Trueba's The Artist and the Model in Sag Harbor

Playing in Theaters

Trueba's The Artist and the Model in Sag Harbor

(from Sag Harbor Online 9/19/13)

By Danny Peary
Last month, I posted an interview with the lovely Spanish actress Aida Folch and stated that The Artist and the Model, her new film for director Fernando Trueba, would be playing in Sag Harbor before the summer ended.  Sure enough, it slipped into town last week, the final week of summer, and–I want to alert you–it will be playing a second week at the Sag Harbor Cinema, the first week of Fall, beginning Friday the 20th at 5 pm.  Be sure to see it.  Trueba’s elegant, elegiac film is set in southern France during the Occupation.  The great French actor Jean Rochefort plays Marc Cross, a famous, elderly, bored sculptor who pays little attention to the war–or anything else.  His wife and one-time model Léa (Claudia Cardinale) tries to inspire him to create one more masterpiece by bringing him a young Spanish political refugee to be his model.   Mercè (Folch) agrees to pose nude for hours each day in exchange for shelter in his studio.  At first there is little connection between the artist and the model, but in time he sees and is inspired by her beauty (and her intelligence as well) and is able to transfer it to his art.  And we come to understand the unique relationship between artists and models and directors and leading ladies.  The following is my Q&A with the Spanish director/writer/producer Trueba, whose 1992 film Belle Epoque, starring a young Penelope Cruz, won a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.
Fernando Trueba and Aida Folch Photo: DP
Danny Peary: You state in the production notes that The Artist and the Model goes beyond being a mere self-portrait. You brought it one of the greatest screenwriters in the world to be a collaborator. Jean-Claude Carrière.  Because it so personal, were you able to collaborate with him easily?
Fernando Trueba: Yes, and it was a beautiful collaboration. I told him that I’d like to work with him. He loved the story and asked me, “Can you wait one month and a half? I must finish a book that I have to give to my editor.”  I said, “If you want to work with me, a month and a half is nothing.” I went to live in Paris during the writing, so every day I came to his home, we started to talk about the story and characters. It was easy to work with Jean-Claude. What was delicate for me was at the very beginning to transmit to him the flavor of the movie, the simplicity that I was looking for. I said, “We shouldn’t make this movie poetic or dramatic.  We should go for something more simple and sensual and pretty. If there is a poetry, it should come from that, not because we are playing the poets.”
DP: The two of you agreed on that?
FT: Yeah, we agreed. We discussed these things before, and, for me, it was very important that we did.  That’s one thing I learned to do from working four times with Rafael Azcona, the greatest Spanish writer. With him, I always spend three months talking about the movie before writing one word on paper. He always wants to know exactly which movie we want to make before writing. That’s a very important thing.
DP: In their films together, Buñuel and Carrière would take the real and make it unreal, and the unreal is actually realer than the real. Like in Belle de Jour or The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.  I don’t see a connection to Bunuel, but your artist is taking what we see as real–the model–and making it unreal–the sculpture–and it’s likely that in his eyes the unreal is more real.  And you, like all filmmakers, shoot real actors but put something unreal on the screen.
FT: I understand, but as much as I love Bunuel and his films, I can’t really see any relationship between my movie and Buñuel’s.
DP; What about Jacques Rivette’s 1991 film, La Belle Noiseuse?  Are you a fan of that?
FT: I must confess not. My problem with that film is that it is very intellectual but it’s very artificial in some ways. I don’t want to criticize but I will tell you the first time I met Jean Rochefort after he read the script.  I went to his home, and he asked me, “Do you know La Belle Noiseuse?”  I said, “Yes, yes. I saw it.”  “Did you like it?”  I had to take a couple of seconds, and I said, “No, and that is not like my movie.” He stood up, came to me, and embraced me. That was good start for us! So we shared something there.
DP: Well, I like both films.
FT: Yes, but they’re quite completely different.
DP: La Belle Noiseuse is much longer so it has time to deal more with the artistic process, but there’s a moment in both movies–and in yours it’s maybe when the artist and model discuss the Rembrandt picture–when all of the sudden there’s an acceptance of the model on the artists’ part and they become collaborators–and the model becomes an artist herself.
FT: And the audience can look through her eyes at that moment and identify very much with her.

Aida Folch

 

DP: Is the art more beautiful than the model?  To an artist, is Aida Folch more beautiful on the screen than in real life, and is her character Mercè less beautiful than the  sculpture?
FT: I think we make movies, write books, paint, and sculpt, to create life and understand life. That’s why we work and that’s what this movie’s about. It’s about the work that we relate to life.  Sometimes people say art is more important and more beautiful than life, but I believe life and art are the same thing. And they are complementary. Art is another way of breathing. It’s another way of looking at reality.  Fernando Pessoa, a poet that I love, once said that humans need fiction to make reality real.  Reality lacks so much form, lacks so much anything, so we need to do these things. Some people think that art is like a luxury product that has nothing to do with real life, but that’s not my approach. I think art is as necessary as life.
DP: Must the artist love his model to see her beauty, or does the beauty result from the love?
FT: I think he must love her. There is a moment when the artist says to the model in the movie, “What did you think, that I was making your portrait?  I was not doing that!” He’s saying, don’t think you are the queen of France.  But at the same time, there is love in his way of looking at reality and nature. You must love your subject to make it possible.
DP: There’s an erotic scene in your movie when the nude model takes a swim and I believe it’s meant to recall Hedy Lamarr’s notorious nude swim in Ecstasy. But did you want the film to be erotic?
FT: Yeah, that was like Ecstasy. I was looking for beauty in the movie, that’s obvious, but I never talked about this movie as being erotic.
DP: So if I were to say that it’s an erotic movie, you wouldn’t want that response?
FT: Well, a movie is a different movie in the minds of every spectator, like a novel is a different novel for every reader. Usually movies that have a lot of naked scenes are like commercials. I hate that.  My challenge was to establish a natural relationship with the body, with what a sculptor or a painter does. So I didn’t want this movie to be erotic.  I wanted it to be true, to be natural, and, as I said, establish a natural relationship with the body. At the same time I wanted it to be beautiful. So I was very careful in every single frame and every single shot of the movie, to find the right angle, and the right light. That was very difficult with this work, to keep the balance over time.
DP: Does anyone on the outside] ever really understand the relationships between an artist and a model and a filmmaker and his lead actress?
FT: I think so, and I hope many of the people who see the movie do.  For people who are very foreign to that ambience of that relationship, this movie puts you so close that you feel the intimacy of the situation, the intimacy inside the artist’s atelier, and the work relationship between the artist and the model.  I think it will help many people figure out what it’s about.
DP: Aida told me that your film helped her understand a lot more than she did before about the model and the artist’s relationship.
FT: Before the movie, she had to work as a model for the eight artists who were creating all the pieces of art that are in the movie. I think she learned a lot posing for them.
DP: Aida, who you’ve been working with since she was a very young girl, also told me that years before there was a script you called her and asked if she could speak French.
FT: The script was not written yet,  but I wanted to know before writing it if she spoke French.  She said no, but called me six months later and explained that after talking to me she went to live in France and learned how to speak French.  I said, really!
DP: Considering that there wasn’t a script yet, that was risky!
FT: That was risky and generous.
DP: So after she learned French, you began writing it for her?
FT: Yeah.  We were writing the scene where Mercè is asked where is she from, and she says a village in Spain. So I was always thinking about her for the film.
DP: You cast Jean Rochefort and Claudia Cardinale in the other two leads, as the artist and his wife, who was once his model. They were both stars along with Jean-Paul Belmondo of Cartouche, one of my favorite films as a teenager.
FT: That was exactly 50 years before our shooting. Half a century!  And they hadn’t worked together since Cartouche!  I think she was with Belmondo, some time many years ago. Jean and Belmondo still call each other almost every day. A beautiful thing about Jean is that friendship is his religion, and that his great friends today are his friends from acting school, Conservatoire de Paris.   He, Jean-Pierre Marielle, and Belmondo talk all the time.
DP: You and Aida are both from Spain, but you have Jean Rochefort, who’s French, playing the artist, and his wife is played by Claudia Cardinale, who’s Italian although she’s actually from Tunisia and her first language was French. And there’s a German soldier, Werner, played by Götz Otto.  And Mahler, an Austrian, is on the soundtrack. Were you thinking that you wanted all these different nationalities represented?
FT: I like in movies when you have an Italian actor playing an Italian character, and a Spanish actor playing a Spanish character, and a German actor playing a German character.  The movie’s not a comedy or a fantasy, so I wanted real things.
DP: I think you could have easily set your film in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Did you have to set it in France during WWII?
FT: From the beginning, I wanted it to be about a French artist from that generation who lived through the two world wars. Like Picasso. That was important. The first World War began thirty years before, and those who were fifty then are now seeing another world war.   I felt for people of that generation.  What must they have thought of the human race?
DP: It’s stated in the film: Human beings are “savages.”
FT: It was very important for me that this old man, this old artist, has really lost all faith in human beings, and he thinks that maybe the best thing for the world is to be destroyed and for the human race to disappear.
DP: One of the interesting aspects of the film is that Marc doesn’t have any need to stick around to celebrate th end of the war and the victory.  He helps those in trouble, but it doesn’t matter to him.
FT: Yeah, he doesn’t believe it is the end of war.
DP: Aida told me that the end of the film surprised her, as did other things in the film, and that you had to answer many of her questions.  Did you like her asking you so many questions?
FT (laughing): No!  No, but I love her so I answered them.  She’d say, “I’m the MTV generation,” and I would tell her, “You young people think that the rhythm should be faster, but rhythm has nothing to do with being slow or fast. If rhythm is only fast cutting then you’ll be bored after ten minutes.  The sense of time, the tempo, is another thing. You know the film critic Manny Farber? I have a painting of his at home called “Faster Slow.” It’s my sense of cinema, too.  I want people to stop and look and learn, because reading an image and knowing what I’m seeing is very important to me when I’m watching a movie.  And listening, too, and distinguishing between artificial noise and real sound.
DP: A scene many people might find controversial is having the artist and the German solider, Werner, whose field his art, have a friendly visit and hug each other although it’s during the Occupation.
FT: That’s a real thing. That happened a lot in the First and in the Second World Wars. People at war were friends. The war divided you, no?  I was thinking, these are two characters who were fine before the war.  [Until his death in 1937] Count Kessler was a protector of art and an art collector, and he was a very good friend of many, many French artists.  He was German.
DP: So you wanted to bring in a political element, also.
FT: It’s not a Manichaean movie. The world of art invented globalization centuries before the Internet. There were lots and lots of friendships between artists from countries at war.
Art doesn’t have anything to do with wars and flags!

