Remembering Horror Maestro Curtis Harrington

Filmmaker Curtis Harrington: 1926-2007.


Our Friend Curtis Harrington
by Jon Zelazny

Curtis Harrington was born in Los Angeles in 1926. He made short films as a teenager, graduated from USC, and began his Hollywood career in the 1950’s. By the end of the decade, he was directing: independent films, studio pictures, made-for-TV movies, and episodic TV. He completed his last short film in 2002, and died in 2007 at the age of 80.

I knew Curtis well in his final years, as did writer-producer Dennis Bartok, the former head programmer of L.A.’s famed American Cinematheque.

DENNIS BARTOK: I think the most interesting aspect of Curtis’s career is that he was really the only filmmaker to successfully transition from the avant-garde scene of the late 1940’s to directing Hollywood feature films. And when you see how distinctive his movies are, you wish he could’ve made more… but when you consider that none of them ever did much at the box office, it’s really a miracle he got to make as many as he did.

I don’t remember when I first met him, because he was an ever-present fixture at American Cinematheque screenings. The only film of his I knew at that point was What’s the Matter With Helen? (1971).


Written by Henry Farrell, best known for "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962), "Helen" is another psychodrama about two older women sharing a house in Hollywood. Debbie Reynolds plays a flaky dance instructor; Shelley Winters is a frumpy religious nut slowly losing her grip.

I saw it on TV when I was growing up, and it really freaked me out. The bizarre relationship between Reynolds and Winters, and the scenes of all those stage mothers trying to mold their little girls into the next Shirley Temple. I think it’s one of the great, skewed, deranged portraits of the underbelly of the movie industry.

JON: Curtis always regarded it as his best feature.

And it’s got Agnes Moorehead as that Aimee Semple McPherson-inspired evangelist. Curtis loved the history of Los Angeles, and all the great periphery characters here. He never saw the real Sister Aimee preach, but his parents went to her temple in Echo Park once, and he remembered them describing how every pew had a clothesline strung up over it at about eye level. They couldn’t figure it out… until Sister Aimee exhorted from the pulpit, “I don’t want to hear the clink of coins, just the rustle of dollar bills!” You were supposed to clothespin your offering to the line, and the ushers would reel it in. Curtis just cackled in delight when he told that story.

A vivid childhood memory he shared with me was after we saw Robert Towne’s Ask The Dust (2006), which depicted the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. Curtis was only seven or eight at the time, but he very clearly recalled being in the kitchen with his mother when everything started shaking. They lived just off Santa Monica Boulevard, across from what was then the back of the Fox lot, and is now the Century City mall.

Another detail from that time—which he thought should be revived—was “crying rooms” at movie theaters, where mothers could take their babies and watch the movie. I wrote down what he said about the Los Angeles Theater downtown: “My parents would drop me off there when they went to the movies. I must have been about three or four. They had a sandbox in the downstairs playroom, and a slide for the children.”

Maybe that’s where his love affair with the movies began; as a little boy seeing that movie theater as a palace of wonders.

After Helen, I think his most successful film from end to end is Night Tide (1961), which is about as close to a perfect first feature as you can get. It has the poetry and the beautiful, yearning energy of youth.

"Night Tide." In his first starring role, Dennis Hopper plays a good-hearted Navy sailor who falls for a girl who works as a mermaid in a sideshow attraction… who slowly draws him into the beguiling web of her mysterious past.

Jean-Pierre Melville once described Bob Le Flambeur as “a love letter to a Paris that no longer exists,” and I think Night Tide captures that kind of nostalgia for the old Venice-Santa Monica beach culture. I love the wonderful, slightly overexposed black and white photography; it has a very French New Wave look. I think Night Tide and Helen were very personal evocations of what Curtis remembered from his youth.

Night Tide was the first one I saw. Curtis presented it one night at the County Museum in 2000. I’d just written a screenplay that included a character based on the L.A. occultist Marjorie Cameron... whom Curtis had cast in Night Tide. So I introduced myself to afterwards, we chatted about Cameron, and then he said, “Well, you must come to tea some time!” So I went to his house maybe a week later and he indeed served a very proper English tea in the library. It was like stepping into a Vincent Price movie.

That house was such an expression of who he was. I wish it could have been preserved as a museum… of his soul, and his artistic sensibilities. All that great bric-a-brac: props from his movies, fin de siecle and Beaux-Arts painting and statues. Ibex skulls… 18th century prints of vampire bats… his Phrenology head… the trompe l’oiel molding around the ceilings… and that gorgeous mirror when you walked in. That whole supernatural aesthetic was very reminiscent of directors like Mario Bava and Georges Franju and James Whale.

And I think all the parties Curtis hosted there were as close as I’ve ever been to a genuine bohemian salon. You read about these great social scenes, like Paris in the 1920’s, and at Curtis’s house you really did meet all sorts of wonderfully crazy people.

Dennis Hopper and Linda Lawson in Night Tide.

Some of them were very nice; I had a lot of great talks with film preservationist Robert Gitt and film scholar Tony Slide, but there were a lot of kooks as well. I think Curtis—like Andy Warhol—just loved to surround himself with interesting people. One time we brought my nice, Lutheran in-laws from Florida, and they politely listened to people talk about shooting heroin and having sex with aliens.

I always enjoyed seeing cinematographer Gary Graver and his wife Jillian; Gary shot Orson Welles’ final films. The critic David Del Valle… horror queen Barbara Steele... and there was always some artist or writer just in from New York who Curtis would be introducing around.

After that first tea, he and I would get together for lunch or dinner and a movie every couple months. And I started seeing more and more of his work. I think my favorite of his early shorts is Fragment of Seeking (1946).

Curtis wrote, directed, and starred in this sixteen-minute surrealistic dream story set in and around his USC dormitory. The film was hailed as a major avant-garde achievement.

I usually find it embarrassing to sit through student films, but I was amazed at what a natural director he was; the camerawork and editing already has this ineffable grace and rhythm to it.

The quality I most admire in almost all of his movies is the poetry. They’re all tremendously lyrical.

Remember the sequence where Curtis is charging down that series of hallways in pursuit of the mysterious figure, and every time he rounds a corner, he just misses the specter disappearing around the next corner? I asked him if that was a nod to Buster Keaton’s similar sequence in The Navigator (1924), and he thought that was hilarious. He said no one had ever compared him to Buster Keaton before.

He also showed me The Wormwood Star (1955) at his house. That was his seven-minute study of Marjorie Cameron and her paintings.

I think we screened it at the Cinematheque once. It’s in color, right?

Yeah, he shot it on Kodachrome. And Cameron’s presence, her voice of doom…

Did you ever discuss the occult with him? My impression is that unlike his old friend Kenneth Anger, who genuinely subscribes to those beliefs, Curtis was always more the curious outsider looking in. I think he was fascinated by other people’s belief in black magic; particularly if they also lived lives of “artistic” decadence, like Aleister Crowley, or Cameron’s first husband, Jack Parsons.



I know Curtis, Cameron, and Anger were all part of that fifties Hollywood experimental underground crowd. Dennis Hopper, Anais Nin… all those people who were in Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1953). Even Curtis’s friend Jack Larson—who played squeaky-clean Jimmy Olsen in Superman on TV—did some experimental films for Warhol in the early sixties.

I don’t know how long Curtis remained in touch with Anger. They were close in the forties and fifties, but I know at some point they had a huge falling out.

Anger finally put a curse on him. Curtis showed me the final poison-pen letter Kenneth wrote him. It’s hard to believe the two of them ever stood on the same philosophical ground: Anger is a dark, nasty, venomous person who clearly revels in the implicit cruelty of the Crowley system of thought.

You were at Curtis’s funeral, right? One of the most appalling things I’ve ever seen was how Anger hijacked that service. From videotaping Curtis in his casket, getting ejected, then somehow worming his way back in, sitting in the front pew, and continually interjecting all these obnoxious rambling anecdotes during Jack Larson’s eulogy. If Curtis had actually been there somehow, he would have strangled that asshole!

Author and filmmaker Kenneth Anger.

Larson was amazing; he didn’t let any of it throw him. Just calmly rolled with it. “That’s true, Kenneth.” “Thank you for reminding us of that, Kenneth.”

Anger even threw in a promo for his own funeral! “I’m dying of cancer! I intend to be buried here one year from today… and it’s going to be by invitation only!”

Which sadly did not come to pass… he’s still out there! I imagine Marjorie Cameron must have been an equally wretched human being. How could Curtis have spent so much time with her?

Well, every film he made was about some kind of strange obsession... obsession with obsession, obsession with death. Images of decay, and things falling into ruin: houses in ruin, hearts in ruin. I think Curtis lived in a kind of glorious ruin; his own house always had that faintly sweet scent of decay.

Which is ironic, because you never met a nicer, more charming gentleman in your life. I was always fascinated that here was this intellectual with impeccable artistic taste… yet the stories he felt most drawn to were almost exclusively in the realm of psychological horror and the macabre.

It’s true. He made horror films for an art house audience… who are generally not interested in horror films.

And horror movie producers are typically not the most genteel people. In The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris said Curtis needed a producer like Val Lewton; someone who really connected with that “elegant” horror ideal.

Though I doubt Curtis aspired to be known exclusively for horror films. Like most directors, I think he wanted to make successful studio movies so he could go on and tell the more eclectic stories that interested him.

