoffery, I discovered that he has a wide range of experiences that he brings to a role. He's very sexy. The daughter of our costume designer, Jacqueline West, brought her daughter to the set, who's a student at UC Davis, and she just found Geoffery incredibly sexy and seductive. You can feel how powerful he is when you're with him.

Tell us about working with Michael Caine.
I teased Michael a lot by saying 'Michael, I'd get to know you a lot better if you didn't keep getting it on the first take every time!' (laughs) He's amazing. He just gets it. But Michael, who seems to be so casual, he's joking all the time, when you get up close to him you can feel the heat coming off him. He's very intense. It's not nervousness, but he's all wound up inside, ready for the scene. To the outside world, he appears to be completely different. Ed Harris is like that, too. He's a dynamo inside, just simmering.

Joaquin Phoenix is one of the most interesting young actors working today. What was he like?
I was talking with Kate Winslet one morning in London, saying 'Who can we get to play the Abbé?' Kate said "Well, there's this one guy who I think is the best actor of my generation--Joaquin Phoenix." It was really funny, because Ridley Scott had been calling me about him, and Joaquin was flying up that afternoon to read for me! (laughs) Joaquin is complex, for reasons that we all know. He's hurt and bruised and has been through trauma within his own family. Yet what people don't know is how bright and articulate he really is. He chose a very difficult role here. It's probably the most difficult thing for an actor to play straight and narrow and give it dimension. We have very few actors who can do that nowadays. Spencer Tracy and actors like that could do it. But today, actors want to be showy, they want to be quirky. When you look at Joaquin, you see the resonance of a Montgomery Clift and John Garfield. He's very romantic. At heart, this is a very romantic movie. It's also about the making of an artist. What does it take to make a true, perceptive writer? Some people find it to be very sad, but I find it to be quite hopeful in the end.

Let's talk about your background.
I grew up in Chicago. I was an only child. My dad wanted to be a journalist. He went to Northwestern night school and always tried to write, but he wound up in the produce business. My mom was a housewife. I grew up on the north side of Chicago. When I did The Wanderers it was sort of a reflection back to what that was like, although that film took place in New York. There were a lot of kind of American street guys there. We all wore club jackets. There was always the threat of fights, but never really were. That was the era before guns were really prevalent. We were all athletes, played ball, tried to get laid. Some things never change. (laughs)

Did the isolation of being an only child help you develop your creativity?
I suppose. During those long, cold, snowy Chicago winters, I'd look out the window and think about a lot of things. The other thing was that I was friends with a lot of very clever, funny guys. Many of them went on to become writers, college professors, and filmmakers, like William Friedkin (The Exorcist, Rules of Engagement). I went to grammar school and high school with Billy. He's a very funny guy, a real character. This was before people moved to the suburbs, so everybody lived in Chicago. We got this new, sprawling culture and I think we lost something in the process. I've always been lucky to have great groups of friends, and I try to make my films reflect that. I try to get all these great people around me where we talk about things that interest us. It's like experiencing college all over again for a few months.

Were you drawn to film from the time you were a kid?
Sure. I used to go to double features when I was a kid. In high school, we'd sit in the balconies of these huge movie palaces with our girls and make out. Then when I was in college, European films started to hit and I saw things like The Seventh Seal, The 400 Blows, all the French new wave films. I lived in Europe for a couple years around then and saw films by Pasolini and Vittorio De Sica, then came back to the States and films by people like Cassavetes and Shirley Clarke really excited me. It was the beginnings of the American new wave, and I made my first film, called Goldstein in 1962-63.

Was there one film that really did it for you, where you said "This is what I have to do" after seeing it?
Shirley Clarke's The Connection (1961) sort of drew me back to America after living in Europe for a while, and Cassavetes' Shadows (1960). Both had this kind of hipness of America at the time, especially the way both films used jazz (in their musical scores).

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid painted a very documentary-like portrait of the old west.
Yeah, I thought it was important to do a more realistic portrait of Jesse James as a really scary, murderous guy who led certain members of his gang, like the Youngers, down the wrong path. It was the antithesis of the Tyrone Power version, which was very romanticized. In many ways, the Marquis de Sade was the same sort of person in Quills. Both he and Jesse are the most charismatic, likable people in the films in many ways. They are also potent and dangerous and can have a strong influence over people.

You worked with one of the greats, Warren Oates, in White Dawn. What was he like?
Warren and I spent about four months up in the Arctic together doing that film. He was a wild guy, really talented, really smart. He was also a mixture of a guy who would drink a lot, taking whatever it took to get off in those days, and a guy who would read The Wall Street Journal. He was kind of a mixture of hippie and right wing.

After that you did the screenplay for The Outlaw Josey Wales and started directing it, then Clint Eastwood took over. What happened?
Clint, for whatever reason, decided we had some creative differences. He was the producer. He was the biggest star in the world. One of us had to go. (laughs) It wasn't my choice, so...I've never seen it, actually. I hear it's very good. Orson Welles loved it and Vanessa Redgrave wanted me to write something for her after seeing it. The book it was based on was by a very right wing guy, and I really turned it into a more liberal, humanistic story. That, however, wasn't the original material that Clint gave to me.

After that, you did a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which, I think, is even better than the original, which is a masterpiece in itself.
In that case we never told the studio the ending until they saw it, because I wanted to restore the ending that Don Siegel wanted on the first version. The studio made him tack on that epilogue that said the FBI had come in and everything's okay. It's like Humpty-Dumpty fell off the wall, but fortunately we were able to put him back together again! (laughs) I mean, there's something about being scared and being shocked that's healthy for the soul, if it's valid. That was a great experience doing that film. I loved all the actors. I loved being able to shoot it at home, in San Francisco. I loved working with Michael Chapman, a great cinematographer. I loved being able to make comments about the beginnings of the yuppie culture that was happening, the sort of "therapy culture."

I also loved the fact that you gave Don Siegel and Kevin McCarthy (director and star of the original) cameos.
Yeah, with Kevin it was like he'd been running for 20 years trying to warn people. (laughs)

Your next film, The Wanderers, is a true masterpiece, and really captured the transition from the 50's to the 60's.
I think Richard Price would say that his novel was really a bunch of short stories, and we really tried to make one story out of them all. When I was shooting Goldstein, we came out on the street one day and I saw people were staggering down the street crying. We were walking around with our cameras and saw a bunch of people standing around a store window, looking in and crying. That was how I found out that JFK had been killed. We duplicated that in The Wanderers with the people looking in the department store window at all the TVs, watching the news that JFK had been assassinated. I love that moment when Ritchie (the protagonist) sees this transition happen and he decides to go back to the old neighborhood and stay in the old world, instead of going to see Bob Dylan with the Karen Allen character and joining the new world.

On Raiders of the Lost Ark you have a story credit.
I didn't actually write any drafts of that. George Lucas and I sat down to write a story. I had the idea of the lost ark. George had the idea of the Indiana Jones character. We talked for about six weeks and then I got an offer to do another movie. About four years later, I got a call from George saying that he and Spielberg talked about the project on a beach in Hawaii, and would I mind if Steven did it? I said fine, and that's what happened.

After that you did The Right Stuff. It's one of the first films I remember that combined history with satire.
And a lot of people had problems with that. Many of the astronauts wanted to be portrayed as completely infallible. I always felt that John Glenn could have been president if he'd had more Ed Harris in him. (laughs) More of that sort of self-mocking, hipster guy. I think many people wanted the Life Magazine version of the story, although that would have been difficult if we were going to stay faithful to the spirit of Tom Wolfe's book.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a fascinating combination of politics and romance, based on a book that many people thought was unfilmable.
I thought it was probably unfilmable at first, too. But I started working with Jean-Claude Carrière, and we decided that instead of duplicating the elaborate, musical structure of the book, that we would try to make a movie that moved in more of a straight line. We made a very drastic decision very early on to take out the book's most interesting character, the narrator, who was the guide through the story. We took the philosophical overlay out of it and tried to bury it in the drama of the story. I've always described it as an intimate epic.

Henry and June was the first film rated NC-17. How did you feel about the rating initially, and what do you think about the state of the system with all this post-Columbine furor?
I thought it was great when it happened. I thought at last we no longer have an X rating, but a rating where children can't come to adult movies, but we can make movies that deal with sexuality in America. In my mind, it wasn't about violence, but about allowing depiction of mature, adult sexuality. Everybody thinks about sex all the time, but not necessarily violence. Yet we depict so much more violence in our movies than sexuality. So at first, it was great. The critics who had been demanding a change in the system were applauding it. Henry and June was doing great business wherever it played. Then suddenly, a few weeks later when it was time to go wider, theater owners, with pressure from political groups, decided that the NC-17 was just as bad as the X, and that grown-ups should not be allowed to see this kind of sexual material, and they wouldn't put them into their theaters. Newspapers wouldn't advertise them. Blockbuster Video won't carry them to this day, although they have much more explicit films that are unrated, with much more childish sexual things. Everyone who had been fighting the battle sort of disappeared. Now, as you say post-Columbine, with all this stuff being brought up during the election about the evils of Hollywood, I think it's very dangerous, and I think Jack Valenti has been very strong and articulate in fighting these attacks. But I think maybe we need a more complicated ratings system. Quills is not a film for children, just as Henry and June wasn't. But they're not meant to be X-rated movies that can't be seen by adults. I think in order to be a healthier culture, we should expand our discussion of sexual matters.

I understand your next film might be a biography of Liberace?
We're working on getting the script right. Robin Williams came into our office recently, saw a picture of Liberace with Carol Channing and proceeded to do a conversation between both of them! (laughs) We all fell off our chairs, laughing. I think he'd be brilliant as Liberace. So, we'll see. The other project we're thinking about is Henderson the Rain King, from Saul Bellow's book. Jack Nicholson is interested in doing it. We're also working on Killer Spy, the Aldrich Ames story, for Fox Searchlight. It's hard. I ran into an old friend the other night and we reminisced about this long list of movies that we had written, storyboarded, got all ready to shoot and then they never happened because we couldn't get Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise to do the leads. Very frustrating...

Any advice for first-time directors?
Get a good story. Story is everything. Many first-time directors think they want to do an MTV-style "calling card" movie. Don't do a calling card movie. Make as good a story as you can and get the best actors you can, all the tools you need to tell a good tale and dramatize it well. It's very easy to make a flashy movie, really. The older I get, the more I admire directors like Luis Buñuel, who have this seemingly simple, straightforward style where the camera moves, but is also telling a tale. We just need more good stories, period.

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Peter Weir: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Peter Weir.


PETER WEIR ON:
MOVIES, MADNESS AND MONTY
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the June 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

It's 1978 and I'm a frustrated 11 year-old film geek living in the all-American, traditional confines of Tempe, Arizona. With Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind recently having come out, UFO's were on everyone's mind, mine especially, since I was dying to take Richard Dreyfuss' place on the alien craft in said film and fly off into space with the gentle little aliens, to whose tribe I most certainly belonged. Since that wasn't an option and my mom tended to get paranoid if I even wandered away from our street for too long at a time, I settled on escape at the movies. I read about this new "Australian UFO movie" called Picnic at Hanging Rock, that was making a buzz with the critics nationwide. I convinced my mom and dad to make the trek to Scottsdale where it was playing and, needless to say, didn't get what I expected. No E.T.s, no Jedi warriors, not even a Death Star in sight, just a lot of haunting shots of the Australian outback, backdropping a story about a group of schoolgirls who, legend has it, disappeared during a school picnic, one sunny day in the year 1901. The UFO's, it turned out, were just one possible explanation of their vanishing into thin air. It was an important lesson for me in my film education. It taught me what you don't see on-screen can be even more important than what you do. It also taught me that whenever I saw it's director, Peter Weir's name in the credits of a film, I knew I was in for a cinematic treat.

Peter Weir was born August 8, 1944 in Sydney, Australia. The son of a real estate broker, Weir abandoned school and a stint at his father's business to travel to Europe and eventually return home to work with the Commonwealth Film Unit in Australia. Through his work there behind the camera and in production, he began to direct. His early efforts were the horror satire The Cars That Ate Paris (1974) and the aforementioned Picnic at Hanging Rock in 1975 (which is being rereleased later this year. Watch for it!). The Last Wave (1977), a supernatural/spiritual mystery with Richard Chamberlain, introduced the wonder and respect for the power of nature that would infuse many of his later films, as well as the theme of clashing cultures, which he would also revisit in films like Gallipoli, in 1981. This is the film that really put Weir on the international film map. A stirring anti-war drama starring Mel Gibson that echoed the finest films of the genre, such as Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957), Gallipoli told the tragic tale of two Australian lads who sign up to fight in Turkey during WW I. He re-teamed with Gibson the following year for The Year of Living Dangerously, a riveting romantic drama and political thriller set in Indonesia just before Sukarno's fall in 1965. His first Hollywood film, the modern Oscar-winning classic Witness in 1985, starred Harrison Ford in a tale of culture clash involving a wounded Philadelphia cop hiding out with an Amish enclave in the Pennsylvania countryside. The commercial success generated by both films established Weir as an important Hollywood director who could command big budgets for intelligent, adult-oriented films that stimulated the eye, the brain and the heart in equal measure. He followed Witness with The Mosquito Coast in 1986, also starring Ford as one of the most unlikable protagonists in recent film history (which made the story all the more riveting); the Oscar-winning Robin Williams hit Dead Poet's Society in 1989; Green Card in 1990; and the vastly underseen masterpiece Fearless in 1993, boasting Jeff Bridges' Oscar-caliber performance (which was ignored) as the survivor of a cataclysmic plane crash.