Archive: On the Set of The Namesake

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On the Set of The Namesake

(from FilmInk, then TimesSquare.com 3/13/2007)

Despite the rain, the drive from mid-Manhattan up the Henry Hudson Parkway and into the suburbs takes no more than 45 minutes. The destination of the two shuttles that carry us "international" journalists is Eastchester, which oddly enough is located in Westchester. Here, in a quiet, upper-middle class neighborhood, at the end of a cul-de-sac with the safe, secure, and secluded name of Willa Way, stands the split-level house that is being used as the Ganguli family's American home in Mira Nair's much-anticipated adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's best-selling novel, "The
Namesake."

We park near several huge equipment trucks and trailers, including one with the names "Desi" and "Lucy" over bathroom doors, and climb out into the cold, late-morning drizzle. Not making a sound in case cameras are rolling, we are escorted by two Fox Searchlight publicists through the garage and into the house.

We are startled that it has essentially been gutted and turned into a combination of ragtag movie set and construction site. It's hard to spot any of the belongings or furniture of the unsuspecting homeowners who are away on holiday. Even what we see on bureaus and the walls—old photographs, diplomas—are props that belong to the Ganguli family. About forty jean-clad crew members are milling about with the costumed cast members, including actresses and female extras wearing colorful saris. An odd sight. It's the most congenial group imaginable—everyone says hello. And that includes Nair. Dressed in stylish purple blouse and pants, she flashes a big smile at us between takes.

The production is well into its six-week New York-area shooting-schedule, before cast and crew must brave the 115-degree temperatures of Calcutta for another ten days. In fact, the scene being shot as we arrive—scene 143—is of a farewell party for the widowed mother Ashima, played by Tabu, before her return to Calcutta after thirty years in America.

About 15 crew members are squeezed into the small kitchen, with a few, including cinematographer Fredrick Elmes and his cameraman, standing on top of counters. The camera is directed into the living room, where Ashima's grown son Gogol, played by Kal Penn, enters the house wearing casual American garb. Walking toward the camera, he navigates through partygoers and into the kitchen, where he exchanges a few words with several more guests and then his sari-clad mother. Finally, as the camera pans with him, he moves past her and through the kitchen, exiting stage/kitchen right.

Happily watching the action on a small monitor by the kitchen's other doorway, Nair sits with her back against the wall, perched on an uncomfortable looking, leather-covered end of a large suitcase that has the name "Mira" marked on its side. I say happily because although this scene must be shot repeatedly due to minor glitches, Nair remains upbeat. It's as if the foul-ups amuse her. She has a big smile as she reminds everyone of the tight schedule: "Too much fun, too little shooting!"

A few hours later, out back and under a canopy to protect us from the rain, Nair will tell me that her on-set demeanor is different from when she started out, before she became renowned for directing "Salaam Bombay!," "Mississippi Masala," "Monsoon Wedding," and others. "I'm now assured in what I'm doing," she says. "I no longer have that nervousness of what I used to call 'the exquisite terror of not knowing where to put the camera' while everyone was watching me. It's essential that I remain calm because nothing works if everyone else is tied up in knots."

The complex, deftly-choreographed party scene takes ten takes, during which time Nair replaces one tall male extra with a short female extra, only to then decide she doesn't want either. However, she does pull a journalist from our ranks and has her play a party guest and become part of celluloid history.

But still there is something missing. Nair tells Tabu that when Penn passes her, she should turn around and follow him with her eyes. The scene plays out, this time Tabu turns. "Beautiful!" says Nair, visibly moved by the meaningful glance of a mother to a son she'll soon be leaving. At last satisfied, Nair praises everyone for doing a great job. "We did only one shot but it was an entire scene, "she later explains. "This picture hasn't the budget of a Brad Pitt movie, but because we plan everything carefully, it allows for a creative style despite having little time to shoot. For me, it's exciting to develop an idea, refine it, and then execute it, and have it work, as it did on this scene."

Nair, who was born in India but attended college in Boston, has called "The Namesake" her most personal project, which certainly contributes to her enthusiasm on the set. "I read the book by chance when I was flying to India to shoot the end of 'Vanity Fair.' The book is really rich and layered, and there is a certain degree of interiority. That's what my films are like. I already had financing for two other films, but after reading Jhumpa's book I thought it was like a calling. The moment the plane landed, I called my agent and said to get the rights."

Because Nair is working with a modest budget, the plan for the day is to shoot as many scenes as possible that take place in the house. So after the kitchen scene, Nair immediately begins blocking and rehearsing a scene in the family living room. Like many scenes in Nair's movies, it contains a horde of characters. Fortunately for us, Gogol isn't one of them and Kal Penn is able to steal away and hold court with the journalists in an empty room on the top floor. Kalpen Modi is best known for the stoner comedy "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," but that should change with the release of Nair's prestige film. He says he's in seventh heaven coming to work each day to play the son who is torn between finding his own identity and his parents' wish for him to not lose his heritage.

