Paul Haggis and His Two Actresses on "Third Person"

Playing in Theaters

Paul Haggis and His Two Actresses on Third Person

(from Sag Harbor Express Online 6/19/14)


Third Person fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor. Written, produced, and directed by Paul Haggis (who won back-to-back Best Screenplay Oscars for Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby and Crash, which he directed), it opens this Friday in New York City. Because the film has a twist that changes our perspective on everything we’ve seen earlier in the film, I will avoid revealing too much by safely sticking to the Synopsis in the press notes: “Third Person tells three stories of love, passion, trust and betrayal, in a multi-strand story line reminiscent of Paul Haggis’s earlier Oscar-winning film Crash.  The tales play out n New York, Paris and Rome: three couples who appear to have nothing related but share deep commonalities: lovers and estranged spouses, children lost and found…Michael (Liam Neeson) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who has holed himself up in a hotel suite in Paris to finish his latest book.  He recently left his wife, Elaine (Kim Basinger) and is having a tempestuous affair with Anna (Olivia Wilde), an ambitious young journalist who wants to write and publish fiction.  At the same time, Scott (Adrien Brody), a shady American businessman, is in Italy to steal designs from fashion houses…There he meets Monika (Moran Atias), a beautiful Roma woman, who is about to be reunited with her young daughter. When the money she has saved to pay her daughter’s smuggler is stolen, Scott feels compelled to help…Scott starts to suspect that he is the patsy in an elaborate con game.  Julia (Mila Kunis), an ex-soap opera actress, is caught in a custody battle for her six-year-old son with her ex-husband Rick (James Franco), a famous New York artist…Julia is reduced to working as a maid in the same upscale boutique hotel where she was once a frequent guest.  Julia’s lawyer, Theresa (Maria Bello) has secured Julia one final chance to change the court’s mind and be reunited with the child she loves.  Rick’s girlfriend Sam (Loan Chabanol) is a compassionate onlooker.”  This synopsis leaves out…pretty much everything.   I took part in this following roundtable with Haggis on Tuesday about his intriguingly enigmatic film.  I note my questions.  After it, is my quick exchange with Atias and Chabanol.

Interview with Paul Haggis

 Paul Haggis  Photo: DP
Q: What inspired you to make this film?
Paul Haggis: This idea was brought to me by Moran Atias. When I was sitting on the set of The Next Three Days, in the last week of shooting, she came in for two days to do a small role.  She asked if she could sit on the set and watch because she wanted to learn how to direct or something and take a look at the cameras.  So I said yes, just be quiet.  Moran is beautiful woman so everyone wanted to talk to her.   At some point, she started pitching ideas to me for movies, which I thought excessively annoying. I was trying to direct a movie!  I think the first one she pitched was a Holocaust movie, and I said, I’m not going to do a Holocaust movie, thank you very much, it’s been done too well before, and I don’t know what I would say about it. Then she said I should do something about relationships.  My first instincts were to reject that idea, but I then went, “Oh, that’s interesting.” That movie wrapped, and we both headed back to New York.  We met and I actually recorded her for fifteen hours as she talked about her relationships, her friends, her failings in relationships, all sorts of stories. She went away after a week or so, and I sat there and started thinking where I’d failed in relationships, and what intrigued me were several questions: How can you succeed in a relationship if you have somebody across from you who you believe is totally untrustworthy?”  What if you just decide to trust them, despite all the evidence that they are not trustworthy? You’re a smart person and you know that person is probably lying to you, but what happens if you just decide to trust and believe in that person?  Is love transformative?  Is that kind of acceptance transformative? What if you insist on saying, “I know who you are, I know what you did, just admit it and everything can be fine”?  Do you admit it? And if you get what you want, do you no longer want it? It’s a very cynical view, but if that person finally opens up to you–will you betray him, or her? It’s better that those questions don’t go away than if you have the answers.
Q: So if this started out as Moran Atias’s idea, how much of it could be autobiographical?
PH: All of it!  Not really.  [laughter]. All my work is partly autobiographical, Crash was, absolutely. You wouldn’t recognize me in those characters in Crash, but I was in every single one of them. Those were fears that I had felt, things that I had thought in my heart– I just projected them onto other people. You just wouldn’t recognize me, but I’m also in the characters in The Next Three Days, in which Russell Crowe’s wife Elizabeth Banks is arrested for murder.  It was a prison breakout movie, and I was asking myself, “What would I do in his place? How far would I go for the woman I loved?  And what would I do if she told me that she was guilty? Could I still believe in her?” It was very personal.  So was In the Valley of Elah [about a man, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who tries to find how about the death of his soldier son]. On Third Person it’s easier to see because it’s about a writer, but all my films are like that.
Q: So how did you instill yourself into the story?
PH: I started by asking myself questions.  Obviously in my relationships, things have worked, mostly things have failed. And I asked questions about those things. I wanted to explore different aspects of how I’d failed or how I could possibly have succeed if I’d done something better or did something less. Then I put my answers into stories in which the real people I’m writing about will mostly not recognize themselves. That’s really what I did.  I explored a lot of things, especially about how damn selfish we writers are and how other people often pay the price for that selfishness. I thank God I have never gone through a tragedy like Michael or the other characters go through, but I can imagine myself there. Because often it’s children who pay the price for our selfishness. I moved to Hollywood when I was 22, I was married and we had a kid right away.  I worked as a furniture mover and at various other jobs eight-to-ten hours a day, trying to support my family.  Then I’d come home and write for two or three hours every night. You love your kids, but…It’s a very real guilt I carry, now it’s just [here] in fictional form.
Danny Peary: When her rich ex-husband Rick, played by James Franco, breaks a promise and refuses to let her see their son, Mila Kunis’s Julia asks, “Why do you get to play God?”  But that seems to be a question that could be asked to the writer Michael (Liam Neeson), who creates and manipulates all his characters. And in turn, that question can be asked to you as the writer of the movie and creator of the characters, including Michael.
PH: Exactly, absolutely true. It’s a question, I think, that I have as a filmmaker and also as a human being. Playing God as a writer and especially as a person is something that haunts me.  I write about what haunts me. There’s a reason pride is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Because we’re prideful, we think in our relationships that we’re good, we’re right, we’re the sensible one, whatever. I remember being in a relationship where this woman said to me, “Your asking me to open up to you is just a game. If I’m finally completely vulnerable to you and trust you completely, and open up to you, you’ll just betray me.”  I went, “Wow, this is a woman with serious trust issues…but what if she’s right?” That if is how I approached this. I often like to write from the point of view of characters that I completely disagree with. That challenges me, and gets me to look at my own justifications, rationalizations, bullshit.

DP: The writer-as-God theme is probably the most important theme in this film, but your movie is also about overcoming bad choices.
PH: The most interesting characters, the most interesting people, are ones who often work against their own best interests. Bad choices. They go in directions where you’re like, “What? No, no, no, no!”  They push away someone who’s trying to love them, they push away someone who’s trying to get their trust, they love someone they shouldn’t love. Another thing I was exploring is the idea that while we think we keep finding the wrong person in life, at some point we might ask ourselves, “What if the wrong person is really the right person?” In this movie polar opposites are drawn together into relationships, and then pulled apart, and then drawn together.  They’re completely wrong for each other but though some of it doesn’t work, some of it does. I don’t think there’s much logic involved.
SPOILER ALERT
DP: There’s an erratic nature to your characters, and I don’t know if it’s deliberate or unintentional.  Maybe their erratic because their creator, Michael, is experiencing erratic emotions.
Q: It’s both for me.
Q: So it’s legitimate to assume that maybe all these characters are in Michael’s mind?
PH: It’s very legitimate. At some point or other, they are. How much is he trying to rewrite his own life? How much is he trying to explain his life, or explore his life? But then how much is he trying to avoid by doing that That’s what I explored.
END SPOILER ALERT
DP: In the press notes, it says that you usually are a quick writer but this script took you many, many drafts.  Was it because it was so personal and you were exploring the same things Michael was?
PH: It took me so long to write because I allowed the characters to lead me along. That was totally the wrong thing to do.  We writers should structure things and force our characters to do what we want them to do. And that’s what I almost always do, playing God. But this time I let them take me to places, and they took me to blind alleys or off a cliff or to bridge of no return; or they would wander off into the desert and get lost.  They took me to see the things I didn’t want to really look at. That’s exactly what’s happening to Michael with his characters. It’s easier to live with drama than with responsibility for what you’ve done.  The storyline and who the characters are changed radically over the last two-and-a-half years.  I finally just realized what I was writing about – and that came to me very slowly.  After a year, I went “Oh, this is what I’ll write about.”
Q: Beyond personal stories of your own, were there other inspirations for your film? I saw comparisons between this and The Singing Detective,  maybe because of the idea of a writer stuck in a room.
PH: You know, that’s a great analogy. It was a brilliant TV series. It wasn’t conscious of it in any way while writing the script, but the problem with watching anything good is that it will stick in your mind forever. That’s why I try to not watch movies while I’m either writing or directing. That’s hard, because this movie took me five-and-a-half years!
DP: Are you a fan of American Graffiti?
PH: I was, why?
DP: The intertwining stories. That was one of the first films to try that and it left such an impression on everybody.
PH: You’re right, I hadn’t thought of that. I always think of Robert Altman, of course, but he came later.
Q: Talk about the film’s title.  Is it about writing in the third person or about a third person in each of the relationships?
PH: There are different ways to interpret it. It can be exactly what you said, that there’s always a third person in the relationships, although you often don’t know who that person is. It might be someone from the past who is keeping you from moving on or keeping you from connecting with somebody. I don’t keep a journal, but I love the idea that Michael distances himself so much from his own feelings that he actually writes in his journal in the third person.  Anna and Michael talk in the third person–they flirt, they say fabulous things to each other, they also can be incredibly cruel.
Q: Talk about casting Liam Neeson in a part where he types rather than shoots a gun.
PH: Liam is one of our best actors. I remember talking to him about doing a film years ago, before his personal tragedy.  I wanted him to a play a role in a drama, and I thought he would be very good.  It was something I hadn’t written but was planning to direct, He really wanted to do it, but when I talked to my financiers, they said, “Liam Neeson is not really worth a lot at the box office.  I said, “He’s a brilliant actor.”  I dined with him and thought he was perfect for the role and was a lovely, lovely man.” At the end of dinner he said, “Paul, I did this little film that’s coming out soon.  I hope no one sees it.”  That was Taken.  Three months later, those same producers came back to me and said, “Do you think you can get Liam Neeson for this role?” That’s how our fickle business is. I didn’t end up doing that movie but I chased him from the moment I finished writing this script.  I didn’t worry that he made so many action films.  He’d made a lot of great movies, but told me that he hadn’t had the chance to play a romantic lead in something like twenty years. And women like him.
Q: Did some of the actors adlib or did they stick to your script?
PH: We had very little rehearsal time, but I feel that if an actor is skilled and can understand the scene and what my intent is although it’s not always obvious on the page, then they can act it. I gave them the freedom to improvise and most of them didn’t. There were lines that changed, but not a lot.
Q: It is everyone’s nightmare to be in a hotel hallway naked, like Anna is in one scene.
PH: I wish I’d lived that experience!
Q: Was Olivia Wilde on board with doing that, and then running naked down a flight of stairs?