Weir's latest stands up to his best work. The Truman Show is the brainchild of screenwriter Andrew Niccol (Gattaca), one of the most exciting and intelligent screenwriters working today, and stars Jim Carrey in the story of one Truman Burbank, a man whose life has been a continuous, 24 hour, seven day a week TV show since his birth. The only catch is, Truman's the only one who doesn't know it's all make-believe and he starts to figure it out, much to the chagrin of the show's Messianic creator, played by the always superb Ed Harris. The Truman Show is not your typical summer popcorn fare (or typical Jim Carrey film, for that matter). Like all of Weir's films, it demands that the audience think while it's being entertained. It does both in spades. The Truman Show is one of the best films of 1998, and could well mark a new beginning in the career of Carey, one that will transform him from wacky, crazy, goofball comic to a fine, serious actor who happens to be funny, much like Dead Poet's did for Robin Williams ten years ago.

Peter Weir in person displays the layed-back unpretentiousness that most Australians are known for. He is obviously a man who is very serious and passionate about his work, but doesn't let that feeling pass over to himself. What follows are his thoughts on movies, politics, actors, and the unparalleled genius of Monty Python.

How did you become interested in the arts?
Peter Weir: Well, there wasn't a lot of (artistic) outlets in Australia when I was growing up in the 1950's. Just a lot of swimming (laughs). So there was a sort of tradition in Australia then for anyone who was artistically inclined to go to London and paint, write...which is what I did when I was 20. I went by ship in 1965...I dropped out of university. I was a real 60's kind of guy.

How did you support yourself in London?
Odd jobs, you know. I think that tradition sort of carries on. You go away for a year or two, take the grand tour, get that out of your system, then come back and settle down. But for me, there was no settling down. It was about unsettling. I wanted a job that involved lots of travel. There was a famous Australian comedian who used to say that staying all year in Australia is like dancing all night at a party with your mother (laughs)!

How did you fall in love with film?
Well it wasn't film initially. Film was just part of it. It was really show business (in general). It really all started on that ship to England. There was no entertainment, so a couple other guys and I decided that we'd be the entertainment on the ship. So we did the ship's revue and found that the ship also had a close circuit television system, with a studio, running to all the bars. So we convinced them to let us do some shows...and did our own version of The Tonight Show. We were the only channel, got great ratings! (laughs) It was all very Monty Python-esque...in fact, when I got back to Australia, I teamed up with another guy and formed a team. We worked in television there and our stuff was very would-be Python. It was essentially skit revues with rock and roll and film clips mixed in. I would shoot and direct those sketches, act in them as well, and that's where I got my taste for directing. Then I began to make short films. I'd borrow the money or steal the film, anything I could do.

Were they experimental films?
They were sort of little black comedies...and I finally sold all my scripts to my partner in the company, and decided to pursue film. By the way, what changed my mind and made me pursue film directing was seeing the Pythons perform in England. I took one look and said 'That's it, I'm out (of TV).' That was probably 1970, or so. (The Pythons) were so much better than we could ever hope to be.

Your first feature was The Cars That Ate Paris. Tell us about that.
It was a black comedy about a town called Paris, Australia that had hit hard times economically. There was a very dangerous bend going into the town which they had put there that caused accidents and then they'd take the wrecked cars into town and pirate them for their parts...The film's got a sad history, really, in this country, because it was bought by an American distributor and completely re-cut and re-voiced and we didn't have enough money to sue them...a sad thing. I tried to buy it back later and they said 'You don't have enough money in the world (to buy it back).' I can still remember stumbling out of a screening room on Sunset one sunny afternoon after seeing (the American cut). They said they were just going to 'tighten it a little.' I felt like just vomiting in the street. It was the worst feeling.

After that you did Picnic at Hanging Rock. Was it based on a true story?
Supposedly, but no one could ever find any newspaper accounts. I think it was an invention on the part of the novelist (on whose book the film was based), but why she should make up such a story I don't know. She would never answer the question about whether it was true or not, which didn't bother me. I used the device that it was probably true. What interested me was the fact that people disappear every day, seemingly into thin air sometimes, and they're never heard from again. And it's very important in many cultures to bury the body and have a feeling of closure when someone dies. With disappearance, you never have that.

We all thought that they were taken by a UFO.
(laughs) Was that the popular opinion here?

What do you think happened to them?
I don't really know. I'm of the kind of mind that accepts that there are no answers to every question. I went across a number of theories...and the most plausible one is that the rock formation that they disappeared around has unplumbed depths...filled with holes and cave-like areas that they haven't been able to reach the bottom of with the most sophisticated measuring equipment. So it's conceivable that they could've fallen into one of these caves. The other interesting thing is the notion of time itself. Sort of a Bermuda Triangle type of thing involving another dimension...every explanation you can give winds up being sort of banal. I loved Sherlock Holmes as a kid, but I remember being disappointed when he'd come up with these simple explanations for these complex mysteries. I always was fascinated by the mystery itself, as opposed to the answer behind it.

Were you influenced by Antonioni at all? Your films have a similar style to many of his in that the dialogue is often expository and what's really moves the story is the images on-screen. You seem to be primarily a visual filmmaker.
Oh yeah, I love Antonioni's work. I think to a large extent I (tend to rely on visuals) because in the early days of the Australian film business, nobody could write good dialogue. Also, many of the actors of that period were either older actors who were classically trained and came off as being hammy on film, or younger actors with no training who were just plain awful. So the phrase 'Drop the line' became a familiar one on sets during those early days. So then you had to figure out how to convey visually what was said in the cut dialogue.

Tell us about the genesis of Gallipoli.
I wanted to make a film about the first World War...The remembrance of the battle of Gallipoli was a very stuffy, almost religious sort of ceremony that would occur every year in school, and we really didn't know what it was all about. So I did some research, actually went to Gallipoli, which is one of the only battlefields in the world that's still intact because it's still a military zone. There were bullets and knives and forks and bottles...There was no one else there, so I went down to the beach, stripped down and had a swim, and the first thing I thought when I was underwater was, 'This is where you would want to be if you were being shelled,' and I wrote a scene based on that...then I walked up shrapnel alley on to the battlefield and thought 'I've got to make this!' You know it's one thing to read about the moon and going to the moon, but it's another thing entirely to go to the moon yourself...It gave me a sense of time and reality in a very eerie way. Later, I went to Egypt and went inside one of the pyramids, and there saw graffiti written by Australians who were there during the war: 'A.I.F., Australia, 1915,' you know.

Your next film, The Year of Living Dangerously...
As Monty Python would say: 'And now for something completely different!' (laughs)

But it dealt with the theme of culture clash, which most of your films seem to do.
It's not surprising, growing up in a post-colonial period. Growing up as a kid, we all came from different backgrounds, Scotch, Irish, English...but no one knew and no one cared. In our society because it was started by some 150,000 convicts, you didn't talk a lot about yourself or what you did or where you were from. What the British did was very clever, instead of having prisons, they exported their convicts, the idea being that you don't want them when they get out, and you don't want them having kids and breeding more convicts. It was terrible, very racist, really...only 5% ever went back to England, because when you got out of jail, you were offered land for free. So you might get married, you might buy a pig...and when you went to a place of work or to a neighbor's, you wouldn't ask what you did to get sent there, or where you came from and would just take you on face value. So a kind of agreement grew in our country of not asking questions of people. So the whole notion of what town you came from and what your European roots were went largely undiscussed. And that's true of all my friends. And that's one of the sharp differences between our colonial experience and yours...that so many Americans are still very conscious of where their ancestors came from. I'll never forget riding in a cab during one of my first visits here, and the cab driver saying, with a very American accent, "Well, I'm really Irish, you know." To me, I think the great experiment is to leave the past behind and all the past hatreds behind.

What do you think of the parallels between Indonesia in '65 and what's happening now?
I think it's terribly sad. I saw some photos in the newspapers that reminded me of scenes I'd staged for the film, burning buildings, riots and so on.

With Witness did you have any contact with the actual Amish community for research?
No. We rented buggies and some other props from them, so we dealt with them on a business level...but the fascinating thing about that piece was that it was a genre film on the one hand, but also an examination of one of the last subcultures that has stayed frozen in time, so to speak. By looking at the Amish, we're really looking at ourselves through a prism, how our ancestors most likely were 150-200 years ago.

What was it that drew you to Dead Poet's Society?
A couple things. First it was the theme of standing up to authority, because there have been many times during my childhood and also as an adult when I wanted to stand up and speak my mind, but I didn't, and I've regretted most of those times. Second, just the idea of the boys running into that cave in the forest and the cave itself...I remember saying to my first A.D., 'You better allow a couple days for the cave sequence to be shot,' because I wanted that sort of shift into something more mythic and significant and in a way play with the time.

Fearless is one of my favorite films. It was the first time I realized what it was like to look death in the face. How did you capture that?
By talking with survivors of a plane crash. I got six names of people who'd survived the crash on which the film is based, United 262, or 232, which went down in Sioux City, Iowa. Half the people survived...and I spoke to four of the six on the telephone and they told me about the feeling of living 45 minutes with the knowledge that the plane might crash and that they could die, then the experience of the crash itself. As a result of those conversations, I completely reshaped the crash and the scenes on the plane, dropped all exterior shots, took very much the passengers' point of view...They all said it was unreal, really, especially the actual impact and the reactions of the people on board. Jeff (Bridges) was just incredible. He went places that were well beyond the realm of conventional acting...there was absolutely no projection about what the character was going through or feeling. It was all very honest and somehow captured an essence that was just...Jeff.

Now we come to The Truman Show, another culture clash movie, with the culture of fantasy colliding with that of the culture of reality.
Yeah, that's true I guess. To me, the real center of the film is the loss of reality. I think now (in the media) there's so much acting and re-enacting and dramatized news broadcasts and cops with cameras, and society viewing it all second hand. As Bill Gates recently said "We may soon never need to leave our armchairs," as if that were a good thing! And that's what I liked and what I tried to apply to the audience (in the film). They applaud, they laugh, they cry...

Any advice for first-time directors?
Don't give your big ideas up because of budget, try and do the same idea another way. Second of all, write down anything you want to do, no matter how outrageous it might sound. Say you've got a 747 crash you have to shoot, and someone's reading saying 'How the hell are we going to do this?!' Maybe later you can come up with another way to do it, like just having the sound of it, instead of having to cut it altogether just to keep it within budget. You never have enough time or money, whether it's a big film, or a little film. Third, have great parties! (laughs) Have a good time on it. Also, when you've lit a scene and you're running out of time, always ask your cameraman if there's anything else you can do, any other way you can shoot it. What else can happen in this scene? Also keep dialogue constantly going between yourself, your actors, your crew. Keep the collaboration alive throughout. Think it all through because thoughts are free. And after all, it's just film.

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Oliver Stone: The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Oliver Stone.



OLIVER STONE U-TURNS WITH A NEW ROAD MOVIE
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the October 1997 issue of Venice Magazine.

Oliver Stone is probably the single filmmaker working in America whose work consistently stirs debate, controversy and wildly divergent opinions. With films like Platoon, Wall Street, The Doors, Born on the Fourth of July, JFK and Natural Born Killers to his credit, like him or hate him, you just can't feel neutral about Oliver Stone and his work. At 50, the multiple Oscar-winning writer/director's latest effort is U-Turn, a road movie written by John Ridley, based on his novel Stray Dogs, with Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe and Billy Bob Thornton rounding out the all-star cast in a film that is equal parts hilarious, horrifying, beautiful, repulsive, maddening, endearing and out-and-out psychedelic. But then it wouldn't be an Oliver Stone movie if it weren't a bundle of contradictions. Stone has also recently published his first novel A Child's Night Dream, based on his experiences as a 19 year-old, due out in October from St. Martin's Press.

Without revealing too many of the film's wild, whiplash-inducing plot twists, Sean Penn plays Bobby Cooper, a small time gambler/loser who is on his way to Vegas to pay gambling debt to a Russian mobster who collects fingers along with cash. His cherry '64 1/2 Mustang convertible breaks down in the depressing backwater town of Superior, Arizona. As he waits for his car to be repaired, Penn's character is catapulted into a nightmarish whirlpool that can only be compared to the third circle of Dante's Inferno. And for Bobby Cooper, hell looks pretty good in comparison to Superior, Arizona.

Those who expect a mercurial, stand-offish paranoid will be disappointed when they meet Oliver Stone. His demeanor is relaxed, confident and charming with an easy smile and a direct, penetrating gaze that lets you know he's taking in everything within (and probably beyond) his range. Mr. Stone took some time out recently to answer some questions about his remarkable career and his newest filmic slice of Americana.

Why do you think your films consistently spark so much controversy and debate?
OLIVER STONE: Well, I don't know, there are so many sources out there, you'd have to research the source. On The People vs. Larry Flynt (which Stone executive produced), for example, we got a bunch of postcards from women who said they refused to see the film. I wrote back a letter and said that I didn't think that was quite right, that it was like McCarthyism in reverse, that you should go out and see the movie and if you feel so strongly about it, see what it is you object to and deal with it.