Like Nair, he seemed to have an epiphany when he read the novel. "I read it in one sitting and cried," recalls the twenty-eight-year-old actor who was born in New Jersey to parents who had migrated from India. "I cried because I felt it captured the sense of isolation foreigners can feel in America. I tried to buy the rights, but Mira beat me to it, so I got my manager to get me a meeting with her. Fortunately, her son and her agent's son were fans of "Harold & Kumar" and forced her to watch it and me. I flew to New York and told her the impact she had on my life showing real Indian people on screen. I also told her that it wasn't that I wanted to play Gogol, but I needed to play him."

Kal Penn, a.k.a Kalpen Modi

Scene from "The Namesake"

Gogol's younger sister is played by Sahira Nair, who had an easier time than Penn getting her part. She is Mira Nair's niece, and also appeared in "Mississippi Masala" and "Monsoon Wedding." "My aunt likes having someone from the family around," she jokes during a break in mid-afternoon, when the sun made its first appearance of the day. "My father is Mira's brother. He and my mother still live in India but they're coming to New York next week to see me graduate from the School of Performing Arts."

Sahira isn't in school to hone her acting skills but to follow in the footsteps of her aunt and be a director of films with Indian protagonists. "I went to college in India for a year and then came to America to go to film school. Mira did the same thing, only she came to study sociology before she changed to film." As a future director, what impresses her most about her aunt's directorial technique? "Her ability to bring out emotions in actors. It's amazing."

Sahira is called to the set, but her seat under the canopy is taken by Tabu, still in a lovely red sari and fresh from a snack break consisting of a muffin and cigarette. India's most famous actress is making her first film in America, and certainly that new endeavor is helping her relate to her character.

"I used to make 12 films a year, a total of over 70," she says. "I wanted to slow down and I was looking for a new experience when Mira offered me this part in an American film. I admired her so much because she had come to a country where she didn't belong and became a big success. I had met her a couple of times, but I knew no one else on the film and no one knew me. So I identify with this woman who was transported into an alien world and has culture shock."

"Tabu is an amazing actress," says Nair. "Yesterday was extremely intense because she had a scene in which Ashima takes off everything to show that she's a widow. For the first time in my career, I was literally weeping while directing."

Apparently, Nair isn't always cheery on the set.

During the course of our 12-hour visit, we watch rehearsals and several scenes being shot from anywhere in the house we can sneak a peek. And on monitors in the makeshift sound-editing room. Otherwise we kill hours of time between scenes and interviews in the backyard eating from a fatty-snack buffet and hearing crew members and extras grumble about how they were screwed working in Hollywood and how they love being part of this unconventional shoot.

A high point is when a relative of the homeowners shows up with a camera and begins to snap random pictures to send them. Fortunately, she is convinced not to enter the house because it would interrupt the filming. This saves her from a heart attack.

Mira Nair

At 9 p.m., the publicists summon us to leave, just as Nair begins to shoot another party scene in which family members and friends sit around drinking, gabbing, and singing. Although it's now late, the energy level is still high because Nair continues to be a cheerleader to lift everyone's spirits. As we head for the shuttles, we hear her implore her actors, "You're three drinks down, show more merriment!" And they do.

Megumi Sasaki Talks About Herb & Dorothy 50x50

Playing in Theaters

Megumi Sasaki Talks About Herb & Dorothy 50x50

(from Sag Harbor Online 9/12/13)

Herb & Dorothy 50×50 fits my category “Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.”  And there is good news about that.  It premieres at the IFC Center this Friday and by all means see it there if you’re in Manhattan in the next two weeks.  But if you can’t get into the city or want to see it again or for the first time out here, it will be opening at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Friday September 27.  Megumi Sasaki’s new documentary is a welcome follow-up to her Herb & Dorothy, which was released in 2008.  (It won many awards including the Audience Award at the 2008 Hampton’s International Film Festival.) The first film gave us a fascinating up-close look at the legendary Herb and Dorothy Vogel, a postal worker and librarian who on their modest salaries amassed a priceless collection of minimalist and conceptual art beginning in the early sixties.  When they donated their collection to the National Gallery in 1992, there were approximately 2,500 pieces that they put on the walls, on tables, in boxes and crates, and under their bed in their small New York apartment–which they shared with cats and turtles.  Never selling a work of art, they would continue to collect until there were between 4,000 and 5,000 pieces total and the National Gallery had no more room to store it.  That’s when the National Gallery and the Vogels announced they would launch a gift project entitled The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States.  A museum in each of the fifty states would receive fifty works from the collection–-with Buffalo being the New York destination–including works by such renowned artists as Richard Tuttle, Robert Mangold, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Charlie Clough, Sol LeWitt, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Chuck Close, and Lucio Pozzi–all whose sputtering careers were helped by the Vogels before any one else purchased conceptual art or, later, had heard of them.  The donation and the public reaction is pretty much what Sasaki’s second film is about, as she took her cameras to museums around the country.  But it is also about, again, the extraordinary twosome as they approach their fiftieth anniversary together and share their art collection with the public, for free.  Herb was able to attend several of the exhibitions but passed away before the completion of the film, which is very much a tribute to him and his and Dorothy’s legacy in the art world.  Before Herb & Dorothy 50×50 plays at the Sag Harbor Cinema, you’ll be able to read my interview with the amazing Dorothy Vogel.  But here is the one I did simultaneously with Megumi Sasaki, whose love and admiration of her two subjects–and art–is in every frame of her movie.

Megumi Sasaki

Danny Peary: You made Herb & Dorothy in 2008.  Was that when you met the Vogels?
Megumi Sasaki: No, I met them in 2004.  Two years before that I was assigned to do a story on Christo.    I had been living in New York for a long time but I was working for Japanese public television, NHK, and went to Washington D.C. to shoot his exhibition at the National Gallery.  It was a part of Herb and Dorothy’s huge collection that they had donated to the National Gallery in 1992.  They weren’t in Washington but I met them at another Christo exhibition two years later, at Grace Mansion in New York.
DP: Did you ever do a TV piece on them?
MS: No. But I thought I may do it for the TV program, so that’s how I first approached Herb and Dorothy about shooting them.
DP: And eventually you told them that you wanted to make a movie?
MS: Yes, but not for awhile.  I didn’t really think I’d make a film at the beginning.  I just knew I wanted to tell their story.
DP: What in particular excited you about their story?
MP: When I first heard about Herb and Dorothy I was really, really moved. And I was totally shocked, because I couldn’t believe that it was a true story about real people. It’s not just because they were able to build a world-class art collection with their humble salaries, but that they never sold anything and finally gave everything away to the National Gallery so that people could enjoy art for free. And meanwhile they lived humbly, on their pensions, in the same one-bedroom apartment.  They didn’t want any kind of fame or special status.  I knew it was a good story, but even when I began thinking of it as a film, I thought about making a short, not a feature. It just evolved over time.
DP: As did your friendship with the Vogels.
MS: Our relationship evolved very slowly over time and over years. We became more than friends by the end of the first film.  I spent so much time with them, including shooting countless times in their apartment.  I was trained as a TV journalist, and I never had any close relationships with my subjects before.  I thought it was much healthier to keep a good distance from them.  But the Vogels became like family.

At Christo's Gates Exhbit in Central Park

DP: While making the first film and seeing Herb and Dorothy in their collecting mode, did you believe they felt they were on a mission to collect and even rescue as much art as they could?  I ask because there’s a great moment in the first movie when the Vogels are crossing a New York street and a weary Herb, who is usually the point man in going after the art, asks Dorothy hopefully if they’re through for the day and she rushes ahead saying they have a lot more to do. As James Siena says, “They wanted to see everything!”
MS: I didn’t think they felt they were on a mission.  They weren’t on a goal-oriented thing at all. They just did what they wanted. One of the reasons I said I was moved by their story is that it’s not just a story about art collectors. I was moved because of their passion for collecting art and the power of that passion. What makes our lives so fulfilling?  Passion.  A lot of us can’t find anything we feel passionate about but they were so happy to have found a passion they could dedicate their whole life to.  Their passion happened to be art and they pursued it and they stuck to it for decades. They were totally committed to what they really liked. And the result of their passion is that so many in the world can now share what they collected.  So for me, the key word for the first film for me was passion. And in the second film, it’s sharing. The fruit of their passion is now shared by everybody.