 

PH: Completely.  That was the great thing about working with Olivia.  I told her from the beginning, “Olivia, you’re going to be butt-naked in this movie.” and she said, “Okay, I can do that for you.”  She knew what the scene was. And she made it so comfortable for us, making us feel that it was not a big deal. Of course I closed the set, and it was just me, the DP, and the camera.  No one could see monitors.  That was a set, thank God, that we built. Both of the hotels, the Mercer Hotel and the St. Jacques, we built completely on a soundstage in Rome. She didn’t really run down the stairs from one floor to the next.  The stairs went into a pit.  And then she came down what was supposed to be the next level of stairs.  Olivia did an interview in which she said that between takes she was eating pizza, and forgot she was walking around butt-naked.  I wanted that scene to be joyous, not sleazy in any way.  It was just so much fun to watch her. She’s so vulnerable in that moment playing a character who hasn’t been vulnerable and has been quite cruel to others–we want to see that other side of her.
Q: What was the funniest thing that happened during shooting?
PH: Liam’s character, Michael, was supposed to step out of the shower and see Olivia Wilde, Anna, lying naked on his bed and reading his journal. This took place on a set we built, and I wanted steam to be coming out of that shower. So I put Liam in the shower with the hot water running and then the DP started talking to me, and then Olivia asked me a question.  Finally, Liam screams, “I’m goddamn scalding in here!”  The hot water was burning that poor son of a bitch. He was waiting very patiently for his action cue for way too long. So he came out and was quite red. And not from anger, red because I almost fried the poor man.
DP: One thing I find really interesting in this movie is your emphasis on first impressions. You immediately identify a character or situation by showing us revealing props–or Olivia Wilde’s legs–or you have sharp first lines said whenever characters enter a scene.
PH: I do like to try to set up characters and let you think you know them.  Judge them completely and say, “This is who this person is.” I like doing that, so that I can then subvert those expectations. That’s true with Michael and Anna.  I wanted to say, Here’s Michael, he’s a great guy; well, okay he’s cheating on his wife, oh he’s left her. So he’s a flawed man, but a good man; what the hell is he doing with Anna, who’s a crackpot and  so volatile that she’s cold one minute and hot the next.  Maybe the sex is good, but please, Michael, grow a pair of balls, what are you doing?  Who’s using whom? In relationships, you often think, “Oh, this is the good person and the other is the devil.”  Then when you really get inside of a relationship you realize it’s maybe not that way.
DP: Michael tells Anna that her short story is cold and impersonal. Was that part of your problem writing this, not making it personal enough?
PH: No, I think what Michael says earlier to her is my problem. He says, “It’s very clever.” She goes, “Ooh, clever, thanks.”  I used to be a clever writer.  I was for years.  But once I realized how you’re supposed to write, the last thing I wanted to be was clever. There are very few people like Oscar Wilde who can be really clever and also reveal themselves. It’s easier to be clever as a defensive mechanism, so that you don’t have to reveal yourself on paper.
DP: Is Michael talking about himself when he says Anna’s writing is cold and impersonal and clever?
PH: We often project our own frustrations, and when Michael criticizes her short story he was obviously having a problem with his own book. His characters were protecting themselves, They were all making excuses for his life. (I fear that.)
Q: Talk about Mila Kunis’s character Julia.  It is hard to tell whether she or her ex-husband Rick, played by James, is damaging their little son more.
PH:  I want you to go in thinking she’s irresponsible but is not going to hurt her kid. But she cries and confesses to Rick about something she did. He breaks his promise to her, and she cries that she lied to him.  I love planting clues with humor early on, and if  you think back there’s a scene where she saying that she used to be in a soap opera and got that job because she could cry on cue. So is that what she’s doing now?
Q: All the characters have ambiguous, open-endings.
PH: I don’t know if the stories themselves are ambiguous.  The movie itself is ambiguous, but in the stories, you pretty much see who wins and who loses. Those who trust, like Anna, don’t always win.  Scott trusts Monika, so he risks everything because she insists she has a daughter. That story is about belief, and I want the audience to see it’s about what you believe, not what the facts are.
DP: What’s the reason you set Third Person in three different cities?
PH: One reason is that it would make it physically impossible for my characters to meet. So when things start happening, you’d have to go, “Okay, that impossible. And if that can’t really happen, then what is happening?  And why?”  Also, who doesn’t want to shoot in Rome and Paris and New York? They’re the most romantic cities in the world.  I spent a lot of time in Italy shooting this, which was fabulous. And since it was going to be a really complex story, I really wanted to celebrate it and have it be joyous, and convey that visually. What better cities to film this than Paris, Rome, and New York?
Q: Do you think of yourself more as a writer or director?
PH: That’s a hard question to answer. I see myself as a filmmaker, and sometimes I get the chance to write or direct, and sometimes I get to do it all, like with Third Person.
Q: You’ve been making films for than a decade. Have you considered writing a play?
PH: That’s how I started out. My plays were so bad that I was chased out of Canada. I would absolutely like to go back to it but I haven’t found a story that tells itself best on the stage yet.
Q: What are you working on right now?
PH: Nothing, absolutely nothing. I spent eight weeks here over Christmas.  Usually I spend three months here editing my movies, but this time I didn’t go away.  I said, I’m a New Yorker, I’ve had a place here for ten years; my youngest son goes to school here; my best friend and best reader, my ex-wife is a terrific playwright who loves it here; I like to write here; I’m staying.  It’s brutally cold but it’s the  perfect weather to be miserable and write.  So that’s what I did, spending eight weeks writing a brand new story.  Then I read it through and threw it out. So I’ve got nothing.
Q: A couple of years ago, you were going to make a film about Scientology.
PH: I was never going to make a film about Scientology. There was just the book. It’s not that I shy away from it, but I just haven’t found a good story to tell. I’d have to find something that really intrigues me.
DP: This film is really hard to talk to you about because we can’t reveal the ending. But, do you think people will like this better on the second viewing?
PH: I think so, yes. I think they’ll enjoy it more because they’ll be in on it. Hopefully they won’t run around telling everybody what happens. There are lots of clues that I plant quite early in Third Person. which people probably don’t notice the first time around. But next time you notice.  In Rome, Adrian Brody’s character Scott turns and looks up as a Mercedes passes, and in the back seat is Anna, who is in Paris. This was an impossibility but I was being quite literal.

