Evans and Sands Discuss Fathers and Son in A Nazi Legacy

Playing at Festival

Evans and Sands Discuss Fathers and Son in A Nazi Legacy

(from Sag Harbor Express Online May 14, 2015)

Philippe Sands and David Evans.

By Danny Peary

A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  Having seen it a the recent Tribeca Film Festival, I predict this stirring documentary by English director David Evans (Fever Pitch, TV’s Downton Abbey and Shameless)  will be playing all over world for years to come.  It takes its place in the pantheon of documentaries about how the Holocaust is viewed people today, including those whose parents and grandparents experienced it firsthand.  Geoffrey Gilmore, the Director of the Tribeca Film Festival, wrote “Can you imagine what it means to grow up as a child of a mass murderer? Hans Frank and Otto von Wächter were indicated as war criminals for their roles in WWII.  Nazi Governors [in Ukraine] and consultants to Hitler himself, the two are collectively responsible for thousands of deaths.  But what stood out to Philippe Sands [who narrates the film and is one of the film's three central figures] were the impressions they left on their sons.  While researching the Nuremberg trials, the human rights lawyer came across the two men who re-focused his studies: Niklas Frank [who reviles Hans for being a uncaring father and because of his war crimes]  and Horst von Wächter [who shrugs off evidence and insists his father tried only to help Jews].   The men hold polar opposite view on the men who raised them.”  This is how Evans summarized his film for Indiewire: “Three men journey through Europe to the killing fields of war-time Poland; one of them is Jewish [the British Sands, whose grandfather's family was exterminated in Ukraine], the other two are sons of senior Nazis.  It’s about the massive swells of historical destiny and the tiny moments that stay in a person’s memory forever: about the roots of Ukranian nationalism in the bloody turmoil of the Second World War, and about the time when an unloving father dabbed a bit of shaving foam on his little son’s nose; about a happy childhood shattered because Hitler was defeated, and about the origins of international criminal law as we now know it; about a Jewish man who escapes the Nazis, and his grandson, who wanted this story to be told…”  During the festival, I relished the opportunity to have this conversation with Evans and Sands.

Horst von Wächter (left) and Niklas Frank look at a marker for massacred Jews, while the emotional Sands has his back toward them.

Danny Peary: I was really moved by your film. I saw it as soon as I could, at a pre-festival screening.

Philippe Sands: I’m curious why you sought it out.

DP: There were a couple of reasons.  Foremost, the denial theme fascinates me. There was a great Israeli film here four years ago called The Flat by Aaron Goldfinger.

PS: I did see it.  It is a great film.

DP: If you remember, the daughter of the Nazi was helping him piece together the strange story of his own Jewish grandparents, who kept up a friendship with the Nazi and his wife.  When he confronts her with evidence that her father was a high-level Nazi who worked closely with Adolf Eichmann, she has this sick look beneath her shaky smile.  And I just wondered what she was feeling all through her body.

PS: I remember that well.

DP: And the other aspect is the idea of Nazis carrying on their everyday lives while atrocities go on right down the road. Some of the images you have in the film of these smiling Nazis really struck me hard. David, tell me why you wanted to include that.

David Evans: Because the film is about domesticity, it’s about families. Almost to an extreme the initial appeal of the film to the audience, if you like, is that it’s about a family and a familial relationship, where some members of the family happen to be senior Nazis. That was always going to be the unique spectacle of the film, right from the very beginning when Philippe said he met this amazing guy and of the stories he was telling.  Immediately you start to hear the things that Niklas Frank says about his kindly nurse who cared for him when he was young boy and the little story he says, “Whenever my mother came back she said, ‘I just want it to be me and the children,’ but and after five minutes, she was like, ‘No, no, no, it’s making me too nervous. you need to take them away.’” Without needing to try very hard, you are immediately  starting to make connections with Niklas’s family.  That’s because of the way his stories make you think about your own parents; or you have some personal, familial connection to what his domestic life was like.  So there’s this sense of momentary forgetfulness that the person he’s talking about is the wife of a mass murderer. That’s the way into the film.

DP: Philippe, in terms of writing the script, how did you go about it? Was it written to be chronological or were you prepared to move text from one place to another as events unfolded? And how much could you predict in advance?

PS: I think the “written by” part of it is generous. I’d been researching a book to come out next year, about two different men [international lawyers who prosecuted Niklas Frank's father Hans Frank, at Nuremberg, leading to his execution].   And out of that spun an article for the Financial Times.  That was about my meeting with Horst von Wachter.  And David read the article and thought it would made an interesting film. And what we used was the raw material from my article to construct a narrative that then wrote itself. The film originally was going to end with the scene in the Purcell Room in London, when Horst, Niklas, and I were on the stage for a public discussion.  Firstly, they had originally bailed out of such a thing, so I thought it wouldn’t happen.

DP: They both bailed?

PS: Horst bailed.  And then Horst said, “No, I’ll do it.”  So my “writing” is: me saying, “Come on, let’s the three of us  go to London.”

DE: To be honest, it’s not the most important thing about the film but we took a lot of care over how to credit Philippe. And I think he’s being too modest because we never would have had a platform to make this film had there not been this vast reservoir of data that Philippe had already accessed—maybe doing research for his book.  But when we started filming the one-on-one interviews with Niklas and Horst, which form the backbone of the first twenty to thirty minutes of the film, we were basing them on the huge amount of information that Philippe already knew about both of their fathers’ lives.

PS: I knew exactly what I wanted.

DE: So he went to interview them with an agenda of questions, which was the basis for the rest of the film.  So yes, Philippe is right that there was a jumping-off point from all that–but that was a script, really.  At one stage we thought—given the huge amount of stuff you shoot for documentaries—that we could have made a very interesting film by merely expanding that first section into something more comprehensive than we allowed it to be.  That could have been the entire film, but it would have been a different film. But Philippe was a writer in that respect, vis-a-vis the whole issue about him now saying, it’s not quite right to call him the writer.

PS (laughing): I thought it was “generous,” not “not quite right.”

DE: I’m not quite sure how we could better describe it, but I knew I didn’t want Philippe to be credited in any way as the presenter of the film.   Philippe began by expecting not to be in the movie at all.  Originally, he thought he would be the unseen person asking the questions.

DP: That’s what your role is.

DE: Yes, I ended up being that guy, but originally it was going to be Philippe.  When he moved in front of the camera I was very resistant to–and I still am–people assuming that whatever he says is in total concert with what the film is saying, like it is when Simon Schama is in front of the camera on the BBC and whatever he says is meant to express the truth of the story.  But I think it’s much stronger that Philippe is allowed to be a kind of free agent in front of the camera and have has his own emotional reasons for saying certain things and pursuing certain lines. When you get beyond the opening section of the film, I hope it’s evident to the audience that just because Philippe says something, it doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the 100% truth of the film.

DP:  An extremely emotional moment is when Philippe is at the Ukraine grave site and is in obvious distress. Did you ever feel the urge to walk in front of the camera and see if he was okay?

PS: No, absolutely not.

DP: Were you then thinking of yourself as being objective rather than subjective?

DE: Nearly all of the time I’m a dramatist rather than a documentary-maker. My actual bread and butter filmmaking experience is entirely television drama, and has been for years. So I felt subjective, I certainly didn’t feel objective, but my subjective gaze had to do with truth to character rather than anything else. So I never would have dreamt of intruding in a moment that was clearly intensely dramatic. Why would I do that?

DP: I know you wouldn’t do it, but I wondered if you had the urge.

DE: No! Well, I had the urge  to make this moment last as long as possible, without interrupting. But you should ask Philippe about that moment.

DP: Philippe, you were in the meadow outside Lviv in Ukraine, where there is a marker to commemorate the 3,500 Jews, including your grandfather’s family, who were shot dead by the Nazis under orders given by both men’s fathers. You are standing with your back to the camera and to Niklas and Horst, who is refusing to admit his father was in any way responsible.  You were in your own space and I am sure you are angry at Horst.  What was going on in my mind?

PS: That was the third time I had been to that site.  The first two times I did been with a local Ukranian friend.  We had just had the rather intense session in the destroyed synagogue, a scene in the film.  And I was pissed at Horst, really pissed.  And it was baking hot, 90 degrees, and we were being bitten to death by mosquitoes. So I’m very uncomfortable, and at that point I’m thinking, I’m with the sons of the two men who were most responsible for the massacre.  I wasn’t thinking any more, I zoned out, and just moved closer to the victims in my family.