 Herb and Dorothy Vogel began collecting contemporary art in the early 1960s

The Vogels' small, cluttered apartment

DP: Did the 50×50 project originate before or after you made the first documentary?
MS: During. I finished editing Herb & Dorothy in June of 2008.  The decision to donate 50 pieces of art to 50 museums around the country came about in April.
DP:  In the production notes for Herb & Dorothy 50×50, you say that initially you were too burned out to think about making another feature, this time about the 50×50 project, but changed your mind when you attended with the Vogels the premiere exhibition in Indianapolis in December 2008.
MS: Yes, at first I wasn’t thinking about a full-length feature film–again. I went to Indianapolis six months after completing Herb & Dorothy thinking I might film the event to use as a DVD extra or something similar. I just thought it was important to document their collection, their gift project.  But when I saw the exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, I realized it was the first time for me to actually see their collection. I had filmed at their apartment while making the first film, but I hadn’t seen the art because the deal with the National Gallery had been finalized.  The 50-work package truly represented a collection. I was startled.  It was the very first time that I got invited to step into that real universe, into the Vogel’s world. It was the very first time that I saw the collection in a museum setting, properly framed, and lit, and mounted on white walls. It was just so absolutely beautiful, and it made me feel that I wanted to learn more about the whole collection and how people were receiving it around the country.

At a museum exhibition of their collection

DP: You said in your Director’s Statement in the production notes that the second film “began as a journey in search of art,” where you learned about art in a new way.
MS: Yes, it turned out to be that way.
DP: In all your time together, including in their apartment, at galleries and museums, and studios of various artists, did Herb and Dorothy ever explain to you what was so special about a particular work of art?
MS: Never.  I learned from Herb and Dorothy, the most important lesson in art. What I learned is that art is something to experience. It’s really an emotional experience, I should say, and it’s unexplainable.  I did not know that when I started making the first film about them.  The first time I tried to interview them on camera, I had a very hard time, because no matter how much I tried to find out why they saw beauty in a piece of work, they’d just say, “We bought it because we liked it, because it’s beautiful.”  It was that simple. I really thought that response was very problematic, but then it turned out to be a very important message.  Why must we all try to understand and explain art, especially contemporary art?  Why can’t we just simply say, “It’s beautiful” or “I like it”?   I think one has a different kind of enjoyment depending on whether they do or don’t understand something, but it doesn’t mean you’re entitled to enjoy it only if you know something.  Anybody can enjoy any work of art, whether it’s music, films, novels, or works of art. Does it open your heart?  It’s very personal.

DP: There is a wonderful scene in the new movie in which Richard Tuttle, who has a long history with the Vogels, is at the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey revealing how he sees his art and explaining to the staff how a series of his paintings should be lined up for visual and thematic reasons. Did you include that scene because you felt it contributed to your artistic journey?
MS: Richard is one of the most inspirational artists, for me. I learned so much from him. His art is very difficult in a way. I think his art is a good example of art that’s so easy to dismiss if you look at it superficially.  But if you spend a really good time with the art, you’ll find the beauty.  You’ll feel it crawling under your skin, up into your emotions. I included that scene because I feel that Richard is a very important part of the Vogel collection, and because I also wanted to show what the artist is thinking. It’s very rare that we can have a good look at the raw thinking process of an artist.  A that moment, when he is with the curators of the Montclair Art Museum, they are engaging in real talk about art.  That’s something that I could probably never get if I interviewed Richard.
DP: Because he would not give you his A conversation, as he would with Herb.  Did Herb’s death in May of 2012 make you change directions with this film–or give it a focus for the first time?
MS: I thought this film was about the gift project and about sharing art.  I was prepared for Herb’s passing during the production [because he wasn't well] but I was hoping that he would be able to see it.  I was prepared but when he passed away, it was a very emotional experience for me. I didn’t want to get caught up with emotion, I thought, but how could I finish the film without it?  So I had to think, “How do we really go through telling this story when Herb was a very important part of it?”   After he died, Dorothy and I went to lunch with Herb’s sister and her husband, on Herb’s birthday.  I found out two things.  I hadn’t known that Herb was at first really opposed to the idea of breaking up the collection and sending it to museums in fifty states. I also didn’t know that he always had it in his mind that what he and Dorothy were doing would become a very important part of art history.  That’s why in archival interviews and also often in my interviews, he often he used the word history.  I hadn’t known where that came from., but after we had that conversation, I understood that was what he envisioned.
DP: So you included a scene at the Smithsonian, where they have boxes and boxes of material on art and artists that Herb had sent them over the years.
MS:  Yes, we went to the American archives to shoot that part.  We wanted to include more of Herb, including when he was younger in archival images, things like that. Just to connect the dots.
DP: What is your feeling about Herb and Dorothy’s impact on art history, including the 50×50 donation?
MS: The art itself, the collection itself, brings such an impact to every local community where a museum has received their gift.  The gift is part of that museum’s permanent collection and they are required to exhibit it to the public within five years.  I think their spirit of generosity is really a testament that art is for everyone.  As I said, you don’t have to be rich or have to have a master’s degree in art history to appreciate art, or support art. And I think especially contemporary art, particularly the minimalist, conceptual art they collected, can be very distancing and intimidating. But everybody can enjoy it in their own way. I think their story gives access to enjoyment of art to everyone. It’s beyond art communities, it’s beyond America, it’s global.  In Japan I never really imagined the people would love and enjoy this film so much. Dorothy went to Japan with me and she was like a rock star. We’re going to be traveling a lot together with this film.
DP: So collecting art wasn’t a mission for them, but telling their story was a mission for you.  I would I think there’s something very gratifying to you as a filmmaker to be able to tell it.
MS: I wanted to complete their story by making the second film. They should be remembered in the history of art, and their collection should be documented and be appreciated by generations to come.  So I’m very honored that I was able to tell the full story. Mission completed! Mission successful!

The late Herb Vogel

Megumi Sasaski and Dorothy Vogel Photo: DP

Catch Young Golfers on Their Way Up

SummerDocs, Film Festival

Catch Young Golfers on Their Way Up: The Short Game Concludes SummerDocs in Style

(from Sag Harbor Express 8/29/13)

 

“We always try to let the movies at SummerDocs speak for themselves,” insists Anne Chaisson, the executive director of the Hamptons International Film Festival (HIFF), “but I must say that “The Short Game” was a big surprise. “David Nugent, the festival’s artistic director, saw it at SXSW (South by Southwest Music Film and Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas) and told Alec Baldwin and me, ‘You’ve got to see it.’  Alec, who curates SummerDocs with David, and I watched it and we both went to the moon over it. So that’s how it got chosen.”

 

Anne Chaisson

“I’m very honored that ‘The Short Game’ was included,” says the film’s director, Josh Greenbaum, who will be at Guild Hall for a Q&A with Alec Baldwin this Friday after the film’s 8 p.m. screening.  Greenbaum’s debut feature closes out SummerDocs’ fifth year, following “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” “Gasland 2,” and “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me.”
Josh Greenbaum

“It’s an awesome spot in an incredible lineup,” says Greenbaum. His sports film may be in the clean-up spot, but it’s not about big sluggers swinging bats at Yankee Stadium, but seven- and eight-year-olds swinging golf clubs in Pinehurst, North Carolina. That’s the site of the annual World Championships of Junior Golf, and Greenbaum and producer Rafael Marmor found eight talented and charming kids — including children from China, South Africa, and France — among the 1,250 competitors at the 2012 tournament to highlight in their movie.
“I’m a believer that even with great subject matter, you need an interesting angle,” says Marmor. “Our angle was going for the youngest kids because they have the fewest inhibitions, even in front of a camera. So we went to the tournament the year before and interviewed hundreds of kids for about five minutes each, and we came away with a diverse group.”