 A Quick Exchange with Loan Chabanol and Moran Atias

Moran Atlias (L) and Loan Chabanol Photo: DP

Danny Peary: Is Loan a name other people have, do you know other Loans?
Loan Chabanol: I do, in Vietnam. Lo-An. It’s a Vietnamese name, and my grandmother is Vietnamese. So it’s a very common name.  In France we have a lot of Julies.
DP: Do people call you Loan, pronouncing it like the word for borrowing?
LC: All the time. I make it cool, I’m like, “No problem, call me any name you want.”
DP: Moran, you spent a couple of years talking with Paul Haggis about relationships, all leading up to Third Person. So is this film anything like your original concept?
Moran Atias: Oh, yeah, there are so many things I see myself in, including the other characters.  That was a first-time experience for me as a writer. As actors we get to hide. We can change our hair or use an accent, and all of a sudden it’s not you anymore.  But it’s always you, I feel; you always bring yourself, but these tricks are like masks. As a writer, even though they’re speaking in third person, it’s really yourself and your fears and doubts.  I felt extremely exposed for the first time, and I was truly mesmerized by the whole outcome.
DP: Was that a surprise?
MA: Yes, because I did not expect the film to happen. Because I think back to when I was sitting in a hotel room with an idea and then an Oscar-winning filmmaker wants to do it, and then there’s money to make it, and then brilliant actors like Liam Neeson sign on…None of this felt real to me, I was living in a bubble. And then there were moments when it didn’t happen, because we lost financing, and then Liam had to go off and do Taken 14, and we were like, “Okay, what happens now?” So I yelled with joy and had moments of sobbing throughout the years.  Now the film is exactly what I hoped, everything I dreamed of.
DP: Loan, I kind of see your character, Sam, as the calm in the eye of a hurricane. Everyone else is experiencing turmoil and she’s so composed. She’s the observer of the film, as I see it. How do you see her and how does she fit into the whole thing?
LC: I think she’s a fly on the wall.  I think she’s on the wall and everything is happening and she just watches it. She does not judge anyone, and that’s a big strength. When you don’t have any bad thoughts about anyone, you just see what’s going on. I think she feels a lot, she doesn’t really show her feelings, but she tries to help anyone who needs it. She could just pass by when Julia is on the bathroom floor crying, but she doesn’t because she’s curious and cares and has good instincts. I think she’s looking for the truth. For me, when I read it, she represented love, and on the purest level that you can imagine. She is just true, unconditional love.
DP: Do you think Sam is responsible for Rick making the friendly phone call to Julia about their son?
LC: I think she’s a great help with that, yeah. She could judge Rick, she could be mad at him, she could leave, she could just explode.  I remember that scene when she talks to him. On the first take I had her be judgmental, and Paul was like, “No, cut! She’s not judging him.” I was like, wow. At that moment I really understood her strength. She’s love. She’s hope.
DP: She’s the  conscience.
LC: Yeah, she’s very powerful.  She’s almost like a symbolic figure in the movie, a little Buddha. That’s how I connected to her.

Ice Cube Is Back and Is Still Yelling in "22 Jump Street"

Playing in Theaters

Ice Cube Is Back and Is Still Yelling in 22 Jump Street

(from Sag Habor Express Online 6/12/14)


 
 Ice Cube (foreground) with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum

Expected to outgross the original, 22 Jump Street opens Friday across the country, including in East Hampton.  I got a jump on the sequel.  On assignment for the Australian magazine, FilmInk, I was among a contingent of journalists who visited the set in New Orleans last November.  That day, in an abandoned Vietnamese church, that was serving as a police facility, we watched an improvisational scene in which Captain Dickson, played by rap icon/actor Ice Cube, rips into his dimwit officers, Schmidt and Jenko, played by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, respectively.  Afterward, Ice Cube did this brief interview with us.  I note my questions.
Danny Peary: In 21 Jump Street, you yelled at lot. Does Captain Dickson yell all the way through 22 Jump Street, too?
Ice Cube (laughing): Not all the way through it, but about two-thirds of the way. You know, I’m trying to become the meanest, nastiest captain of them all. We’ve seen nasty black angry captains who are always giving their officers shit, but I want to be the top one.
DP: Were you told right away in the first film, to yell all the time?
IC: Well, you know, I was told this movie was done with tradition in mind. Dickson is kind of like a hyper, super cliché of the mean angry captain. I looked at some of the best angry captains.  On the TV show, Starsky & Hutch, they had a good one.  I saw a good one on Beverly Hills Cop, the one that gave Eddie Murphy so much shit, and so I wanted Dickson to be right up there. It’s been a lot of fun, especially the second time around, because the first time you’re kind finding your feet but the second time you’ve zeroed in on who this guy is and it’s just about trying to up the ante.
Photo:DP
Q: How do you do with improv?
IC: I love to ad-lib. I kind of take what’s there, and change it for myself, maybe thinking of something totally over the top.  That’s kind of the formula for good comedy. Start off with a great script, but you’ve got to have actors who can expand on that, go places with it, not just somebody who’ll read the lines and get out the way, you need someone who really has the flavor to go with it. I just turn the switch.  I just look at Jonah and at Channing, and all that comes up.  I think about how much they’re getting paid compared to me, and it comes right out!  I’ve had a lot of practice with comedians who improvise.  My whole acting career I’ve been working with Chris Tucker, Mike Epps, Bernie Mac, and Charlie Murphy.  I’ve gained a nice, little tough skin to be able to hold it in, but Jonah has woken me up a couple of times on this movie. I’m not proud of that but it’s happened. He comes up with some shit, you know.
DP: What’s your main strength as a comic actor?
IC: My dark sense of humor. I think it’s kind of my strength. I can almost make anything funny, which is a little twisted, but I always could make a joke out of pretty much anything.
Q: Before the original film, people were saying, “Why are they doing 21 Jump Street? It’s a terrible idea.” How was it brought to you as a good idea?
IC: Well, I saw Jonah, and he told me, “Man, you gotta do it, you gotta do it, you gotta do it.” I saw what they were doing with it, spoofing the TV show but creating something new for people who hadn’t seen it, so I knew that it could work for the people who loved the series and people who never heard of it.  It was packaged right. It worked, thank God. Now I think the audience expects us to let them in on the joke, make them part of the joke.  Here we are making a bad sequel to a bad TV show. That’s funny for a lot of people, so here we go.
Q: Has your role been expanded?
IC: Yeah, yeah, they’ve expanded my role and you’ll see a lot more of Dickson on the screen, interacting with the two guys a little more during the whole case.  And there’s a big surprise when it comes up Dickson that’s going to freak out everybody.
Q: Are they going to let Dickson out of his office?
IC: Yeah, yeah, he’s out of the office a little bit. When you do a sequel you gotta spend more money so we spent more money on the office.  There’s no more Korean church this time, Korean Jesus is mad.  Korean Jesus has got to take a backseat; Vietnamese Jesus, it’s his time to shine.
Q: Do you like working here?
IC: I love New Orleans. I first came here in the ‘90s, I had mixed emotions, but the more and more I come the more and more I get a chance to really get out and see things and meet people.  I’ve been loving New Orleans for the last fifteen years. Every time I get a chance to come out, I jump at it because I know I’ll have a good time.
Q: Have you been out to Channing Tatum’s bar, Saints and Sinners, on Bourbon Street?
IC: Not yet, not yet. I’ve been trying to stay focused. I’ll probably go on my last day here, before we go to Puerto Rico to shoot.  Then I’ll hit the bar!

Josef Wladyka Gets His Hands Dirty Making "Manos Sucias"

Film Festivals

Josef Wladyka Gets His Hands Dirty Making Manos Sucias

(from Sag Harbor Express Online 5/17/14)


Jarlin Martinez and Cristain James Advincula in Manos Sucias. 


Manos Sucias (“Dirty Hands”) fits my category of Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  It made a big impression at the recent TriBeCa Film Festival and its director-cowriter Josef Kubota Wladyka was selected Best New Narrative Director.  While a graduate student at NYU, this dedicated young filmmaker went to danger spots on the southern Pacific coast of Colombia, including the port of Buenaventura, to make his debut feature about young people involved in the drug trade there.  By going to real locations and employing guerilla-filming techniques, he was able to bring authenticity to his riveting, intense storyline about two poor estranged brothers who make a drug run on a rickety boat in the Pacific and get in way over their heads.
“Manos Sucias,” says Wladyka in his Director’s Statement, “is not another movie that glamorizes cocaine and the drug trade, rather it’s a film that unveils the realities of exploitation of children, impoverished fishermen, and families who are forced to be a part of this world…Making a film like Manos Sucias is only possible—from its very conception to its release—by working hand in hand with the local community in Buenaventura.” The result of his working with the neglected people of the area—some provided locations, some told inspiring stories, some worked on the crew, some acted in small parts–is a unique, amazingly ambitious, enlightening, and rewarding film.
I completely agree with the TFF’s jury’s comments: “We have chosen a filmmaker whose journey should truly be an example to all of us about the commitment to the process of researching and developing a film. Not only did this director spend several years immersed in a marginalized community in order to tell the story in the most truthful way possible, he impacted and contributed to that community. We felt this film was an eye and mind opener that transported us to a different place, stimulating our thinking, allowing us to meditate on the relationship between violence and circumstance.”
I think every aspiring filmmaker should use Wladyka as their model, instead of setting their eyes on Hollywood.  I was pleased to do the following interview with him at the beginning of the festival, before he won his prestigious award.