DP: You’re literally on top.

PS: It’s a huge sandpit that is filled with water, not earth. You could dive in there and pick up bones. And so it was my desire to be close to the victims.  We were all miked up and if you listen very attentively, you hear a sound, and it’s not clear what it is.  and actually I’m crying. And the two of them have gone to look at what is an unmarked grave.  A private person put that thing up, and every five years it gets destroyed, and the private person has to pay for it to be put back.

DP: Still near Lviv, you soon after film a gathering of Nazis who are burying the newly discovered remains of German and Ukranian soldiers who were killed in World War II.   And they treat Horst royally because they so admire his father.  How were you able to handle that without instantly showering several times?

PS: That was shocking. That was shocking. We drove out there because it was Horst’s idea. He said, “Our visit coincides with the the 71^st anniversary of the Galica SS division.  We’ve gone to the burned down synagogue and we’ve gone out to the mass grave, and he’s feeling pretty beaten up by the whole thing. And then all of a sudden, there are these guys who think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread–and “your dad’s great!”  They were giving out photographs of his dad and they didn’t know we were coming!   We turned up and they were suspicious of us—and Horst turns up as the all-conquering hero, the son of the famous governor.

DP: After watching Horst enjoy being made a hero of these Nazis, Niklas states Horst is a Nazi.  Were you agreeing?

PS: No, I say later on that I don’t think Horst is a Nazi. I think he may be a weak person who justifies mass murder.  I think he’s a damaged person, I think he’s a shy person.  And he’s an apologist for what his father did. No doubt about that.  And if being an apologist makes you a Nazi, then…

DP: You don’t think he’s going to go home and contemplate his experience with you and see the film and change his mind?

DE: There is zero chance of Horst ever changing his mind.

DP: Talk about Horst.  In my opinion, it seems that he wants to be challenged over and over again about his denying his father was monster, and he doesn’t want you or Niklas to give up and go away.  He’s the most infuriatingly stubborn person in the world, but he doesn’t hide.  Instead he stays with you and says, “hit me again, hit me again and I’ll see if I can still ward you off.” That seems to be his personality to me.  Does that make sense to you?

PS: That’s very interesting.  When I met Horst for the first time, I was amazed that he would see me and then I was amazed that he opened himself up completely.  He gave me access to anything I wanted to look at, he has never once said no, quite the opposite.  And I really respected that. I really admired that. [Note: Horst has since donated his entire family archives in the digital form to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.]

DP: So you feel protective of him?

PS: I disagree with a lot of his interpretations of what’s real, but while I’m not actually protective, I feel a protective instinct in particular because of that moment in the film when he describes being at his birthday party when he is six years old. That caught me, and I think David, very unexpectedly. That really made it clear that, “Wow, this guy is seriously traumatized by what happened. ”

DE: He wants love.

PS: He is desperate for love.

DP: He misses his mother, not just his father.

PS: For me, that’s the heart of it.   It’s not about his father. There’s a moment when Niklas says his mother was a perfect Nazi, and she always thought what his father did was great.  But Horst loves his mother. To me, that’s the key to Horst.

DP: Now let me ask about Niklas.  At the end of the last scene, after a whole film of saying only negative things about his father–except for one time Hans Frank put shaving cream on his son’s nose–there’s suddenly a moment when he starts to be a little apologetic about him.  Was that a shock to you when he did that?

DE: Niklas is a funny mixture, and watching that part of film always reminds me very, very vividly of his very enigmatic disposition.  All the time we were making the film, I was scrutinizing the three of them, when I was filming and when I wasn’t filming.  I was thinking, “What kind of mood are they in, what kind of material are we likely to get?” And often Niklas was at the same time a very giving and open and equally very, very unpredictable in terms of the kinds of emotions that flicker through him.

DP: He seems consistent in the movie until the end, so is that true?

DE: Well, I’ll give you an example from that sequence, which I think of as being very characteristic of Nik.  He’s sitting there very, very gravely, and he said—and this is not some sort of distortion brought about by the editing–”Now that I find that I’m here in my father’s cell, I do feel a certain amount of pity.” And in response to that, Philippe, understandably empathizing: says, “Is it more intense given that we’re doing this on the actual anniversary of your father’s death?”  And Nik says, “No!”  Like: “What a dumb thing to ask, no it’s not!” He goes very blithely, “In fact by now he was already dead!”  Then he says, “There’s another thing I want to tell you that’s really funny.”  And now I’m thinking, “Oh, where is he going with this?” That was very much Nik’s personality.  He looked like he was near tears, then he tells us a story about his father kneeling, and he’s very critical of organized religions, so he gets in a little jibe: “I bet that Catholic priest loved it when he opened the door and my father was kneeling.”  That’s what I mean–one moment he’s very sad, then he cracks a joke, then he’s making jabs at the Catholic church. He’s just a bit hard to figure out..

DP: I’m surprised by that. Philippe, do you agree with David’s take on Niklas?

PS: Yeah.  I’ve had to manage a very complex relationship with him.  What David didn’t say is that Niklas also likes to be in control of what’s going on.

DP: And it frustrates him that Horst refuses to listen to him and change his mind about his father.

PS:  Not just Horst, he was trying to get control of all of us.  There were times when I’m wondering, “Is Nicklas is playing me?”  Or “Is Horst playing me?”  It’s not a hierarchical relationship Niklas and I have where I say what he should do; everything has to be worked out. There’s give and there’s take. So one moment Niklas will say, “Okay, you can use this video footage.” And then he’ll have second thoughts.  And we’re like, “Oh my god, here we go again.” And then there’s a period of a month and a half of trying to negotiate with him.  Maybe, I’d send him an email with a comma in the wrong place, and he’d interpret it to mean something that was not intended. So you’re treading on broken glass.

DP: So Horst is actually an easier person.

PS:  In a curious way. This did come up after the stage debate in the Purcell Room.  We wondered whether Horst was just more comfortable—his life’s a bit easier. And yet at the end of the day I don’t think that’s where it ends up. Niklas is very tough on himself, and Horst is not in the same way, not in the same style.

DP: Usually when you make a documentary with living people you want them to see the film. Do you care if Niklas and Horst see the film?

PS: Yeah.

DE: I may well be setting myself up for a fall here, but I wouldn’t like it if either of them felt like they had been misrepresented. The film was made in an atmosphere of mutual trust, which I’ve never ever tried to exploit in the editing process, during which I have a vast amount of power and nobody has the ability to go against my choices at that stage. But I don’t believe I’ve misrepresented Horst; in fact I went out of my way to make sure that whenever he said something that seemed completely, baselessly contentious, I really tried to go out on a limb to make sure that we gave him the opportunity to give what he said some sort of context so somebody watching the film would understand why he might  have made that remark.  Otherwise what he said could be used to make him look like a kind of black-hearted psychopath, which Philippe knows he is not. But sometimes he could be his own worst enemy, as when he suddenly turns around at the site the Jews were massacred and talks about Austrian casualties there in the first world war!  Still I very much like to think that Horst would watch this film and recognize that the portrayal of him is fair.

DP: Is it meaningful for you two to be at Tribeca with the film?

PS: Very meaningful for me.  My wife and I live in London but she is a New Yorker and our kids were born here in Manhattan.  So it’s like being home.  Of course given that there is a big Jewish theme, New York is a pretty logical place for it to play.  But it’s not a film only about Jews and Nazis and Poles. It’s a film about a more universal theme–fathers and sons and how that complex relationship turns out.

DE: I have to say that we began this film with a great deal of enthusiasm, but with a very modest sense of what it might become. And to be here and to be having conversations like this one, and to have had the big premiere yesterday, it really feels like an accolade.  I’m just delighted to have a premiere at a festival of this importance.

PS: It was incredibly intense yesterday. I’m a teacher in a classroom and a lawyer in a courtroom, and so I know when you’ve got a room and I know when you’ve lost a room. The room where we played our movie had real tension. You looked down on this sea of faces and you know from the way they are looking at you of the experiences they have been through.

DP: Finally, Philippe, on screen you are in despair that Horst won’t change his mind and admit to his father’s crimes, but is it important that he change his mind?

PS: No. I would have preferred that he change his mind because it would have made me less frustrated.  But that he doesn’t makes for a better film.