At least horror opened the Hollywood door for him. Studios like scary movies; there’s always a genuine need here for storytellers with the ability to shake people up… like Curtis did with Games (1967).

Harrington's first studio feature, "Games," is a mystery about a young “decadent chic” couple (James Caan and Katherine Ross) who find they’re in over their heads when a mysterious, witch-like woman moves in with them.

Games is a really good film. Curtis wanted Marlene Dietrich to play Lisa, but Lew Wasserman at Universal turned him down, saying, “Nobody gives a shit about her anymore.” So they got Simone Signoret, who was coming off an Oscar, and I think Curtis was happy with her performance, but he really had his heart set on Dietrich. I think he at least got to meet her at some point, in Las Vegas.

He went to see her cabaret act, and they hung out for a few hours after the show. I think he regarded that as one of the great nights of his life; she was certainly part of his lifelong fascination with the films of Josef von Sternberg… whom Curtis referred to as his “directorial soulmate.” I always liked that expression.

A still from Harrington's 1967 Games.

Curtis wrote one of the first monographs on Sternberg, which was published in the UK in the fifties. And I remember him telling me about seeing a nitrate print of a Sternberg film called The Case of Lena Smith (1929).

That’s a Sternberg? I’ve never heard of it.

It’s a lost film… except for Curtis’s memory of it. That’s why talking with him was always amazing, because somewhere inside him, those flickering images of long ago were still there. He really was a repository of all the great films he’d seen, and the stories that went with them. He was this living connection to a vanished Hollywood.

Harrington (right) and James Whale in Paris.

Especially all the great directors he befriended. Just off the top of my head, there was Sternberg, James Whale, Fritz Lang, and Rouben Mamoulian. Hitchcock, Welles, Kubrick. Alexander Mackendrick, Michael Powell, Lindsay Anderson. And of the living greats, there was Polanski and Jonathan Demme and Bill Condon. He said David Lynch was his favorite living filmmaker, but I don’t think they ever met.

I believe Curtis was personally responsible for saving one of James Whale’s greatest films, The Old Dark House (1932). It was long considered a lost film as well, but Curtis managed to track down one last surviving lavender-tinted print...

…which he found in the vault at Universal. And then he convinced James Card of The Eastman House in Rochester, NY, to do a complete restoration.

Anybody who loves Whale’s Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein needs to see The Old Dark House, because it’s really one of the great American films of the 1930’s. It’s probably my favorite Whale just because it’s so unique and unexpected; everything about it is strange and unsettling.

A Whale film Curtis turned me on to was Remember Last Night? (1935). It’s ostensibly a comic romp about a group of young socialites partying all night and their compounding mishaps, but there’s a palpable sense of social critique to it. You can feel Whale’s working class judgment of these spoiled, shallow people.

I’ll have to check it out. I don’t know the full extent of the relationship between Whale and Curtis, but Curtis did tell me that when he was doing the starving artist routine in Paris in the early fifties—and literally flat broke—he somehow connected with Whale, who wound up giving him a pretty significant chunk of money. It was enough for Curtis to pay his rent and buy food, and he was always tremendously grateful for that.

Now I could never turn Curtis on to anything in return, because he’d seen everything, but I’d often mention this or that Anthony Mann film, and he’d scoff, “Anthony Mann!” …like you couldn’t imagine a bigger hack. So one day I lent him a tape of The Furies (1950), and he called me a few days later to say how much he loved it… and he never sneered at Mann again! I think that was my only contribution to his body of knowledge.

I don’t think a day went by when he wasn’t at a screening somewhere, whether it was the Cinematheque, or the DGA, UCLA, the Academy, the BAFTA screenings. He kept up with all the new movies, and he loved foreign films.

The only time I turned down an invitation was when he wanted to see Basic Instinct 2 (2006). He said, “Oh, I heard Sharon Stone is just wonderful in it!”

Speaking of batty old dames, did you see The Killing Kind (1974)?




It’s excellent. I put it in the category of Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960); these character studies of creepy serial killers. John Savage is really good in it.

What’s strange is how the relationship with his mother really veers off into melodrama. It’s a natural looking film, with this operatic relationship at the heart of it.

I think Ann Sothern’s over-the-top character was as much of interest to Curtis as the suspense elements. He was a tremendously gifted and sympathetic director of actresses, particularly great divas of a certain age and a certain style.

Ann Sothern and John Savage in The Killing Kind.

He told me his favorite part of directing prime time soaps like "Dynasty" and "The Colbys" during the eighties was when he got to cast actors from Hollywood’s golden age.

I’d like to see some of his TV episodes. They probably aren’t anything special… but I’m sure they paid well, and helped his pension.

He described that phase as the end of the line in his career. That he started in features, but once he accepted his first made-for-TV movie, that was how the Industry then saw him: as a made-for-TV director. Then when he started directing TV shows, he went down another category. He regarded it as a humiliating downward trajectory.

I think that happened to a lot of directors from the fifties, sixties, and seventies. My friend Budd Boetticher was the same way: he directed some really good TV—including the pilot for "Maverick"—but he would scowl and almost go into a rage if you asked him about it. Andre de Toth, same thing. Those guys would take TV jobs when they were hurting, but they were always hoping to somehow land another feature.

I asked Curtis what his worst career setback was, and he told this long, convoluted story about how he was originally supposed to direct The Omen (1976), but through some politics at William Morris, he lost it. He was almost in tears when he told that story… and I’m sure he would have made The Omen at least as capably as Richard Donner: that script was director-proof, and Donner went from the bush leagues to the big time. Can you imagine how a blockbuster like that would have changed the rest of Curtis’s life?

I’m sure he would have made at least several more studio features.

I wonder... I mean, his films always looked great, and he cast interesting people and got good performances, but the biggest problem is usually the stories. The dramatic structure is weak, or they lack drive, or the motivations aren’t well thought out.

What’s The Matter With Helen?, for example, opens with those two young Leopold and Loeb-type murderers being sent to prison, then the story shifts to their two disgraced mothers trying to make a fresh start in Hollywood. Which is an intriguing opening… except I kept wondering for the whole picture when it was going to come back to those sons. I asked Curtis if he and the writer had thought about doing that opening differently, or even cutting the prologue altogether… and Curtis’s eyes started to glaze over. I thought I’d insulted him, but as I got to know him better, I realized he simply wasn’t interested in dissecting plots or character motivation… which surprised me because he spent his early Hollywood career in script development for producer Jerry Wald at Columbia. He worked with a lot of big writers on major films.

And I think Night Tide and Games are two of his best films partially because both scripts were pretty heavily patterned on previous classics: Night Tide is more or less a remake of Cat People (1942), and Games is essentially Diabolique (1945). I think Curtis needed an established story to work off of. It freed him up to focus his energy on the visuals and the performances.

He sort of hit this nail on the head for me the night I took him to meet Uli Edel, who was introducing his remake of The Ring of the Niebelungs (2004) at the Goethe Institute. People were asking questions about the adaptation from the original Icelandic sagas, and Uli was going into great detail about his reasons for the various changes. Curtis finally whispered to me, “Why does he get so involved in all that? I don’t care about the story… just the style!”

When did you first see Usher (2002)?

I think we had the world premiere at the Cinematheque. That was a very personal film for him.

Harrington in Usher.

Edgar Allen Poe was Curtis’s favorite writer, and he made two short films based on “The Fall of the House of Usher.” He completed the first in high school; sixty years later, he wrote, produced, directed, and starred in a new forty-minute version.

It’s not really a film that’s going to scare anybody, but it’s dark and poetic, and extremely disturbing—particularly when Curtis first appears in drag as Madeline Usher. It’s everything he wanted it to be, I think. He shot most of it right at his house.

I really liked his script The Man In The Crowd, the short film he was trying to get made when he passed away. It was an amalgamation of three or four different Poe stories.

I thought it was better than Usher: less stagy, more cinematic.

But he was in a tough spot there: an hour-long experimental narrative? The only people who are going to put up the money for something like that are you or your friends and family. So he approached a number of his longtime friends—all very well off people, apparently—and asked for donations, and almost all of them turned him down. He was very frustrated and disappointed by that.

One time he asked me to sit in on a meeting with some possible backers. I went and listened to these two guys, and when they left, I had to tell him I thought it was bullshit. They didn’t know anything about Curtis, or his work, and I didn’t think he’d ever get a penny out of them. Which sadly turned out to be the case.

I guess his plan was that if he got Man In The Crowd made, he could pair it with Usher, and hopefully find a DVD company to put them both out on one disc.

Which I thought was a good idea. I also suggested he put some of his early short films on it as well. None of those have ever been commercially released.

Did you know his friend Oneshin Aiken made a film of Man In The Crowd?

I’ve seen it. It’s good… though I don’t think it’s what Curtis would have done. It’s more of an homage to Curtis.


The movie I made a couple years ago, Trapped Ashes (2006), was also inspired by Curtis. The first draft of the script was all set at a party at his house. Curtis was sort of this Joel Grey-Cabaret ringmaster and host for the evening, and a quartet of supernatural stories is told by various guests… and at the end, Curtis pulls out a grimoire—a book of magic—from his bookshelf, peers into the dark space where the book was and cries, “I see things! I see wonderful things!” Then he’s sucked in and disappears with that great cackling laugh he had.

Wow. Did all that make it in?