Do you find that people have polarized reactions to your films?
I hope not. It's not necessary to have that. Definition is death, I think. I always want to be redefining myself, whether it's with a new film, or writing a book. Be redefined. Be fresh. Although I feel very proud of movies like JFK and Nixon, I'm not going to live off them.

You've gone through a lot of changes in your life in the past few years. Does this film mark a "U-Turn" in your own life? Do you feel now especially you need to redefine yourself?
I don't look at it that way. I've directed 11 films in the past 12 years and each one has been done in a different style, a different way, a different subject matter. Nixon, for example, is quite different from JFK both in its approach and in its subject matter. If you look closely Born on the Fourth of July is shot in a wholly different style than Platoon. So I've been redefining myself over those 11 films. This film is just another way of doing it. Perhaps it stands out more because it's lower budget and it's a thriller, but I feel good. I feel fresh. Making the film was really a lot of fun. It has all those domestic politics that I love: murder, sex, betrayal (laughs). It's good stuff! It doesn't always have to be about external politics.

You say in the forward to the screenplay of U-Turn that it's harder for you to make films now because people stereotype you.
Yeah. Unfortunately. I just don't want to get between the film and the viewer and that happens again and again...personal attacks come every time and it's perhaps planned, I don't know. It always seems to be a situation of going after the messenger, and that's a shame, because I don't mind being totally anonymous in this thing, and having people walk out not knowing who directed the movie and enjoying the movie. That's what I do.

A lot of the film, and I mean this in a good way, reminded me of a 1960's Roger Corman road movie. Is the film a homage to that genre?
In a good way, yeah. I hope it went beyond that, into the 90's because there was a limited ambition in those older films. But thank you. I love road movies and this is certainly a genre film.

Did you find yourself compromising anything because it was such a short shoot? Were you rushed in any way?
Yes. There were limitations. We set out to make a $20 million film and pretty much stuck close to that. I think we might've gone to $21 million. We went a few days over. It was a rugged shoot. The canyons were tough. The actors were hanging by ropes. Wind, sun, rock. We were in the middle of nowhere, way, way out. It was hard to get trucks out there...so we took some hits on coverage, but we moved fast...and that helped us develop momentum, which is how (my crew and I) prefer to work, anyway. I hate to sit around and wait. It destroys the momentum and the spirit on the set.

Why was it important to you to keep it low budget?
I have this system in my head when I sit down with the script and decide what I have. I sit down with (producer) Clayton Townsend and we go through it, decide how much it should cost. I didn't think this one should cost more than $20 million. Now you've got first-time directors making $60-$100 million movies that they haven't even earned the right to make! Consider that I've never made a movie above $43 million. I've always come in fairly close to budget and fairly close to my scheduled time. With so many filmmakers now, it just seems that the discipline is gone. Billy Wilder, whom I admire very much, has repeatedly told me that he used to shoot his stuff right on the money in 30 days, 35 days. Then he'd cut it right down to the wire. He'd finish the picture, it would be rough cut within three weeks and close to being ready to be shown. Hitchcock would do close to the same thing. But how do you do that? Modern technology has more toys to play with. Billy's day was a little simpler.

Was it a case of where the story itself led you to a smaller scale or were you looking for a small film to begin with?
It was the story itself. It takes place over 24 hours in a small Arizona town with seven people in the main cast. It doesn't require a large scale. And if this movie for some reason misses when it comes out, I'm not going to take a big hit. I think we can make (the $20 million) back. With a bigger film, I would've asked for more money.

What was it about this particular story that grabbed you?
John Ridley wrote a crackling good first draft. We worked on it also for a long time afterward, but it was there. I thought the dialogue was terrific. John was a standup comedian, and loved dialogue, but the script was too dialogue-heavy and we wound up cutting a lot of it. But what was left I thought was very juicy, great stuff.

The use of the film stock (reversal stock) was pretty inspired as well. How did you discover that particular type of stock?
As a function of cheapness! (laughs) We used it at NYU Film School. Reversal stock, 5239. And we basically used it to shoot through the sun and the clouds. It was winter and there were a lot of clouds and we knew that it would be a tough shoot and knew we couldn't stop and do a lot of the things that outdoor photography requires. So we went gangbusters and shot straight through with everything on reversal. We even used it on some interiors.

Tell me about "A Child's Night Dream."
I originally wrote it when I was about 19, then went back to it after finishing Nixon and reshaped it and rewrote sections of it. It's a personal story, about roots. One day perhaps, if I have the moxie, I'll go out and make a personal film like Truffaut or Fellini did. I'll probably get slammed for it...(laughs).

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Norman Jewison: The Hollywood Interview

Director Norman Jewison.


NORMAN JEWISON:
IN THE EYE OF THE STORM
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article originally appeared in the December 1999/January 2000 issue of Venice Magazine.

Norman Jewison was born July 21, 1926 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The son of a shopkeeper, Jewison got his BA at Victoria College, University of Toronto, and after moving to London, where he wrote scripts and acted for the BBC, he returned to Toronto and directed live TV shows for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation(1952-1958), then musicals and variety in New York (including much-heralded specials for Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland), before embarking on a film career.

Jewison's initial offerings were harmless pieces of fluff like Forty Pounds of Trouble (1963), The Thrill of It All (1963), Send Me No Flowers (1964) and The Art of Love (1965). Suddenly in late 1965, the 39 year-old director decided to get serious, replacing the legendary Sam Peckinpah on the dynamite Steve McQueen vehicle The Cincinnati Kid, the story of an itinerant poker player in New Orleans. Jewison's work kept growing from there. He followed Kid with the political satire The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! in 1966, then made what some consider still to be his finest film.

In 1967 the United States was a very different place than it is today. No other film captured this quicksilver moment in time better than In the Heat of the Night, the story of a Philadelphia detective (Sidney Poitier) reluctantly recruited by a redneck southern sheriff (Rod Steiger, Oscar-winner) to aid him in a murder investigation. The film broke more racial and social taboos than can be listed here, and ushered in a new genre in American film, one where African-Americans took center stage, where black was beautiful. Although it helped give birth to the blaxploitation genre of the 70's (which many critics revere), In the Heat of the Night's influence can also be felt in the films of Spike Lee, and many other filmmakers who, over the past 30 years, have dealt with race, culture clash, and the socioeconomic realities which create an underclass in our society. It also spawned a highly-successful TV series, and won five Oscars, including Best Picture.

Jewison followed this landmark film with another classic, The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), again starring McQueen, this time with Faye Dunaway as his love interest. Gaily, Gaily (1969) was writer Ben Hecht's story of his apprenticeship on a Chicago newspaper. Jewison then brought two landmark Broadway musicals to the screen: Fiddler on the Roof (1971) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), scoring big hits with both. These were followed by the science-fiction classic Rollerball (1975), starring James Caan, and the fictionalized Jimmy Hoffa biopic F.I.S.T. (1977), starring Sylvester Stallone and written by a first-time screenwriter named Joe Eszterhas. Jewison next helmed two scripts written by another young tyke named Barry Levinson (and his then-wife Valerie Curtin):...And Justice for All (1979) with Al Pacino, and Best Friends (1982) with Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn.

Jewison scored another breakthrough when he dealt with the race card once again, bringing Charles Fuller's A Soldier's Play to the screen as A Soldier's Story (1984). Starring Howard E. Rollins, Jr. (who also played the Poitier role in the TV series of In the Heat of the Night) as a black army officer investigating the murder of a sadistic sergeant at the tail end of WW II. It co-starred many new faces, including Robert Townsend, David Alan Grier, and this kid named Denzel Washington in a pivotal role. We'll come back to him later...

Jewison brought another play to the screen brilliantly with Agnes of God in 1985, followed by another triumph with the romantic comedy Moonstruck in 1987, an Oscar winner for Best Actress (Cher), supporting actress (Olympia Dukakis) and screenplay (John Patrick Shanley). Next came In Country (1989), a post-Vietnam drama starring Bruce Willis and Emily Lloyd, another play adaptation in 1991 with Other People's Money, starring Danny de Vito, the romantic comedy Only You (1994) with Marisa Tomei and Robert Downey, Jr., and the fantasy Bogus (1996) with Whoopi Goldberg and Gerard Depardieu.

1999 brings Jewison full circle, completing his film trilogy about race in America. The Hurricane stars that kid Washington we mentioned earlier, in the true story of former boxing champ Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, who was wrongly convicted on a trumped-up murder charge, and served more than 30 years in prison. The Hurricane marks a welcome return to the cinema of social consciousness that Jewison helped give birth to 33 years ago. The story is so fantastic, it's almost hard to believe that such a miscarriage of justice occurred not only in this country, but in this day and age. Denzel Washington delivers his finest performance to date as Rubin Carter.

Mr. Jewison, who possesses an energy, an appearance, and an enthusiasm that run counter to his 73 years, still makes his home in Canada, and has remained active in his homeland. In 1986, he established the Canadian Centre for Advanced Film Studies in Toronto, where he works with young Canadians learning the craft of filmmaking (much like our own AFI). Although he was only in the States a short time to promote The Hurricane, he gladly extended our allotted interview time so we could keep talking.

Along with The Hurricane, many of your films have a very strong social conscience. Where does this come from?
Norman Jewison: I think we're all products of our environments, where we grew up, what we read, what was inculcated into us. Also, I had the opportunity to be in the Canadian Navy at the end of WW II. When I was on leave, I hitchhiked across the United States. Canadians are always interpreting the United States for the rest of the world because we share the longest undefended border of any two countries in the world. I think it's a fascination, a love-hate relationship. It was my first experience with apartheid when I hitchhiked all through Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. I saw people who couldn't sit on the same bus, drink from the same fountain, go get a cup of coffee at Woolworth's, and yet they were being asked to give their lives for their country in defense of this society. And I didn't think that was fair. Also, I grew up with people calling me "Jewie" and "Jewboy" and found out I wasn't Jewish! (laughs) But I've been searching for my own Jewishness all my life, and wound up in Yeshivas in Israel, and interpreting Fiddler on the Roof and Jesus Christ Superstar, trying to explain to the rest of the world what it's like to be Jewish! (laughs) Like Topol said, I know more about Judaism than most Jews. We're all products of our own history, as people. When you're attacked, or you're pushed, you push back, and you start studying why, and how. I wanted to make The Hurricane 10 years ago, when I read about it in Sports Illustrated. I think that the reason that maybe this film can work now, is because I didn't think anyone was going to come see In the Heat of the Night, or A Soldier's Story. I didn't know how I was going to tell this story or how it would work. As Bobby Kennedy once told me, "Timing is everything" in life, in art, and in politics. This story says to me: "Hate got me in here. Love's gonna bust me out." Hate breeds prejudice, which breeds war, which breeds murder. Now there's nothing new about that. That's what God was saying, that's what Christ was saying, that's what Gandhi was saying, that's what Martin Luther King was saying, that's what Malcolm X was saying, that's what Krishna Murdhi was saying, and that's what Rubin Carter is saying! So maybe the time is right for us to analyze that again.

It was refreshing to see a socially conscious film again.
Well, we've moved away from that, unfortunately. The only reason this got made is because of Beacon Pictures. Universal released it, but it's an independently made film. Universal wasn't really that excited about it, otherwise they would've made it themselves. These sorts of films aren't easily made. Every studio in town passed on A Soldier's Story until I said I'd do it for nothing! We only made it for about $5 million, shot it in Arkansas. We also had the benefit of then-governor Bill Clinton who got me 600 African-American National Guard troops for the marching scenes. I never could have afforded that number of extras. He said "Don't worry about it. We'll call out the National Guard and send the white boys home." (laughs) So President Clinton helped me get that film made because he believed that it was important socially. So I'm politically motivated as a person, but I also did The Hurricane because I think it's a wonderfully dramatic, compelling story. I try to make my films as entertaining as possible. If I wanted to make messages, I'd do documentaries.

This is the second time you've worked with Denzel. Could you talk about what it's like collaborating with him?
It was wonderful working with him again, because I've always admired him as an artist. But he really wanted to do this picture and for a director, there isn't anything better than having an actor who is totally committed to film, not for his career, not for the money, not doing it for any other reason than he has to do it. He has to play that part! So the two of us really had a great time making this film, because we were both really committed to Rubin. It was amazing because, especially with the scenes in jail, Denzel even started to sound like Rubin, in addition to looking like him. He just became him! He even had Rubin's fighting style down. Denzel has a great gift. I think Denzel is at the peak of his talent in this picture, and it wasn't easy. We were reaching for some pretty difficult moments.

You mentioned Bobby Kennedy earlier. How well did you know him?
I met Bobby skiing in Sun Valley when I was young. I supported his campaign here and was supposed to meet with him at 10:30, the night he was assassinated. I had Melina Mercouri with me, whom he very much wanted to meet. So we were on our way down to meet him at John Frankenheimer's house when we heard. It was part of the reason I left America in 1970. I spent the next eight years working out of London, making films in Yugoslavia, Israel, and Germany. Then, in 1978 I moved back to Canada.

Let's talk about your background.
I was born and raised in Toronto. My dad ran a clothing store and post office. I had one older sister. I was always performing, poetry readings and things like that, from the time I was about six. I don't know why, either. I always loved dramatic storytelling.