Camilla Nielsson Films History As It Happens in Zimbabwe in Democrats

Playing at Festival

Camilla Nielsson Films History As It Happens in Zimbabwe in Democrats

(from Sag Harbor Express Online May 7, 2015)

By Danny Peary

Democrats fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  Now it is playing at the San Francisco Film Festival, following strong receptions at the Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs in Toronto. I was pleased it was chosen Best Documentary at Tribeca because it was my favorite film at the festival.

As I watched this unique film, I wondered: How in the world did esteemed Danish documentarian Camilla Nielsson (Good Morning Afghanistan, The Children of Darfur, Mumbai Disconnected; pictured left) get permission to spend parts of three years in Zimbabwe and witness first-hand the creation of a constitution that ostensibly would pave the way from a thirty-year dictatorship to a new democracy?  I’m sure Nielsson, who earned an M.A. in visual anthropology from NYU, would be content with my using the word “witness” to describe her role, but she was also a “participant.”   As she admits, she developed strong personal connections with and eased the tensions between Paul Mangwana of Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party and Douglas Mwozora of the opposing MDC-T party, her protagonists and the two men in charge of drafting the historic document.  If the late, great Italian director Sergio Leone would have made this film, the handsome, controlled Mwozora would be The Good (although he is more moral and heroic than Clint Eastwood’s character who is “good” by default).  Mugabe, a background figure whose presence is always felt, is The Bad, although he is even worse than Lee Van Cleef’s villain.  Mangwana is The Ugly, which in Leone is a designation decided less by looks than by flaws and jolly humor that makes Eli Wallach’s Tuco likable despite his bad deeds.  As it would is the Eastwood-Wallach coupling in Leone’s classic western, Mwozora is at times like a straight man to his new, always gabby sidekick, Mangwana, who occasionally needs to be reined in.  Both men, who have amazing histories, are fascinating on their own and seeing them together to not establish a comedy team but draft a constitution is a real treat.  What they do together is serious business, true history, but the nature of the friendship that develops between the political foes should give diplomats and democrats hope for the world.  Privy to watching their unlikely bond form, Nielsson was savvy enough to realize that they are more than just historic figures–they are movie stars!  Over breakfast at the Conrad Hotel in New York, during the Tribeca Film Festival, I had the following conversation with the gracious and personable director about her extraordinary documentary.

Danny Peary: Talk about the title, Democrats. If a country has a constitution, does that make it automatically democratic?

Camilla Nielsson: Well, there’s irony in the title because it takes place in Zimbabwe, which, of course, is one of the most anti-democratic places on earth.   When the idea about making the film was presented to me I was very skeptical of the idea of trying to implement a democracy with Robert Mugabe and the Zanu-PF party still in power.  It seemed like a Sisyphus task to introduce democracy while the anti-democratic forces were still in place. It was for me almost a joke to think that this could work out. So the title came very early and I had it with a question mark–Democrats?  I almost want to turn around your question and ask it to American citizens. I realize that in America the word “democrats” has so many connotations that have nothing to do with my movie.  I don’t know if American people read the title and think it’s about the Democratic Party.   In a way I want to reclaim the word ‘democrats” from the U.S.’s Democratic Party brand and reassign it to be a universal reference for anyone in the world who is an advocate for democracy.

DP: Democrats is about the creation of a new constitution in Zimbabwe as a way of establishing a democracy.  When Rhodesia received independence in 1965, it had a constitution, didn’t it, even during all the years of civil war? Then why did they need a new one?

CN: I haven’t read the old constitution, but I know about it was more like a peace document that was formulated in great haste when the British were giving the power back to the Zimbabweans. There were many things that they couldn’t agree on when colonial rule was ended, including land rights, which was a very big issue, and repatriation following the liberation struggle—those things were never settled. It was what could be agreed on, and the Zimbabweans wanted their freedom so they took the constitution knowing that it was a compromise document.

DP: Was Mugabe around then?

CN: He was around, and he was part of the negotiations.

DP: Was he for that one second in his life a decent person?

CN: I think so. If you look at him while he was fighting the liberation struggle, he seems like a very sincere and very likeable man.  He was also very, very smart and had the ambition for a long time to change the constitution because he didn’t want to take over a British formulated government.  But once he got in power [in 1980], he started to receive threats from all sides. I think he realized that the constitution given to his country by the British was quite a handy document to have because it was based on the same constitution that the British used to rule.  So there was a very bad bill of rights, there was no freedom of assembly, and all sorts of things that you wouldn’t think he would have wanted in a new democracy. I think he realized that politically it was a very handy tool to keep his power. So he kept the old constitution and amended it 19 times to reinforce his position, and that’s why he has been able to stay in power for more than thirty years.

DP: Did you film Mugabe making that political address early in the film or was that footage you acquired?

CN: We filmed him.  My DP, Henrik Bohn Ipsen, and me.

DP: How did you feel being in a room with him?

CN: People talk about Bill Clinton appearing in a room and feeling his charisma, but Mugabe’s charisma is something else, I have to say. In the movie, when he enters the room and everybody stands up, there’s dead silence. You can hear the sound of his leather shoes on the floor. That’s as silent as 1,500 people can be. I think on film he burns through the lens, he’s so charismatic. I felt intrigued of course.  He’s a dictator but he’s also an icon.

DP: Did you tell your DP, “Let’s zoom in?”

CN: Yes, of course. And I did sound and moved the boom forward because we wanted to pick up on his rhetorical skills, because he delivers perfect sound bites. He can trash his political opponents and know that he’ll get away with it.

DP: If during his speech, he had looked at you and pointed, would you have felt dread?

CN: There would have been a dread, yes. He did stare at us from the stage a couple of times, probably wondering,who is this white media?  We were the only white people in the room so we were quite conspicuous.  Although we had a permit from his ministry to film I’m not sure Mugabe was personally aware of this documentary being made. I don’t think so.

DP: It was fascinating watching him speak to all his acolytes, and they’re all laughing at whatever he says. Did that strike you as strange considering nothing he said was humorous?

CN: I think that strikes everyone who sees the movie—why are they laughing? There’s a scene in the film where Douglas Mwonzora’s assistant describes the dictatorship, saying “We’re a nation of great pretenders, we’ve been cowed so badly that if you look around, things look normal. But they are not normal, there’s terror everywhere.”  For me, that sums up the type of dictatorship there is in Zimbabwe, because if you just arrive in the capital, Harare, and you drive around the city, it looks like paradise.  Everything is green, the sun is shining, and people look happier than where I live, Copenhagen, where the sky is always gray. So it takes some time to deconstruct the layers. The reason people are smiling is that Mugabe is the type of dictator who just needs to adjust his glasses and everybody knows that it’s time to smile. It’s a very subtle dictatorship, where people are taught to laugh and to smile on cue, and for me that’s an even worse level of deterioration than if you at least have some kind of protest.

DP: I’m sure a lot of us who watch the movie here are envious of you for having such access to a constitution being written in an African country, because we’d have to go back through the centuries to see ours being written and experiencing history in the same way.

CN: The million-dollar question at the Q&As after my film is screened is of course, “How did you have access in a country that has banned foreign media?”  You can’t even get a camera into the country, so to get cameras in and then out was not easy. There’s a huge bureaucracy and two weeks before we arrived, we faxed equipment lists, noting every single XLR cable, every single serial number, to the government, the Ministry of Information. It was all approved, and sent back. If we had arrived short one XLR cable, it would take us another four hours in the airport to negotiate that.

DP: Since it turned out to be so difficult getting access, I’m surprised that you actually came up with the idea to make a film there.

CN: The idea to make this film was not mine but came from a very good friend, a Danish journalist named Peter Tygesen, who lived in Zimbabwe for many years. I think that originally he wanted originally to write a book about the process of the two parties writing a constitution, and then he came up with the idea of making a film.  He pitched it to the production company where I was working.   I’d never been to Zimbabwe, so I used him as a consultant and he’s credited for the idea and for research.  I think he still wants to write the book.

DP: How long did you anticipate you’d be there? Because I know the constitution took two years longer than they anticipated.

CN: It was supposed to take a year and we added a little buffer. We expected a year and a half.  We went back and forth for three years, we made thirteen trips.

DP: Did you film an unbelievable amount?

CN: An unbelievable amount, 300 hours.  Being white, we stood out all over, and people there are wary of cameras, of course, so it was the most difficult shoot.

DP: And what made you go back each time? Were things happening, or were you just following a schedule?