Unfortunately, no. It’s still an omnibus film, but I never quite figured out how to make that party idea work, so the framing story became a tram tour of a Hollywood studio backlot. The tour guide is played by the late Henry Gibson… as a kind of Curtis figure, but more sinister.

Is it on DVD?

Yeah, Lions Gate picked it up. I always hoped Curtis could have directed a segment, but the investors didn’t go for it. We got some great directors—Ken Russell, Monte Hellman, Joe Dante—but I like to think Curtis’s spirit sort of hovers over the whole thing.

The last time I saw him was a few months before he died. We had a long, leisurely lunch at Café Med on Sunset Boulevard. He didn’t look too good towards the end of his life: dark splotches all over his face, hair going in every direction, clothes rumpled and stained… he was like the ruins of the Roman Forum, overgrown with weeds! And there we were, surrounded by all these young, beautiful Hollywood hard bodies, but what did it matter? The conversation just roamed all over movie history, and then at one point he fell silent, and finally lamented, “I have no great love. I have no one I share my life with. My work is all I have to live for.”

Did he ever have anyone? I was always curious about his personal life, but didn’t broach the subject because he never did.

No, in all the years I knew him, he never referred to any significant other.

That must have made his last years particularly difficult. Maybe a week before he died, he told me one of his friends was going to hire a housekeeper for him, and I was so relieved to hear it. He had various boarders who helped and didn’t help him over the years, but he really should have had someone with him full time.

I think Los Angeles has really lost something with his passing. He was this wonderful, rare, gem-like part of the fabric of the city.

Looking back, all I can think is how fortunate I was that he considered me worthy of welcome into his orbit those last few years.

I feel the same way. There was such a tremendous generosity of spirit about him, and once you were a friend of his, you were a friend for life. And we can tell stories about him, and show pictures of his house, but unless you were there, and got to be in his presence…

Every time I drive past the turn-off at Argyle and Franklin now, part of me wants to turn the wheel, head on up Vine, knock on the door, and see if Curtis is home.

Curtis Harrington, photo by Dennis Hopper, circa early '60s.


This article first appeared at Eight Million Stories.com on January 22, 2010

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Talking with Master Acting Teacher and Human Behavior Expert CANDACE SILVERS

By Terry Keefe

[As the Interview grows, we’re expanding our talks with actors, directors, and writers to include discussions with prominent figures in other parts of the business. One of our first is here with Candace Silvers, who teaches a highly influential series of acting workshops.]

Growing up the daughter of the comedy acting legend Phil Silvers, Candace Silvers was likely able to learn a tremendous amount about the craft simply by osmosis. Silvers did become an actress herself and studied under the famed Roy London, but in the past two decades, she has also become one of the most sought-after acting teachers in the business. Her classes focus on learning and identifying the causes and effects of human behavior, and have proven popular as life instruction, as well. Silvers’ client include not only the Producers Guild and the Screen Actors Guild, but also the Remax Group. She has received endorsements from acting luminaries such as Richard Dreyfuss, and her clients include writer Eileen Myers (“Big Love”), actor Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”), and musical artist Jessica Sutta (The Pussycat Dolls).

The Hollywood Interview: Let’s start off by talking about how you segued into teaching, and when that happened.

Candace Silvers: I started teaching about 20 years ago. Friends used to beg me to teach them, and I would say no, because I wasn’t a teacher and I had four kids…it just wasn’t my thing. Finally, at one point, they came to me and said, “If you had a class and students and material and all that, would you teach?” [I was] thinking they would go away and shut up, but no, they showed up a week later with all of that. That was 20 years ago.

How quickly did you find your stride as a teacher of acting?

I think from the very beginning. At first, we had one paying student and one free student [laughs]. That’s because the free student brought the paying student, and so he got to be free. But, within a week, I had 13 students, and now I’ve had thousands. I think it was something that I did my best not to do...but that happened. I was a mom. I didn’t think of doing this.

Has your class changed significantly since you started teaching it?

It’s exactly the same. I trained under Roy London for ten years. And I think mostly watching my father…I was born in 1961 and my father was one of the biggest stars in the world. I would watch him on television, and I would see him standing next to me at the same time, and I didn’t see a difference. I didn’t see that my father “acted,” as in fake acting. Stakes were really high, and he took the action in front of him, directly related to what the writer had intended, and they filmed that. And that didn’t make him different, it just made the situation that he was in different. That’s what I teach people, and that has never altered, because it is what creates truth. It’s what creates human behavior. It’s how a human being goes from nothing to something, or a one-dimensional piece of paper into a three-dimensional heart, and a body that is born, and will live a finite time and die, and has a fear of loss of itself, or the boyfriend, or the girlfriend, or the job, or the money, or what it is that brings it into the activity or the action that it is in. That has never changed. But now I work with Emmy Award-winning writers, and actors, and directors, and Oscar winners…so, I think perhaps the work has changed because of the level of people I work with.

I wanted to talk about how your classes are structured. How much time is spent on doing actual scenes, and how much on overall philosophy?

It’s a scene study workshop, the acting classes. Whether you’re a writer, director, producer, cinematographer, or editor, it’s a scene study class that I teach. In order to be in the Master Class, you have to be in a life class, which I call a “Human Behavioral Workshop.” But people refer to it as a “life class,” because you can’t deepen in your craft as an actor if your life keeps you small. You have to see where you are stuck, to see where your characters are stuck. The two classes are two halves of the same whole. Whether it’s a character’s human behavior, or your human behavior, what’s the difference?

I wanted to talk about your involvement in Galaxy Quest. It’s a favorite film of mine.

Well, thank you. It’s a big deal to me. I remember the day it opened, and I was sitting in the theater with one of my children that I had taken to the opening, and I kind of whispered, “You’re about to watch a film that mommy made.” [In response] “Well, why isn’t your name on it?” And I said, “Well, one day people will know.” It’s kind of fun to talk about it.

How did you come to work on the project?

Dean Parisot, who was the director, said that he listened to one of my CDs, and called me off of the CD that he listened to. He hired me to help him analyze it and get ready for filming. They hired him, I think, six weeks into preproduction. The original director had walked off the set, and he had to get it up and rolling fast. He called me a savant, which I thought was really fun, as long as it isn't an idiot savant [laughs]. It was amazing working with him. It was my job to find where the truth of the human behavior in these aliens existed.

It’s interesting because what makes Galaxy Quest work is that the aliens all do feel quite real, although the film is a comedy. The characters are grounded, nonetheless.

Thank you. I’m really proud of the work. Dean was an amazing student, and he did beautifully. Another one of my favorite clients for the last five or six years is Eileen Myers, who is one of the main writers for “Big Love.” It was her script that was up for the Emmy this year. When she writes, she writes from the highest stakes obstacle possible, so that everything that falls sort of underneath that rain cloud…it really matters. It’s not just another day. It’s life or death. What is in front of you is impossible to get through, and the director gets to film that impossible activity.

Is it the writing process you’re speaking about there, or the journey the characters on the page go through, or both?

I think it’s one and the same. A writer would come to me and say, “The creators want me to write these characters this week, and these are the notes I was given, and I don’t see the correlation.” And I will just help [that writer] to see the correlation. I can take two pages of any script and tell you what the entire script is about. Anybody can, that knows how to do this.

How is your upcoming class structured?

This particular class is 15 hours, it’s three days. On the 18th, 19th, and 20th of this month. It’s only 15 hours, so it’s clearly not everything, but I teach them the tools of how to get inside of the beginning of the seed of a newborn baby and take an action to get out and follow it, so my writers can write it, my actors can act it, my producers can produce it, my cinematographers can see where it exists, to manifest it into form, and editors can know where to keep that extra impulse, before they edit it out. So, we’re looking for all levels of causation of that human behavior.

Another of your clients is Brian Goodman, who recently wrote and directed the feature What Doesn't Kill You, that starred Mark Ruffalo, Ethan Hawke, and Amanda Peet.

One of my favorite people in the world. When he first came to me, directly out of prison, he used to drive my son to school to pay for his classes. He studied with me for like five days a week, for seven or eight years. I think the magic in his film is that when you see What Doesn’t Kill You, you’re actually watching true human behavior in form, which is a little startling in the first five or six minutes of the movie, because you’re not used to seeing a movie that is actually filmed and edited in its true life form, instead of a pretty polished version of "What if this were real?"

Did your dad give you any specific advice about acting that has really stood out?

I think one hundred million things. He spoke to us in terms of “Don’t do this unless it’s a 9-to-5 job. This is hard work.” And “Your passion is your life.” I would go with him to sets. He did “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” and I would sit and watch all the women put on their falsies and everything [laughs]. And then, sit in the audience. And every time he worked, he spoke directly to me. He would do “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum,” and the audience was watching and no one knew that the entire play he was speaking to me. But he understood the subtext and the characters so finitely that he could move it around and no one noticed, because he never left the truth of the character. And this is something that just being in his presence, and having the unbelievable gift of training under Roy London for ten years…they both were saying the same thing from two opposite ends. I somehow was in the right place at the right time - and I only say this because I have a huge following now and people around me with Oscars, that this must be working - somehow, I was just able to receive the information and cognized it so that people could hear.

The next event hosted by Candace Silvers is the "Trailblazing Retreat," this coming weekend,
April 30, 2010 – May 2, 2010. Location: White Lotus in Santa Barbara, CA. For further information or reservations, please contact her office at - Email: office@candacesilvers.com
Phone: (818) 781-8345

More information on Candace Silvers can be found at http://www.candacesilvers.com/.