Was there one film that really grabbed you as a kid, where you said "This is for me"?
Well, I started in the theater, as an actor, then got into live television with the BBC in London, so television was like a miracle to me. But when I was a kid, I used to go to the movies for 10 cents on Saturday, then I'd act out the whole movie for a penny! (laughs) I guess it was an obsession with storytelling. I remember Gunga Din as one of the great movies for me. And I also remember Rose-Marie, with Nelson Eddy playing a Mountie! I thought that was so romantic and wonderful! I guess we're all searching for those things that touch us. As you get older, you get a little more particular. I think directors are a little like orchestra conductors. We get better as we get older, as long as you still have all your marbles and are still committed. But I don't know if they believe that in Hollywood. (laughs)

Who are some of the other filmmakers that influenced you as you got older.
All the works of David Lean, John Huston. William Wyler was my great idol, because he could take a bad script and make a mediocre picture. He could take a mediocre script and make a good picture. He could take a good script and make a great picture! This guy could never miss. His ability to tell a story on film was unparalleled. Willy told me that there's no difference between genres. In a musical you're telling a story where you're being helped by the music, and if you can make it believable, that the person who's singing the song is really feeling those emotions, then all you've done is taken the musical form and added it to the story. But he didn't believe that there was any big difference between comedy and drama, except that comedy was more difficult because it required a greater discipline on the part of the actors and the director. Willy had a confidence that really impressed me. I think Howard Hawks had it, too, and I think Frank Capra had it, George Stevens had it, William Wellman had it, Billy Wilder had it, and Fred Zinnemann had it. I came in contact with all these people when I was very young, and learned from them. I sat at Willy Wyler's feet, because I was coming to film from the outside, coming from live television, so it was important for me to spend as much time as I could with the giants. A lot of this business is about passing down.

And collaboration.
Absolutely! As a director, you get a lot of help, like I did from (cinematographer) Roger Deakins on The Hurricane. I had to tell Roger how I saw this story in order for him to make that happen, because only he can make that happen. Directors stand back and watch the cameraman make it happen. I really believe that films are made by writers, directors, cameramen, and editors. Those are the key storytellers, because all of them are involved in telling the story. The closer those four people work, the more they become one. If you take hands and form a circle, you are now one. That's what the North American Indians said, because there's something about becoming one. The tribe, the family. Making a film requires the individual artists to take hands, and form this circle, and become one with the work, because the work is what's important, so the film is the result of this closeness. And the look, and image and vision of the film has to come from the director, but he's only a part of the circle.

How much actual direction do you give?
It depends on the actor. Certain actors know exactly what they want and what they're doing, certain actors don't. But again, it all comes down to believability. If they're believable, leave it alone. If they're not, then maybe youíd better take them aside, and whisper to them. And maybe you can help them, who knows? Maybe you spotted it. But there are no rules.

You got to work twice with Steve McQueen. Tell us about him.
He could string you out there. He was street smart. He was shrewd. He wasn't highly intellectual. He was Peck's Bad Boy. I used to call him "Spanky." (laughs) Steve was always looking for a father. I told him "I can't be your father, but I can be your older brother, who went to college. And I'll look out for you. And I want you to believe that I'll look out for you. So you continue to take apart the Volkswagen engine over there, and I'll look out for you." He looked at me and said "You're twistin' my melon, man!" (laughs) I never knew what he was saying, he was so hip! (laughs) I got him to the point where he never looked at the dailies and he trusted me. I think it was a relationship of trust. I didn't want him for Thomas Crown, you know. He convinced me that he was right for it, and as a result, brought a lot of interesting stuff to that part. He'd never worn a tie in a film, and here he was playing a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth, a Boston Brahmin with beautifully tailored English suits and he'd never done that before. He was very easy to direct, too. The problem was, if he would see that you were insecure about something, he'd go in for the kill. He was always looking for weakness, so I made sure I was very secure around him.

Did you see the remake of Thomas Crown?
No, I couldn't bring myself to. But I like John McTiernan's work and I heard it was very good.

The Russians are Coming! The Russians are Coming! is a great film, both as a straight comedy and a very pointed political satire.
It's the only film I've made that's become part of the congressional record, as a plea for coexistence at a time in history when the word "détente" wasn't even being used. It's also the only film I've made where its first screening was for the Vice President of the United States, and this huge group of diplomats and dignitaries, and its second two weeks later, was screened at the Soviet Film Workers Union in Moscow, and I couldn't even get back into the country after I went to Russia! (laughs) I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be there. I got my visa in London because I was traveling under a Canadian passport. As a Canadian, I had made this film for Americans and for Russians. Again, as Canadians, we're always the observers, interpreting America for the rest of the world because we're the most like you.

Tell us about In the Heat of the Night. Did you know going into it what a groundbreaking film it was going to be?
No. I think it was an important film for its time. I think the timing was right, as Bobby Kennedy said. He told me, "This is a very important film." I didn't think anyone was going to come to see it. There were newspapers that wouldnít take the ad in certain cities. When you're making a film that has a social comment, I think itís important that it be at a time that people want to discuss it, and that you never really know. It's instinct. I was kind of surprised when people reacted to it in such a strong way. Then the nice thing that happened was The New York Film Critics gave it their Best Picture award, and when I accepted the award at Sardi's who was presenting it, but Senator Robert Kennedy, from New York. As he gave it to me, he whispered "See, I told you the timing was right, Norman." But I don't think anyone really knows what the reaction to a film is going to be. With The Hurricane, we showed it for the first time as a work in progress at the Toronto Film Festival. It was agreed that we'd show it there because it has such a strong Canadian connection, but because it was a rough cut, no critics were allowed to attend. So I didn't know how people were going to react. Would you believe we got a six-minute standing ovation?! I was in a total state of shock and panic! I thought maybe it was an aberration because it was a hometown crowd.

You actually shot most of In the Heat in Illinois, not the south.
Except for three sequences shot in Tennessee: the cotton-picking stuff and the scene in the big southern mansion. Sidney didn't want to go south of the Mason-Dixon line with the political climate being the way it was then. We shot most of it in a little town called Sparta, Illinois. It wasn't easy.

Tell us about Rollerball.
Rollerball was my first, and only, film about the future, the not too distant future. I tried not to get caught up in the technology too much. I wanted to isolate the areas in which I would work. I found the BMW building in Munich, which was perfect, as our main location. Its design was very ahead of its time. We were the first ones to use identity cards to get into places and all that sort of thing which is quite commonplace today. It was an interesting film to do from a political aspect, because it was a film about a world where political systems had failed and multinational corporations had taken over. It deals with violence used as entertainment for the masses, which goes back to the Circus Maximus. I think when you use violence for entertainment, you're getting pretty low on the human scale. (laughs) I think it turned out to be a pretty interesting film, very stylized, packed a wallop. In Europe it became a cult film, whereas in America a lot of the critics went after it as being exploitative, of just being about a violent game.

Legend has it when the cameras stopped rolling, James Caan and the other actors played rollerball for real.
(laughs) Yeah, they kind of got caught up in it. I was always terrified someone was going to get killed. We had a few accidents, so I was frightened all the time we were shooting.

F.I.S.T. was an interesting film.
It was Joe Eszterhas' first script. He spent about six years researching the Teamsters when he was at Rolling Stone. The problem is, there weren't that many people interested in the Labor Movement in 1977! (laughs) It was a hard film to sell because of that, but it was a pretty strong picture.

Tell us about Moonstruck.
I was kind of tracking a writer named John Patrick Shanley, who we used to call "the bard of the Bronx." He'd written a lot of great one act plays. All his stuff was familial, always Catholic, and very much New York. I don't think there's anyone who has an ear for dialogue like Shanley does. He'd written this script called The Bride and the Wolf, and by the time I got it, there were lots of coffee stains on it. It had been around. Lots of people felt it was too much like a play, which it was. So I asked him if he wanted to work on it, which he did. We worked about five or six weeks on it, changed the title, added a little more poetry to it, a little more cinema, and the rest is history. I gave it to Alan Ladd, Jr. at the Toronto Film Festival. Cher was my first choice for the lead. It's probably one of the best-cast films I've done. Every actor I wanted, I got. We shot most of it in Toronto, again. There's lovely use of opera in the film, which I love, of Puccini. In fact, the whole film is a bit like an opera. I love that film, itís full of energy and life. It's so Italian! (laughs)

You worked with Judy Garland early on in your career. What was she like?
Judy had more comebacks than anyone in show business, and I was there at the last one. It was just called Judy, and was after the Carnegie Hall album. She'd never done television before. I think it was one of my most exciting experiences in live television, because it was like capturing quicksilver. We had to deliver two other stars, or they wouldn't go ahead with the show. So we got Frank Sinatra. I called him, and I was just a kid, I was very nervous, and I called him in Palm Springs and asked him if he'd come to rehearsal. (laughs) So he says "Okay kid, I'll be there." I said, "You know she likes to work at night, so could you come at seven at night?" He laughed and said "I said I'd be there." I said "Bring Dean Martin, will you?" (laughs) And I hung up, and sure enough, they came in the limo, both of them, and they worked 'til midnight. It was a wonderful experience. She had her last big comeback, and out of that, they wanted to put her on every week, which was a disaster! (laughs) I came in the next year and produced ten of the shows, but it was just too much for her. That was the story of her life. People always pushed her, exploited her.

Any advice for first-time directors?
Always remember that it's a collaboration between yourself, your cinematographer, your editor, your writer, and your cast. Remember the idea of the circle and try to keep that circle together. Always make a film for the right reason, because you have to. Because you believe in it. Always believe in yourself and your own vision. Never let anyone else tell you that a film can't be done, or that you can't do it, because it can and you can.

Read more!

Nick Nolte: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Nick Nolte.


NICK NOLTE: REBEL, REBEL
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the December 1998/January 1999 issue of Venice Magazine.

Growing up in Arizona is sort of like being a forgotten third cousin of the Rockefellers with a different last name: no one talks about you, no one thinks about you, and no one notices you. You're the red-headed, pasty-faced stepchild that vanished into the wallpaper of the east wing. You know that you're very close to something important that people do notice (like California) where books, plays and movies are set, where many famous and accomplished people are from, where people seem to want to be, want to go and very often seem to be on their way to. So for those of us stuck in the limbo land of identity-free Arizona, we had very little to really call our own. We had one Trump card: Steven Spielberg. Aside from the most successful filmmaker of all time, we could claim Alice Cooper, Steve Allen, Wayne Newton, and Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman, remember her?), but no true-blue, bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool, cooler than cool movie stars...that is not until 1976 when a TV "mini-series event" rocked our world. Rich Man, Poor Man was a revelation for a couple reasons. First, it was a great, old fashioned story full of sex, violence and one-eyed villains who were deadly with a sharp blade. Second, it introduced a young actor named Nick Nolte to the world. And get this: Nolte, this cooler than cool, dyed in the wool star-to-be was from Phoenix! Well...okay. Maybe "from" is too strong a word, but he went to Arizona State, lived in the Phoenix metro area on and off for years and at one time or another, had an Arizona driver's license, so dag-gummit, we claimed him as our own! Nolte's immediately-recognizable star quality combined the vulnerability of James Dean, crossed with the surly world-weariness of Robert Mitchum to create a much-needed rebel without a care for the rebel-challenged times of the mid-70's. Ask anyone from Arizona and they'll tell you: "Yup, Nick's one of us."

Nick Nolte was born nowhere near Arizona, but in Omaha, Nebraska on February 8, 1940. The son of an Iowa State football player, Nolte followed his dad's footsteps initially, excelling in sports as a teen, and eventually earning a football scholarship to Arizona State, where he flunked out. Over the next few years, he played ball, but barely studied, at four other schools, including Eastern Arizona Junior College, Phoenix City College, and Pasadena City College, before finding himself out of options as a football player. After briefly holding a job as a Los Angeles iron worker, he discovered the theater, studying at the Pasadena Playhouse. For the next 14 years, Nolte roamed the country with various regional companies and worked extensively at New York's Cafe La Mama. Although he settled down considerably during his travels, marrying the first of his three wives and catching up on his education by attending classes at various universities, the still-rebellious Nolte was arrested for counterfeiting draft cards and was put on five years probation. Things improved dramatically for him upon his return to California in 1973, however. He began appearing in films and TV shows, and in 1976 hit paydirt with Rich Man, Poor Man. Movie stardom quickly followed, with Nolte gaining notoriety for many of his unconventional, non-commercial choices of projects. Many feel that the longevity of his career has been helped by the fact that he refuses to be pigeonholed into "movie star" parts.