Photo: DP

Joseph Wladyka

Danny Peary: This project took a long time. Were you already at Tisch and NYU when you started it?
Joseph Wladyka:  Manos Sucias is technically my thesis film, for my Masters in the graduate film program. But my initial interest started before I started the program.  Before I came to Tisch I was waiting tables and making films in Washington DC, where I was living.  I was just trying to learn the craft, and was not making political films but just a little comedy.  I got into Tisch for the fall so I took the rest of the summer off to go backpacking through South America with a good friend who was living in Colombia. That’s when I first discovered and started exploring the coasts of Columbia and Ecuador.
DP: Were there revelations on this backpacking trip that started you thinking about making this movie or were you already thinking about your subject before you went on the trip?
JW: I only knew that I wanted to make a movie in another place. We started the trip in Ecuador before going to Colombia and down the Pacific Coast.  My friend had traveled a lot in the cities and areas we went to and he suggested we go to a town in Ecuador that is very much like the Colombia town, Buenaventura, where I’d film Manos Sucias.  It was a place completely forgotten by the government.  That first trip was in 2007, when I was just backpacking.  Around February 2010, I had the idea of going back and doing specific investigation for a film. I was in a concentrated program at NYU, so the only time I could go was summers for the next few years.
DP: Did your friend from Colombia take you where you needed to go?
JW: My backpacker friend was actually an American.  He wouldn’t be part of my crew. The way I got access to more of the real, intimate stories was through a woman named Kelly Morales, whom I met when I was backpacking.  She is an Associate Producer on the film.  Kelly’s family is from Tumaco, the second largest port on the coast of Colombia. It’s on the Ecuadorian border, but it’s a place that has exactly the same issues and problems as Buenaventura.  I asked her to take me to fishing villages around Tumaco, including one that required a two-hour boat ride south.  She had family members who live in these areas, and I had my journal and was able to speak to them and other people who had stories similar to the one in my film.  That’s when I started to think about the plot of my film..
DP: When you spoke to the locals, what did they say about the drug trade?
JW: It’s a beautiful place but there’s so much darkness because of what’s going on there. Like with Buenaventura, there are all these barrios controlled by different groups.
DP: Paramilitary groups or government groups?
JW: Some of them are paramilitary groups and some are guerilla groups. Buenaventura is on the Pacific coast and it’s located over the Andres Mountains, so it’s hidden away, but it’s the richest, biggest port in Colombia, and most imports and exports come and go through there.  The port itself is very nice and there is a lot of modern technology, but the people that live there don’t get to be a part of that economy.  It’s a place of dense jungle, swamps, and mangroves, and it’s pretty much the epicenter or the launching point for a lot of drug traffic, contraband, guns.  All kinds of stuff goes on there.
DP: Did you have a camera?
JW: I did have a camera.  When we did Kickstarter to help us fund the movie, we used a lot of the footage we shot on the Pacific Coast.  I also got permission from the Colombian government to go to the Malaga Naval Base, where we saw cocaine they had confiscated and narcotorpedoes, which are used to carry the drugs at the back of boats.  There are also these huge boats with four engines on back. The dealers load a bunch of bales of cocaine on them and gun it up the coast.
DP: They’re faster than the government boats?
JW: Yeah, and they can go into swamps and rivers to get away..
DP: Your film was the first time I heard about a narcotorpedo. Did you know that word?
JW: We had heard stories. Initially, the idea of the film was four guys who get inside one of those semi-submersibles that they built. But that would have made it much bigger and too expensive to make.  Also the typography of the area is so beautiful, so we didn’t want to lose that by having them underwater. So we decided to make it a narcotorpedo with the drugs inside and have the two brothers outside on a boat.
DP: When you went to the naval base, were you trying to make sure you were protected when filming on the water?
JW: No, it was because I felt I had to really see the things first-hand. It was just research.  It was the same with going into the fishing villages and talking to people–it was all for the research.
DP: When you finally decided you had done enough research to make a movie, what did you think of first–the characters, the story, or the subject?
JW: I think it was the subject and the world first. I thought that no one would ever see another film made in this place. It thought it could be important to explore, and at the same time be a very interesting, entertaining film. The story was based on a real guy’s journey from Buenaventura to Panama. He was a drug runner, just one of the guys who gets put on a boat. His story was crazy, but that’s where a lot of the plot comes from.
DP: Where did Spike Lee fit into your film as an executive producer?
JW: Spike teaches directing in your third year at the graduate film program at NYU. He gives a grant for thesis films.  It’s not a lot of money, but I used it to continue to travel to Buenaventura and do research. I would show him the footage of my research, and different versions of the script. He was telling me, “You gotta finally shoot it.”  He kept up with the process and was extremely generous with his help.  In Colombia, he’s a huge icon and his writing letters for us opened so many doors and let us meet certain people and get a production team, and got people in Colombia interested in our film.  But he wasn’t officially on board as executive producer until we showed him a cut towards the end, and then he said, “Whatever you guys need, I’ll put my name on it.”
DP: I read that you went into the community and held film workshops for five Saturdays and had people there participate in making your movie. When did you come up with that as a master plan?
JW: The filmmaking workshops? It was an idea that initially came from our producer, Elena Greenlee. This was in, I think, 2012, and was the first time that Americans from the production team came with me to Colombia–Elena and Alan Blanco, my co-writer and cinematographer.  We met with community leaders in these areas and said we’d be shooting a narrative, not a documentary.  We were always up front and really honest with everyone there about our intentions.  Very quickly we realized that the people were thinking, “Okay, you’re going to come and shoot here and we’ll help you, but what are you doing to do for us?”  We said we would hold filmmaking workshops once a week for people from the displaced communities we shot in.  There was a big radio announcement to the people from Buenaventura, so a lot of people of the school and others showed up for out writing workshops. We’d break down their three-page scripts and figure out how to shoot them.  Before we went into production, they all went out and shot little shorts on their iPhones. Once some of our Colombian crewmen arrived, closer to the production, we did workshops on art direction and wardrobe.
DP: Were the twenty-five people who came to these workshops of different statuses?
JW: Yeah, and of different ages. There were university students and older people from a theater group.  It was really, really interesting.  We used a lot of the local people in our crew.
DP: Were you doing acting auditions as well, for small parts?
JW: We found some of the cast at the workshops. I will say that so much of the script changed and evolved once I started casting because a lot of the kids you see in the film are from these displaced communities.
DP: One of the interesting things I read about the casting of Cristian James Advincula as Delio and Jarlin Martinez as Jacobo is that they recognized they were not matched as actors or friends.  Did you recognize that too and sense they’d soon bond and their chemistry would grow?
JW: Yeah, yeah. They’re extremely different in real life. We had a very intense audition process, and we saw that there were three actors who could play the two brothers.  So I had them all switch roles and feel out which two had the best chemistry and who had the tug and pull of a real brotherly relationship.  So it was the three of them doing some crazy improvisations…Ultimately it became Cristian and Jarlin. The other one played the boy who steals the drugs.   I had them in the living together in the same room and by the time we got close to shooting, in April 2013, they clicked.
DP: Because Delio and Jacobo are totally different, did you cast two actors who were not alike because you wanted friction and tension between these characters.
JW: Oh, definitely.
DP: What did you want their relationship to be? Did you want the older brother being protective, did you want the younger brother always cheery?
JW: Yeah, the broad strokes of it was always to take this bright-eyed naïve kid, Delio, and start him in one place and have end up in a completely different place. Jacobo turns to survival mode and shepherds his younger brother through this journey. For me, personally, their relationship came from my relationships with two older brothers.  I know they can be loving but at the same be bullies.  Siblinghood is kind of a universal theme.
DP: To me it seemed that you wanted to make the brothers likable and relatable to us at times, but then you undermine that by having them do or say something we object to. For instance, the younger boy is full of life and is always smiling and is a family man, but then he starts talking about what he’d do to a pretty woman sexually if he got to be with her. We’re appalled. And neither of them seems to care what will happen to the bed-ridden grandmother of the boy who steals the cocaine. You don’t make them 100% sympathetic.
JW: We didn’t want to create angels. We wanted them to be real people, with flaws, especially in regard to the boy’s grandma. There is just a whole cycle of violence that goes on in that area of Colombia and I wanted to show, particularly at the end, how people are sort of forced into it and there are casualties, not only the people who are killed but also their poor families who count on them for money. All this came from our just being there and learning the real stories going on. When we cast the brothers, we went through the script together and really, really talked about every single scene. We changed a lot of the dialogue to make it colloquial, like how they speak in Buenaventura, and we also talked about all these little specific moments–about what a character is doing and why he is doing it.  Cristian came to realize that Delio’s choice by the end is to kill or die.  And that’s the story we wanted to tell.
DP: You present a cycle of violence that nobody can get out of because of the poverty in the area.  I wonder about villains.  I’m sure the drug dealers who give them the drugs and pick up the drugs are the villains but I’m sure they have similar stories to the brothers.
JW: Exactly.  When you meet people who are involved in trafficking drugs every week on a boat, they aren’t who you might expect. They’re all different.  Because the culture there is very happy and bright. There’s a lot of incredible music and artists and stuff that resonates. It just happens to be in this place that’s completely under siege. Last month in Buenaventura was the most violent it had been in many, many years, so they had this huge protest with about 10,000 people asking the government to come and help, basically. It was all over the news when we were at the Cartagena Film Festival screening the movie. It was first thing the journalists started asking us about. Everyone from Buenaventura came to Cartagena and their favorite scene in the movie, the scene they loved, is when the brothers sing together on the boat. That’s also the favorite scene of both actors. They feel it represents that they’re happy, although they’re stuck on this boat and they’re suffering on this crazy trip.
DP: Was that song in the script?
JW: Yes, that specific song.
DP: The opening scene, I think, is really important. Delio gets the job of transporting drugs, so he can make money, and he gets worried when the young tough who hires him says he’ll have to kill the other boy applying for the job because he knows too much.  Then the young tough says he’s only joking!  I think you want that young tough to be thinking that if he were in a movie he’d actually pull the trigger. You wanted to show the influence of movies on these young criminals. Otherwise you could just have one guy there trying to get the job.
JW: There was a lot of stuff cut from the movie, and what didn’t make the final cut were more scenes with Delio and his friend. That scene we wrote in a way that we thought would be interesting dramatically.  It was just part of the dramatic structure. We think the guy who hires Delio is this tough guy, but then he turns out to be kind of a fast-talking bumbly guy. It’s a relief.
SPOILER ALERT
DP: It goes with the final moment of your movie, when the brothers are told they’ll be more drug running jobs for them if they want. They’ve almost lost their lives, people have died around them, but it’s just one ordinary day in the life of drug runners.
JW: From my experience, it’s just so matter-of-fact about what’s going on. Someone died, they don’t care; you delivered the stuff, so you can do another run.
END SPOILER ALERT
DP: Talk about filmmaking on the water and the nifty stuff on the railroad.  Those are brilliant little action pieces.  In the press notes you say you want people to see what’s really going on by making an action kind of movie.
JW: Yeah, if the film isn’t entertaining then it’s not going to reach its maximum audience. Elena and I always felt that we had to use dramatic tools to entertain an audience and then leave them with something to think about.  That’s the way the film will transcend out of Colombia, into the United States, into the world. Alan and I were the two-headed beast behind this thing.  When we wrote the first draft of the script, we were thinking we were going to make it for nothing and without a lot of equipment and just do it. So we wrote the script mostly to have exterior, day-time shooting. We weren’t going to worry about lighting or anything like that. So for the entire shoot, the only lights we had were wireless and we shot on two Cannon C300s, which we got from grants.  That was the perfect-sized camera and it is ideal in humid places. The Pacific Ocean is not easy to shoot on, so we tried to have the best game plan possible to pull off some of the set pieces on our very limited resources. We tried to think specifically about shooting in a boat and making the blocking interesting so that it didn’t look the same all the time.  We were in the rig and Alan had the camera strapped to him.  It was hard.
DP: There’s heart-racing stuff going on, and you really feel it’s a life-and-death struggle in that whole last sequence.  There is a boat chase, characters and the cameraman running up a hill, scenes on the railway.
JW: Those things were tough to shoot. We didn’t pick an easy movie to shoot, on boats and on these small railroad cars.  When we were on land, we were very, very happy. For example, the scene with the grandmother, we were in the house, and finally we could do some nice blocking.
DP: But that was a small space.
JW: Compared to what else we had, it was heaven. We could actually walk a little and do what we wanted to do. I’m really happy with how that that scene turned out.   I can’t tell you how intense of a shoot most of it was. First of all, the conditions of the place made it difficult.  It’s extremely hot, extremely humid, so it was hard physically. The majority of the crew was Colombian and crews work a little different there. So it was hard at first but after time has passed, it was a beautiful collaboration. Also we we’re shooting in neighborhoods where the police and military don’t go. So we had to figure out how we were going to get the community’s trust to allow us to come in and shoot in these areas.
DP: Did they have people watching you? Or were you just on your own?
JW: We made sure to be as safe as possible doing it, but in some places bringing the police with you makes it less safe. If an actor was from a neighborhood he’d know somebody and ask for permission to come shoot there for a day and we’d know it was going to be totally fine.
DP: Wouldn’t people from drug cartels say, “I don’t want to have a movie about what we’re doing because it will cause an uproar?”
JW: Like I said, it’s so matter-of-fact, just a part of what’s going on there. We were always extremely honest and upfront with people when we came in, saying, “Look, we’re gringos, this is what we’re going to do.  We’re going to tell this story and I’ll tell you why we’re going to tell this story.  There have been films made in similar areas, but they’re more anthropological-type films, and we want to make a film that’s dealing with this issue a little bit.” Everyone really, really embraced it.  They wanted us to make the film.
DP: Are you optimistic about Colombia? Or are there no options for people there to make money except by selling drugs?
JW: I think one thing we’re most proud of with the film is that it shows there are a lot of really talented people in Buenaventura, actors and musicians.  Much of the music in the film is from there.  It is a huge, huge, huge part of the film and the culture. These kids got some chops.
DP: What reaction do you want people at the TriBeCa Film Festival to have toward your film?
JW: I’m hoping people will see the movie and then go Google Buenaventura, Colombia, and read about it. Because people need to see what’s really going on there!