CN: There were times in the process when there was nothing interesting for us to film. After they had the public hearings, there were six months of data analysis and that doesn’t make for a very interesting shoot.

DP: Did someone get in touch and say that you might want to come film something important?

CN: That happened at the end.  At the beginning of the process, they wanted the film to be made, but I didn’t have any direction in terms of deciding when was a good time to be there.  I sort of had to target the right shooting times myself. And I think halfway though, when we got really into the filming and they understood what kind of project we were doing, they started to be the ones calling me back.  Douglas Mwonzora called it “reverse Stockholm Syndrome.”  At the beginning they were a little wary of this camera and this white woman filming everything they did, and at the end they got so attached to me and the project that they called me.

DP: He looks regal.

CN: Mwonzora’s in fact the great-grandson of a former kind of Zimbabwe—a legendary man.  He looks regal. He moves regal. He’s a very elegant.  He has an interesting psychology.  He’s the most-prosecuted man in Zimbabwe’s political history. He has been arrested twenty-eight times in his life, but was always acquitted.

DP: Did he have to face the charges that were brought against him during the process to get him out of the way?

CN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was acquitted just about a month ago. If you’re not a real threat to this regime, why would they care? He is one of the most brilliant people that I ever met. He’s subtle about it, his strategies, but he really knows what he’s doing. Obviously in a documentary like this, I can’t include all the details, but if I had written a book, for me an important thing is the differences in his background and Mangwana’s.   While Mwonzora is almost royalty, Mangwana grew up with a poor father who toiled in a white man’s mine. And I think that dynamic is so much in them, in the way they walk and the way they talk. I guess he would do well in American politics, there’s that saying here—who would you rather have a beer with?  Paul Mangwana has been in power as long as he’s had a political career. He’s in his mid-50s. His brother fought in the liberation struggle and was jailed during the liberation struggle, that’s how he got involved in politics. He’s been Minister of Information for many years, he’s also been the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.  He’s held many important positions in Mugabe’s government throughout the years.

DP: I would think Mwozora likes everybody, but did Mangwana get to like you?

CN: Paul and I liked each other instantly. I think he liked me because he felt I had an understanding of the impacts of colonial history and that we share some ideas about where the natural resources from the African continent should go, and how they should be negotiated. If you look at the Zanu-PF manifesto of the liberation struggle, I would agree with most of what it said in there, in terms of black people’s rights. I know the story really well, and I think he connected to that. The last thing he said when we first met was, “You talk like a black woman in a white woman’s body.” I took that as a compliment.  There was a chemistry between us that I can’t explain. If there was a wedding, you’d probably seat us and at opposite ends of the table if you knew only our backgrounds and politics, but there was some very special energy between us, a very special understanding.

DP: That’s interesting. I wouldn’t think a Republican could ever be my friend, but on occasion I’ll hang out with one and think, “You know, I like this guy.”  Was it the same with you and Mangwana?

CN: That’s how I felt, and that’s an intriguing experience.  I think it was the same for him: “How, with all my feelings about white people and Europeans, can I connect with this woman?” He’s a representative of the dictator Mugabe, so psychologically we had an interesting process together, I think we collapsed some of the cultural barriers that would usually be there.  He’s the reason we made this film, I have to say. I became less interested in the constitution-making process and more intrigued by the two men, especially Mwonzora’s relationship with a guy like Mangwana because they have such different personalities. If I were to make a fiction movie about the same thing, I don’t think I could have cast a better buddy couple. I met them first individually and discussed the project, and the next day I met them together for lunch, and I was totally sold on the idea because of their dynamic.

DP: Did you explain that to them?

CN: In the beginning, no. But at some point nobody thought drafting a new constitution would ever get anywhere, and they asked me, “Why do you keep coming back to Zimbabwe and pushing this movie?” And then I told them, “It’s about you!” I had a bigger gallery of characters in my head before I started making the movie–there were many more people involved–but I decided to stick with the two of them.

DP: So whether the constitution was actually written or not, you’d still have a movie?

CN: I still thought that I had a movie, yeah. Either a tragedy or one with a happy ending.

DP: Was being female helpful?

CN: I think it was a very big advantage being female. What I said before about the Stockholm Syndrome—we had a bubble, the three of us, and I think what happened is that Mangwana and Mwonzora were under so much pressure from all sides–their parties, the population, the donors, each other—to succeed in drafting the constitution that they appreciated having a woman around who never asked critical questions, who was just observed and listened and was very loyal to them. Also I sort of facilitated communication between them, because there were many times when the process was stalled and they didn’t speak to each other.

DP: Did you bite your tongue?

CN: I had some critical questions that I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to jeopardize anything, so I planned to hold on to them for my final trip.  Then I asked Mangwana a few critical questions.  There’s a scene in the film when he meets with a famous female South African white journalist and she asks him questions.

DP: It seemed to me that she was in the vanguard of international journalists who were observing and saying that everything the Zanu-PF party was doing was not on the up and up and was sabotaging the democratic process.  She wouldn’t back down to him. That’s what I saw as her role, which is different than your role.

CN: She’s a journalist; I am an anthropologist.

DP: Was Mangwana wary of women in the media because of her?

CN: No, no, no. That’s another thing–Mangwana and I didn’t relate as man and woman. We got rid of the categories of being a white woman and a black man and anything that might get in the way of having the kind of relationship that we had.

DP: Mangwana was under tremendous stress because a draft of the constitution called for terms limits for the president and that would have disqualified Mugabe from running for reelection.  He was arguing against that clause, but he was being called a traitor by conservatives and his life was in jeopardy.  What was your relationship with him at that time?

CN: I think comforting, supporting. He confided in me.  Both men traveled through the country, so we’d spend a lot of time on the road and staying in hotels, and there was a lot of free time in the evening and he confided in me a lot, saying things that, of course, I would never put in the film. And that helped developed the special trust that we had.  He’s a former Minister of Information, so he knows what a camera does, and he was very professional about what he said on-camera and what he said off-camera.

DP: Did he realize early on in the film that as a spokesman and representative of Mugabe’s government, that he was a liar and a manipulator?  And if he did realize it, did  it bother him?

CN: It’s a good question. I don’t know. I think he was so ingrained in the system that in many ways he felt that the things he was doing were appropriate. There’s a scene in the film in a Harare suburb, and Mugabe supporters have been bussed in to dilute the opposition vote. I’m sure Mangwana can tell that those people in those hats  and sitting on those benches didn’t look like people from that area. A Zimbabwean can distinguish that in a split second. To him the world looks completely different and he makes jokes about it, and then in the car, immediately after, he tells me, “We’re doing very well, we have structure and when I give an order it comes down.” When he tells me that, it indicates that he didn’t feel that there’s anything wrong with stacking the vote, that’s just how it works. He even says It’s a guerilla party, it’s a military operation and that’s how we operate. It came out of a liberation struggle, a revolution, and it will always be a revolutionary party, that’s how we organize.  Mwonzora is a true democrat in my book; Mangwana can be sort of a democrat.

DP: There’s a line in the movie.  “It was never our intention to have a constitution, or a democracy.”

CN: That’s Mugabe.  Democracy in Africa is a difficult proposition, he says. Because he believes that always the opposition wants much more than it deserves.

DP: Does Mangwana believe that too?

CN: No.

DP: He doesn’t at the beginning?

CN: Not even at the beginning.

DP: But he says that for 33 years Mugabe’s system has worked, so let’s just keep it the way it is.

CN: But I am sure that’s not his position. He even says, “Sometimes you need to change the thinking of your own leaders.”

DP: Well, he says that later in the film. Of course, I didn’t see what he said off-camera to you.

CN: It’s a very fragmented party. There’s a progressive side, and then there’s the old guard. And the younger members actually do want a different kind of system.

DP: I would think that by the time the constitution is completed, Mangwana realizes that a new system makes sense in the new, progressive Zimbabwe.

CN: And I think he is very proud of the constitution, and he should be. He was in the tougher place of the two of them. Mwonzora’s journey was pretty straight-forward. He’s in the opposition, he wants democratic change, he has his whole party behind him. He can sort of only go one way and he feels pressure from only one side. Mangwana has pressure from the opposition, from his own party, and from Mwonzora, who’s a very, very good negotiator, So I think he is the one on the hot spot,

DP: Does Mwonzora ever get anxious, or is he always calm?