His first high-profile feature was the big screen adaptation of Peter Benchley's The Deep (1977), where Nolte played second fiddle to Jacqueline Bisset's tangible assets; director Karel Reisz's overlooked masterpiece Who'll Stop the Rain (aka Dog Soldiers, 1978); the greatest gridiron film ever made, North Dallas Forty (1979); the biography of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy, HeartBeat (1980): the box office smash 48 Hours (1982) which introduced another fresh young face in Eddie Murphy; Under Fire (1983), director Roger Spottiswoode's masterful political thriller about the coup in Nicaragua in the late 70's; Grace Quigley (aka The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley, 1985) with screen legend Katharine Hepburn; Paul Mazursky's Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986); Sidney Lumet's Q & A (1990); he scored two hits in 1991 with Martin Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear and Barbara Streisand's Prince of Tides. He followed these with George Miller's acclaimed Lorezo's Oil in 1992, James L. Brooks' I'll Do Anything and William Friedkin's Blue Chips in 1994, Merchant-Ivory's Jefferson in Paris in 1995, and Keith Gordon's adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night (1996). Nolte ends 1998 with two major releases: reclusive auteur Terrence Malick's long-awaited World War II drama The Thin Red Line, in which he plays a Lt. Colonel who may or may not be totally insane, and Paul Schrader's searing drama Affliction, a compelling and bleak depiction of a small town sheriff's investigation of a shooting and his impending mental collapse, framed with a backstory of childhood abuse at the hands of a tyrannical father (James Coburn). Both films are slated for Christmas releases in L.A. and New York for Oscar consideration and feature some of Nolte's most compelling, complex work to date.

In person, Nolte is not the imposing giant he appears to be on screen, but a trim and dapper fellow of about 6'1 who loves nothing more than to sit at home with a good book on a Friday night. Nolte sat down recently to discuss his work, his memories and of course, his (sort of) hometown, Phoenix.

Your character in Affliction, Wade Whitehouse, really stayed with me for a long time. Did you have trouble shaking him as well?
Nick Nolte: Yeah, he hung around for quite a while, just because of the place I had to get to find him. I stalled doing this film for about three or four years. We finally got it set up about a year and a half after Paul and I had first met, and when Paul called, telling me he wanted to start shooting, I had a couple other projects I'd already committed to. Plus, I didn't really feel quite ready to do it. So Paul was quite upset that it fell apart...finally the head of Largo, Bart Potter, asked me if I had any projects I wanted to do, and I told him about Affliction. So it took about five years altogether. And I needed those five years, not that I didn't understand the rage and the violence in the character, because I did. But it was all about whether I wanted to go there or not...but this primal rage, this capacity for violence that we address in the film, it's in us all.

I thought one of the most compelling things about Wade's losing his mind was that you weren't sure until the very end whether the murder was real or in Wade's head, because Wade believed so strongly that he was right. He didn't think he was insane, so neither did we, as the audience.
The insanity is Wade's denial of the situation. The other brother (played by Willem Dafoe) is truly insane. He's locked himself away in this little world where he doesn't have to deal with human beings at all. Wade is a classic hero in the sense that he faced his deficit, his affliction, and deals with it...but the whole nature of mental illness is denial. Hitler didn't believe he was crazy. He thought he was right. He thought he was rational, and correct. It's not the crazy person who's dangerous, it's the rational person who's in denial.

The Thin Red Line deals with many of the same issues, doesn't it?
It does, and it doesn't. I think one of the themes is, based on what James Jones, who wrote the book the film is based on, said. He said that in the moment of the biggest horror that one can face--war--where you absolutely know you're going to die and that the fellow next to you is going to die, in that moment there's a falling away of all pretense, and in that moment, you experience the most profound love for the fellow next to you that you will ever experience. And it's a hypocrisy that that's the case. Jones was on the front lines, so he knew first-hand. It's also a story about courage. Who's able to arise to the occasion and shoot that gun? In WW II and up to Vietnam, only 20% of the troops actually fired their weapons. 80% did not fire. A Colonel did this whole study, and he discovered that there's an instinct in all humans not to kill, and that instinct has to be overcome somehow during times of war. They found that a lot of the men were shooting over the enemy's head and that those who couldn't shoot at all, would load the guns for those who could...But Jones said that he never felt that kind of profound love again in his life and the only kind of love that comes close to it, is love for a child. That's about the only kind of love you'll sacrifice yourself for.

Let's talk about your background. We you drawn toward theater as a kid?
No, not until I came out here. In the early 60's I had a friend who was going to the Pasadena Playhouse--I was going to Pasadena City College--and he invited me to see a play he was in. So I went, became fascinated with it, and left L.A. and went to Arizona, where I started doing theater. I did some work at Phoenix City College with John Paul, all the community theaters, started a couple rep companies out there. Then I worked all over the country, finally ended up with a company that went to Broadway and then folded. Then a guy I knew in Phoenix named Keith Anderson called me up, and told me he mounting a production of this William Inge play called The Last Pad. So we did it, Inge came over and saw it, and insisted that it come to L.A. with our cast. So we put it on in what's now the Geffen Playhouse. This was about 1974 and I went from there to doing TV guest spots, and then Rich Man.

You were really one of the first actors who was courted by the big studios to take a more independent route, weren't you?
You have to remember, I was 35 years old when I got Rich Man and I had 14 years of theater experience and during that 14 years, I chased nothing but the authors (of the plays). If there was an Arthur Miller play, I'd find out where the production was being done and go audition. If they were doing Luther somewhere, I'd go audition. I tried to do that play every 2-3 years, because it's such a scope of his life and I'd get a different insight into the character every time. So after Rich Man I had a lot of offers for three picture deals and I'd say "What are the pictures?" And they were always crap. There were three pictures I tried to get into that year: Apocalypse Now, George Roy Hill's Slap Shot, and Billy Friedkin's Sorcerer. I came close on Apocalypse, but they gave it to Harvey Keitel, then to Martin Sheen. And during all that time, they had The Deep just sitting there, with my agents going "Do The Deep! Do The Deep!" Since I wasn't cast in these other pictures, I went to work and did The Deep.

Tell us about working with Robert Shaw in that film.
(laughs) He'd corral me in a corner and say (imitating Shaw)"It's a treasure picture! A treasure picture! Let's drink some rum!" (laughs) We'd be in the tank filming with Jackie Bisset and take these giant phallic shells and chase her around. Jackie would start laughing. With Jackie in the scene, you were always swimming upside down, with her wearing that t-shirt. (laughs) Bob and I got real close during the shoot. Here's one day: we were sitting on the boat, docked, and were shooting this scene where we had to get off the boat, onto the dock. And it starts raining, all day. And we're just sitting in this boat. So Bob turns to me and says "See that bottle of whiskey over there?" I said "Yeah." "Let's have it." So we take the bottle, have a drink. It keeps raining and we keep drinking...finally at five o'clock a little ray of light breaks through and hits the dock. And (director) Peter Yates goes "Let's get the shot!" I immediately, being a young actor, try to get up. And I'm drunker than a skunk! We'd gone through that bottle and started another one! (laughs) So I'm all ready, trying to pretend I wasn't drunk and Bob goes, "No, no, let me handle this." So Bob gets up, walks up the stairs to the top of the boat, started walking along the plank, gets to the front of the boat and BOOM! He falls flat on his face! Peter Yates starts yelling "Oh my God, he's drunk!" Bob rolls off the boat, falls into the water, climbs into a little dinghy, starts it up, and heads across the bay! So everybody was terribly frightened to go get Shaw, so I got elected since we were friends. So I go across the bay, to this house where he is. I look through the window and I see him sitting in a chair with another bottle. So I crack open the door and say "Bob...?" He turns to me and says "What took you so long?" (laughs) That was Shaw. That was Shaw.

Let's talk about North Dallas Forty, which I think is the greatest football picture ever made.
I'm sitting in Mexico doing Who'll Stop the Rain, reading Peter Gent's book North Dallas Forty, just going "This is an amazing book." Anthony Zerbe walked by and said "That's your next picture." I said, "You mean I can just do what I want?" He said "Absolutely. That's going to be your next picture." So I got a writer friend of mine and we just started writing it. We didn't have the rights to it, didn't know what its status was. I called my agent and manager at the time and said I wanted to do this film, could they please check on the rights. But they didn't want me to do this project, so they didn't really pursue it. In the meantime every job that was offered to me I turned down. So this went on for a year. At the end of that year, I got a call from Michael Eisner, who had just come on as one of the three presidents of Paramount, along with Barry Diller and Robert Evans. He was also a vice-president at ABC when I did Rich Man, so I had a relationship there. He read the script and said "Okay, this is going to be one of my first films. But you've got to use a Paramount producer and a Paramount-appointed director. I said "Fine." Diller and Evans didn't want to do it, there was a lot of competition between them, but we went ahead anyway. During the development process we had gone through lots of different writers, comedic writers who wanted to have one of the players go on the field with a wooden leg, things like that...so I called Pete Gent and had him come back to have him on the set.(producer) Frank Yablans didn't want him there. He screamed at Pete: "Get this guy the hell off the set!" I said "Frank, this is the man who wrote North Dallas Forty, this is Phil Elliot, my character. I need him here to help me with my character." Frank grumbled "Alright, but he'd better not get in the way." So then (director) Ted Kotcheff comes up to me and says "Get Gent to start writing." So Pete started re-writing the script. And we shot one of his scenes, and Frank wasn't there that day. We were in dailies later, and this scene came up, and it was just brilliant, and Frank said "This is great! Who wrote this?" Pete raised his hand. Frank barked back: "Keep writing!" (laughs) So that's how North Dallas Forty was done. It was forced into being by my simply saying "I am going to do this."

I think Under Fire is an overlooked masterpiece. Tell us about the genesis of that film.
I'm going through the commissary at Paramount and I see Roger Spottiswoode and Ron Shelton. I knew Roger because he was Karel Reisz's editor. I asked them what they were up to. They were about to pitch Under Fire. I asked to read it and said "Look, you guys stay here, I'll go over to the office and read it." So I read it and it was just brilliant. So I committed to it, and because they had the actor already attached when they pitched it, it got set up! So we go down to Mexico to shoot it. We didn't have that big a budget, maybe 10 or 12 million. Right when we hit Mexico, the peso devalued by half, so we doubled our money! Now we had $24 million, in Mexican money, to shoot this. So we were able to give it an epic scope.

Tell us about Katharine Hepburn and Grace Quigley.
What Kate did, when I went to Kate's house in New York, she said "Pick a chair you want to sit in." So I sat down in this chair and she said "Ah yes, just as I thought, you picked Spence's chair." (laughs) She was great, just wonderful. The producer would say to her, "Kate, how are you going to play this?" She'd say "What do you mean 'how am I going to play this?' Do you know how you're going to do something before you do it? That's a stupid question!" (laughs) Here's a woman that was fired on eight films, bought her way out of a Broadway play, she said "I was very young and just terrible. I didn't know any technique and I went to the producer and said 'Get someone in here who can act.' And the producer said "No, we didn't hire you for your talent, we hired you for your name." She's very aware, very tuned in. And she knew that wasn't the right place for her to be, so she raised some money and bought her way out of the play. She came along in my life at just about the right time. I was pretty on the edge. And that film had a real ambiance as a holdover from Vietnam, the counterculture. It's an interesting film. Rex Reed called it a "Nazi film," that it promoted killing the elderly, which was absurd.

Let's talk about Prince of Tides, another character with a lot of backstory. Did you have a similar experience with your character Tom Wingo in that as you did with Wade Whitehouse?
Absolutely. I was living in North Carolina at the time, in a beach house, just above Myrtle Beach. I told Barbara Streisand that I was going to go to that beach house for the summer, and I was going to live that life, out on the beach, hang out in some classes with some school teachers in small schools near that area, go down to Beaufort and try to trace Pat Conroy's writing of the novel, which became sort of a massive detective job. Because Conroy talks not only about Beaufort, but all of the south. For a while Robert Redford had the piece, and had a different kind of script than Barbara had. I thought she really found the heart of that material. So I really lived that life, went shrimping...I always felt the character of the sister was Anne Sexton. Barbara felt she was Sylvia Plath. Then someone told me that Pat has a sister who's a poet, so it might just be his sister! (laughs) But Barbara took the heart of the story and focused it on the women and the men. She was a wonderful director, wonderful with the actors and so steeped in the material.

How do you like to be directed, if at all?
However that director wants to direct. With Sidney Lumet, for example, he has a style where we do four weeks of rehearsals where we answer every question from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. We rehearse it a lot like a play. And that's a wonderful approach, because by the time you film, you don't really have any questions about the characters. Sidney and I had a ball. He was wonderful. But every director's different, and you learn something new with each approach.

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NICK STAHL: The Hollywood Interview

EYES WIDE OPEN

Sleepwalking star Nick Stahl
By Terry Keefe

This article is currently appearing in this month's issue of Venice Magazine.

No one in Hollywood plays a tortured soul better than Nick Stahl. But, thankfully, despite whatever places he needs to go to bring to life the likes of the Yellow Bastard in Sin City, Bobby Kent in Bully, Ben Hawkins in Carnivale, and even John Connor in Terminator 3, Stahl seems to be able to leave them behind at the stage door. Although he’s been in Hollywood since he was a child (starring as an adolescent opposite Mel Gibson in 1993’s The Man Without a Face), the now-28 Stahl has rarely been seen in the tabloids as part of the ever-burgeoning celebrity industrial complex, but he could certainly have been milking that publicity gravy train for all it was worth next to the Lohans and the like, if he chose. He’s been on the verge of major studio film stardom seemingly forever, but appears just as happy playing interesting characters in lower-budget indies. It’s a bit of a cliché to state, but the quality of the work is obviously very important to him. This writer didn’t know what to expect from Stahl in person, when we met for lunch on Abbot Kinney at the end of February. Actors are sometimes very close to the types they specialize in and, just as frequently, couldn’t be more different. To answer my own question here, Stahl comes across as an affable guy, with a lot going on underneath the surface. Speculating on more than that regarding his personality would be useless and presumptuous after just an hour talking together. But what was obvious is the determination that drives his career and that he’s here for the long haul as an actor. When all the current flavors-of-the-month have burned up and disappeared from the covers of gossip magazines, Stahl will likely still be pushing himself to the limits of his considerable talent.