Twelve Years in the Making: The "BoyHood" Press Conference

Playing in Theaters

Twelve Years in the Making: The BoyHood Press Conference

(from Sag Harbor Express Online 7/10/14)



BoyHood fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  This Friday, innovative writer-director Richard Linklater’s bold 164-minute opus covering twelve years in the life of a boy (Ellar Coltrane as Mason), as well as his sister (the director’s daughter Lorelei as Samantha) and his divorced parents (Patricia Arquette as Olivia and Ethan Hawke as Mason Sr.) opens in New York City.  I’m sure you’ve heard how Linklater, who broke cinematic ground when he reunited his youthful Before Sunset (1995) stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy nine years later to play the same characters in Before Sunrise (2004) and nine years after that for Before Midnight (2013), has been working clandestinely on this film that does away with even more cinematic rules in regard to time and structure. For this unique film, he reunited his four cast members every year, until both Mason and Ellar were ready for college. Here’s what is said in the press notes: “Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, Richard Linklater’s BoyHood…charts the rocky terrain of childhood like no other film has before. Snapshots of adolescence from road trips and family dinners to birthdays and graduations and all the moments in between become transcendent, set to a soundtrack spanning the years…BoyHood is both a nostalgic time capsule of the recent past and an ode to growing up and parenting.  It is impossible not to watch Mason and his family without thinking about our own journey.”  On Monday, I was in Manhattan for the following press conference with Linklater, Coltrane, Arquette, and Hawke.

L-R: Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, Ellar Coltrane and Richard Linklater
Photo: DP