Raphael Marmor

Greenbaum constantly reminds viewers that the young subjects are like other kids their age. “They have the same emotions, they like to goof off; they aren’t self-aware.” But he acknowledges there is something unique about this group. “What makes them different is their focus. It’s hard for us adults to stay focused but for a kid it’s even harder. But these kids have the ability to focus completely on golf in practice and on the course. They have goals and the confidence, focus and drive to see what they can accomplish.”
“What attracted me to this project initially,” says Marmor, “is that I heard of a world where seven-year-olds focus on things I struggle with.” How do they handle pressure and frustration, how do they have so much confidence? “What I believe is that kids who go toward golf tend to be smarter. They are articulate and they think things through. They can be cerebral and state pearls of wisdom and have profound insights that we could learn from them.”

“What excited me was the juxtaposition of their being funny and having wise thoughts,” Greenbaum says. “We got close to these kids and worried about them doing poorly in the competition in the film. I discovered they have short-term memory, which allows them to quickly get over bad rounds and losses. The other thing that impressed me was how they see only the flag and not the bunkers or trees. Metaphorically-speaking, when we adults see obstacles in life we lose sight of the finish. I went in expecting to watch kids learn lessons as they play golf with parents as their caddies, but from watching them I learned as much as they did.”
You’ll be captivated by the kids off the course, including Anna Kournikova’s younger brother Allan; but make no mistake these future Tigers and Annikas can really play. A warning: When you hackers hear a tiny eight-year old golfer say she feels happy every time she makes an eagle, you may want to retire your golf clubs.

“As a filmmaker I want you to wonder who will win the tournament,” says Greenbaum, “but the important thing is what the kids learned and how they grew. The definitions of win and lose and success and failure change. It’s exemplified by the South African boy, Zam. He finished 43rd the year before and I think that if he finished 42nd he would be happy. He’s certainly developing the right attitude.”
Chaisson is delighted by the loyal following Summer Docs has because, “it is most definitely an extension of the festival and leads into the festival.” In fact, if The Short Game wins the audience award over the other three documentaries, it will play at this year’s festival.
Another draw at this Columbus Day weekend’s HIFF will be the popular “Views From Long Island,” which will include three features and three shorts that are set on Long Island and/or were made by Long Island filmmakers. Titles of these films, as well as passes and packages — including a large discount on all-access Founders Passes purchased before Labor Day — can be found at www.hamptonsfilmfest.org.
The Hamptons International Film Festival SummerDocs series, hosted by Alec Baldwin, will screen “The Short Game” on August 30 at 8 p.m. at Guild Hall in East Hampton.

Joe Swanberg on Drinking Buddies

Playing in Theaters

Joe Swanberg on Drinking Buddies

(from Sag Harbor Online 8/23/13)

Joe Swanberg Photo: DP

Indie favorite Joe Swanberg began his directing career with Kissing on the Mouth in 2006 and since then has been a directorial machine, churning out more than twenty movies, all improvised, all with lots of chatter—which is why he is revered by fans of mumblecore cinema--all personal, all starring unknown amateurs (including himself and, for a time, his discovery Greta Gerwig), all done on miniscule budgets, all about young middle-class people in troubled relationships, and some with graphic sex.  A quote by him (highlighted on his IMDB page) indicates his need to slow down: “I realized that because I'd been producing so much work, I hadn't changed enough as a person between projects. At that point I couldn't make another movie even if I'd wanted to, because I hadn't had a life for so long.”  Swanberg is now thirty-two, with a wife, kid, and new perspective, and though he is still prolific (two more films are heading our way), he has slowed down a bit.  He has also decided that it’s time to make movies for a larger target audience, which means casting actors people have actually heard of.  His new film, Drinking Buddies, which opens in New York City on Friday, is already getting him media attention than he’s never experienced.  And his four leads—Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, and Ron Livingston—are telling everyone they are thankful they got to play interesting characters unlike anything offered to them in the past—and that they’d be pleased to work with Swanberg again.  Here’s the premise: Best buddies, drinking buddies, Kate (Olivia Wilde) and Luke (Jake Johnson) work at a Chicago brewery.  They flirt endlessly at work and at bars after work.  They deny their mutual attraction because they are in relationships.  But Luke has more fun with Kate than his fiancée of six years, Jill (Anna Kendrick), and Kate seems more comfortable with Luke than her music producer boyfriend Chris (Ron Livingston).  Everything becomes trickier when the two couples go away together and Jill and Chris kiss.  Things go in strange directions and Swanberg even shows up in a cameo to grapple with Luke.  On Monday, I had the following conversation with the director about what may be his breakthrough film.  His photo was taken with his cellphone!     

Danny Peary: Perhaps it’s because of the cast, but people are talking about Drinking Buddies as a semi-mainstream movie, which would be something new for you.

Joe Swamberg: I hope it is.

DP: Your other films were improvised. Was there a script for this?

JS: There was actually about 45 pages of outline. Just no dialogue.

DP: And do you still not hold auditions?

JS: I don’t. I don’t know what I could learn about people when there’s not a script to audition with. It doesn’t seem like a great environment to figure out whether I can work with somebody. It’s always been either writing parts specifically for people or just sort of having a conversation approach to casting.

DP: For your earlier films, were your fans more male than female?

JS: Hard to tell. I think it shifts with each movie, but I’d say that right now, most of my fans are hardcore cinephiles. That tends to be, at least in my mind, more of a male audience. But I think with Drinking Buddies it’s shifting quite a bit to women.

DP: Would people who have seen your earlier movies and don’t know you directed Drinking Buddies, be able to tell you made it?

JS:  I sense that they would. I think that my concerns and the things that I’m fascinated by are still the same. I’m still interested in how we do or don’t communicate with each other, especially in the context of relationships; I’m still interested in the temptations that we deal with when we’re in committed relationships. I think these are things that have been central to all my movies. This one is bigger, and to me, feels bigger, but my wife watched the first cut and said, “Wow, it still feels like just one of your movies.” So I think that I can’t help being myself.

DP: But what about stylistically?

JS: We shot it pretty much the same.

DP: To me, it looks more formal.

JS: Yeah, there’s quite a bit more set-up involved, but I attempted, performance-wise, to keep the actors pretty free and loose. The cinematographer I worked with was very fluid and quick-moving with them.  So it felt like the same process as always, just with some more infrastructure.

DP: I think fans of yours who watched all your films about twentysomethings dealing with relationships can view Drinking Buddies in regard to your aging. You’ve gotten older than the characters in your previous films and I think this film is in a way about that. Does this film reflect that you’ve aged?

JS: Certainly. And I have a kid now.  Those things are really on my mind a lot.  The stakes naturally get higher as the characters in my movies leave their twenties and enter their thirties.  I think by default the conversations that they’re having feel more dramatic, in that sense.

DP: Were you thinking that your characters were too young to make commitments but not anymore?

JS: Here’s how I feel about it.  America allows everybody an extended adolescence now. This country’s not going to force anybody to grow up. If you’re a middle-class white person, you especially don’t have to grow up.  I’ve been married for six years, I have a son who’s almost three, but the characters I’ve been putting in my movies are not at the life place that I’m at.   I want them to be a little more representative of what I’m seeing--which is people waiting until their early thirties to even have the marriage conversation and until their mid-thirties to talk about kids. I feel I’m a couple years ahead of a lot of my friends in terms of that stuff, but I want the movies to still be reflective of what I’m seeing around me.

DP: You could have cast twenty-year-olds in the film but I think it’s telling that you cast older actors on purpose.

JS: On purpose, yes. I’ve always hoped that my movies grow up with me.  If I’m still making movies when I’m 80, knock on wood, I hope that my central cast is also full of 80-year-olds.

DP: For this, four well-known actors, Olivia Wilde, Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston, decided to work with you. Had they all seen your previous films?

JS: I don’t know if they did. I actually don’t know if any of the four had seen one of my movies before I got in touch with them. I know that Ron watched some in the time between my first talking to him and his doing the film. I still don’t know if Jake or Anna have seen any of my movies. Olivia did watch a lot of my stuff in preparation for this.