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CIARAN HINDS: The Hollywood Interview

(Ciaran Hinds in The Eclipse, above.)

By Terry Keefe

“Starring Ciaran Hinds.” It’s about time.

The very talented Belfast-born actor has been the lead in numerous prominent stage productions over his career, but on-screen, he is better known for some of the best cinematic supporting work of the past ten years: as the under boss of sorts to Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood; the slightly nerdy Mossad agent who falls for the absolutely wrong undercover woman in Munich; the President of Russia in The Sum of All Fears; and as an imposing, regal, but also very human, Julius Caesar in the HBO’s “Rome,” amongst many others. With The Eclipse, Hinds steps up to the top of the marquee, and the new suit fits him well. I just hope that he doesn’t swear off supporting roles in the future now, because Hinds has added an extra level of quality to more films than I can list, just by appearing in a few scenes.

The Eclipse was co-written, and directed, by Conor McPherson, who is also famed for his work as a playwright which has earned him three Tony nominations, and the film was based on a story called “Table Manners,” by Billy Roche, who co-wrote the screenplay with McPherson. Hinds plays Michael Farr, a recently widowed father of two, who was once an aspiring writer and is volunteering his time at a literary festival held in his seaside Irish town. Farr has been given the job of driving about an author of ghost stories named Lena Morelle (played by Iben Hjejle, last seen by most American audiences as John Cusack’s girlfriend in High Fidelity). The older man and the younger woman take a fancy to each other, and bond further when Farr asks her advice on the topic of ghosts…as he has been seeing a few ghosts of his own since the death of his wife. The ghosts may be true spirits, or they may be a manifestation of guilt, or both, and their presence lurks throughout the darkest corners of the film. Aidan Quinn plays a famous, slimy American author named Nicholas Holden, who is courting Lena as well. Holden likes to drink, and has read too much Hemingway, because he also thinks he can fight, something which the otherwise quiet Michael will test him on later in the film. Hinds, whose screen presence generally reads “Don’t screw with this guy,” isn’t the first person you would think of to play a somewhat passive, almost meek, character, but it was a deft choice by McPherson, because when this aging, slightly wounded lion does growl again, the transformation is quite powerful.

Hinds will soon be seen in two major studio films, John Carter of Mars, and in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 & II, as Aberforth Dumbledore.

I reached Ciaran (pronounced Keer-un) by phone when he was staying on the east coast of the U.S., during one of the worst snow storms of the past few years.

Hi, Ciaran.

Ciaran Hinds: Hello, Terry, how are you?

I’m well, thank you. You’re in New York right now?

I am in New York. In a bit of a blizzard [laughs].

Had you known Conor McPherson prior to The Eclipse, from your mutual work in the theater?

Yeah, yes, I had. I was being directed by him, in New York, on Broadway. We had just gotten into previews on his play, The Seafarer, and he asked, “Will you read this for me?” He came to me with this very slim, meager draft of just a few pages, based on a short story written by a friend of his. I read it, and there weren’t many pages, and what pages there were…there wasn’t a lot of “black” on it. But knowing Conor, and having worked with him, I knew he has an awful lot of it in his head. A lot of psychology, but he’s very economical. So, I knew this would be a great adventure to go on. I just knew it. I trusted him because of our work in the theater. It was a real pleasure to be asked to do this.

(Hinds and Hjejle, above.)

Something unique about Conor’s directing style is that many of his shots are very complex, and elaborate…but subtly so. There’s a lot going on in the corners and backgrounds of the frame often - sometimes small things are happening out the window in the rear of a shot - but he also doesn’t go out of his way to draw much attention to those elements.

I’m glad you thought so! I think he knows very well how to draw you into an emotion, or create a feeling, without making a huge statement about it. I think he filmed it brilliantly, I must say.

In terms of blocking, did he let you, and the other actors, know much about what he had planned for his shots, in terms of the more subtle visual elements that are happening in addition to the main action of the scene?

No, not really. I suppose because of the nature [of the piece], and the very short amount of time we had to shoot it, he was trying to be economical, at times, with the camera, and also not to be too fussy with it, around certain issues. He didn’t try to accommodate that much camera movement. He actually kept the camera still a lot of the time, and people expressed themselves within that [frame]. He also didn’t use a lot of close-ups.

That’s true. He stayed wide often.

Because he wanted to give you a “place” to watch these people move and see them how they interact, and how they relate, and a lot of how people relate is physically, not just with a camera showing their face acting, or emoting.

He didn’t shoot a lot of close-ups, also, because he wanted to give the audience that atmosphere of landscape, of these people within that landscape. The landscape also adds to the emotional sense of what the audience picks up, which you can’t do if you’re only offering up the emotion of a face contorting itself through whatever heightened emotions there are. There is something about observing the entire physical presence of people.

It was kind of a very European way he shot it, but at the same time, I think he was very honest about what he was trying to say in the story itself, and he was prepared to trust that whatever we were doing would come out without the need for close-ups.

(Director Conor McPherson, above.)

The ghosts in The Eclipse are obviously not presented in a traditional horror film sense of going for a big scare, other than in one scene. They are more part of the landscape, to borrow that term. Sort of co-existing with the living, if they are in fact actual spirits, which they may not be. What sort of conversations did you and Conor have about how the ghosts were to be perceived in the film?

I think he wanted to play with the idea of these things that arrive…I suppose there are a couple of forms of them…one of them is pretty malign, and the other is benign, if you like…and leave [open] whether they are self-manifested, through imagination, or if they are in fact a visitation. I think that is open to interpretation, and I do believe that Conor wanted to leave it that way. Because, as human beings, we all see things differently. We all have different sensations, and you don’t want to define exactly what it meant. At the same time, he’s been pretty bold, I feel, with the choice of what he’s offered up. The idea of one [ghost] being this malignant, bilious, raging, dark thing….a sort of sense of guilt that I think that Michael has, and a sense of sudden panic that goes off; whereas the other one is a kind of comfort, a kind of cathartic relief that he needs.

(Hinds and Hjejle, above.)

Partially because of your character’s amateur boxing background, as well as his hidden strength, I wanted to ask if the classic Irish-based short story “The Quiet Man” (by Maurice Walsh, later made into the John Ford film with John Wayne,) was discussed as an inspiration at all for The Eclipse?

[laughs] No, it wasn’t. That was shot up in Galway. I didn’t know it was a short story, actually. Conor did take the idea from a short story, “Table Manners” by Billy Roche, which was also set in a small town during a writing festival, and it was about a man, a woman, and another writer. But it was a different sort of man, because this Michael Farr was married, and sort of thought he was a writer too, and started sort of stalking, and obsessing about this female writer, much like the way the Nicholas Holden character does [in the film version]. Conor’s wife read it and said, “There is something odd about this.” You may, in a story, go into the mind of a protagonist, say, and whether you like him or not, you can follow it. But you put that on screen, and people will say, “What type of person is this? He’s obsessing about this other woman, but he’s got a wife.” She suggested that maybe Michael be a widower, and change the whole nature of the character, in a way. Because if he’s a widower, and going through some type of grief, then he’s not really himself, and at the same time, Conor went, “He can be haunted.” I’ve been in a couple of Conor’s plays, and there is always the sense of the other. Of the outside. Of the things we don’t know, even though we believe we do. There is a lot of stuff humankind can’t really work out. Conor feels that even if we aren’t aware of it, it is still, in a way, ever-present. He uses that.

You’re often cast in roles where your characters are quite tough. Was there any significant process you had to go through to play Michael Farr, who is tough, but softer on the outside?

I think the answer to that is Michael Farr is a much more like me than all the other ones [that I’ve played]. I think Conor would say that’s why he offered me the part, because, having worked with me, he knows that I’m warmer [than many of my characters] and more open, and not quite sure of the next move, or how it should go, and have some doubt. That’s more who I am. He wanted to use me as a template for the character.

Did you find the need to create much additional back story for Michael, or was the script enough in that regard?

The script was enough. I decided to use my imagination. I don’t think there are many books you can read as to how you’re supposed to behave while you’re under psychological pressure. What was very important to me was that, with the two kids Eanna (Hardwicke) and Hannah (Lynch). I wanted to make sure that we felt like a real family. That I could make them feel I loved them. And generally, I did. They suffered me as a father for a few weeks [laughs].

You had a great fight scene with Aidan Quinn, which Iben was also in. What type of blocking and rehearsal went into it?

It was crazy, we had one day to shoot that.

Really?

Yeah, it was a very small film, and so we had to listen very carefully to Andy Bradford, the stuntman, who came over for the morning and said what are we going to do and who is going to do it, and sort of choreographed it.

It’s also in the characters [the fight]...it’s a great expression of who these people are, really. It’s not just a fight. It’s how they fight. When they punch, or don’t punch. Even Iben, who I think is a dynamite actress.

Did anyone get hit accidentally? It looked pretty rough.

I tell you, we shot between 7 and about 9:30, and I think Iben stubbed her toe on a piece of furniture, or something. We found out it was broken later on, but she just taped it to the other toe and carried on. Because there’s no point. She said, “We can’t stop. There’s no time. Tape it up.” [laughs]

(Aidan Quinn as best-selling author Nicholas Holden, above.)