Q: How did this project change your idea of what is cinema and what cinema could be?
Richard Linklater: I had never seen this film before.  I kind of figured at some point, people would be pointing out to me how this film had been made before, in some country. But that never has happened–no one came forward with a film that felt original to me, that I hadn’t seen before.  It felt like it was a huge but very simple idea that I had, based on years of thinking about it. Cinema in general, narrative storytelling–I have been thinking of the possibilities of it in relation to time and structure for my adult life.   When I first got involved with film, I was excited that it had all these really unique storytelling possibilities, I loved the medium so much. And I still think film is a wide-open frontier for storytelling.  With this film, I was solving a particular problem, so I liken [what I was trying to do]–-it may sound arrogant –to a scientist who goes to sleep at night and then dreams of the formula for whatever solves his problem. If you’re a scientist and you’re thinking of a problem, the answer’s obvious. I’m kind of in that same boat, but I’m a storyteller who was trying to figure out how to tell the story in BoyHood  given the limitations I was confronted with.
Patricia Arquette: I feel like I’ve watched this really strange shift in cinema over the course of my career and I’ve seen it become a business of bankers and spreadsheets.  I [admire] the way Rick chose to use restraint when directing this movie and the way he balanced structure with collaboration.  He didn’t tell the audience a dramatic story, and most people would say to him, “You’re not fulfilling the formula of storytelling. You’re not gearing to this or that demographic.” [Instead] in this movie there are philosophical elements of human connection and communication, and space for the human relationship.  I think the more we move towards technology in our human communications, the more we’re going to have the need, as human beings, to see movies like this that are about humans. What this movie also does well, and I think that young film audiences will enjoy this–is being  supportive of exploration [and creativity].
Ellar Coltrane: I think there’s this tendency or need to gravitate towardshyper-drama as if that’s the only thing that makes a story worth telling–those big fantastical moments that don’t happen to most of us.  But I think it’s really powerful to dwell on the little things.
Ethan Hawke: It’s interesting that this movie actually gets a lot of power off our preconditioned experiences of the cinema, of our expecting something big is going to happen. There’s an unbelievable tension in the minutia of the movie, because we’re so conditioned to think, “Well, something horrible must happen. We wouldn’t just be watching some people drive to this university if there isn’t going to be a car wreck, right?” What I love is that it actually [taps into] how a lot of my life is wasted worrying.  The movie captures that feeling of, “Well, they’re spending the night camping and it’s so scary.” How do we ever survive those nights? There’s something about the way the movie tells its own story but it doesn’t live in a vacuum. The story [resonates] because it is in response to things [not in the movie].
Q: Rick, in your movie Waking Life, you speak about [grasping those moments in life that are socially unacceptable to share.]. Do you think that the vastness of this movie allowed such powerful moments [to stand out more]?
RL: I hope so. The playing field here was real in that way. I didn’t want anything to feel like it wasn’t earned or wasn’t tethered to some kind of reality. I don’t think there’s anything in the movie that didn’t come out of my life or their lives, or something real-world-based. Once you get people to accept it as real, it really opens up to a realm of possibilities [for] how to experience the movie.  Look at the vast emotional spectrum.  Once you’re getting into people’s own lives, there’s an incredible area or possibility. It was designed to do that, and you can’t specifically say what someone might experience at a given moment. But once you get people to just think about life in general, about their own lives and the lives of their loved ones, and about their own experiences, it triggers all kinds of wonderful things, I hope. Painful and wonderful. Who knows?
DP: Maybe because this film is meant to be about real people, I thought there was a real consistency with the four main characters, in the sense of who they turn out to be after twelve years is who you’d expect from the beginning. For me, there are real subtle and small changes in the characters over time. But do you think I’m wrong and that there were   big changes in your characters?
EH: It depends on how you define big and small.  They’re certainly small changes by any normal standards of storytelling.  But my character goes through significant changes of who he is at the end versus who he is at the beginning. Certainly the boy does. We all do.  And they’re very human changes.  .
EC: A lot of small things, but after twelve years you’ve aged twelve years. It’s day-to-day, each day you just another day older.
DP: But, Rick, were you going for that consistency year by year and over the twelve years?
RL: The whole movie is kind of a collection of little, intimate moments that probably don’t fit into most narratives. They’re not advancing the character enough, or the story enough, or the plot enough. They all add up to something bigger than each little piece of it.  And that mirrors our lives. Everything had a life corollary in that way.
EH: I remember years ago being in a rehearsal room with the great Tom Stoppard, and he was talking about how plot is this unfortunate device that the audience just needs, and what’s funny about plot is that over time you don’t even remember it.  He talked about the obvious example of Lawrence of Arabia. You can watch that movie and twenty-five years later you still remember him standing on top of that train, expressing this feeling of power as he is becoming fully actualized.  He really wants to be in this kind of close-up. And I couldn’t even tell you where in that story that moment is, or what’s going on. I just remember that I was moved by it. Rick was kind of daring with this movie to forego what Stoppard thought was necessary, bogus plot. Our lives don’t have plot, but he felt their narratives do–and this movie skirts around that.
RL: I’ve replaced plot with structure. The more I have to think about it, it’s like, yeah, structure is plot. We put structure on everything, including time. And structure doesn’t have a lie to it, whereas often plot does. It’s not so much a construct as being innately human.
Q: Rick, I read that your daughter had doubts about this movie.
RL: No, she just didn’t want to get up at ten.
EH: It wasn’t even that early.
RL: Had she not been my daughter, I don’t think she would have [stuck with it]. Her character would have to die, and that would have been a little dramatic for what we were going to do. But all that was fleeting, she really enjoyed making the movie.
Q: Did any of the rest of you have doubts or was it just a fun experience getting together every year?
RL: It was really special for us to work on it and it was special to get together every year.  The cast and crew felt it.  We all committed to it. A life project. It never felt like anyone wavered, ever.
EH: At first it seemed a little bit like a fun experiment, and then it turned into something I love so much.  I think I can collectively say we all only grew to love it more and more and more. We fell in love.
PA: This experience of coming together every year–it was collaborative and it built upon itself.  I felt safe with everyone, and I trusted the process. When you’re in the right hands and you jump into the void together from the get-go, really great things can come of it.
Q: Was it difficult to get back into character when you would meet again?
EC: I get asked that a lot.  It was a very long build-up every year. Every time we had a couple of months to think about what we would be doing, and then we did a solid week of work-shopping and building our characters and figuring out where they were that year.  So by the time we got to the filming, we were already there.
EH: And the truth is, we had a very good director. My father’s a mathematician and usually mathematicians have their breakthrough ideas when they are extremely young. So it’s kind of interesting that you, Rick, were in your forties when we started this because I don’t think your style of filmmaking has really changed that much. You had a lot more experience, but I’m not sure it would have been different if you’d started it when you were twenty-six. However, I can say that your working with Ellar was different from the way you worked with Lorelei, which was different from the way you worked with me, which is different from the way you worked with Patricia.  I’ve worked with Rick eight times now, and I’ve watched Rick learn how to speak to people the way they need to be spoken to. And that’s what helped us be ready to play. We were always prepared to play.
Q: I think that one of the most important things about this film is that it’s about the transformative process of art.  That comes across in the way it’s constructed, but also at the point Mason picks up photography and it really changes his life. Was that a conscious decision, the idea of choosing photography, and is that paralleling Ellar’s life experience?
RL: I always thought we’d see Mason drift into some art, some form of expression, by junior high or high school; at some point he would start to express himself. I didn’t know exactly what form that would be. I thought it might be either writing or music. If I had to have bet year one, I’d have bet that he’d be in a band at some point. But Ellar actually did become a visual artist.  He’s very interested in photography, and I personally like that.  I was taking pictures at that age.  I remember saying, “Oh, that’s great, perfect.” That was a perfect segue, and a perfect thing for his character to get into.
EC: Yeah, absolutely. I think being lost in an artistic process is a very therapeutic thing, an outlet that’s incredibly valuable.. No matter what it is, just to throw yourself into dreaming something.
EH: The most beautiful experience for me about making this movie is watching Ellar survive adolescence and become a creative entity unto himself. It’s Ellar’s performance and his creativity and passion in the movie that elevated us all.  Ellar, you were a central figure and you let the movie be not just Rick’s expression but also yours. That was happening in the movie and it was happening on the set. Ellar is not Mason, they’re very different people, but there was a similar development.
Q: And, Ethan and Patricia, do you relate to theme of the arts being transformative?
EH:  Patricia and I discovered the arts when young.  Much has been said about how transformative and healing the arts can be.  But you can be creative in a lot of different ways if you find a passion. For instance, you can be creative in athletics. You can express yourself with baseball. You can manifest your personality with your team and with your coach in the same ways that you can in the arts. I wish for two things for my kids, which are to have decent friends and have a passion that’s so exciting.
PA: The beautiful thing about art, whether you’re getting paid for it or not, is that on some level it is a little spark of a life force, whatever that is. It’s not miraculous.  There’s Biblical art and churches, and some of our greatest musicians were flawed humans yet were somehow connected to something beautiful. In acting, you have to get past your own head and your own ego, and all of these fucking barriers and walls, to just get to a place where hopefully you can be pleasant enough to be in a scene with somebody, to get out of your own way and listen to a director who has a beautiful vision, and just be there.
Q:. Rick, BoyHood is a very big title, so I’m curious if you think of the movie as an intimate character story, or something more sweeping than that?
RL: Both.  It’s very specific to this family and to Mason and all that.  It is intimate and small and common in that I’ve always thought it is very universal, within that specific world.  This could have been made in any country, at any time. There’s such a commonality there as it works through what I’ve always thought of as a very universal, big story about life and time and all that.
PA: But we should say that BoyHood was not the title while were making it.
RL: No, we didn’t call this BoyHood for twelve years.
PA: Sometimes it was the Twelve-Year Project.
EH: Or Growing Up…
PA: We never really knew what the hell it would be called.
EH: It could be anything. Your question even illuminates the answer, which is that it’s an epic about minutia. That’s what it is. It’s difficult to title because of that. But it’s a family seen through one boy’s eyes, so that title makes as much as sense as any other.
RL: Titles are difficult.
Q: Boyhood absolutely encapsulates the film, but it could also have a secondary title like Motherhood, Fatherhood.  Because it really gets inside the heads of the parents, Patricia’s character, Olivia, and Ethan’s character Mason Sr., as well as the children’s.
RL: It was always going to be a portrait of growing up and also parenting and aging. You don’t quite grow up once you’re a parent, particularly a young parent. In the cases of Patricia and Ethan’s characters, they’re growing up still. I always saw it as their bumbling through parenting and also growing up. Also, Patricia, Ethan and I had our own childhood experiences to draw on.  We had our relations with our own parents, and we had ourselves as parents to draw on. During the twelve years we made this film, we had five children born between us.
PA: And Ellar had a new sister.
RL:  That was just an on-going part of life around us. It was a multi-generational collaboration always. I really wanted to see the parents’ perspective. The scene at the end, when Mason is leaving his mom to go to college [and she cries]–we all did that at some point. I remember my inability to totally comprehend my mother’s point of view when I was leaving. At that age, you’re so self-absorbed. You could be the most empathetic person, but you just don’t have the variety of experience to fully understand what your mother might be going through. You can acknowledge that you can’t fully feel it.
EH: The question brought up something that I’m surprised people don’t write about more, which is how awesome it is to see Patricia’s character in this movie, to see a real woman who is a mother and a lover and more that one thing in a movie. I feel so proud to be a part of a movie that respects her character the way this movie does. It’s true in life, you see that woman all the time, but you don’t see that woman in movies. I don’t see her. Maybe she’s in the background, an ancillary element to give some encouragement and some weight to some guy or something. But here is this is a real, three-dimensional human being, and it was so exciting. And the women in my life who see the movie so appreciate it. And it’s not just because she’s just good. She does stupid things as well as smart things. We’re used to people in movies being one thing all the time, but you can’t pin her down.
RL: There’s so much complexity in Olivia. She’s human and has flaws.  To work with someone like Patricia, who’s just so ferociously real, was super, super inspiring.
Stupid Question of the Day: This is a movie that stirs memories of growing up. What do you remember about your first kiss, Ethan and Patricia?
EH (joking): Our first kiss? My first kiss was with a girl named Cindy at the Hamilton Roller Rink, during the slow skate. And afterward she said to me, “Do you like Jack Daniels?” And I said, “Yeah, too bad he died.” I didn’t really know what Jack Daniels was then. I got it confused with Jimi Hendrix.
PA: I do not remember my first kiss. That doesn’t mean I’ve had a lot of kisses. I think I was pretty young. But I do remember one kiss. I don’t know why but I really didn’t like the way this guy kissed me. He was a friend of a friend, a pro skater, and he was the only guy I ever gave a fake phone number to. Years later he murdered his girlfriend.

Talya Lavie Gets a Perfect Ten for "Zero Motivation"

Playing at Festivals

Talya Lavie Gets a Perfect Ten for Zero Motivation

(from Sag Harbor Express Online 5/23/14)

Zero Motivation fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  I hope that will happen soon because the US distribution rights to the unique debut feature of Israeli director Talya Lavie were recently sold to Zeitgeist Films.  This follows its overwhelming premiere at TriBeCa Film Festival, where it won theFounders Award for Best Narrative Feature and the Nora Ephron Prize. 