DP: On television, in New Girl, Jake Johnson’s great at making written dialogue sound improvised. But in this he makes it seem as if it could have been written.

JS: Everything’s improvised that he did, as it was with the others. But he is great. The thing that I took away from my initial meeting with him and then from working with him is that he has such a rich, full personality that he lights up the camera and the room he’s in. He’s a great actor who wasn’t a kid actor. He had a whole life outside of the industry, and he’s in his thirties and is only now coming into his own and getting a lot of attention.  He’s really exciting to me because he wasn’t shaped by Hollywood and taught the right way to perform, or any of that. He’s just himself.

DP: Did the other three turn into your type of actors? 

JS: All of them turned out to be my type of actors. It was a wild guess going in, but now  I hope all four of them will become regular players for me and I can keep putting them in things. I’ve already worked again with Anna Kendrick [on Happy Christmas, due out in 2014].   She is one of the most talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with.

DP: You’re known as one of the pioneers of mumblecore, which signifies that your characters talk a lot. There is a lot of talk in this film, but I noticed that you silence your characters at key times.  

JS: Well, silence is big for me. The most directing I do on set is reminding actors that they don’t have to talk all the time. When a camera and lights are pointed at them, I think that there’s a natural instinct for actors to be on, and fill that space. But in regular conversation, there’s quite a bit of listening that happens, and there’s quite a bit of thinking that happens in between something being said to you and your response to it--at least in my conversations. And so I want that silence in there, and often very dramatically. It’s often much more dramatic to say nothing in movies, unlike on radio, where you talk or it’s dead air.  Film, because it’s a visual medium, can convey a lot when someone’s not saying anything.

DP: Are you talking about silence by the actors themselves or the characters?  Because Jake Johnson just talks and talks and talks, so when he doesn’t talk, as in the last scene, there’s something going on and we pay attention.

JS: There’s weight to the silence, yes.

DP: In addition to making the silence relevant, you use character placement thematically. There is a lot of hugging, handshaking, characters touching, and characters placed in the frame almost on top of each other.

JS: It’s negative space, but it’s all in proportion to the performance. And the spacing is a big one for me, because it’s such a big part of how we work and relate to each other. The physical actions, what they do in the film, take on significance in terms of their proximity. A lot of this is about attempting to capture what I remember experiencing from my own flirtations--eye contact that lingers a little longer than it should, or the strategic placement of a hand on somebody’s shoulder, or any of those complicated signals that at the time feel loaded with meaning. I tried to infuse that into these characters’ body language, rather than it being something that is said aloud.

DP: Again it’s the age thing: You’re older now, so are you wiser when looking back on such things?

JS: I hope so. At this point in my life, those fun flirtations are less fun and less interesting to me than they used to be. There was a period of time, even when I was in a relationship, when that stuff felt very exciting and seemed to me like it needed to be an integral part of everybody’s life.  I felt that it was a shame to be in a relationship with somebody and lose the ability to flirt and play around, and walk up to the edge of the line. But now I sense that everybody reaches a point where they’ve done that enough and knows what happens at that line and that it’s not that interesting.

DP: So many characters touch that when Kate, Olivia Wilde’s character, says to Luke, “Don’t touch me,” it’s meant to be an important line in your movie.

JS: Well, it was improvised.  It’s just how Olivia felt Kate was feeling in that moment. And it’s interesting because right before that, Kate was sitting on the couch next to Luke and when he touches her with his elbow, you can see how uncomfortable she is with contact from him, all of the sudden. But another time, she crawls into bed with him while he sleeps and very deliberately puts her arm around him. There are constantly shifting lines between when it is and isn’t okay to touch, and what the touching means and how emotional it is for both.

DP: Luke says two things to Kate: “you’re crazy” and “you’re fun.” Which are great characteristics for your partner if you’re in your twenties, but once you’re in your thirties that’s not the type of person you want to settle down with.  Is that your perspective?

JS: That’s part of the point.

DP: Kate’s a dream girl, beautiful, fun, a drinking buddy, but she keeps getting rejected.

JS: She certainly is Luke’s dream girl at the beginning of the film. Somebody who is crazy and fun is always going to have a certain appeal to me. I don’t think I’ll ever reach an age where suddenly that’s uninteresting.  But you just have only so much energy for it. Also, Kate’s incredibly selfish.  But so is Luke. That’s more the point of the movie–that these two supremely selfish people aren’t a good match for each other. They actually need less selfish people in their lives to learn from and to balance out their selfishness. They sort of, on a molecular level, agitate each other in a really fun way, that’s exciting for awhile, but as soon as it’s not, they agitate each other in a really un-fun way.

DP: Since Kate and Luke aren’t candidates, is Jill the best of the four characters, or could it even be Ron Livingston?

JS: I feel that both of them are much more self-realized people than the two at the center of the film. Jill is certainly the most mature out of all four of them, in the sense that she at least has a very strong sense of what she wants. The others don’t know what they want. It’s simple: she knows that she loves Luke and wants to be in a relationship with him.  And after she behaves badly, she apologizes for it.

DP: Will Luke then confess to her that he put his hand on Kate’s leg and not as a friend?

JS: I don’t think he will. It was very important to me that she’s actually mature enough to confess--but he confesses nothing in return.  Hopefully the audience feels that he learned some things.

DP: I think we do—that’s why he doesn’t drink as much toward the end. Was that intentional?

JS: Less intentional. I didn’t think so much—at least I can’t remember making those decisions on set.

DP: There’s more moderation in his drinking toward the end, even in that last scene. That’s not intentional?

JS: No.

DP: Why does Chris, Ron Livingston’s character, give Kate a copy of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run? Was that his way of saying he wants break free from their relationship?

JS: No. I think he sort of already recognizes in her the angst of Harry Angstrom and his flight mentality when things get heavy.

DP: Is he thinking the relationship can’t last because she’s going to flee?

JS: I think he’s pretty aware of that. He has several reasons for thinking it’s not going to last.  Specifically, the novel, which I like but don’t love, represents the kind of great American novel and he gives it to her because he sees himself as the mentor in their relationship and the book is part of her education.  He’s saying, “If you’re going to be with me, I’m going to turn you onto these kinds of things.”

DP: It’s like how Woody Allen was with Diane Keaton in Annie Hall.  And, you know, that relationship didn’t last either.

 

Lowery, Mara, and Foster Make Sense of "Saints"

Ain't Them Bodies Saints Is Playing in Theaters

Lowery, Mara, and Foster Make Sense of Saints

(from Sag Harbor Online 8/22/13)

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints fits my category “Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.”  Its writer/director David Lowery says he always wanted to make a movie that captured the feeling of the songs of unique singer/songwriter/harpist/pianist Joanna Newsom, who ventures musically from roots/Appalachian to avant-garde. Inspired by and an homage to songs, books, movie westerns, gangster-couple films and his native Texas, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints surely is the lyrical, haunting, authentic yet dreamlike film that he wanted to make.  And he’s probably content that since it opened in New York City last Friday, the reviews have been a mix of raves–by those who consider it “an American original”–and shrugs–usually by those who expected more action.

It takes place in Meridian, Texas in the 1970s. Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara) and Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) have loved each other since they were kids, which is when they began their life of crime under the auspices of Skerritt (Keith Carradine), the morally-ambiguous man who raised them. Bob takes the rap when Ruth shoots one of the lawmen, Patrick (Ben Foster), who arrest them.  After Bob is sent to prison for a long stretch, Ruth gives birth to their child, Sylvie.  Looked after by Skerritt, the reformed Ruth lives a tame, solitary life with their daughter, feeling guilty she stopped writing to Bob but still hoping he’ll return.  Four years have passed and Patrick, who doesn’t realize Ruth shot him, starts courting her.  Bob escapes from prison and heads home.  Three bad guys–the type who try to do in Warren Beatty in McCabe in Mrs. Miller, an influence on Lowery–come to town and wait for Bob to turn up.  And, you guessed it, it all leads to a big climax that includes gunfire.