CN: The most anxious I saw him is in the film, when Mangwana walks out of the meeting room in frustration because the drafters won’t change the term limits wording. Mwonzora’s worries that if Mangwana fires the drafters of the constitution because of this, they’ll have to start over, and they’ve spent the money they were allotted and the whole thing will collapse. So he says that’s not gonna happen.  That was the most affirmative I saw him in three years. That speaks to his character, I think.

DP: Do you think Mwonzora saved Mangwana’s life by agreeing to the compromise that allowed Mugabe to run again?  Because after that Mangwana is relaxed.

CN: It’s hard to speculate. The thing is, if that clause had stayed in, [preventing Mugabe from running for re-election], Mugabe would never have signed the constitution, and the whole project would have failed. He never would have signed a constitution that would end his own power, for sure. Mwonzora knew that, and I think he just sort of played a high-stakes game.  He high-rolled on this one because Mangwana was so focused on getting that clause out of the constitution that Mwonzora got another two or three things through that he probably wouldn’t have otherwise.  So he just gambled. I’m sure he wouldn’t have done anything to endanger Mangwana’s life, if it came to that.

DP: There’s a great shot of the two of them sitting together right before the constitution was printed, and they are kicking their legs as if they are little kids. I love that.

CN: Yes. They’re both sitting there doing that and you can see they’re totally in sync. It’s that image I used on the poster. They really care for each other,

DP: When the constitution was written and Xeroxed, you were there for that.  Amazing!

CN: That’s a great moment. I think.  There’s a scene in the film where they got the results from the referendum approving the constitution, and it’s a very emotional moment for them because even as they printed out the new constitution, they were never certain it would go to referendum. We were also not sure the referendum wouldn’t be manipulated by the Zanu-PF to go against the constitution. So once the constitution was approved by such a big majority, there was such feeling in that room that day.  They were teary, I was teary. It was such a euphoric moment. We were still editing that scene up to the last moment, and I went through a lot of Kleenex. I was very emotional about it when it happened, and I still get emotional about it.

DP: You’ve surely never experienced anything like it in your life. Who has?

CN: Right. I don’t think I’ll ever make a film as intense and as involved. I don’t think I could. It took a lot of engagement on many different levels.  I think of the scene in the film where Mwonzora meets the people in his constituency, just after the referendum passed.  They’re dancing and he’s greeted with gratitude.  That’s another emotional scene for me.

DP: Do you wish the world knew about Mwonzora, that he’s a hero?

CN: We’re trying to have him travel with the film. He was supposed to be here in New York with me for this festival, as a matter of fact, but getting his conviction overturned took time and getting his visa took too long.   Both of them did come to Copenhagen for the opening.  I wanted them to see the film before we released it, so they came a week before the premiere, when we would finalize the edit, to make sure there wasn’t a scene or a remark or something that they felt had to be deleted because it was too dangerous for them to have it included. I felt I knew Zimbabwe very well at that point, what would be sensitive and what would not be sensitive, but there could have been some things that I thought were completely innocent that could have put them at great risk.  There were some scenes—such as them sitting together on the park bench—I was ready to cut out.  I’m glad I didn’t have to, but I offered. It’s important for the film as well, because if we ended with Mugabe killing the process, it would have been a pure tragedy. I think the final scene where you see that the two of them are still pals after all that happened, and walking through the park together, gives me a sense of hope.  That friendship they createdand the bond they made, may have planted a small seed.

DP: Are they still both at the forefront of the culture, or have they been pushed away?

CN: They have had very different trajectories after the process ended. When we made the film Mwonzora was the spokesman of the party, but now he is actually rising in the ranks.  He’s now the Secretary General of the Movement for Democratic Change. So he’s basically Morgan Tsvangirai’s right-hand man and second in power in the opposition. DP: Basically, Mugabe said, I don’t care what was decided, nothing is changing. So does the opposition party feel it has any power?

CN: Not after the way Mugabe stole the next election a few months after.  It was so blatant. He got 80% of the votes in areas where he would usually get 0%. He got the majority in areas where he had massacred people thirty years ago, where nobody would vote for Mugabe. The stealing of the election was too successful, so it didn’t look credible at all. But since it was accepted, and there was no death, blood, violence—it was free and fair—they got such a big majority in Parliament that they can do whatever they want, basically. I couldn’t believe it. At that point, when Mugabe signed the constitution into power, in front of the world press, I thought, “What a smart move, Mr. Mugabe, because with your history, signing a democratic constitution in the 11^th hour of your presidency will maybe give you a better legacy than if you hadn’t.  Maybe people will look at your time as president and as a freedom fighter with a different eye, if at the last minute you turned around and did something good for the country.”  I was looking to go to Tsvangirai’s inauguration party, in fact. I was shocked. Everyone was shocked. I got text messages from Mwonzora and his assistant and from friends and it was all, “What happened here?”   They were so sure they were going to win. And so the opposition completely fell apart in the coming months, they started in-fighting and blaming each other for went wrong  All that stuff. Divide and rule, perfect.

DP: Where could you have gone wrong with this film?

CN: For me the biggest failure would have been if the Zimbabweans didn’t like the movie.  It has been screened in Zimbabwe already, and we’ve tested it with a Zimbabwean audience and no one receives this film better than the Zimbabweans.

DP: Where did you show it?

CN: We had a screening in Harare, hosted by the Danish ambassador. I cannot go back into Zimbabwe because I was arrested on my last trip there–that’s another story. For me, it was important that the people saw the film before we started this international festival tour. It’s their film, it’s their constitution. And it’s very emotional for me when the Zimbabweans see this film and become emotional themselves. For me, the biggest failure would have been that they didn’t see the Zimbabwe that they know, and even worse if I had been accused of having some kind of colonial gaze or repeating another white story.

DP: What kind of transformations have Mwonzora, Mangwana, and you had because of your experience together?

CN: We all went through a great change, most notably Mangwana. And maybe I come second.  I think Mwonzora is the one who stayed most on course. I learned a lot from the two of them, Mwonzora especially. I’m a much more calm, take things as they come, and am not the type of person that I was before I made this movie.   There’s this idea that when you make a film that you can control everything and every day will go as planned– and everybody will be on time–ut I learned very quickly that’s not going to happen, and the more you let loose and stay in the moment the more gifts you will get from reality and things you would never have been able to imagine will happen.

DP: You went to Tisch and lived in New York for six years.  Have you enjoyed being back in New York with your movie?

CN: It had a very good reception here, it’s been quite overwhelming.  We’ve had such great Q&As, good debates. I don’t know if it’s usually like that here, but people have had such strong reactions to the film that we have continued the Q&As in the hallways.  It has been very intense.  Also it has been very sweet because my editor, sound designer, and the production guys came here on their own to be part of this. There’s so much love by all of us in regard to this movie.

TFF: Alexis Alexiou's Gangster Film, Wednesday O4:45

Playing at Festival

TFF: Alexis Alexiou's Gangster Film, Wednesday O4:45

(from Sag Harbor Express Online 5/4/15)

By Danny Peary

The title of Greek director-writer Alexis Alexiou’s visually striking Wednesday 04:45, which made its world premiere at the recent Tribeca Film Festival,  refers to the time Athens jazz club owner, Stelios (Stelios Mainas), must pay off his debt to a ruthless Romanian gangster or face the consequences.

Director-writer Alexis Alexiou (left) and editor Lambis Charalambidis.

As the seemingly doomed man tries to change his sorry destiny, he deals with his demons from a life that was not always well-spent.  During the festival I did the following interview with Alexiou and his editor, Lambis Charalambidis. about his stylized, action-packed but dreamy second feature–both a tribute to American gangster films and westerns and sad commentary on his once proud country that is in economic crisis.

Danny Peary: I’m sure the look of the film is the first thing people respond to.  I think it looks spectacular. Is that the way you pictured it? Did you spend a lot of time storyboarding this and figuring out all your camera angles?

Alexis Alexiou: Yeah, we spent six or seven months storyboarding, and we spent even more time, a year, doing location scouting. The storyboards were based on the actual locations, and they were very close to the final way we shot it.  I also made notes about lighting, production design, and the costumes. So we really worked hard to visualizeeverything. What I wanted to do was create a very visual and aural experience.

DP: So Lambis when did you come in? I would think pretty early on.