This spring brings us two new Stahl features, Sleepwalking and Quid Pro Quo, which really allow a nice showcase of his range, so far apart are the two stories from each other in terms of plot, although they share some thematic similarities. Sleepwalking was directed by William Maher and produced by Charlize Theron, who also co-stars, but it’s really Stahl’s film to carry as an actor. He plays a very average guy named James Reedy, a fellow who works construction, not very well, and stumbles through a painfully average life. That’s until his much-wilder sister Joleen (Theron) shows up and asks to move in temporarily with her 11-year old daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb). Temporarily for Joleen, but more permanently for Tara, as Joleen takes off one night and leaves Tara with her uncle James. While James can barely take care of himself, he slowly rises to the occasion of becoming the father that Tara never had. This is no lighthearted Big Daddy-style surrogate father-kid buddy story though, as James and Tara have to brave a harrowing time with James’ own father, played by Dennis Hopper, before James is able to come to a number of painful realizations which enable him to move his life forward. In Quid Pro Quo, written and directed by Carlos Brooks, Stahl inhabits a character who is ostensibly much more together than James, a successful Public Radio journalist named Isaac Knott, but who is not without his own challenges to overcome, as he is confined to a wheelchair. While James in Sleepwalking has to discover who he is, Isaac seems to know at first, but his sense of self is challenged by the arrival of a mysterious young woman named Fiona (Vera Farmiga), who is part of a bizarre subculture of “Wannabes,” able-bodied people who desperately wish to be paralyzed themselves in order to feel whole. While investigating the Wannabes for a story, Isaac becomes involved with Vera, who will shine light on parts of his past that he has buried deep in his subconscious. There’s a nice, albeit unintended, symmetry to the fact that both of Stahl’s characters, Isaac and James, are sleepwalking through life, and have to essentially wake up and confront demons they’ve long avoided.

Obviously, some of the backstory of James in Sleepwalking is revealed as the story progresses. He’s a complicated guy though, while simple at first glance. Did you create any additional backstory to use in the role?

Nick Stahl: I actually didn’t have to do a lot of that, because I do think it was all on the page. It was a really cool character. If there was any danger, maybe, in how the character read…it was that he might’ve been misunderstood as being kind of slow, or something, which I didn’t want to play. I thought it was more interesting that he was someone who has just been wounded, by life, and as a result of that, kind of retreated from the world a little bit. And settled for a simpler life. Then his niece comes into his life, and that’s when his kind of transformation starts, you know? I think he finally has like some sort of a purpose or something to work towards, something to take responsibility for. He starts to come into his own at that point.

AnnaSophia Robb as your niece has one of the more confident onscreen presences I’ve seen in a child actor. Is this your first time starring opposite a child, other than when you were a child actor yourself?

Yeah, I’ve never really worked with younger kids or anything before, but it was interesting because I myself was acting, you know, when I was around her age also. I was doing movies as well – so it’s funny…it kind of, it mirrored the film’s story in some ways because I just sort of instinctively had this kind of like protectiveness with her, you know? And then when I was young and I was doing films, there are producers and people who, you know, they’re exploitive – they will try to get as much out of you as they can, and they’ll tell you and your parents that working a fifteen-hour day is normal. And if you want the movie to be finished, you need to stay for fifteen hours, or whatever. And just really….I mean, luckily, you know, there was none of that on this movie, and she had a really solid family, and really – and she’s a lot more, I would say, balanced kid than I was, I would say, at that age. And I think she’s more secure and level-headed and confident as well.

AnnaSophia Robb and Stahl in SLEEPWALKING.

You also got [SPOILER ALERT]...

...to kill Dennis Hopper in this film. He’s usually the one who’s doing the killing onscreen in most films.

I know, and I hated to have to do that. I mean, I was so nervous about it. This was, you know, the legend, Dennis Hopper. And I had to beat him up, and then, you know, do more than that – and I just didn’t want to do it! Plus, I like him so much personally – he’s such an amazing person, but I think he understood that I didn’t have a choice [laughs]. He’s somebody that really cares a lot about what he’s doing, his work -- and that was really cool to see, because I’m sure, you know, once you get to a certain age and you’ve seen so much, and you’ve done so many things—

You could sleepwalk through it if you wanted to.

Right [laughs] – you could. You might not care as much, I would think there’s the potential for just phoning things in. This guy would never do that. I mean, because he just is a real artist and he cares a lot about his performance, and he works….he just constantly is working very hard at it.

Charlize Theron and Stahl in SLEEPWALKING.

How did you get involved in the project?

I was approached by Charlize and Bill Maher, the director. I like to call him William Maher, so people don’t confuse him with the Bill Maher on television. There were actual reports when we started filming that the “Politically Incorrect” Bill Maher was directing this for us. It was literally on CNN or something, that he was directing Charlize Theron in a movie [laughs]. But they approached me about a year before it got its full financing. I was the first one cast. They just saw me in the role, and wanted me to do it, and it was pretty exciting because I’m used to having to fight for things a lot, and this I didn’t have to. I was the guy they wanted from the beginning.

You do still have to fight for things a lot? That’s somewhat surprising.

Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, depending on the movie. Right now, I’ll get offered independent things occasionally – but most of them, I’d say 95% of them, are horrible.
But with something that’s of any kind of quality, I definitely audition – and I like auditioning, I’ve always felt comfortable with doing it. I mean, I’ve always felt more comfortable in an audition than a meeting. I think it’s the same reason why I have such nervousness about public speaking and things like that. But as soon as I’m filming or onstage or something like that, I just never have. I’m kind of in that world, maybe, in character, and so I can do that, no problem. But having to meet some strangers and talk about myself for an hour, it’s a lot more difficult for me. So, I’ve never had a problem with auditioning, and especially if it’s for something that I really like. You know, all that I have ever been frustrated about, or wanted, was just the opportunity to do it, to audition, and actually have a fair competition. Because…it’s taken me a long time to come to terms with the politics of this, of the town, you know, and sometimes, it sucks to have to abandon a movie that you’re really proud of and then go on and have to do something that you don’t really believe in, because you need money. But I’ve also been really fortunate that I’ve never had to have…a job, a real job, in my life. You know, I’m twenty-eight years old, and that’s pretty amazing. And that feels good. What gets really hard to deal with sometimes, when it comes to the politics of the town – and by that, I mean if someone has a lot of popularity in the moment, they’ll just get offered something for that reason. But you know, if that [level of popularity] happens with me [laughs]….I’m obviously gonna have a different take on it [laughs]. But if I’m not able to even read, to even go in on something…that’s hard to deal with. Because if I’m up against someone who’s genuinely better for the role, that’s great, I can totally deal with that, that’s fine. It’s the lack of opportunity that’s really hard to deal with sometimes. It’s just part of the business end of things, which has never been my strength.

Let’s talk a bit about Quid Pro Quo. This must have been an interesting film to do your prep work for.

It was more unusual than Sleepwalking, I would say, sure [laughs].We filmed in New York – which I loved. I’ve worked there a few times, and I just love the city, and I love working there. But I had never worked there in a wheelchair, so that was obviously different. And essentially, as far as that goes, in terms of prep work, I just used a wheelchair for a few weeks and just kind of went everywhere in it and rolled around the city. I just wanted to experience what it was like: people’s reactions, the difficulty of doing it. First of all, physically…I mean, it’s hard, it’s really hard. And you can see I’m not, you know, the biggest – I don’t have the biggest upper body [laughs]. It takes a lot of strength. That was my first discovery. How physically demanding it is. But yeah, it was really interesting just to see people’s reactions to you, and how you’re treated. For the most part, people kind of avoid your gaze.

Just like your character describes in the film.

Yeah, it’s funny. People….I think that wheelchairs scare people. That was my assessment. People don’t want to look at injuries. Most people didn’t recognize me because they didn’t take the time to look into my eyes, or my face, you know? I didn’t really even have to worry about that most of the time, because I just kind of blended in. But then, you know, one day, someone said, “Hey man, aren’t you on that…weren’t you on ‘Carnivale’?” and I was like, “Fuck!” [laughs] So I wheeled away really quickly. I think he was horrified to think that, you know, this actor’s been in an accident. And so I had to watch out for that a little bit.

This the type of material that could be a disaster if the directing was off in any significant way.

Right, and by the way, even after we filmed it and it was done, it took many passes editorially to get it to where it was [quality-wise] in the script. We actually ended up re-shooting some stuff, and adding a couple of scenes. I think it was the kind of thing that, it was so clear on the page…the story, and the tone of it was so clear, but, for whatever reason, it’s such a different process once you actually film it and then you actually go to start editing it. It’s such a different process that it doesn’t always translate well from the script. I saw some early cuts, that actually weren’t all that great. Those cuts didn’t capture what was in the script, and a lot of people had problems with the film. A lot of people didn’t get it, and that was the reason why we had to go back and retool some stuff. [Director] Carlos Brooks worked endlessly for so long. He kept cutting it and working at it. But finally, I think what he got – what we ended up with was pretty close to the script, and I’m actually really proud of it, and I was really happy that it came together like it did.

Carlos mentioned in the press notes that he wanted the tone of the film to exist “somewhere between deep sleep and wakefulness.”

That’s exactly something he would say. Yeah. It does have sort of a dreamlike quality to some of it, and I think that it deals a lot with the subconscious, and the bearing of painful memories. Those are elements which are really intriguing to me. It’s amazing how your subconscious protects you against pain.

Jessica Alba and Stahl in SIN CITY.

Let’s talk about a few of your previous films. How did you find the character of Yellow Bastard in Sin City?

Well, first of all, just to give you kind of the back story on getting that role, it was not a role I was supposed to do. I was just supposed to be in the beginning of the film, when it’s me without the make-up, before he later turned into [the Yellow Bastard]. And they had another actor who was set to do the Yellow Bastard role – and he fell out of the movie, he had a conflict or something, so Robert Rodriguez called me to and he just said, “Hey man, maybe you could do both, and maybe we can see that it’s you, kind of, through the makeup, and maybe it’ll be even better.” And I thought it was cool because, it’s a bigger role obviously [laughs], and I got to do more on the film. But I was intimidated by doing this theatrical cartoonish thing. It’s obviously drawn a certain way, and you can get kind of a voice of this crazy character through Frank Miller’s writing, but I was really intimidated because I still didn’t know completely what Frank had in mind. This character…when he actually speaks, and he moves around, and his physicality, and I was like, “I don’t know what to do. I have to – obviously this is really broad, and I have to make this into something big, and something scary.” But really I was kind of in the dark about it. I was just hoping that what I did synched up with what they wanted. They didn’t fire me, so I guess it was okay [laughs]. But I don’t ever want to wear that many prosthetics again in my life!

It must have been insane. It barely looked like you.

It was miserable. Not only grueling time-wise to put it on – but, you know, just sitting there in it. It’s stiflingly hot, you can’t move. You feel like you’re stuck together. Luckily we only did that character….I only had makeup on for, I think, five days. It was shot so fast on video, rapid-fire.

The first film I remember seeing you in as an adult was Bully, where you played the very disturbed teenager Bobby, based on a real-life individual. You weren’t far removed from high school age yourself.

Yeah, and I knew kids like some of the ones in that film. I had friends like that who were just, you know, young and had no sense of consequence and lived dangerously. And I kinda did the same for a while at that age. I mean, I had sort of a dual life in a way – I was going away and doing films, and then coming back, and hanging out with friends, and getting into trouble, and experimenting with drugs, and doing all that stuff, and so my teenage years had some darker times to them, that aren’t the fondest memories for me. So to go back to that world [for Bully], and to - and this obviously was a real extreme, this particular story - but it still really brought back a lot of memories for me, of that time, and that character was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in a movie . You know, Sin City is one thing, when you’re playing someone who’s a ridiculous, over-the-top cartoon character. But if you’re playing, you know, a real guy who’s essentially looked at as kind of a monster…I mean, it was just so far from who I am and I was amazed I was even cast in that role, actually. So I guess I was just so worried all the time that it would not be convincing. That it was beyond my range of who I was and what I could pull off. And Larry Clark, too, the way he works….he’s very visual, and he doesn’t give a lot of direction, acting-wise. That’s kind of his style. He kind of lets people do their own things, and if something’s not working, he’ll tell you, but for the most part, you’re kind of out there on your own. So if he didn’t tell me not to do something, I just had to assume that it was okay. It was one of the most challenging films I’ve done.

Let’s go way back. Your bio says that you started acting when you were four. Was that in the typical manner, via school plays and such?