I was recently in New York City at the press junket for the film.  Below are my questions to David Lowery, followed by a roundtable with Rooney Mara (who inhabits her character as she did Lisbeth in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and another with Ben Foster.  I note my questions.

David Lowery Q&A

David Lowery Photo:DP

Danny Peary: Why did you set your film in the 1970s?

David Lowery: I was born in 1980.  This takes place right before then so I felt it was separate from me  I didn’t want it to feel too old-fashioned but to have some degree of currency. At the same time, I didn’t want it to be identifiable as one particular time period.  Especially as we were doing location-scouting in all these small Texas towns, I was thinking that Meridian had changed very little since the town was built, at least what I saw.  Because it’s a rural farming community, everyone has things that are made to last. All the clothes are old, and the trucks, like those in the movie, are from the ‘50s or ‘60s.  It’s timeless, not in the Norman Rockwell sense but more elusive. I felt that if we set the movie in the ‘70s, we could include things that were more modern, and create this weird blend of time periods.

DP: While watching the film,  I was thinking the whole time of  Robert Altman’s Thieves Like Us, with one of your stars, Keith Carradine, and that your subject matter also fit the 1930s,  the Depression-era, and even now during the recession, when characters like Bob Muldoon wouldn’t have many options in life.

DL: That would have tied it to a specific time period when I really I didn’t want to have any reference points, like having a Depression, or a particular war going on, or a movie title on a marquis at a local theater.  I didn’t want any  reference to the real world.

Ruth (Rooney Mara) and Bob (Casey Affleck) are arrested.

DP: Obviously this film was made by somebody who loves movies.  I see Altman, Arthur Penn, Nicholas Ray, Terrence Malick.  The style at the beginning, with all the jump cuts speeding along the story, reminds me of “Breathless” and other French films of the ’60s.

DL: Yeah, exactly. My background is as an editor, so I wanted to shake things up a little bit in the beginning.  Rather than starting with a lot of exposition or having a big preamble, I wanted to rush through a great deal of content. The prologue covers a tremendous amount of ground very quickly and very fluidly, establishing this rhythmic quality. Every cut has a percussive hit, and the film kind of flows from one shot to the next in a very rhythmic fashion. I wanted to just kick the movie off in that way, and get you caught up at that pace, and then just hit the brakes. Then it cuts to four years later, and the whole movie slows to an almost glacial pace. I really wanted that beginning to express the exuberance of youth and for viewers to get caught up in that.  Then all of the sudden, real life hits. Ruth grows up and everything just slows down and we really have to deal with the circumstances at hand, rather than skipping from one circumstance to the next.

DP: Did you have all those jump cuts in the script?

DL: There were even more in the script. There was actually a version of the script which covered twenty years in the same amount of screen time as we cover now in a few months. What we have on the screen now is pretty much what it was in the final script.

DP: In Western-movie tradition, two characters once rode together and one went good and one went bad.  That’s essentially what happens in your modern-day Western with Casey’s Bob and Ben’s Patrick. Were you intentionally following tradition or did this just happen naturally with these two characters?

DL: It was intentional.  I started off just trying to honor these archetypes, trying to do right by them and let them exist in that realm of classic movie-narrative technique. The idea was to start off that way, and at some point Patrick would have to turn the other in or something like that. But I wanted to have that be the point where I subvert things a little bit, so that at the end of the movie the sheriff still faces the outlaw with a gun drawn, but it doesn’t go the way it normally does. He has a chance to catch him, but he doesn’t catch him.

DP: Patrick and Bob respect each other..

DL: Absolutely, especially Patrick towards Bob. Bob isn’t aware of who this guy is, but Patrick is deeply aware of who Bob is and has a great deal of respect for him.

DP: You have said Patrick is a surrogate for you, particularly in the scene in which he leaves Ruth’s house but immediately goes back inside and opens up to her.

DL: All the characters are surrogates for me to a great extent, but Patrick was definitely a version of me that always hoped I could just speak my mind.  I was the guy who’d walk out of the house and then think the next day that I should have gone back in. Patrick is a guy who goes back in and speaks his mind.

DP: I assume your title Ain’t Them Bodies Saints was a hard sell but I like it.  It sounds like something the Coen brothers would write (as does your last line). Is it a title that conveys themes of the movie?

DL: Absolutely. I could break it down to my being raised in the Catholic Church and around the idea of sainthood.  But on a very basic level it just suggests to me that everyone has the potential to do the right thing.  I think every character in this movie is good, aside from the three man who arrive in town and are clearly bad.  Everyone else in the movie is trying to do the right thing.  It’s likely that everyone has a different definition of what the right thing is, but they’re all trying to make the right choice and to do good by ourselves and others. That was something that was really important to me. It’s easiest to have characters make wrong choices, dramatically speaking. It’s easy to make that interesting.  But it’s hard to actually have people being good. I really wanted to have a lot of people who made bad choices but are now trying to fix those mistakes and to do the right thing.
END

Rooney Mara Roundtable

Ruth (Rooney Mara) comforts her daughter

Ruth receives mail from Bob in prison

Q: From your perspective, does Ruth stay loyal to Bob because he took the fall for her shooting Patrick?

Rooney Mara: Ruth has a lot of loyalty to Bob and to her daughter, and she certainly has a lot of guilt. She feels both things very strongly, but I don’t think that one has to do with the other. I don’t think she’s staying loyal out of guilt.

Q: Ruth has a lot of resolve, which is something we’ve come to expect of your characters.  But are you trying to show more vulnerability than you have before?

RM: I never think of it as, “Oh, what do I want people to see?” I don’t ever think like that when playing a character, but certainly Ruth does have a lot more vulnerability. Maybe when I chose that role, I was feeling more vulnerable and that was what I responded to. I’m not really sure.

Q: Was being vulnerable a challenge for you?

RM: No, it was never a problem that I needed to be more vulnerable. It’s just who the character is. Ruth’s life is very complicated and she is just very vulnerable, physically and emotionally.

Q: What was it about the character and the story in general that you responded to?

RM: David Lowery just has a unique voice, and his script was so beautifully written. Ruth, in the first script that I read, was definitely the most underdeveloped of all the characters. But he  knew that before I’d even read the script, and it was something he was working on. I could still see all the potential there, and I found Ruth’s relationship with Bob to be just so beautiful and interesting. I also really loved the love story between her and her child.  In most scripts, a mother is protective of her child and that’s it. Ruth is protective but much more. I liked how the mother-child relationship is much more complicated than that.

Danny Peary: What would Ruth be like if she never had a baby?

RM: I’ve never thought about that but it’s a very interesting question. I can’t imagine where she would end up. It’s very sad to even think about.

DP: Would she be in jail too? Obviously her baby changed her from being a criminal.

RM: Maybe she’d end up in jail. I think having Sylvie was the best possible scenario of her life.

DP: I think she’s surprised by how much having a child changed her.

RM: Definitely.  I don’t think Ruth is necessarily excited when she finds out she’s going to have a baby. It’s not exactly what she planned on doing. We talked about how up until when she looks at the baby for the first time, she’s kind of fighting it. It’s not something she feels ready for, it’s not something she wants. She wants her life with Bob, she wants back her childhood with Bob until the moment she’s actually holding the baby and sees it for the first time. I think it did change her tremendously.

DP: In a good way.

RM: Yeah.

Q: In the film, Bob says a line about how people don’t know things the way they think they know them. Is there something inaccurate about how the public sees you?

RM: Maybe everything the general public thinks they know about me is not accurate.  There are very few people in your life that you truly know. It’s hard to really know someone because people are very complicated. I think we try to simplify people and put them in these little categories of being this kind of person or that kind of person and it’s just simply not true. I don’t see the world that way. I don’t see people as being this type of person or that type of person, I find people to be incredibly complex and interesting and different. I’m sure that most people who don’t know me think things about me that are not true.  Same goes for me with other people I know only from their interviews with the media. I probably don’t really know anything about them.