Lavie described her zany, savvy, sometimes dark military comedy in its press notes: “During my mandatory military service as a secretary, I dreamed of making an army movie with the pathos and epic proportions of classic war films, but about the gray, mundane experiences that my office mates and I had, hardly ever getting up from our chairs.  Like most girls during their two years of service, we didn’t risk our lives.  But we were definitely in danger of dying of boredom. I was inspired and amused by the idea of using envelopes, coffee cups, office intrigues, staple guns, and Solitaire to create a female response to the male-dominated army films genre.  Israeli women may of course serve in more glamorous roles, like pilots and tank crew instructors.  But I wanted to focus on us office girls, the unseen and mostly-ignored majority whose contribution is lacking any social of symbolic value.” Lavie’s female soldiers may not win any accolades from their superiors but they are fabulous movie characters!

For once, I agreed with TriBeCa’s choice for best narrative film. And it wasn’t because I have a rooting interest in Lavie.  However, I do like to claim that, in America, she is “my discovery,” because back at the 2006 TFF, I championed her splendid short, The Substitute, which she has now expanded into Zero Motivation. Journalists at festivals rarely bother to interview directors of shorts, but I did a long, rewarding one with Lavie about her short and creative career.  Here, in Part One, is an excerpt about The Substitutefrom that 2006 interview that I believe is relevant to her new feature.  It is followed, in Part Two, by a interview I did with Lavie eight years later–at this year’s TriBeCa Film Festival–about Zero Competition.

Part One:

Excerpt from a 2006 TFF Interview with Talya Lavie on Her Short The Substitute 

In The Substitute, the terminally-bored, constantly-complaining Zohar (Dana Ivgy) hopes that the new recruit she’s in charge of, Libby (Shiri Ashenazi), will replace her at the base.  But she doesn’t realize the girl is suicidal.

Danny Peary: You made shorts prior to The Substitute. Sliding Flora starred Shiri Ashkenazi and you say she inspired you to make The Substitute.

Talya Lavie: Shiri is indeed an outstanding actress. I met her during the auditions for Sliding Flora, and we became good friends. Subsequently, the role of the dejected woman soldier, Libby, in The Substitute was written with her in mind.

DP: When we talked informally about The Substitute, you described Libby as “a problem.”  Can you explain what you meant by that?

TL: I had a general idea about the film I wanted to make, I had the vision of locating it in an army base and the sense of the characters, but I still lacked a storyline. About Shiri, I kept imagining her as being “somebody’s problem.” We created her character, Libby, primarily from body language and facial expressions, and chose to leave her personality unresolved, yet quite comprehensible to her own self. In essence, the role of the protagonist, Zohara, and other characters were built around her.

DP: I am impressed by the strong, “real” performance by Dana Ivgy as Zohara.  Tell me about her and how you got her in your movie.

TL: Dana is a famous, highly-respected actress in Israel. I had tried for the longest time to reach her, but somehow never succeeded. And then I sent the script to an acting student who I thought could play the role of the medic. He turned out to be Dana’s boyfriend!  She read the script and called me to say that she really loved it and wanted to play Zohara, and that was the first connection between the two of us. Later the production was delayed because of various issues, and Dana became extremely busy. So again I found myself with no lead actress with just a short time before filming was set to start. Out of total despair, I decided to stalk Dana everywhere, until I found myself in her house. She made some phone calls and turned things upside down in her schedule in order to make herself available for the period of the filming.

DP: Were you comfortable directing a star?

TL: The fact that Dana’s such an experienced actress was perhaps a bit threatening at the beginning, but that passed very swiftly. It was wonderful to work with her and the rest of the cast. They were all extremely talented, modest, and prepared to work their hearts out.

DP:  Your film is about women in the Israeli army, far away from any fighting. Talk about how your own two years in the army relates to your film.

TL: Most of the military films I’ve seen placed men at the focal point. For a long time I had wanted to make my own army film, which would have a non-heroic plot. It would take place in an atmosphere not charged with intensive combat and battle missions, and place the most lackluster, least heroic characters at the forefront of the story. We tried, via small hints, to give the impression that important, fateful events were taking place behind these characters, but they were occupied with no less dramatic matters.

The story is fictional and scripted, but the one thing that is completely autobiographical is the life of the army clerk.  Zohara’s role was identical to the one I played during my military service. Beyond that, I drew inspiration for creating the characters and the atmosphere from my own army stint. The movie was filmed at the exact base where I served, and since the story is quite extreme, we were careful to pay attention to the authenticity of small details—the set, the uniforms, the language.

DP: I laughed the beginning when Zohara tells Libby she can vary what she will be doing as an army clerk—opening all the mail either at once or one at a time, a numbing routine.

TL: That segment just accentuates the appalling waste of time the work really is. But it was important to me that this text be spoken seriously, not cynically. That’s because the absurdity is even greater when we the viewers see it and the characters don’t because they’re so used to thinking that this is what they’re good at. Still—this may sound strange and contradictory—I sincerely believe that you must not belittle any work that you do, even if it’s stupid.

DP: You told me that the movie depicts “humiliations” that you felt at that outpost. Talk about the line said by the young medic to Zohara when he’s trying to seduce her: “In the desert, every thorn is a flower.” Is that a compliment or a humiliating line?

TL: This is a line that’s usually part of a men’s joke. It’s never been used casually by a man trying to make it with a woman.  The fact that he utters this sentence in a complimentary tone confuses Zohara about how to respond and what to make of it. She pegs the medic as a problematic type, yet a specific one with his own, not necessarily “bad” personality.

DP: Talk about your Israeli film title, Lonely Soldier, in relation to the characters, including Libby, who says she feels she doesn’t exist, and Zohara, who seems to have had no friends before Libby. The other women do nothing of consequence and seem to be living like prisoners. I think you’re saying that female soldiers in remote posts feel that way because of loneliness, isolation, and doing unnecessary tasks.

TL: My first night at that base felt like my first night in prison. Eventually matters improved, but even after a year-and-a-half of serving there and things looking different, I was still engulfed by that “prison” feeling etched in my brain. Through the character of Libby, the new soldier, I wanted to convey that feeling in the girls’ barracks, which even architecturally resemble most of the prisons I’ve seen in movies.

As for the title, in Hebrew it’s “Lonely Soldier,” which in army terminology refers to a soldier with no family in Israel—or at all. It’s a very common and cold term, but I’ve always felt that it’s a poignant juxtaposition of words. I adopted this for the title of the film because despite there being no information in the script about the girls’ families or backgrounds, there’s a pervading feeling that they are quite alone.

When translating the film to English (which, by the way, was quite complicated), we decided that the literal translation “Lonely Soldier” didn’t express the same sentiment as the Hebrew (where, as we said, it’s an army term). Somehow in English it had the sound of a Vietnamese war movie. So we decided to title the English-language version The Substitute. This name we also deliberated over a great deal. We were afraid it had the connotations of a substitute teacher, but a friend who’s a native English speaker convinced us that this definitely was not the case. If you disagree, take it up with him…

DP: Do you think Libby has attempted suicide before arriving? When she and Zohara bond does Zohara think she will be happy and never commit suicide again?

TL: Libby is depicted as a depressive individual, and while the army did not trigger her deep depression, it certainly exacerbated it. When I was writing the script, I monitored internet forums for soldiers suffering from depression. I think that an acute depression leading to suicide begins at a much earlier stage. From the beginning, Zohara never believes that Libby wants to commit suicide. She is so self-centered that she assumes everyone else harbors selfish priorities. She is sure that Libby is feigning suicide in order to get released from the base, which is exactly what Zohara would have done.

DP: Do you like Zohara or Libby, and do you relate to them?

TL: I’m very attached to both characters. I think that they’re quite similar, yet they represent two contrasting options for relating to life. Each of them lives in her own world, without much awareness of her surroundings. I identify with them both, despite their differences, and I think that I succeeded in expressing myself through them.

DP: Do you think there are universal themes or do you think Israeli women will relate to your film much more than anyone else?

TL: It’s hard to answer that. While I was writing the script, I imagined an audience made up of people I know who are somehow connected to me. And they’re Israelis, of course, mostly IDF veterans. (It’s important to note that the army is a very individual, different experience for each soldier). Naturally I had no intention of focusing only upon the very limited audience of Israeli women soldiers.  So not everything in this movie necessarily relates to army service, and the military is in some ways an excuse to talk about other structures in life. Also, I never considered that the film would be screened in many places outside Israel, nor could I know whether its themes would be understood internationally. I still contend that it speaks differently to an Israeli audience that understands the army culture from up close and can catch details and codes that are transmitted to those in the know.  However, of course I’m delighted that the film is being shown in places across the world I’d never imagined, with positive reviews.

DP: With your camera placement, you made some interesting choices. What were you thinking in regard to a style?

TL: The decisions about the filming style were shaped by loads of restrictions. The film was extremely low-budget, with serious time constraints. We couldn’t afford the luxury of having complex camera movements or complicated shots of any type. But I actually like these kinds of limitations—they arouse great creativity. We attempted to keep to a limited spectrum of colors in the film and dim lighting to set the proper atmosphere. In essence, I think that this is the type of film whose simple filming style doesn’t attract attention, leaving the stage to the actors’ work.