Lambis Charalambidis: I came in two or three months before Alex started shooting. I wasn’t present for the storyboarding. We tested a lot of cameras to have the look that they wanted. And we made this work.  We checked everything and after we started editing.   We tried to deconstruct the storyboards. Since Alexis shoots from many different angles we had choices of what shots to use.  We could change things that didn’t work or had problems.

DP: Alexis, what was your initial conversation with Lambis?

AA: I gave him a couple of films to see.

LC:  He gave me many films to see!

AA: Some gangster films, some westerns.

DP: Am I right in thinking Sergio Leone was an influence on you?

AA: For sure.  And Sam Peckinpah.

DP: Is your lead actor Stelios Mainas well-known in Greece?

LC: He’s one of the biggest stars there.

DP: And he plays a character with the same name, Stelios.

AA: That was a coincidence.

DP: When did he come on the project?

AA: When I had a first draft I gave it to him. I wasn’t sure if he was perfect for the part at the time, but when he read it and really liked it, I realized he understood everything I wanted to do.

DP:  The character he plays, Stelios, dominates the film, appearing in almost every scene other than when the two Tarantino-like henchmen are having nutty conversations,  In fact, there are not that many characters in your movie, but it has the look of an epic. So did you have the biggest budget in the world, or did you have a limited budget and try to make it grandiose?

AA: The latter. We knew we had a limited budget but we didn’t really know how much.  We were trying to set up the film and we were always losing financing because of the economic situation in Greece. At some point Greek public television collapsed, and we had other problems.  At the end we had very little money, and we tried to put everything into the shoot. That’s also why we tried to plan everything beforehand—if you don’t have enough money, then you have to be very specific about what you shoot.

LC: A lot of people worked for very little money.

AA: Nobody was paid properly.

DP: What is going on with the Greek film industry at this point, and where is your film situated—is it the only gangster film?

AA: It’s rocky. Dying—well, financially, but movies are still being made, and some of them are interesting. Most of the movies are dramas or comedies, we don’t really have a tradition in genre filmmaking.

DP: I came across this quote by you is “I want to convince people that it’s possible to make a genre film, in this case a crime thriller in a country without a relevant cinematic tradition.”

AA: There are a few film noirs and crime dramas but they tend toward naturalism or realism.

DP: Would you call yours expressionistic?

AA: Yeah, I would say it’s stylized, not realistic. The story is kind of realistic, but the way that the story and the visual style of the film unfolds, make it seem to me to be almost surreal or even absurd. That’s one of the things I’m afraid not everyone likes. So they say, “What the hell am I watching?”  But I believe it still makes sense.

DP: You wanted to be surreal stylistically but you also are making real political comments about the economy of Greece, which is on the decline. So there are two levels you’re working at.  Is that a fair assessment?

AA: It is. The crisis in Greece is of course part of it; it affects the storyline. The fact that the protagonist can not actually find a way to pay the money he owes has a lot to do with the economy.  The riots and the burning trees is rather surreal way to show it.

DP: Stelios once was thriving and now he’s on the decline.  You deliberately wrote of an older, past-his-prime guy, so was it your intention that he embody Greece?

AA: When I was writing the screenplay, an article in an American newspaper, probably The Financial Times, stated that “watching Greece is like watching a car crash in slow motion.” I thought it was a great idea.  We have the story of a man, Stelios, and you’re watching his life, and see him crashing slowly against the wall. He knows that is what is happening, but he can’t do anything. It’s all slow motion, but he cannot escape.

DP: I like the rise-and-fall theme found in most gangster movies, from the Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney films of the thirties to Avalon.  We see Stelios on the decline, but what was he like twenty or thirty years ago?

AA: He was probably living the high life. He had already made some money, smuggling furs out of Greece to the Balkans. Russia, Bulgaria. There were a lot of furs produced in the ‘80s. He had a lot of money and then he decided to stop being a criminal and to say, “No, I can come to Athens and be a legitimate businessman and do something classy, like run a jazz club.”

DP: He doesn’t just run the club, but is an expert and devotee of jazz, which I think makes you like this guy. Is that true?

AA: Yeah, yeah. He’s a guy who loves jazz, but in a way he has lost his way, and confused his love for jazz, his passion, with vanity and ambition. Now it’s important for him to have the perfect sound system, even though it costs a fortune and maybe there’s nothing wrong with the speakers he already has. But he has to make everything perfect.

DP: I came across a review in which a Green critic stated “innocence and perpetual return of childhood occupy the heart of the movie, otherwise a dark and violent exercise in postmodern noir, taking place in contemporary Athens, a city with a bleak future, very much like the central hero.”  He goes on to write about the great Leone-like moment when the boys ice cream melts as a gun fight is nearing outside the café. What does this represent–the end of innocence?

AA: Yeah, exactly. At this point, the father of the kid is getting shot. So for the kid, it’s the end—he has to grow up. It’s also ties into one of the themes of the film. Stelios, the protagonist, is a completely immature guy.  He cannot even tie his shoelaces, like a kid. He’s made all those mistakes in his life, but he’s not able to take responsibility as an adult. He’s still very much pursuing a kid’s dream.

DP: So is this a movie about failed dreams?

AA: Yes, of course.

DP: Of course? This guy had potential to go legit, but he wanted more and dreamt about more…

AA: And for the wrong reasons, maybe. Or he got lost on the way, or confused his priorities. He didn’t only want the flat and the good music, he wanted the expensive car, the expensive house, the wife, the girlfriend.  He wanted a bigger life and status.

DP: Talk about the violence. Is that influenced by westerns more than old gangster films?

AA: The way the film is structured, it leads to the final shootout—it’s more like a western.

DP: Lambis, was it fun editing the big action sequences outside the café and on the roof of the building?

LC: It was fun and very interesting.  You don’t know what you see, you want to cry and to laugh, so there is double meaning.  You see it with the music and the slo-mo. It is violent, but in a way it isn’t violent.

DP: The slow-mo recalls Peckinpah.  That’s it’s operatic recalls Leone.

LC: I think it’s poetic.

DP: Alexis, did you do that at the beginning or at the end of the shoot, the final action?

AA: That scene on the rooftop was the last thing we did, and it was very complex. We shot most of the film during winter or early spring, but this scene has rain and we couldn’t have the actors be wet during winter, so we had to wait until the end.

LC: It also helped the movie that the actors knew what was taking place.

AA: Yes, they had already played the rest of the scene, so they knew how to do that final sequence.

DP: How has your experience been at the Tribeca Film Festival?  Are people understanding that Wednesday 04:45 is made by someone from Greece who has seen a lot of American movies?

AA: I think they’ve really enjoyed it.  They have stayed for the Q&As and have really aksed good questions. I think it’s resonating with the audience.

TFF: Australian Tony McNamara on His American Film, Ashby

Playing at Festival

TFF: Australian Tony McNamara on His American Film, Ashby

(from Sag Harbor Express Online May 1, 2015)

By Danny Peary

One of the most fan-friendly films at the recent Tribeca Film Festival was Ashby, an amiable mix of comedy and drama, the conventional and the quirky, good guys and villains that is set in Virginia but was written and directed by an Aussie, Tony McNamara.

Tony Ashby

Ed Wallis (Nat Wolff, bound for stardom) tries to keep his spirits up despite having no friends at high school because he is too smart, a lonely single mother (Sarah Silverman) who settles for loser boyfriends, and a father who keeps breaking his promise to fly into town to see him.  But his life changes when, despite his fear of being tackled, he joins the football team as a wide receiver; meets the smart and pretty Eloise (Emma Roberts); and, for a school project, spends time with his older next door neighbor, Ashby (Mickey Rourke).  Ashby becomes Ed’s tough-love mentor, surrogate father, biggest supporter, and best friend. But he discovers Ashby is dying and was a prolific CIA assassin–and his killing days may not be over.  I spoke to Tony McNamara about his unusual film during the festival.

Danny Peary: When you grew up in Australia did you see every movie that played there?

Tony McNamara: No, I grew up in the country and didn’t really see movies much at all. I’m from Kilmore, about an hour or so out of Melbourne, and didn’t really start watching movies until a video shop opened there.  I did love the Marx Brothers because they used to play them every Saturday night.  Then I moved to the city and started writing plays, and I went to the national film school and did screenwriting there.  Then at the same time I was writing plays, I worked on a bunch of TV shows as a writer.  [Following that was an adaptation of the award-winning play The Cage Latte Kid, retitled The Rage in Placid Lake.]  And then I  wrote this script, in Australia.