DP: Ruth says two things to Patrick, that she doesn’t need anything and she can’t sleep. What could make her sleep?

RM: The think her not sleeping goes back to the guilt. Bob has been writing her letters the entire time he’s been in prison, and I think she started off writing him letters, too. But as soon as she had Sylvie, it was kind of like: How do you write about the first time you look into your child’s eyes?  Or her first birthday?  Or the first time she walked? Or the first time she said Mommy. How do you write about those things in a letter and make someone understand?  So I think as soon as she had Sylvie and she started to feel that way, she stopped writing to him, because there was no way to express those things. She hasn’t slept in four years because she’s been wondering if he’s okay and having all this guilt that she’s not writing to him after he has gone to prison for something that she did.

DP: Is it just a matter of having closure? Will she sleep after the movie is over?

RM: I think it’ll probably take her a lot of time, a lot of healing, but I think she’ll sleep. [Laughing] Then Sylvie will turn into a teenager and she’ll not sleep again.

Q: I found it was when Ruth admits she’s not really able to sleep that I really liked her for the first time.. What did you try to put into your performance that would make her more amenable to the audience?

RM: I think that before the movie begins, Ruth was a very different person. Her relationship with Bob was very passionate and fiery, and there was a lot of fighting and making up. She was this wild, stubborn, feisty young woman, and then she has this child, and it changes who she is. She is walking about with all of this guilt and responsibility, and it’s hard moving on and finding happiness and something great in her life when the person she loves isn’t coming back.  I can imagine that would be very difficult. I really like my character so I never really thought about what I’d have to do to make her more accessible or likable to the audience. I already find her to be a really vulnerable, interesting, likable character.

Q: David says he wanted this whole movie to be like a song.  So did he send you music to listen to?

RM: He sent me a bunch of songs.  I liked and appreciated them, but after I listened to them I just kind of never listened to them again. I had my own songs that made me feel like the character.  God, it was such a long playlist I’d listen to. A few of the songs he sent me were on there, but there was a lot of Loretta Lynn, a lot of sad songs. I constantly am listening to music when I’m working and I have different playlists for each character.  For Lisbeth in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there was a lot of angry music. There was a lot of Nico Vega on my playlist and a lot of stuff that David and Trish Summerville, the costume designer, sent me.

Q: What’s your perspective about how Ruth feels about the love triangle with Bob and Patrick, who clearly loves her, too.

RM: People ask me about that and I feel terrible because I didn’t see the movie as a love triangle between Ruth, Bob, and Patrick. I see it as a love triangle between Ruth, Bob and Sylvie.  Ruth is never choosing between Bob and Patrick. She is always choosing between Bob and Sylvie. I think Patrick is the guy Ruth wishes she’d want to date but she just doesn’t.  She doesn’t have those kinds of feelings for him but wishes she did because her life would be much easier and better if she wanted him. She thinks Patrick’s is a lovely person and that he is so sweet to her, and she knows they would have a really nice life together. But she’s grown up with Bob and she’s had an amazing life with him. I don’t think she can go from that to a relationship with Patrick because that’s now how they know each other.  It would never work out, I don’t think.

DP: If Bob came back and they could be together, would she want Sylvie to meet him?
RM: Oh, yeah. At least I thought it was like that and played it that way.  For most of the movie, she’s totally planning on going away with him and actually thinks it’s the right thing to do. When you are in love with someone you can be quite delusional and convince yourself that [the wrong thing to do] is the right thing to do.

SPOILER ALERT

DP: With Bob bleeding to death, Patrick takes Sylvie outside, denying her the one chance she’ll ever get to talk to her father. Would Ruth agree to that or tell Patrick to bring her back to see Bob?

RM: She probably wanted the three of them to have more of a moment than they have, but I don’t think she’d want Sylvie to stay there for that long because it would be quite scary for a child. Also Ruth probably wants to be alone with Bob in his last moments.

END SPOILER ALERT

Ben Foster Roundtable

Q: What does Patrick see in Ruth that makes him want to get involved with her.

Ben Foster: I don’t believe they knew each other, but she contacted him with the bullet she shot. I believe that once you’ve been touched by somebody, you think about them. And you have a lot of time to think after there’s been a close call with your life. What he says toward the end of the picture is essentially what love ought to be, which is “absolute forgiveness.”  He essentially tells her, “No matter who you’ve been in the past, I see goodness now.  So please don’t carry this around the rest of your life.”  In terms of a love triangle, he’s very respectful of the complicated situation she’s in.  For all intents and purposes, she’s a single mom. Her man is out of the picture, and then he starts to come back into the picture.  Patrick remains a gentleman throughout. There aren’t many gentlemen, it seems, in films today, so it was nice to explore that.

Danny Peary: So you don’t think he ever saw her when they were growing up and had feelings for her?

BF: It’s left to our imagination. David and I talked about that, but what’s there in the script is what’s there. It’s complicated when you care for somebody and you can’t go after her because of your own ethics or  job restrictions. Love is curious that way, and he’s contemplating what he imagines to be a right action. He’s a good Christian in his mind; and like all these characters, he’s just trying to figure it out.

DP: Patrick tells Ruth that when he sees her with her daughter, all he sees is good. So if she hadn’t had the daughter, would he have fallen for her?

BF: Are you saying he fell for her because she had a daughter?

DP: She became a good person because she had a daughter, I thought that was what Patrick is implying.

BF: I think you’re touching on something that we discussed about his backstory, which is only suggested by Patrick’s wedding ring.

DP: What do you think?

BF: Who’s to say?  I think kids can affect a person’s sense of responsibility, because you have to take care of something bigger than yourself.  With a kid, you can’t live a selfish life, you have to sacrifice yourself for the greater good.  I understand that logic. But I’m not going to say that in an alternate film, had she not had the daughter, he would not have been attracted to her.  Ruth is an attractive lady and she’s spirited.

DP: So it wasn’t just the goodness that drew him.

BF: Who knows why people fall for someone?  He sees goodness in her, and I imagine he too is haunted like we all are by our own ghosts, the things we regret. He’s telling her, “Just let it go, because you’re good now.”

Q:  There’s a lot of chemistry in scenes between you and Rooney.  Did you two have conversations about developing it.

BF: It’s hard to talk about chemistry. It’s a unique balance. My whole goal was to make Rooney smile! She’ll smile, but you need to sneak around to get it.  She’s a wonderful actor with an almost translucent vulnerability and an equal measure of strength.

DP: Did you feel that Bob and Patrick were two sides of the same coin, one who put on a badge and the other who became an outlaw?

BF: I never saw that the two were parallel. I know that in personal circumstances you can’t help but compare yourself to the other guy and see how you’re alike or different. I think what’s important to Patrick is an old-world value, which I saw and experienced while researching the picture and spending time in Midland with the Sheriff’s Department. They’ve got third generation sheriffs there and they respect the people they protect, whether or not they care for them.

DP: You mentioned the wedding ring he wears.  I didn’t notice it but I recognized he’s a lonely character. Does he think Ruth is his only hope for a full life?

BF: Well, the imagination is funny that way. We can’t help but fantasize every day. For years. Whether or not we act on it is up to our own ethics. I think we’re all trying to be saved, during our darker moments, from our miserable lives. We think someone out there is going to fix our life and give it value. Is Ruth the one for Patrick Wheeler? I think he thinks about it.

DP: Ruth says she doesn’t need anything but I think he sees that she does and that he can provide it.

BF (laughing): They’re just a bunch of co-dependents in this movie.

DP: He sees himself as a good influence on her, a positive in her life.

BF: I think he sees a good woman who’s struggling, and is probably conflicted with his own profession, her circumstances, and his male genetics.

DP: Speaking of male genetics, Patrick has a mustache as ostentatious as David Lowery’s!

BF (laughing): We did a lot of handstands to get it that way!

Ben Foster as Patrick Wheeler