Career-wise, are leads something you’re deliberately seeking out more right now?

No, not really. I don’t have a particularly design. In theater, people ask me, “Do you want to play Hamlet? Do you want to play Macbeth?” And [my answer is], “Not really. But it depends with who.” I suppose I’m more of a collaborator. I’m always, “What’s the story?” If the story grabs me, it’s always nice to be a part of something. Sometimes you have to take more responsibility than at other times. But it’s not like this is my calling card, or anything. Conor chose me, and I’m glad that it seems to have worked. But I wouldn’t be adverse to working with Conor again in a film where I wasn’t the lead.

The Eclipse opens today, Friday March 26th in New York and Los Angeles, via Magnolia Pictures.

The official site of the film and the trailer can be found here.

Some of the Many Other Faces of Ciaran Hinds, below:

(In "Rome," above.)

(In There Will Be Blood, above.)

(In Munich, above, with Daniel Craig, Eric Bana, and Mathieu Kassovitz)

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Steve McQueen 1930-1980

No, you will never be this cool.


On what would have been the King of Cool's 80th birthday, we at The Interview thought it apropos to post this video scored to "(I Just Wanna Be) Your Steve McQueen," by the talented Eytan Mirsky. Thanks Eytan and thank you Steve, wherever it is you're currently burning rubber (or jumping barbed-wire fences) in that green Mustang fastback.

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THE DAWN OF BRANDO: Richard Erdman Remembers THE MEN

(Actor Richard Erdman, left)

by Jon Zelazny

The craft of acting in the 20th century breaks neatly into two distinct phases: before Marlon Brando and after Marlon Brando. He first conquered Broadway in A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. Three years later—and sixty years ago—he made his first movie.

The Men (1950) is a grim drama set in a VA paraplegic ward. Brando is the bitter new arrival; Jack Webb and Richard Erdman play the patients who become his best buddies.

A native of Enid, Oklahoma, Erdman spent his teenage years in vaudeville, and began his Hollywood career in 1944. He most recently appeared on the NBC series "Community."


RICHARD ERDMAN: Brando and I went out to Birmingham General Hospital in Van Nuys, where all the war paraplegics were still being treated, and we stayed there a few days, learning how to use wheelchairs, and how to get in and out of bed without using our legs.

There were about five veterans who actually worked on the film. A guy named Pat Grissom, a very gregarious fellow, and a huge man named Turk Memori, and that kid Arthur Jurado, who appears in the film; the one with the amazing body. He was a real paraplegic… and I think six months after the picture, he died.

The atmosphere at Birmingham was amazing because those guys were so ruthless with each other… deathly awful jokes they played on one another, so that no one would fall into self-pity. That was something they could not abide.

JON: I think one of the best scenes in the movie is when Brando is first brought into the ward, and you guys just tear into him. It’s a scene that goes a lot farther than you expect.

I think Carl Foreman—the writer—really hit it with that one. That was how those guys were. There was also a doctor we worked with named Ernest Bors, who specialized in paraplegics. I had a long chat with him one day. I asked why I’d never heard of a paraplegic before this movie, and he said it was because there weren’t any; they had all died. A lot of them committed suicide. Bors was a pioneer in treatments that allowed people to live with it; the doctor played by Everett Sloane in the movie was based on him.

I assume you at least knew Brando by reputation when you met?

Sure, because of Streetcar. This legend had been born right off the bat. We all expected he would go back to New York and become a great, great actor of the stage, but he never did. A lot of us were very disappointed by that.

He didn’t talk to me at all when we first went to Birmingham, he just worked with the guys. Then one day an actor named Luther Adler was staying at my little apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, and told me to say hello to Marlon for him. So I did, and Marlon asked, (Brando-esque) “How do you know Luther? Where is he?” When I said he was at my place, Marlon came to visit, and they had a nice reunion.

Now the Adlers never heard the word “hotel;” they stayed with people. Luther stayed with me, his brother Jay stayed with me—Stella didn’t; she stayed with other people—but those guys moved in, and then Marlon moved in, and he stayed with me for the first four weeks of the movie.

Wow. What kind of roommate was he?

He was a slob. I mean he was clean, but he wore crummy clothes most of the time, which was pretty unusual back then… except the night they threw a party in the ward to celebrate the end of the movie, and Marlon showed up in a tuxedo!

He didn’t know a lot about classical music, and I had a pretty good collection, so he started listening to my Russian opera records. And he almost never went with American girls. Shelley Winters was calling my place night and day trying to get hold of him, but he couldn’t stand her. “Shelley, get the fuck away from me!”

You’ve probably heard the story about The Pump, right?

No.

It’s been written up a lot. Well, one Saturday night, a bunch of guys at the hospital decided they wanted to go out, and they said Marlon and I should come with them… in our chairs, to see if we could pass as real paraplegics. Nobody out here knew Marlon yet—I was more afraid I might be recognized—but we went to this place called The Pump, on Ventura, which catered to paraplegics; they had extra-wide doors, and room for the chairs to maneuver. So I think there were about eight of us—drinking, having a good time—when this woman approached our table. She was probably a little high. She said, “You guys are paraplegics, aren’t you? That means you can’t walk?” Somebody said, “Yeah, that’s right.”

“That’s too bad,” she said. “You know, if you men had a true belief in God, you could get right up and walk out of here.” Now Marlon piped up: “Don’t bother us, lady! You got your problems; we got ours.” He was pretty tough with her, and the guys liked that. But it only made her focus on him the more: “You, of all of them; you look like you could do it. Do you even want to walk?” He said, “Yeah, I wanna walk!” “Then you have to imagine the power of God.” She was getting all worked up. “Just imagine His strength surging through your legs right now. You can stand!” So Marlon struggled and struggled up out of his chair. He got to his feet, tottering —she was yelling, “You did it! You did it!” –and he fell back down. Well, the entire place was dead silent now; everybody was watching, and the woman kept badgering him to try it again… until Marlon suddenly leapt up, danced a jig in the middle of the floor, and ran out of the place! The guys were laughing so hard they almost fell on the floor, and the woman just stood there in shock.

The last time I saw Marlon he was a mess. It was about six months before he died, and I ran into him at that little country store in Laurel Canyon. He couldn’t have been nicer, jovial as all hell, but… my god.


(Brando in The Men, above, with Everett Sloane) .

Did you have to audition with him for The Men?

I didn’t audition for it. I was up for an earlier picture Stanley Kramer produced called So This is New York (1948), but they cast Leo Gorcey instead, who was one of the Dead End Kids. So when they were writing The Men, they created this character “Leo,” for Leo Gorcey again… but Leo didn’t feel like he could do it. It just wasn’t his cup of tea. So Stanley gave me the part.

I went down to the set and met this quiet little man, who was the director Fred Zinnemann. People have kind of forgotten about him, but he did From Here to Eternity (1953) and High Noon (1952), and A Man For All Seasons (1966), which may be the best movie ever made.

I think the only thing Freddy ever said to me was, “Bubble, you bastard!” Because Brando was so sullen, he really wanted me as a contrast to that. I think Marlon was a little bit lost there at first. He was very quiet and distant.

Was he trying to stay in character?

No, that’s just how he was. But gradually he got more comfortable and warmed up. Freddy worked with him a lot; they were often in the corner having long talks.

And your other co-star was Jack Webb, before he got famous too.

He was already kind of famous. He’d done a radio show up in San Francisco called "Pat Novak for Hire," which was the best thing he ever did; it was better than "Dragnet." He and Marlon didn’t get along at all. He thought Marlon was just dumb; that his acting style was… well, Jack was a radio guy. He pronounced all his words very deliberately… Marlon didn’t pronounce them at all!

How was The Men initially received?

The reviews were mixed. The New York Times liked it, but The Herald-Tribune didn’t. A couple of the big magazines didn’t like it; they thought it was too grisly. Of course it was; that was the point.

Though it’s tame by today’s standards. When you think of what Oliver Stone showed in Born on the Fourth of July (1989)…

You’re right, they’re very similar pictures. I thought July was very good as well.

I saw it again at the Academy a couple years ago. And just as the lights were coming down, they helped a man in a wheelchair in, and seated him about six feet in front of me. When the picture ended, they announced that Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic were there: that was Kovic in front of me; I had just watched the movie with his head in my field of vision. They got up on stage, and Kovic did most of the talking. He’s a wonderful speaker, and it was incredibly moving as he talked about his life, and how that film got made. He talked a lot about how Tom Cruise did the same things as you guys: visiting an actual paraplegic ward, and learning how to live without using his legs.

I assume you got good notices for The Men?

Generally, yes. There was one I always kept by Bosley Crowther, who was the king of the New York critics. He liked the picture, and wrote in The Times, “Mr. Brando is impressive, however he has a few things to learn from a Hollywood actor named Richard Erdman.” (chuckles) Of course I learned a lot from Mr. Brando as well.

I was actually very disappointed at the time. The publicist Tom Gries had called me and said he had some bad news: my big scene was gone. It was my last scene, where I finally won at gambling and went crazy, wheeling all over the ward and carrying on… but it was the second to last scene of the picture, and they found audiences wouldn’t settle down for that final quiet moment between Marlon and Theresa Wright.

They couldn’t find anywhere else to put my scene, so they just cut it. It cost me an Oscar nomination, no question about it… but what are you gonna do?