DP: So in Australia, you have essentially written nonstop.

TM: It’s fun, I never don’t enjoy it.  When I’m not directing, I write every day.

DP: Ashby takes place in America and is about a teenager, Ed, who joins his Virginia high school football team. And his older new friend, Ashby, is a CIA assassin.  Do you consider this an American movie?

TM: Very much so. I guess it’s a sort of an Australian-American movie, because I am Australian and wrote and directed it, but to me it’s an American movie that I wanted to set here and wanted to be about here. I’ve been working in America on and off for a long time, and I love American football and I’m really interested in the CIA and politics, and all that kind of stuff.  So writing and directing this movie just seemed like a fun thing. I wrote the script and away we went.

DP: If video stores still existed and you found your movie in the comedy section, would you leave it there or move it to the drama section?

TM: Good question!  But it’s tough to answer.  Ashby is a funny drama, I’d say, because it ends up being more dramatic than funny.

DP: When you were writing it, were you thinking, tone, tone, tone, I have to keep it in a certain tone?

TM: Yeah, I think the tone was really the hardest, most important thing because it goes from a certain extreme in comedy, particularly early on, and then gets dark; and then it gets even darker and has less comedy, but I did want it to still be humorous.

DP: There is a lot of humor in the movie but there’s a lot of sadness, too, and the only reason we might think of it as a comedy is that Ed is so cheerful.  We really see unhappy stuff over and over again.

TM:  Yeah, that’s true. We would talk about how the three main characters, Ed, Ashby, and Eloise, are sort of lost and are looking for something, some kind of human connection.  The movie is about how the characters have lost something or someone and try to find someone who will fill this gap for them.  Of course, you don’t always find the right version of what you are looking for.  I guess it becomes sort of happy for Ed, because he’s finally found things that make him want to go on with in his life, and found the right girl and stuff. But it comes from a sad place.

DP: I know your movie was inspired by Harold and Maude, in which the Ruth Gordon elderly character, Maude, dies, but not before she influences a depressed, suicidal young man, Bud Cort’s Harold, to start living.

TM: Yeah, yeah, it’s very similar. I was a big fan of Harold and Maude.   There are a lot of coming-of-age films, but I love the idea of a movie that’s also about facing your death..  That’s probably because I’m in now in my early forties and so I’ve come of age and am in the middle of my life and I’m rapidly facing my death. I was interested in the things you believe in when you’re 18. Ashby believed in a lot of things then and those thing created his life, and he’s trying to hold it all together.

DP: Are you surprised when you’re in America and in Hollywood and realize that people  don’t remember Hal Ashby, the director of Harold and Maude and other classics?

TM:  I’m very surprised because there’s a real love today of ‘70s filmmaking yet he’s overlooked.   He did have a great talent for—and I aspire to be able to do it as well—mixing straight drama with comedy.  Harold and Maude has a beautifully emotional ending that’s so uplifting.  I like that you can have a film that’s so funny yet still be really moving at the end.  But yes, I am a bit disappointed how forgotten he is, so I guess that’s why I called my character Ashby.

DP: Your characters have bad expectations because they’ve had so many things go wrong and so many people let them down.  For instance, Ed, whose father always disappoints him, thinks, Oh, here’s another bad thing that’s happening to me, and just accepts it.  And his mother thinks lousy lovers are the best she can do.  Were you conscious that your characters are so used to being mistreated that it is what they expect?

TM:  Not really. I think all characters in drama are, to a degree, always trying to fix their problems.  I  guess they feel positive in that way, but still a lot of things go wrong for them in their lives.

DP: Is Ed’s character a bit of you as a kid?

TM:  Probably, I think so. In the school scenes–the classroom scenes, the football scenes–in particular.  Ed’s teacher who’s kind of funny to the kids is very much based on someone who was like a bad mentor figure to me. He didn’t care to be a mentor, but through the force of his intelligence and his rudeness to all his students, he made me think about the world in a different way. I kind of put him in this movie because he was someone who made me think I could be more than I had thought.

DP: Does Ed realizes that his mentor Ashby can help him get out of his funk and move forward in life?

TM: Ed thinks he can, especially in the middle of the movie. He thinks he’s found a surrogate dad and a mentor, someone to listen to him and give him the masculine lessons he needs.  Later in the movie, there’s a sweetening to their friendship. Ashby’s not the perfect mentor, but you don’t get the perfect mentor but get what everyone is–someone who is complicated and sort of good and sort of not so good, you know? That’s why Ed ends up believing, through Ashby, that he has to find what he believes in.  He also must come to terms with what Ashby did in his life.  That will allow him to arrive to his own place.

DP: The priest tells Ashby, “In your heart, you think you’re a good man.” I am sure that’s an important line in your movie, and I think he can honestly say, yes.

TM:  Yeah, I think so. This was a big thing to Mickey.  Ashby was so important to him as a character who had done good but wasn’t sure he was a good man. Suddenly Ashby wondered, “Maybe I didn’t do good, maybe my life was wrong.”  It’s interesting, that idea. There are periods in your life when you believe something, but then you turn around and go, “Huh?  It was wrong what was driving me the whole time.” Not that I’m saying that he’s wrong or right.

DP: Ashby tells the priest Edmund Burke’s famous line: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

TM: I thought it was interesting that Ashby says it.  He’s struggling at that point, but he assumes everything he has done was for good.  But to me it’s a more complicated idea because of who “good men” are.

DP: The scene with Ashby and the priest is one of several sharply-written two-character scenes in the movie.  Did your decision to write many two-character scenes come from writing for the stage?

TM: I don’t know!  But I did a lot of TV, in which there are a lot of two-character scenes.  There was the suggestion of melding all the characters together and having more scenes with all of them, but I was really conscious about keeping Ed’s world apart from the other characters’.  He takes what he has with Ashby back to Eloise and his mom.  The various characters cross paths slightly, but for the most part Ed is always going from one character to another.  He doesn’t have a whole unit around him, everything is sort of separated.

DP: Ed’s mother, played by Sarah Silverman, is a peripheral character, but if she isn’t the caring mother that she is, Ed would really be fucked up, right?

TM: Yeah, totally. Sarah is so great because she brings this strength and this humor to the part.  You don’t doubt that her character loves her son, but you also understand she’s like everybody else in the movie and is seeking something that she thinks will make her happy.  She wants another husband even though the last one was a dick. She wants some love.

DP: Did you cast Nat Wolff and Emma Roberts, who are both really nice people, together because they are close friends?

TM: I didn’t know they knew each other at that point. When I cast Emma as Eloise, she emailed me and said, “We’re buddies.” They’ve known each other since they were nine, and they act like brother and sister on the set. They’re such lovely kids and so talented.

DP: Did you audition Nat or did you know about him already?

TM: We had auditions, but I’d seen him in a few things and knew I wanted him. Nat’s a really great actor and so funny and charming.  We first had a Skype meeting, because I was in Sydney and he was in Montana, and we just got on really well and then he came to L.A. and did an audition.  As soon as I saw him, I thought, “That’s Ed.” He and I went to Mickey’s house to see what their chemistry would be. But I was already sure it was going to be him.

DP: Ashby is Mickey Rourke’s best role since The Wrestler.  Did you always see him in the part?

TM:  To be honest. I thought Ashby should be older and Mickey was probably too young for the part.  Then Mickey read the script and really liked it, so we met and hung out and talked a lot and I could tell he understood all of it.  He understood the character and the Catholic thing.  And he understood what his own life means to Ashby, whether he screwed it up or not.  And that Ashby’s getting older, the age thing. was interesting to him. I really liked the idea of Ed going next door expecting to meet a nice old neighbor for school, and instead it’s someone being played by Mickey Rourke. So it was cute.

DP: What does bringing Ashby to the Tribeca Film Festival mean to you?

TM:  It’s exciting as hell.  I love New York, and to have a film play here is really great.  Also Nat lives here, so it’s good to see him and hang out.

Felix Thompson's "King Jack" Is Crowned TFF's Favorite Film

Playing at Festival

Felix Thompson's King Jack Is Crowned TFF's Favorite Film

(from Sag Harbor Express Online April 27, 2015)

By Danny Peary

King Jack fits my category Movies That Should Play in Sag Harbor.  I believe writer-director Felix Thompson’s tough-but-affectionate ode to boyhood will get theatrical distribution because on Saturday it received the Tribeca Film Festival’s Audience Award as the most popular narrative film.