DP: Do you think your film is political?

TL: I think that it’s indirectly political. Through a story that doesn’t touch the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in any way, we get a glimpse of the place where decisions affecting human life are made by people too young and sometimes unable to comprehend the extent of the responsibility on their shoulders. This, as well as cases of different sorts, can lead to tragic consequences.

DP: Tell me about your TriBeCa Film Festival experience and what has happened to your short since it played there.

TL: Since then “The Substitute” was accepted to some more film festivals such as one in Melbourne.  It also won a special mention in Japan and first prize in Barcelona. So it’s an exciting time! The TriBeCa Film Festival was a great experience. I especially enjoyed the vibes and the special energy of NewYork. Besides that, a lot of people talked to me about the film and were interested in my work, and I had some interesting meetings. I still don’t know if anything will come out of it in the future, but I don’t think that is the main reason to go to events like that. Having conversations with interesting people, getting to know different points of view and seeing films that I couldn’t see anywhere else was very fulfilling.  I had a lot of fun and I hope that I’ll have the chance to visit the TriBeCa Film Festival again.

Part Two:

2014 TFF Interview with Talya Lavie on Her Feature Zero Motivation

In Zero Motivation, the even more rambunctious Zohar (Ivgy) doesn’t care about leaving the base herself but sabotages the efforts of her only friend, the sweet but naive Daffi (Nelly Tagar), to transfer to Tel-Aviv. Their harried commanding officer, Rama (Shani Klein), would love them to be separated so her chances for promotion will increase. Daffi hopes that the mysterious new recruit, Tehila (Yonit Tobi), will replace her–she doesn’t realize that Tehila has a surprising motive for being there.

Danny Peary: Returning to the TriBeCa Film Festival must be exciting for you.

Talya Lavie: We are so fortunate to premiere Zero Motivation here.  Eilon Ratzkovsky, the producer, and two of the leads, Dana Ivgy and Shani Klein, are here too. We’re all very excited.

DP: When we talked in 2006, you spoke about coming back to this festival, but has it been a goal of yours?

TL: When you make a film, you’re too occupied with production and artistic challenges to have goals additional to finishing the film. Once the film was finished, we applied for TriBeCa and I was, of course, very much hoping to get in.

DP: And here you are with a feature that is an expansion of your short, The Substitute, which played here eight years ago when we met. Were you already thinking of making Zero Motivation when you were here last?

TL: I actually don’t view it as an expansion of The Substitute. Looking at filmmaker’s work one can probably often see connections between different projects, and the connection between The Substitute and Zero Motivation is indeed clear. But for me, Zero Motivation is connected no less to my other short film, Sliding Flora. It is true that some of the ideas that ended up in Zero Motivation were conceived while working on The Substitute. After finishing the latter and while working on some other projects, I felt that I really wanted to realize these ideas in the context of full feature film. After writing a few drafts of the script, I submitted it to the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs and was honored to be accepted.

DP: How long were you there?

TL: For the Screenwriters Lab it was a week, I think. And for the rest it was perhaps a month and a half. The lab took place in the Sundance resort, and I met some extraordinary people there.  We had wonderful American actresses playing the roles. It was interesting and productive for me to explore the script in English. When you lose the local (Israeli) dialogue nuances, you find yourself truly dealing with the essence of the drama.

DP: When you had completed the final script did it take long to get funding?

TL: It did take some time, but thankfully the film got funded. It was supported by the Israeli Film Fund, and the Israeli HOT TV broadcaster. We additionally had an Israeli-French co-production with the Haut Et Cour Production Company. We were also supported by the CNC and The Match Factory.

DP: Did you film this on the same base as The Substitute, your base when you were in the army?

TL: No. The Substitute supposedly took place on an Air Force base, whereas Zero Motivation occurs on an Artillery base. (You can indeed see that they wear different uniforms.) Unlike The Substitute, Zero Motivation wasn’t shot in a real functioning army base. Both films, however, have the same landscape.

DP: I’m interested in the evolution from a short to a somewhat different, more complex feature.

TL: I’m not sure that writing the short film was easier. Despite the added complexity, I felt more comfortable writing in bigger scale, analogically to other army and war films that typically have large proportions. I was amused by the idea of giving the same epic proportions to a military film dealing with female secretaries who are not related to combat in any way.  I’d like to note that, while not shown in the film, there are a lot of female soldiers in combat positions or in other significant roles in the Israeli army, doing interesting and exciting stuff. But the secretaries—who’s going to make a film about them?  Well, I figured I would.

DP: Have you gotten a lot of responses from women who thanked you for making a film about them?

TL: We had some pre-screenings, and I was really touched by some girls in the audience who recognized their service time in the film. They felt that they finally get to see a representation of themselves on screen, and this was really rewarding to me. It reminded me of a nice story I heard. A friend told me once that he traveled to Australia for some convention, and that in one of the lectures he saw a big map of the world hanging on a wall. We all know how the world map looks like. But on this map Australia was right in the middle. At the beginning, he thought that it doesn’t make sense. But he quickly realized that it does, and that it’s just a matter of perspective. So in a way, in this film, I put “Australia” in the middle. I took the characters that we’re used to seeing on the side or in the background and put them at the front.

DP: As you did in The Substitute. You have more girls than in your short and they are more uncontrollable, particularly Zohar.

TL: Previously to writing the script of Zero Motivation, when I worked as a hired screenwriter for some TV series, people involved repeatedly told me to be careful that what I write shouldn’t be too much this or that. I don’t remember the specifics, just the words “we should be careful not to” repeated too many times. So when I wrote the script for my own film, I put a note on my computer display saying “do not be careful.” I wished to keep the writing free-spirited and give my characters full liberty.

DP: I’m guessing that you’re now friends with Dana Ivgy, and that she liked the short so you didn’t have to stalk her to be in the feature.

TL: She liked the short, and I love working with her. In Israel, she’s a well-known and respected actress; she won the Israeli Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film Or by Keren Yedaya, and played in many acclaimed films since she was a child.

DP: Of course, there was no need to audition her to play Zohar again. What about all the other actresses?

TL: In fact, I auditioned her for the role of Rama, the officer in charge. But then it was obvious that she’s Zohar. Besides her, the casting director (Orit Azulay) and I auditioned about 300 actresses for the film. Casting this ensemble was quite a complex puzzle. We ended up with extremely talented comedians and actors.

DP: Have they all been in the military?

TL: If not all, then at least the overwhelming majority. But this wasn’t an issue on set. All actors were devoted and committed to the film. We rehearsed a lot, and they were very much prepared. Moreover, the girls who had to be friends in the film really became friends before the shooting in real life, which was beneficial for the film, because I think friendship is hard to fake.

DP: I felt I knew Daffi and the super actress Nelly Tagar already from The Substitute, but that character wasn’t in it!  So the Daffi/Zohar relationship wasn’t in your short either, but for the longer feature you wanted to create a friendship.

TL: As I noted earlier, a lot of things were different in the short. The two are by no means the same. The feature film enabled me to develop more stories and deal with other, completely different issues. One of the things I was intrigued by most was telling a story about female friendship.

DP: They’re like sisters, I think.

TL: Definitely, they take care of each other. The army is a good platform for this kind of a connection.

DP: Yeah, these are great characters. Rama is the officer in charge of the girls.  Zohar never listens to her.  Do you sympathize with her all the way through?

TL: Very much. I sympathize with all the characters.  When someone asked Shani Klein (Rama), “How was it for you to play the antagonist?,” she said she didn’t feel like an antagonist at all. She’s right, I also didn’t write her that way. Rama has a job that puts her at odds with Zohar and Daffi. By the way, this is Shani Klein’s debut role in cinema. Yonit Tobi (who plays the new girl, Tehila) also did her first cinematic appearance in this film. I am convinced that for both of them it is just the beginning of a great career. Yaron Scharf (the DP) and I were so impressed by their professional work and by how quickly they acquired the skill of acting in front of a camera.

DP:  Another performance I really like is by the actress who plays Irena, the stern Russian soldier who becomes haunted by a ghost; and then is funny as she follows Zohar around like a puppy; and finally is a strong, feminist protector of Zohar.

TL: Irena has a lot of things that she’s hiding. I wanted to show that she had some kind of history of violence that she has never talked about. The character is played by the super talented and diverse actress, Tamara Klingon, who has been in movies and on television in Israel, and, together with Dana Ivgy, is also a member of a theatrical comic group called Tziporela Ensemble. It’s a smart and hilarious group of actors and writers who have a large and devoted fan base.

DP: You made an interesting choice in regard to Irena. You could have made the ghost who climbs into bed with Irena be seen through Irena’s eyes.  But we see the ghost climbing into bed with her through our eyes. Talk about that choice.

TL: As I said before, I had this sentence Don’t be careful in my mind at all times. I didn’t intend to make an interesting choice. That’s just how I imagined the scene. I followed what I sensed was right for the story, and I wanted to see the ghost coming into the room, realistic and abstract at the same time.

DP: You have said this is a coming-of-age film. Your short wasn’t. I guess you’re talking about both Zohar and Daffi.

TL: Yeah, well, I’m still coming of age, so I guess they are, too!

DP: I hope to see you again at TriBeCa with your next feature—but not have to wait another eight years!

TL: I hope so too. And thank you for following my work. I already have a new script ready and I hope that getting it funded will be easier this time.