The same thing happened to me on The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). I was under contract to Warners, but my agent took me over to meet Goldwyn and Willie Wyler. They gave me the part, but J.L. wouldn’t let me do it.

What part was it?

The one that won two Oscars!

How could you have played a man with no hands?

Because the character was originally written as a spastic. I went to Jack Warner’s office—the only time I ever met him—I said, “Mr. Warner, this is a goddamn wonderful part, and I beg you to let me have this. It’ll make my career.” He said, “We don’t loan our people out.”

Oh, well. It was only one of the greatest pictures ever made. It probably toughened you up, huh? A good dose of Hollywood cruelty right off the bat?

It sure did.

But I assume The Men was your breakout, even without that last scene?

It was. That, and a picture called Cry Danger (1951), with Dick Powell. Having those two back-to-back really kicked off my career. We just saw Cry Danger again last weekend; they had a film noir festival up in San Francisco, at this wonderful old theater, The Castro. There were twelve hundred people there, and they gave me a standing ovation… for about three minutes! I couldn’t believe it.

You went on to play dozens of military parts throughout the fifties and sixties. Was that because of The Men as well?

That, and they just made a lot of war pictures back then.

Had you actually served in the military?

For three days. I enlisted in the Air Force right out of high school, and they sent me down to March Field, but they sent me home again because I had no sense of smell. I was in a car accident when I was young; I hit my head and was out for seventeen hours, and when I woke up, my sense of smell was gone. The Air Force said I’d be “a menace” because I wouldn’t be able to smell smoke or a fuel leak if anything went wrong. So I came out here and got a contract with Warner Bros. and hoped I wouldn’t get drafted. Thankfully, I didn’t.

Your most famous war film is probably Stalag 17 (1953), but a lesser known one I really admire is Objective, Burma! (1945).

That was one of the first really brutal war pictures; it broke a lot of ground. Raoul Walsh directed it.

I like it because there’s not a lot of phony Hollywood drama crammed into it. It’s a very nuts-and-bolts procedural about infantry tactics and combat operations. You could almost run it for troops today as a training film.

It was a miserable shoot. We did most of it during the summer up on that hill overlooking Warner Bros., and a swamp out in Pasadena on Lucky Baldwin’s old estate. We were out there, up to our necks in goddamn slime, carrying those guns through that swamp… it was awful. Two guys got killed on that shoot. One of them fell off a parallel, and another backed into—I can’t remember what—but it broke his spine and killed him.

Now Errol Flynn was a terrific guy; I liked him a lot. When that guy fell off the parallel, somebody said they should take his body to a hospital, but this unit manager we had—this son of a bitch—growled, “We’ll get this last shot, and take care of him when we go to lunch!” Errol said, very politely, “No, we stop shooting right now. Get that man to a hospital.” …and he walked off the set!

I remember the very first day, they brought us these awful lunches—powdered eggs and stewed tomatoes—just a shitty, awful lunch… and they served Errol the same thing! He took one look at that, and had it sent down to Jack Warner’s office, with a message: “We get decent food up here by two o’clock, or we stop shooting.” There was an actor named Frank Tang, who had a restaurant downtown called Tang’s. He said to Flynn, “You want Chinese food?” Thirty minutes later, they were unloading it for us. Flynn took the bill… and gave it to Warner!

He took care of his men. Just like in the film.

So you’ve been on this new show "Community" a couple times?

I’ve done three so far, and I’ve got two more. They just got picked up for a second season… why, I’m not sure; it’s about #60 in the ratings.

Who’s your character?

I don’t know. They’re just these little bitty parts. I asked the director, “Who the hell is this guy?” He said he didn’t know. So I went and found the writer and asked him, and he said, “We’re going to find out in the eighth show.” I said, “How should I be playing it until then?” He said, “We haven’t decided yet.”

(laughter)

I suppose after all these years you’ve probably heard everything.

I’ve never heard anyone say that before! I can’t wait to see that script… so I can see what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong!



This article originally appeared at Eight Million Stories.com on February 6, 2010

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The "lost" 1906 San Francisco Street Film

This film was "lost" for many years. It was the first 35mm film ever. It was taken by camera mounted on the front of a cable car. The amount of automobiles is staggering for 1906. Absolutely amazing! The clock tower at the end of Market Street at the Embarcadero wharf is still there. (I'm also wondering ... how many "street cleaning" people were employed to pick up after the horses? Talk about going green!).

The film, originally thought to be from 1905 until David Kiehn with the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum figured out exactly when it was shot. From New York trade papers announcing the film showing to the wet streets from recent heavy rainfall & shadows indicating time of year & actual weather and conditions on historical record, even when the cars were registered (he even knows who owned them and when the plates were issued!).. It was filmed only four days before the infamous 1906 San Francisco earthquake and shipped by train to NY for processing, meaning most of the buildings (and perhaps many of the people) shown were destroyed by fire days later. Amazing, but true, and a priceless piece of history captured on celluloid.

Music is by the band Air.

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Ione Skye Remembers SAY ANYTHING and RIVER'S EDGE

by Terry Keefe



I originally interviewed Ione Skye for Venice Magazine, where this article appeared five years ago. The interview was primarily for Fever Pitch, the Farrelly Brothers film in which she had a supporting role, but we also spoke about Say Anything and River's Edge, the latter of which was one of my favorite films as a teenager. I have only included the portions about her earlier films here.

Our culture has become so coarse that I'm not sure River's Edge would shock audiences today, the way it did back in 1986. Directed by Tim Hunter, the plot centers around a group of slacker teenagers in the Pacific Northwest who bond together, under the direction of a manic Crispin Glover, to cover up the murder of a female friend by another of their group. None of the rest of the gang actually are guilty of the murder, but Glover becomes obsessed with the idea that it is their small group of youth against the world and that it is a moral imperative to stick together. The film featured an early starring role for Keanu Reeves, as well as the debut of Ione. It was also one of the mid-80s comeback films for Dennis Hopper, after Blue Velvet.

Ione would, of course, also star as Diane Court opposite John Cusack's Lloyd Dobbler in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything in 1989, and a generation fell in love with her.

The daughter of musician Donovan, Skye was born in the U.K. but spent most of her formative years in Los Angeles where she lived with her mother, Enid Karl. In addition to her acting work, she's also dabbled in writing and directing, making a number of short films with friends Zoe Cassavetes, Sofia Coppola, and her brother Donovan Leitch.

I can't write about Ione without mentioning that she was terrific in David Fincher's Zodiac, as a young mother who, along with her baby, is picked up for a ride by the Zodiac Killer, after her car breaks down. Zodiac came out after this interview was completed.

We met at the Coffee Bean on Sunset Blvd in 2005.

Let's go back a bit to when acting first started to break for you. Prior to filming River's Edge, you briefly went to Hollywood High.

Ione Skye: It sort of propelled me into acting in the weirdest way. I was rebellious and not doing so well. I had left my private school, and I was interested in dancing. So I was dancing at Hollywood High because they have this great magnet program. But I was sort of hanging out with kind of the wrong kids. [laughs] I had auditioned for River's Edge, the first movie I was in, and I was 15. I think part of what pushes people to get what they want is an ambition, and sometimes that ambition is running away from your life. I remember sitting on the steps of the school thinking, "Get me out of here. God, please let me get this part so I can get out of high school." And I never went back.

Were you and the other cast members aware of how unique River's Edge was when you were shooting it?

We were. We were up on it. I was really into Crispin Glover's whole thing. I think most of us knew that it would be a very realistic look at teen ennui. Because I totally felt like that -- that something bad could happen, and you're kind of at the funny point where your parents aren't really protecting you anymore, but you're not really able to properly take care of yourself either. So bad things might happen, and you might not have a genuine reaction anymore. I totally felt that was very much what being a teenager was like.

What was the audience reaction to the first screening of River's Edge?

We were laughing. We thought it was so funny. But people were quiet in the audience. They were shocked. They were almost angry. People would say, "What was up with Crispin Glover? He was terrible." I was like, "Terrible?!" It's the only movie of mine which I can watch objectively and really enjoy. I can't watch Say Anything that way.

Have you watched it recently?

We did the DVD commentary thing, so I watched it then. But when I watch it, I'm there, back on the set, dealing with everything I was going through. I can't just sit back and watch it.

Tell us more about the experience of making Say Anything.

It was intense. It was really hard to get the role. We had to work hard to get John Cusack involved, because he was so fearful of doing another teen movie. In some ways the experience wasn't so great, but in some ways it was amazing. I'm always into the [Director of Photography] and Laszlo Kovacs was the DP and he was great. I knew it was a big studio film and that was very exciting. I was aware of where I was. But at the same time, I was kind of gaining weight, and they were like, "Watch what you eat," and then they hired an acting coach [for me] at one point. And I felt that John and Joan Cusack were so brilliant and funny, and that I was the straight man. So I had a lot of insecurities doing that film. But John Cusack and I, although we never dated romantically, we fell in love in a friendship way. And I think you can see that.

How did your life change when Say Anything came out? For better and for worse?