Yeah, but it wasn’t really school plays, but a children’s theatre group in Dallas. My mom was a seamstress as a side-job for the children’s theatre group, and so I just started auditioning for plays, and I really liked it a lot, and I thought that this was it. I’m talking like four or five years old, really young. I mean, I’m one of those weirdos that knew very early on what I wanted to do. I just always had a certain confidence about it. For whatever reason. I was decent in athletics, but I was not in the elite, and I wanted to do something where I could be. I grew up next to this athlete who was my best friend, and we would constantly compete at whatever sport – basketball or football or whatever. I was always competitive with him, but he would always edge me out at the end of the day. So I think he single-handedly probably turned me away from athletics and is partly responsible for getting me into acting [laughs].

Did a lot of opportunities follow The Man Without a Face?

I did a couple things, and then my next big feature film, when I was fourteen, it was a Disney movie called Tall Tale. It was a big movie, but it actually kind of tanked. I had a real tough period there, in the teenage years, of not working for a long time. It was really hard for me, because at that point I was supporting my family, and I was really dependent on work. And so I went through some really low periods of just not working for a year or two. It was probably two years max that I didn’t work, but that seemed like one of the longest periods of my life.

Okay, last question. Let’s say you’re that four-year old and you’re imagining your acting future, does the career you’ve had look anything like you expected?

I think I’ve been overconfident since a young age, and so I’m actually probably not as far along as I thought I would be [laughs], because I think I had a real inflated ego, as to my abilities [laughs]. I think I still do, sometimes.

Sleepwalking will be released this month by Overture Films. Quid Pro Quo will be released by Magnolia Pictures.

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Patricia Clarkson: The Hollywood Interview

Actress Patricia Clarkson.


PATRICIA CLARKSON: BELLE OF THE BALL
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article appears in the March 2008 issue of Venice Magazine.


Patricia Clarkson should be designated a national treasure. One of America’s finest actors, she first appeared on movie screens (and made many man’s heart-a-flutter) in Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables (1987), playing the wholesome wife of Kevin Costner’s intrepid G-man Eliot Ness. Since that time, Patricia Clarkson has appeared in over 60 roles in TV and feature films, playing everything from suburban housewives to drug-addled lesbian actresses. The diversity in her body of work betrays a talent that seems to grow and evolve with each passing year, a rare mark that only the real mccoys of the artistic community can boast to bear.

Born and raised in the Big Easy AKA New Orleans, LA., this southern belle made her debut on the world stage December 29, 1959, the fifth child (and fifth daughter) of a father who ran the Louisiana State University Medical School and a mother who would go to onto become a renowned city councilwoman. After graduating Yale University’s prestigious drama program, Patricia never stopped working, initially trodding the boards on the New York stage, and soon landing plum supporting roles on television shows such as The Equalizer and Spencer: For Hire.

After making her feature debut, just a few of the noteworthy cinematic turns Patricia made include Rocket Gibraltar, Everybody’s All-American, The Dead Pool, Tune in Tomorrow, Pharaoh’s Army, Jumanji, High Art, Playing by Heart, The Green Mile, The Pledge, Wendigo, The Safety of Objects, Far From Heaven, Dogville, Miracle, The Dying Gaul, The Station Agent and last year’s sleeper hit, Lars and the Real Girl.

2003’s Pieces of April nabbed Patricia many much-deserved kudos, including: An Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and best supporting wins from The Boston Society of Film Critics Award, The Chicago Association of Film Critics Award, The National Board of Review, and a special jury prize from Sundance, which was also given for her work in that year’s The Station Agent and All the Real Girls. Patricia also won two Emmy Awards for her recurring role on the HBO hit Six Feet Under, as well as an acting prize from the Deauville Film Festival for The Safety of Objects, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her work in Far From Heaven.

2008 has also proven to be a busy year for the lovely Miss Clarkson: Married Life, from Sony Pictures Classics, features Patti as a housewife circa 1948 whose seemingly idyllic marriage to successful corporate exec Chris Cooper is not all that it seems. Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams round out the cast of this fine drama from co-writer/director Ira Sachs, which is punctuated with bursts of black humor and satire. Patti also just wrapped Woody Allen’s latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, and will start work on Martin Scorsese’s latest effort, Shutter Island, this summer. Patricia Clarkson sat down with Venice recently to discuss her latest work, her remarkable past accomplishments, and her pride in being a New Orleanian.


After seeing Married Life I thought immediately what a great double bill it would make with Far From Heaven.
Patricia Clarkson: (laughs) Yeah, that’s true. They’re very different films, but they’re both period pieces about secrets and intrigue and marriage.

I thought it was very Bergmanesque in the way it examined relationships.
It’s so funny you bring that up, because there is great humor in many of the scenes. We were just in the Miami Film Festival and the audience was just rolling in the aisles during some scenes laughing, and gasping in others. But when Chris and I were actually shooting a lot of these scenes, we went for broke, and it was like Ingmar Bergman. So although people might be laughing at certain points, these are very, very intense scenes and in order for them to have any kind of pay-off, we had to play everything completely straight. We were as invested as any deeply dramatic film I’ve ever done.

I think it was probably nervous laughter you were hearing.
(laughs) Well, yes!

Patricia Clarkson in Married Life.

I thought it was such a brilliant metaphor with the cast playing charades at the end.
Yes, and then putting the house back together.

Tell us about working so closely with Chris Cooper.
He’s an incredible man, very bright. He’s a real man. Everything you would want him to be, he is. Sometimes you meet or work with a star, and they disappoint. He doesn’t: he’s a gentleman. He has crazy talent. We actually worked together years ago in a film called Pharaoh’s Army (1995). It’s a tiny, little Civil War film where Chris plays a Union soldier and I’m a confederate woman on a farm whose husband is off at war. Chris and his men come and basically take over my farm. It’s this kind of chaste, dark love story in a way between me and Chris. It was actually the very first independent movie I ever did, before High Art. So we’ve been friends for years, and I’m friends with his wife, so that made doing this film with him very easy, because I was able to build on the intimacy of our friendship that was already there. Because you can only act so much, as an actor. There has to be some kind of connection there. He’s very giving, very selfless, which is rare.

Clarkson and Chris Cooper in Married Life.

It was great to see Pierce Brosnan on-screen again. He’s like this generation’s Cary Grant.
Yes, he’s got all the talent and all the charm. He’s timeless and effortless and…how much more thrilled could I be that I’ve got Chris Cooper as my husband and Pierce Brosnan as my confidante! Pierce is a real gentleman, too.

You’re a southern belle, born and raised in New Orleans. You’ve also played some great repressed women, all of whom could have easily slipped into caricature but you made them very real. Being from the south did you grow up around a lot of these types of women?
Well Pat is not repressed, so to speak, she’s secretive. I think Pat, for a period woman, without revealing her secret, is quite a sexual, sensual modern woman. She’s trapped by the times, but the era might repress her, but I don’t think Pat is a truly repressed woman. I think she’s a woman that has to adhere to the constraints that are placed upon her. I think if she’d been born ten years later, she’d have had a very different life. I think would have had a career, and lovers, and…a fast car! (laughs) And lots of lipstick! (laughs) So there was a certain repression to women of eras gone by that we associate with period films, but if you think about what she says at the get-go, that love is sex, many people still find it shocking now that I say that!

That’s too bad.
(both laugh) Yes, it is.

L to R: Patricia Clarkson, co-writer/director Ira Sachs and Chris Cooper confer on the set of Married Life.

But you had a very dynamic, working mother growing up, so that had to have had an influence on you.
Oh, absolutely, but she didn’t go to work until we were a little older.

How many siblings do you have?
Four older sisters, and we’re all eighteen months apart.

Wow…all that hot southern blood in one house! Dad had to have at least one shotgun loaded at all times.
Oh, I think he had several! (laughs) But we were like his harem. My father is a remarkable man. He’s a very kind, gentle soul, and is very witty. He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He started out running a children’s home when we were little, then got a PhD in Public Health, and ran the LSU Medical School Department of Medicine. He wasn’t a doctor. He was an administrator. But he’s retired now and lived in a house of six women and two female dogs. I mean…but I think he kind of loved it! (laughs) He has male grandchildren now, so the estrogen count that he had to live with has petered out somewhat.

Do you and your sisters all look alike?
We all have similar timbres to our voices and similar mannerisms, so you know when you see us together that we’re sisters. I look like my mother, especially in this movie. In the poster for the movie, oh my God! (laughs) My sisters are all very accomplished and have beautiful lives. My oldest sister isn’t married, but my middle sisters all mix family and marriage and very challenging careers.

Did they all stay in the South?
Yes, they all stayed in the New Orleans area except for one, who lives in Dallas.

So you’re the only defector then who not only defected, but went to that ultimate Yankee state, New York.
Yes, when I was 19. I transferred from LSU to Fordham University’s College at Lincoln Center. My parents were…it was difficult for southern parents to let their daughter go off by herself to New York City. They agreed to let me go to New York if I finished my bachelor’s degree. So it was a real stretch for my parents, putting their fifth child through school, and they weren’t rich by any means. We were middle, or upper-middle class, but New York has always been incredibly expensive. So the sacrifices they made to send me there were enormous.

They must’ve seen something in you early on.
My mother especially knew that I was serious about being an actress.

When did you know you were an actress?
Probably when I was 13.

What happened?
I gave a speech in speech class, and my teacher said “You know, I think you’re an actress. You should join the drama department.” And I did! And that was it. I did a play called F.L.I.P.P.E.D.: Feminist Liberation Idealist Party for Permanent Equality and Democracy. The drama teacher was a major feminist. It was 1974 or ’75 and we did this rockin’ play! I had great training in New Orleans and great mentors, believe it or not. So I went to Fordham and had an amazing mentor there named Joe Jezewski, and then I got into Yale. I went right from Fordham into graduate school there. It was a fantastic, and rigorous experience. I mean, it was eighteen hour days. But in so many ways I didn’t realize at the time, it prepared me so much for this business, and not in the sense of auditioning and “the business,” but in a chemical, physiological way because it required so much of you. Then I graduated in ’85 and lived in New York.

The first thing I remember seeing you in was when you played the butt-kickin’ bride on that great episode of The Equalizer.
(laughs) Oh my God! I have to tell you, I did The Untouchables before I did The Equalizer, and I also did a Spencer: for Hire. (laughs)

Oh my God, it’s ‘80s night!
(laughs) Right? I played a murderer on that one. Foreshadowing. (both laugh)

But I imagine having a film like The Untouchables be your first feature must’ve been an amazing experience.
It was! Working with Brian de Palma first out of the gate was a great education. Again, it was illuminating and it was real on-the-job training.

Clarkson and Kevin Costner in The Untouchables (1987), her film debut.

It must’ve been especially tough with your stage background because, if memory serves, de Palma shot you almost entirely in extreme close-up.
Yes. I couldn’t touch a cup of coffee during that shoot! (laughs) But Brian really helped. You never forget your first, and he really took me under his wing. We keep in touch still. We’re friends, and I adore him. He has a great, wicked sense of humor.

You did about 2-3 years of stage work before your film career really took off, right?
Right. I was doing a lot of off-Broadway and Broadway. It was a dream, just beautiful shows, like The House of Blue Leaves. I met John Guare, and Richard Greenberg, and Nicky Silver. I was lucky and had great fortune to do this wide variety of parts on stage and then slowly doing these films like Rocket Gibraltar and Everybody’s All-American, which took place in Louisiana, but I played the Yankee! (laughs) And then I did The Dead Pool. Then things were cool for me for a while, while I was in my early ‘30s, and that was an interesting time for me.

That’s a tough age for actresses. It’s like the old saying about the three stages in an actress’ life: babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.
(laughs) Yes, it’s so true!

You mentioned The Dead Pool. Tell us about the great Clint Eastwood.
I had just done Everybody’s All-American, and flew to San Francisco and met him for the first time. There were women screaming outside the restaurant, and just about everywhere we went: just mobs of people. He’s such a movie star. Working with George Clooney down the line was quite similar: just the sheer power they have with people. But at the same time, they’re both very real, and approachable and first-class people. But being the female lead in the final Dirty Harry movie was amazing! You know that Clint is famous for doing one take, right? So here I am on maybe my third movie, this huge part with lots of dialogue, playing an anchorwoman rattling off all this dialogue, paragraphs worth, and Clint would be looking at me and would say “That was good for me. Was it good for you?” I’d say ‘Uh yeah, sure!’ “Movin’ on!” (laughs) He was cutting Bird at the time, and was really burning the candle at both ends, and was still just unflappable. I’m very grateful that part of my “lore,” so to speak, will be that I worked with Clint Eastwood.

When you look at your career, it’s quite obvious you’ve chosen quality over quantity from the get-go. You easily could’ve gone the “starlet/babe” route when you began, but you never did. What motivates your choices for picking the right project?
There were some movies I passed on early on, and some movies I didn’t get, some big studio films. But now I look back and I realize that I really came later in life to a kind of career. I was somewhat typecast as suburban “mom” type roles early on. But I’ve always had this deep voice, so I think it was tough sometimes for directors to cast me as the ingénue. Because I’d walk in and look a certain way, then open my mouth and have this…voice! (laughs) So I think I sort of grew into my voice, my face, my body as I got older.