Jack (Charlie Plummer) and Ben (Cory Nichols).

Thompson’s first feature takes place in a small, past-its-prime town in upstate New York, where fifteen-year-old Jack (a winning performance by Charlie Plummer) tries to get through a summer weekend despite having no friends or good role models, a critical older brother Tom (Christian Madsen), and a loving but oblivious mother who is busy working; and having to look after his younger cousin Ben (Cory Nichols is instantly likable), being hounded by bully Shane (Danny Flaherty) and his thuggish friends, and chasing after an elite girl who doesn’t like him–while not noticing the much cooler Holly (Chloe Levine) is interested in him.  There will be trouble.   Early in the festival I did this brief interview with Felix Thompson.  A week later King Jack won the festival’s biggest award and Thompson received a $25,000 prize.

Felix Thompson

Danny Peary: King Jack takes place in a small town rather than a rural setting but it reminds me of Daniel Patrick Carbone’s Hide Your Smiling Faces, which is another director-writer’s memory piece about two boys experiencing a difficult rite of passage over a hazy summer.  Did you know him when you attended Tisch?

Felix Thompson: Yeah, he’s a lovely guy and I’m glad to be put in his company.

DP: Did you grow up in New York?

FT: I first grew up in Australia.  I was born in Sydney, and we moved to New York when I was about 9.  I’ve been living in here ever since and went to Tisch.

DP: I watched you being interviewed on television, and you said King Jack is about how Jack, a young teen whose older brother Tom has resented him since their now absent father would treat him royally and call him “King Jack,” gets the chance himself to be an older brother to his young cousin.  Because that’s your theme you made Ben younger than Jack rather than the same age.

FT: Yes. For me, really, I wanted to make a film about what growing up is. I think growing up is learning to care about other people more than you care about yourself. What Ben’s arrival does is help Jack grow up.

DP: I think there’s a lot of stuff going on with Jack at this time in his life.  Do you think he knows what he wants in life, or is he just taking it one day at a time?

FT: When I was thinking about what his driving ambition is, I looked at the title, King Jack.  He desperately wants to be somebody in his community, and to fit in and to have this title.  But he’s chasing it in all the wrong places, with Karen the popular girl, and in this feud with the bully Shane.  This is essentially a story about a kid who’s inherently selfish and is given responsibility for the first time in his life. But it’s also about a kid who finds his place and his friends and realizes that it’s not about being King Jack to everybody.  If you have three good friends at the end, that’s enough.

DP: There’s a heartbreaking line in the movie, that Jack says to Ben when he’s trying to be honest with him to regain his trust: “I’ve never had a lot of friends, ever.” The time Ben doesn’t react to Jack’s words, but is it your goal as the writer and director to give Jack friends. He goes through bad stuff through a lot of this movie, including being beaten up by Shane, so, again, are you thinking how you are going to make a sad kid happy?

FT: Yeah. That’s a good question. It was about trying to help this kid find his place in the world, which is what a lot of us are trying to find, whether we’re 15 or 50. And I really wanted to tell a story about the weekend that changes his life. That was always something I loved about those summers–you could have these weekends that you look back on ten years later and you’re like, “That was the turning point. That was the moment when I started to become who I was.” We’ve all had those moments. Your first kiss, or your first beer, or your first swear word, or your first fight. Those first times I think really mark us, and most of the time we go through them alone. Or at least not with our parents around.

DP: Jack’s mother tells him the day after the eventful party he attends, “You can be a good kid if you wanted.” I think that’s the key line in the movie.  Does he hear it?

FT: It was interesting for me to write.  I think he hears it. I think he does. I think everything about that morning–and there is such a contrast to the night before at the party—is the dawning of a new time for Jack, taking him a step in another direction.  That’s really what it was. A new path opens up to you when you’re a kid, and you just start walking down this new path, and hopefully it’s the right one.

DP: Jack is bullied by Shane to a scary degree. Was the bullying theme a popular plot device or something personal to you?

FT: The bullying part was something that was really important to me, and it started very early on when I wrote the screenplay. That character of Shane was something I really sketched out and fleshed out.  I should say that all these characters came from people that I knew, in some way.  In some cases I took three people I knew and made them into one character. One of the things that really inspired this story were these summers that I had when my parents weren’t around. What I really noticed is that when you’re given the run of the streets as kids and there’s no one to answer to, you see what kids can be.  They can be incredibly noble and incredibly kind and they can also be incredibly cruel.

DP: That’s very much Lord of the Flies.

FT: Very much so. In King Jack, I really wanted to play with those two sides of what growing up as a young boy is like.

DP: I like your shots from above the town where Jack lives. What were you trying to capture with those shots?

FT: We spent a lot of time location-scouting, because we wanted to find a town that embodied those towns you pass by on the highway and never think twice about, forgotten towns with forgotten kids, and we wanted to tell a story about that. We wanted to tell a story that captured both the light and dark of it, because as a kid you’re ultimately trying to find happiness in whatever your surroundings are.  We finally found Kingston—though we did pull imagery from a couple of other towns we saw as well–and there was something about this lonely train that passes through this town without ever stopping.   This train does not stop in this town. It’s located in upstate New York, in Hudson Valley, and is one of those towns that used to have a lot of industry and now doesn’t, and I wanted to tell a story that took place in one of those towns.  I think you know that town from the shots I took.

DP: In television shows of the 1950s, entire episodes would be devoted to missing five dollar bills.  Now we’re in 2015, but in this poor town, I think you want to make it a big deal when Jack’s mom gives his older brother, a young man, $5 for lunch.

FT: Yeah. It’s something I’ve always been very conscious of. I’ve lived in a lot of places–for instance I taught a master class at the Haitian film school for a semester–and I’ve seen a lot of the human experience and people in dire circumstances.  I’ve always been amazed that no matter what the circumstances are, if you can personalize them and show the human side, people can really relate to it. I could have written a political essay about how today looks so much like the Depression, but I wanted to tell a story about what life is like in these poor towns that people forget.

DP: Does Ben see things in Jack that Jack doesn’t see?

FT: The funny thing is that Ben is the wisest character in the movie. This eleven-year-old boy is in many ways the one who sees the interaction between Jack and Holly.  He sees the sweetness that is in Jack. In the baseball scene, I think he can see the chinks in Jack’s armor. Ben is someone that a lot of people respond to, even though he says very little in the movie.

DP: He’s a sweet kid, the actor. So tell me about the two actors. Did you audition them together?

FT: We started out looking for our Jack. It was a lot to ask, we were putting this film on the shoulders of a fifteen-year-old boy. We had to find the right fifteen-year-old. And when we saw Charlie Plummer, we just knew. He was so connected, so believable, so real. And he had a sense of hurt that our casting director picked up on.  Charlie’s tape really stood out. So we brought him in and he was terrific. Then we started looking for the other cast. And we brought in Cory and he and Charlie just got along so well.  They had such a good time on set.

In fact, they’re best friends now—they have sleepovers all the time, they have a secret handshake.

DP: Do you think this movie needed a male director and writer?

FT: No, I don’t think so.

DP: I do.  I usually don’t, I usually say it could be either gender. But I think this actually needs a male director and writer. You were a boy, and I think this film works because it depends on the filmmaker really knowing what boys are like.

FT: I’m glad it resonated and had a sense of authenticity. But I think the most important thing you need as a storyteller is empathy and an ability to listen. And if you have those you can really identify with anyone.

DP: All these boys in your film have to prove their mettle over and over again.

FT: I think one of the themes you picked up on—even when we did early readings—is how to be a man. There are different gradations of it. All these characters have failed in some ways and succeeded in others, to different degrees. Those are your role models—so you’re looking to imperfect men to learn how to become a man yourself.

DP: That’s a lot of this movie. And the thing is, you don’t have to become a man, you have to become a boy.  You want to give Jack a chance to be a boy.

FT: To have that opportunity to have a childhood and not grow up so quickly, I think it’s so important.

DP: So what’s it like presenting King Jack at the Tribeca Film Festival?

FT: We actually had our short Bedford Park Boulevard here in 2010.  Our producer Gabrielle Nadig produced that too, so it’s really wonderful to get to come back.  Also having grown up in New York, it feels like a mix of a hometown festival and an incredible platform to promote our film. So it’s really cool. I’m having a wonderful time.