I did a big publicity tour when it came out, which was great. But I was still a teenager. My mom was around all the time and it's hard when you're a teenager and you have that single mother syndrome. My mother wasn't managing me or anything, but there's a syndrome that happens. And my mom is probably at the very small end of it. She was nothing like certain mothers you hear about with the single mother/acting daughter thing. But still, mothers and daughters shouldn't be hanging out that much at that age anyway, I think. So I was in a mood and we were in a limo leaving New York and I was sort of having a mood swing. We were fighting. I look out the window and my mom taps me to show me that there's a line around the block, and it's for Say Anything. So that was good. But sadly, that's the point where I could have really taken off, and instead I chose to kind of shut doors. I still continued to work a bit, but I was starting to fall in love with my ex-husband, Adam (Horovitz of the Beastie Boys). I don't know if it was just destructive teenage sort of behavior, or if I just wanted to go on tour with the Beastie Boys. [laughs] So it changed my life, but I didn't really take the ball. I'm probably making it sound dismal, but it wasn't!

Were you also getting typecast a bit as the smart, wholesome girl?

Well, before Say Anything, I did a couple of different movies. They weren't that big. I did this movie, A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, where I was a bitch. Also, Gas, Food Lodging and River's Edge were more the kind of rebellious person that I was really like. So Say Anything was kind of a stretch.

Gas, Food Lodging was, in fact, a major image change for you in a lot of people's eyes.

I felt so in the zone on that movie. Whereas, on Say Anything, that was not the case. In Gas, Food Lodging I just felt totally confident. I love Allison Anders. She's this unique mother figure. Very intense and warm. She's loved by everyone. You can go very deep with the relationship with her.

Do you feel like you had a show biz family upbringing, or was it not like that at all?
I didn't grow up with my dad, so it wasn't show biz from him. But my mom knew a lot of people. It was L.A. in the '80s. It was this sort of chic, gay, English crowd. There were musicians and actors. Although I am Jewish, I didn't "grow up in Beverly Hills with the Jewish producer father," which is nice because I didn't have a sheltered upbringing. I had a very expansive, creative upbringing, instead of going to Beverly High, although at the time I thought that would be the greatest thing in the world.

You're now also a mother. How old is your daughter?

She's three. She's going to go to Beverly High and have the sheltered life. [laughs] No, I'm kidding.

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Into the Belly of the Beast: Antoine Fuqua returns to the (police) force with BROOKLYN'S FINEST

(Director Antoine Fuqua, right, and Richard Gere, during the shooting of Brooklyn's Finest.)

By Terry Keefe

(This article is currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)

Don’t even bother trying to pigeonhole director Antoine Fuqua in one genre, Hollywood. He’s made it impossible.

After the success of Training Day in 2001, the searing L.A. police thriller which won Denzel Washington the Best Actor Oscar for his turn as the corrupt detective Alonzo, Fuqua picked for his next project Tears of the Sun, a run-through-the jungle action story, albeit one with a social message about colonialism, starring Bruce Willis and Monica Bellucci, set in war-torn Nigeria. After that, he was off to Camelot in 2004 for his revisionist take on King Arthur. 2007 saw Fuqua teamed with Mark Wahlberg for Shooter, a modern western of sorts, with Wahlberg playing a retired military sniper who is framed for a crime and subsequently cleans up the “town,” in this case a particularly malignant wing of the military industrial complex. Fuqua has only now returned to the setting of his greatest commercial and critical success, that being the police department, for Brooklyn’s Finest, which follows one tumultuous week in the lives of three separate police officers, played by Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, and Ethan Hawke, in Brooklyn’s 65th District. Gere’s Eddie is a cop who has done little except punch the clock for his twenty years on the job, and finally gets to retire at week’s end, although life will present him with one last crossroads and a chance to use his gun for something positive, or not. Cheadle’s Tango has been deep undercover for way too long and learns that the only way back to his old life is by betraying an old gangster friend played by Wesley Snipes. And Hawke’s Sal is a once-good cop who can’t pay his family’s bills and has taken to robbing drug dealers for their cash.

Fuqua grew up in a tough section of Pittsburgh, before attending West Virginia University on a basketball scholarship, where he majored in electrical engineering. He received his first breaks as a director through a series of music videos, the most prominent of which was Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

[Over lunch, Antoine and I started with some small talk about how so many of the great L.A. institution restaurants have disappeared. Joined in progress.]

I listened to the Training Day director's commentary last night, and you were talking about shooting at the original Pacific Dining Car [for the scene where Denzel Washington’s Alonzo goes to meet with the Three Wise Men] -- so some of the classic places have survived.

Antoine Fuqua: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No question about it. That place is like my midnight joint. In the middle of the night, man, I'll go down there. One o'clock in the morning-- I'm up writing at night, and I'll just like want a steak or get in the right environment...and it's all sorts of great characters in there.

What sorts of characters are there in the middle of the night?

It's kind of bizarre. There's guys in suits, you know, businessmen in suits, which, you're not quite sure what kind of business they're in. You know what I mean? 'Cause it's not like New York, Wall Street, and it's in the middle of the night, like one in the morning--and then you got like the old, old drunks -- old women, sitting in there eating. You know, like, they look like they've been there since it opened.

They possibly have.

Then you've got the people in the bar that are a little more...mysterious.

The place is the definition of noir.

It's totally noir. That's exactly what it is. And then every once in a while you see some young, really beautiful people coming in. There's always somebody trying not to be seen, like a booth in the back. But, you know, you're walking through the booths, you can't see who's in there.

Which is perfect for your scene with the Three Wise Men, in Training Day. Of course they would meet there.

That's where they'd meet! That's where they'd have to have a place. That's the type of people you'd see in there. Three guys in suits...politicians? Detectives? You know they're not a hundred percent clean, because there's something about 'em that's a little different, maybe it's in their eyes or in their sweat. It's that little film you can see, you know? And you know not to interfere with whatever's going on over there. And they make sure you don't sit too close.

You know, they told me [at first] they wouldn't let me shoot there, either, and I called the owner, making Training Day, and the owner came down, cool guy, and he's like, "No, we'd never do that." And I said, "You gotta do it." I said, "The movie is an L.A. story, and most people don't get a chance to see this -" Really, he was cool. He was like, "Okay, I'm on it." That one stained-glass window? I loved that room. The reason I picked that room, there's a bullet hole right there. [laughs] If you look at the shot, there's a real bullet hole right there. And I was like, “What's the story to that?”

Did they know? Did they tell you?

They kind of said there was a shootout, a long time ago. It's old. A long time ago. And they left it there. And, you know, I remember just looking at that bullet hole, going, you know, "Just that alone is a great detail." For me. Just for me, whether the audience ever pick up on it. These Three Wise Men sitting there with a bullet hole in the stained glass.

(Fuqua, right, directs Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington in Training Day.)

You like shooting in practical locations, I assume.

I prefer 'em. It's tough on crew, but it just can't be the same essence otherwise, you know, because the actors know it's fake, I know it's fake, somewhere in your mind, it's just fake. And I know it's acting, except when you're in a real environment, [as an actor] you look at the environment, and go, "What is it about this...what is it about me that's fake, because everything else is real." So... "I have to adjust myself to be real for this environment, because if I don't feel that I really fit in, then it's not working." If you put an actor in a real environment, all their choices have to be based on what's real. And, then, as a director, you can't always move that wall and get that fancy shot.

Lighting's more difficult. You're backed in.

But then again, you know, sometimes it makes you just have to deal with some real hard choices. Instead of it being a restriction, it actually becomes more of a creative choice, "What's this scene about?" It's not about the fancy shot on the wall, it's not about the pretty light in the hallways. You know, and if you can get away with that and tell your story, and it actually helps you be more disciplined, then it's better.

In Brooklyn's Finest, that was a real housing project?

[nods] We didn't build anything. Well, we built one thing: Ethan's basement. That was the only thing, because I needed the space, but actually I had to do it for tax reasons. So I built that one set. Everything else was real, all the scenes in the projects were real, every little small project apartment was real.

Were people living there in the project buildings, when you were shooting?

Oh, yes. We paid them to use their apartment. Some apartments I decorated, but I barely decorated. I found so many amazing things, like when Ethan goes in and shoots the two guys and he goes in the back room, it's got weird little waterfalls [in decoration form, on the wall]--

That was a great touch.

Well, I saw it on the wall in another apartment. And it’s [the apartment] chaos, and a big-ass Rottweiler, and a baby's crying, and I walked into this back room, and it's the most serene, blue, weird waterfall, like the only moment of peace. I just thought, "I gotta have that in the movie."

A lot of those visual touches felt very '70s. I grew up around the same time you did, and I just remember some of those types of decorations and their design. You can't find that stuff.

You can't find it, man. I would walk around to the prop department, "I want this--" But there's not a prop house [for those items]. It reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in the projects and stuff, so... Yeah, even the panther on the wall. I saw that somewhere. Because some are stuck in time, you know, places, they don't have money to keep decorating and keeping up with the times, man. They get what they can get. And most of that stuff is from the '70s. Velvet paintings. The painting of the black Jesus, you know.

Were you channeling any '70s cop movies on Brooklyn's Finest? Sidney Lumet?

You know, I was, but it was self-consciously in a weird way. Sidney Lumet and I actually sat down after I did the movie, and he watched the rough cut.

Really?

That was great, man, what an honor. He came in, he sat down, and watched the whole movie, and straight up, man, he turned around, and goes, "I love it." He loved it. And he gave me some advice, he goes, "Fuck exposition! Fuck that! Nobody explains shit!"

Lots of exposition was never his thing.