So you think of yourself as a late-bloomer?
Mm-hm. And, I hate the cliché, but maybe I’m an old soul. I think it all works better now, somehow. It’s all more symmetrical. (laughs)

Some of our greatest actors have had careers like that: Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman. Even Gena Rowlands didn’t really come into her own until she did A Woman Under the Influence when she was in her 40s.
Those are all my heroes! I’m lucky because now I have choices that I never had. In some ways, it’s “be careful what you wish for,” that I have the career that I have. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still have heartbreak, and disappointment, or feel that I’m sometimes underpaid (laughs). Shooting some of these independent films, and I am for the most part, an indie actress, but you know what? It’s tiring sometimes not having a place to sit between takes! (laughs) The amenities of shooting with money cannot ever be underestimated! (laughs) That’s why Married Life was a great job. It was truly an art film, I felt, with a great cast, but we also got paid. They treated us beautifully.

Who were your influences when you were growing up?
Oh, everyone from Ingrid Bergman to Lucille Ball, and Peter Sellers!

He’s one of my heroes. Every Pink Panther movie that came out…Oh my God, my father and I were obsessed with The Pink Panther movies! And The Party, what a brilliant movie! So I had odd, for New Orleans anyway, odd influences.

I don’t know about that: N’awlins is an eclectic city.
Yes, at heart it’s a European city.

It’s not the United States, not at all. It’s its own country.
And you’d have thought with the reaction to (Hurricane) Katrina that it wasn’t part of the United States! It was always everyone’s biggest fear, and it happened.

You were involved with the relief effort.
I was able to get back into the city because my mother is a councilwoman and so I just started helping wherever I could. It’s hard to talk about it…it’s difficult because I didn’t lose my life, so to speak, in Katrina. I witnessed people I love lose things. Fortunately no one in my family lost their life, but they lost a hell of a lot of other things. So I can talk about the gravity of it as an event, but at the end of the day, if you’re in the middle of it, it’s an entirely different thing. I love my family dearly and I love the city of New Orleans, and it’s not going anywhere! It’s rallying. It needs help, but it’s rallying. So what else should we talk about? What else do you have written on that little pad? (laughs)

Well, let’s see…You mentioned High Art earlier. Your character in that film had to go into some very dark places.
Oh my God! It’s interesting. That film changed everything for me. It was a glorious opportunity, one that I didn’t even realize at the time. I loved the movie and I loved the part, although I’m not German, I’m not gay and I’ve never even smoked pot! But (writer/director) Lisa Cholodenko had faith in me that I would transform and that I understood Greta in some way.

How did you get that accent down?
I don’t know. (laughs) It was cast and shot very quickly because we had no money. I mean, it cost $500,000. I knew a German woman and tried to learn her voice and her inflections, but there was no time for a dialect coach or anything. Plus I had to wear those hot leather pants…

Yes, they were…
No! I mean hot as in melting! (laughs) You’re bad…But it was a new beginning for me, in a way, and I’ve been offered magnificent things since then. I think it kind of shattered whatever the view of me was, then you do something that changes that perception. “Wow, if she could do that, maybe she could play my circus trainer who speaks in seven dialects.” (laughs) They start to think that maybe you could become something that’s impossible to picture, which is a great place to be, and a place that I always wanted to be in this business: people seeing me as an actor who could play…almost anything. (laughs)

If you look at your filmography though, it is a pretty diverse slate of characters.
Yeah, but even great movie stars are shape-shifters. Great acting is great acting, whether you’re a movie star or not. It’s interesting, this businesses. I think there’s more breadth in this business (among the talent) than we give people credit for, and people have greater imaginations than we give them credit for. (pause) And I say that because I’m not working right now! (laughs)

You worked with two amazing shape-shifters in The Pledge: Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn.
Again, they were two who don’t disappoint. They’re both consummate artists, two of the greatest actors of any generation, and Sean was a dream director. I was fortunate enough to be cast in the movie, and there was Jack, who knew when to have a light touch off-camera, and then when to drive it home. He’s a master. So I’m always thankful when I get to work with people who expand you, and hopefully make you a better actor. That’s what I seek…God, could I sound more pretentious: ‘That’s what I seek!’ (laughs) But that is what I seek: the idea of working with certain directors and actors that I’ve worked with, because that’s what I love: the actual work, going to work. I love the intimacy, even though it’s sort of a false intimacy you have with directors and other actors. There are times when you form a real friendship, and sometimes you have a real love affair, even though I haven’t! But even in the moment, it is manna from heaven. There is nothing quite like that feeling.

And without sounding pretentious on my end: it’s like a spiritual realization for you.
Yes, and hopefully you keep continuing to have those realizations. Otherwise, if you don’t continue to challenge yourself, you should just stay at home. That’s my motto! (laughs)

Let’s just go through a list of Patti’s greatest hits. You did a movie for writer/director Craig Lucas that was so twisted, but I loved it: The Dying Gaul.
Oh, thank you! Of course the hardest part was that bikini! (laughs) Somehow a bikini is harder than nudity. It’s a weird thing. I’m being sort of facetious…(laughs) That was a beautiful experience, and I loved making that film. I thought it was an incredibly provocative, sexy film.

It also had a lot of very intelligent truths to tell about “the business.” Oh, very much so! Craig Lucas is a beautiful man, and gifted and just a warm, inviting man that you fell incredibly…you feel you can be in a bikini with! (laughs)

Patricia Clarkson in The Station Agent (2003).

The Station Agent: loved it.
That film cuts across all time and place. Whatever country I’m in, people have seen this film. It’s the most universal film I’ve ever made. They all fall in love with this movie.

It has a very gentle spirit and it came out at a time when we needed some gentility in the world.
Yes, it did. Tom McCarthy is a great director. That was his first movie, and for him to capture that tone…I’ve had great luck with first-time, and young directors, knock on wood… (Patricia proceeds to knock on the wooden end table nearby) Here, I’m superstitious! Not so much in age, but first-time, second-time, neophyte filmmakers. I hope to continue to have that in my career, and hopefully they’ll have money! (laughs)

Good Night and Good Luck was the best movie of 2005, I thought. I grew up listening to the stories of the Army-McCarthy hearings and Edward R. Murrow from my parents, and I felt like George Clooney really captured a bygone era with that film.
Even though it wasn’t a large part, it was quite choice, and I love the fact that I am forever a part of that film.

Clarkson in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005).

Did you all know you were doing something special when you were making it?
I think we knew to an extent. We were all thrilled to be on that set. It was all shot on a soundstage. We’d walk through that door, and it was like walking through a time machine once we crossed through into that CBS studio to shoot the film. Everything was right, and we’d just enter. George is really brilliant. This was his baby. For him to set out and direct this movie as his first, it just shows the level of talent that man has.

And yet no one would take him seriously for nearly the first 15 years of his career, pre-ER.
Well, he always worked, shooting lots of pilots, and he was always handsome! (laughs) But I see what you mean. That’s the thing in this business: sometimes it can shift so quickly, but you have to be prepared for the shifts.

And a few young actors of late haven’t, which is very sad.
Mm-hm. It is a business that can be glorious one moment and deadly the next. But you have to remain hungry for the right things.

That’s the key mantra isn’t it: “stay hungry”?
Yeah, for the right things, for the right aspects of this business. All the other stuff you have to do is crucial, but always for me, it has to be just about wanting to work, and not in a 9-to-5 way. You have to be inspired. You have to be thrilled. You have to be all of those things. And maybe not every single job is going to make you want to run around naked (laughs), but in some movies you might have to run around naked! (laughs) So you better be prepared.

What I hear you saying is: it’s the process you have to love.
You do. You have to love the process. And you have to give your life to it.

Clarkson and Chris Cooper in a scene from Married Life.

Read more!

Cindy Guidry: The Hollywood Interview

Author Cindy Guidry.



ALONE AGAIN, NOT-SO NATURALLY:
CINDY GUIDRY AND THE LAMENT OF
THE LAST SINGLE WOMAN IN AMERICA
By
Alex Simon

In her mid-30s, Cindy Guidry, who seemed to have it all one minute, suddenly found herself fired from her prestigious job as a development executive at a major studio, split from her boyfriend whom she thought she was going to marry, and with nary a clue as to how, or where, to travel on the very wide-open road that seemed to lay before her. Through all this, the New Orleans native had only one lament: why was she suddenly so goddamned happy?

After writing assiduously in journals about her feelings and experiences both in show business and in the minefield-like milieu of being single in Los Angeles, Cindy Guidry compiled her thoughts into a memoir entitled The Last Single Woman in America (Dutton, $24.95), a volume of stinging humor, stunning insight, and moments of emotional epiphany. Think if Dorothy Parker and Anais Nin had collaborated on a book (or had a love child), and you get the idea of the tone of Ms. Guidry’s tome.

In addition to garnering much praise from fans and critics alilke, The Last Single Woman was recently purchased by HBO as a series in development. Cindy Guidry, now 43, sat down in a Hancock Park café recently to discuss her remarkable freshman writing effort. Here’s what transpired:

THE HOLLYWOOD INTERVIEW: Tell us how this book was born.
Cindy Guidry: When I started working at (the studio) in 1990, it was the first time I had ever had a computer. I had a lot of strange people around me, and a computer at my disposal so I just started writing. So for the last eighteen years, I’ve just written essays for myself.

So you were a blogger before blogging existed?
(laughs) Yeah, I guess, although blogging sort of wigs me out. The idea that it’s instantly going to be seen by someone. I don’t think I could have written the things I originally did if I’d known anyone else was going to see it. So I was just writing for myself for a long time, and I was really frustrated with the film business. The summer of 2006 I decided that I’d had it with “the biz,” and I had all these essays, so why not send them out and see if anyone was interested?

So the book is a compilation of writings over a series of years?
Yeah, it goes from about 2001-2006. There’s some flashback stuff in there also that takes you back further in time.

I loved the anecdotes about your family. I think everyone will be able to relate to them.
Yeah, my crazy family. (laughs) I love my family and my parents, and we’re all so different, but I think I’m maybe a bit of an extremist because of my parents. My mom who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, and my dad, who did everything! I feel like I’m constantly going from one end to the other. My dad’s a sportsman, my mom likes opera and dancing. No middle ground there, at all.

Growing up in New Orleans, did you always love the movies?
It¹s funny, I always loved movies, but I never really was looking to get into the movie business. It just kind of happened. I dropped out of University of New Orleans, and moved to San Diego in '87 to expand my horizons. I had two friends who were going to there for the summer, and decided to go with them. I figured they were going to stay for three months, and that would give me time to figure something out. They left at the end of the summer, and I stayed. Then my boyfriend from New Orleans ended up coming out to visit, and never left. It wasn't a very good situation. I escaped in '90. So I wasn¹t coming to Los Angeles, as much as I was leaving San Diego...It’s so strange how things work out: I was working at a bar at Pacific Beach, McCormick & Schmick’s, and this guy had come in and we were talking about movies, and debating about what made a good movie and what made a bad one. At the end of the conversation he said “Well why are you down here tending bar when you know so much about film. You should be in Hollywood, working in the film business.” And honestly, it was just that one thing that pointed me in a direction when I knew I needed a new direction. So I arrived here with $80 to my name, and a place to stay for one month. I didn’t know anyone. I opened up the trades and there was an ad for a receptionist at the studio, and I was hired.

So upon arriving in L.A. you got doused in the baptism by fire of dating in L.A.?
Dating? Yeah, I suppose. I started falling in love with people, mostly. (laughs)

Was dating in L.A. different than in New Orleans and San Diego?
Well here’s the thing: I never dated in those other cities. I always had a boyfriend. In New Orleans, I lived with someone for years, and the same in San Diego. So it was a new experience for me. I’d someone who was interesting to me, we’d go out, and it always seemed that they were my boyfriend within a week. (laughs) It wasn’t like typical “dating.” That’s how it is with me: I don’t really date people: there’s just that magical moment and I’m together with someone for four years, until this book begins! That’s when everything changed.

What changed?
Everybody got married. I got older. I was disillusioned and after the disappointment of losing those guys in the beginning, I think I was terrified of being in a committed relationship.

I think we’re all starry-eyed about relationships in our 20s, then as we get older we get, I don’t want to say more cynical, but maybe more realistic about the frailty of human relationships, and other things for that matter.
Yeah, but you see I don’t want to lose innocence.

But you can’t be an adult unless you surrender your innocence to an extent.
I totally disagree. I think it’s just a conscious effort to open your heart. I don’t think people have to get hardened the way they do.

Then maybe we have different ideas of what innocence is: I don’t believe one has to have a hard heart in order to be a realist. You can be open, and be loving, but still be realistic about things, and make wise decisions, as opposed to idealizing them. Anytime you idealize something, you just set yourself up for disappointment and heartbreak.
I don’t agree. There’s a huge difference between the heart and the head, I think. I think that if you’re being wise, you’re never really going into anything with an open heart. I think that in order to go into something with an open heart, your brain has to sort of shut down. The brain will always get in the way. What’s different now is, I used to get into relationships and twist myself into a pretzel to be what someone wanted me to be. I’d never do that again.

You’d dive into the pool, and then look to see if there was water?
No, it was more like the idea of being in a relationship was so important to me that it didn’t matter what the cost was, and that’s just not the case anymore. So I think that has a lot to do with it. But also, the pool has shrunk: a lot of people have gotten married, or gotten really hardened, disillusioned, and skittish. So maybe the people I’m meeting at this point in my life aren’t as open to things as people were 20 years ago. What’s so comical to me is when my married friends try to give me advice, and it’s like “Hello! You haven’t dated for over 20 years