Yeah, and he's right, but there's a few things in there I had, that an audience may need that [exposition], it's so complicated...but then, you know, I took his advice in some areas, and I was like, "He's right, man," because people are smart. They're gonna get it. You don't need to tell 'em everything. And some of it is better for the imagination. But it was great. And then Scorsese...

Oh, did he watch it also?

Yeah. You know, it's great.

Those are the two guys you would want to give advice on this film.

Those are my gods, and I became good friends with both of them. I've been blessed, because I got to hang out with Scorsese, man, and talk to him, and do the thing for the DGA about Mean Streets. I didn't realize how much I was influenced by Mean Streets, or Q&A, you know, you start watching 'em, going, "Ah, I kind of shot it like that." Weirdly enough, you know, because I had scenes where I would stay wide….I just loved the acting, and I realized I loved Sidney Lumet movies because he would too. It was like stage clips, he would just stay wide, and the actors would just fuckin' fill the frames up with their power. What's weird with Scorsese is that, I love the stories of the Bible. I grew up with pastors in my life, my grandfather was a priest--and I was on the other side. I was always on one foot: half gangster, the other foot: half priest. I always knew right from wrong, which probably saved my life, but I was always one step away from the other side. And then I didn't really realize it until I met with Scorsese, he's like that, too. Scorsese's part gangster, part priest. He's this nice guy, wonderful guy, giving, caring, but he's got this other wildness in him. And I was like, “Wow, no wonder we loved the same movies growing up.” The movies he obviously grew up watching, that I discovered, you know.

The character arc of Richard Gere also has roots in the Western.

That's Shane. He hangs his guns up, and turns his conscience off, and in our case, instead of a little boy who brings him back, you got a girl. And he has to do it, he has to go and pick his gun back up. He didn't even have the guts in the beginning of the movie to kill himself. But he had to go into hell. Into the heart of darkness.

The belly of the beast.

The belly of the beast. That's why I had him go DOWN into the basement [in the conclusion at the housing project]. The reason I had Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke going UP was because their journey was different, they were spiritual heroes doing the wrong thing. And it was that sort of elevation of these angels who were supposed to go up, and they stopped. Ethan can't even finish his prayer. He's given up on faith. And Cheadle's given up because he took an oath to serve and protect, and now he's gonna go do vengeance.

That's why I started off [the film] sort of in the sky, where in my mind, God and the Devil made a deal. They made a wager: Are there any good men or not? And the camera comes over the graveyard, and it's like, oh, they're all dead. And then you discover [Hawke and Vincent D‘Onofrio, talking in a car], and okay, “Are these good men?” And then it sort of starts to take you into that journey, or that concept, and we watch the pressure of their lives -- economic, psychological, spiritual pressures -- unfold and become more and more taxing, and then what choices do they make? And then that's where I found that, that was the journey for me. So it was almost more of a spiritual movie for me. The [police] stuff is superficial, it was much more internal, for me, and for the actors, because I laid it out for them in a lot of ways. Cheadle’s color was red -- passion, violence. That's why, when he's looking right at the camera in the beginning, it's red on his face, he says, “You gotta get me outta here!” And then Ethan's was green, he was always a tender, green one-- you look at greed, you look at the money, greed, a demon. Once you do that act, taking a human life, the demon has you. How do you redeem a person after taking another human life? And so it kinda has that. And so Richard's color was neutral. That's why, in the beginning, he was a ghost. There weren't even sheets on the bed.

Inaction is his problem.

Exactly. He had to be resurrected. Reborn. And that's why, when he comes up the steps, in the beginning, in the precinct, they don't even acknowledge him. The cops don't, they move aside.

(Richard Gere in Brooklyn's Finest, above.)

Redemption stories have something of an appeal to you I noticed. I watched Shooter last night, and I watched Tears of the Sun, and I've seen Training Day a number of times. There's kind of a theme. Tell me where I'm wrong on this…you have great faith in the individual, but great suspicion of institutions.

A hundred percent right. I think there's always going to be an abuse of power. I think if you ever put your faith in institutions, it's a false god, it's gonna let you down every single time, you know. I mean, we got a wonderful new President, President Barack Obama, it's fantastic, he's the first African-American -- half-African-American, I like to make that clear -- because he is that. But he's the first mixed President, let's just say. But he's still part of the institution.

Yeah. It's like, “Congratulations. Now you've got to be suspect too.”

Exactly. It's like, now you've joined the ranks of the rest of 'em, because you're a part of that institution, no matter what. And there are secrets we don't know about. And there's agendas we don't know about. So, I think, people, innately people are good people, the majority of us, outside of a few fucking freaks out there like murderers -- but 99.9% of the people, I think, want to do the right thing. I think the pressures of life always put something in front of you, and opportunities to do the right thing.

In Tears of the Sun, I kind of went back to my old Westerns, which was like The Wild Bunch. The Command is saying, “Just do what we told you and get out, we don't want any problems, political issues.” You're watching someone being murdered and raped and slaughtered. Do you do what's right, human, you know, the right thing as a human being, the moral thing, or do you listen to command and follow orders? Can you sleep at night knowing women and children were just slaughtered and burned? You do the right thing, though. That's basic Western, typical. And I believe that people in the business of service, you know, police, firemen, military guys, that's a redeeming quality, man. They're out there fighting for the people, you know. That's a good thing. The hardest thing is to be in their shoes. To judge them on some of the choices they've made without understanding the whole picture….

I used to, I grew up hating institutions. Hating the police force, 'cause, you know, the abuse that I watched them, the power they would abuse. And, you know, I'm an adult, with children and everything, I'd rather understand it. I'd rather not have hatred as much as understanding of what caused a cop to shoot a kid forty-something times. What was his history? What was his psychological makeup? Because maybe we should take that as a pattern, and watch other people that have that same pattern. And take their gun away before they kill someone else. Or themselves. And that's the other thing that I found, is that the New York Times had an article that more police officers kill themselves than die in the line of duty. And I had a buddy, I said, “What is that?” He said it's called the Hall of Whispers. The Hall of Whispers, that's what he called it. Because you don't talk about that.

Was he a cop, your friend?

Yeah. Undercover cop. I was surprised. It starts to bring up these psychological issues… My question is, so what do we do? And as a filmmaker, you know, it's like Scorsese said, “We all become smugglers,” you know, we have to smuggle in a social relevance, in the package of entertainment.

If it's entertaining...

People will see it. But then you can't try and teach people, because you lose your audience, because nobody wants you to sit there and preach to 'em, and try to teach 'em. I'm just a director, you know, I'm not a professor or a politician. I'm an entertainer. But I can't help but want to try to find a way to constantly put that in, my message, somewhere.

Did you consciously avoid doing cop stories for a while after Training Day?

Yeah.

You were probably offered every great cop script, although maybe there aren’t that many great cop scripts?

There's not a lot of great cop scripts that I could find my way in. It was just some tough guys being tough guys, guns and shooting the bad guys. It was just, like, bullshit. And then I read this, and, you know, it's hard to say why now, but I know that for me, this was important, because there were three different stories that all felt to me Biblical, and I don't know why. And it may have been just, they're so complex. They touch on so many different things, they touched on what was happening in our country. Ethan Hawke's character is like, “I can't even take care of my family. I can't even move. I have twins, and one of them may die, because I can't get another house. Can't get a loan…” You know, what do you do?

He's a good guy. He's doing the right thing. He's protecting our kids, right? He can't get a loan. You know. And if guys like that start to feel abandoned, they start to feel like everybody else in the world is getting what they want, and getting taken care of. And here he is trying to do the right thing, and be a good guy, and not cheat on his wife, and take care of his family, and do the righteous thing, and he's getting punished for it. A lot of people in this country are feeling that way. Unfortunately, they made bad choices, like the guy that drove his plane into the IRS. That's life's pressure, taking a hold of somebody, and twisting their thinking, and making them do something horrible. And when I read the script, I said, this is kind of speaking to where we are.

It felt very much of the time.

Yeah, and that's why I did the scene with Richard at the end, that last shot. For me, that's why I did that. This country's beat up, right now, black eye, bloody, you know, a mess. Still has some abundance there, you know, I love my country, but we're a little lost, a little confused, and then we finally took a path, and we're walking ahead, and we've got some hope left, but when you stop and look at us, man, we're a little beat up, you know, and that's--

We're walking with a limp.

Yeah. There's some blood in our eye. But, you know, we can move forward. But it's up to us. And that [final] image of Richard Gere, to me, represents this country.

I always say, you look up the Statue of Liberty's gown, she's got some scars, and you know, she's a little beat up, up under there. But she's still standing! She's taken some hits, you know, like a boxer in the ring, her ribs was broken, but we’re still standing, and that's really how I saw this movie. This is an American story about where we are, as a country. And there's still some hope, but we've got to figure it out. We gotta pick our direction, and we gotta move ahead. That's why I had Richard, dazed, the yellow line is faded, the line is not so clear anymore. And he's pacing back and forth, and nobody is really giving him no great thank you. I didn't do the scene where the girl hugged him, [little girl voice] “Oh, thank you! You did a great job!” None of that shit. I just thought, man, I'm gonna stay wide.

You're ready for the big swell of the music at that point, but he's just “there.”

He's just there.

There's dead cops upstairs.

There's dead people everywhere. He just says, “Well, I don't know where I'm gonna go, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm not gonna get high anymore, though. I'm gonna move straight ahead.” I’m hoping that that resonates.

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