With two grim milestones passed -- the fifth year of war and the 4,000th soldier killed in action -- it would seem prime time for the presidential candidates to push the issue in their campaigns. John McCain, for one, seems to have pretty much taken it for granted that the war has been won (winning = endless U.S. military presence) and is setting the groundwork for a similar intractable, bloody and unrthinkably costly conflict in Iran. The Democrats, meanwhile, have been distracted by more serious issues such as what Obama’s pastor said and whether Clinton “misspoke” about enemy groundfire when her plane landed in Bosnia 12 years ago.

So you can’t really blame a filmmaker for not pushing the war, even if that’s what her film is ostensibly about. Especially given the success rate of every previous film on the subject. After “Boys Don’t Cry,” her unflinching 1999 film about gender blurring and sexual violence, Kimberly Peirce doesn’t seem like the type to back down from a controversy  or from a risk. Her new film “Stop-Loss” is ostensibly about the psychology of traumatized  Iraq War vets and their exploitation by a military that assigns them to repeated tours of duty. But in the words of the “Hollywood Reporter:”  “you wouldn't know it from the trailer, which emphasizes a young cast in moments of camaraderie in Texas. Or from the poster, which has the vibe of a ‘Friday Night Lights’ or ‘Varsity Blues’ as much as ‘Platoon’ or ‘Full Metal Jacket.’”

Similarly, Erroll Morris’s new film “Standard Operating Procedure,” a documentary about the Abu Ghraib prison, also grapples with the disturbing psychic toll the war has had on the soldiers compelled to wage it. So far, though he and those marketing the film have not attempted to disguise the film’s connections with the Iraq War. Rumors that a nervous studio executive suggested retitling it “Muhammed’s Heroes” and retooling it as an update of the wacky 1960s TV show about a Nazi POW camp have not been substantiated.

 

3/25/2008 4:44:11 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Anthony Minghella, who died unexpectedly Tuesday at the age of 54 , made some films that were truly great (“The Talented Mr. Ripley”),  some that were madly overrated (“The English Patient”) and others that were deeply flawed (“Cold Mountain”). In all of them, however, he demonstrated the same principles: reverence for the art of film, ambition to push that art to its limits, a sincere humility and an engaging sense of humor. Also as an admittedly more writerly than cinematic filmmaker, he was one of the most articulate directors to interview. All of these qualities came through in conversations with the man, and I was privileged to talk with him when he was promoting “The Talented Mr Ripley,” his best film, in 1999. Or rather, I shared that privilege with a room full of other journalists, accounting somewhat for the disjointed nature of the exchange. One thing I do recall about the free-for-all discussion is that I gave Minghella a bit of a hard time because the studio had promoted the film as a romance between the characters played by Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow when in fact the sparks were flying between Damon and Jude Law. Minghella was a good sport about it, though, and true professional that he was, avoided answering the question. Also, many of the questions came off inaudible or indecipherable on the tape, which in some cases is probably just as well. Here’s an attempt at a reconstruction:

Q: [unintelligible, something to the effect that he sure knows how to pick them when it comes to casting]

AM: I mean I think, like everybody else, I’m a film-goer and I look at the images and I get excited and I manage to persuade and maneuver these people into the film. I look around one minute and there is a crude, young cast and I look around the next minute, there’s movie stars and talented young actors.

Q: [unintelligible; sounds like, “Hey, that Matt Damon is one cutie pie. When did you stop messing around with writing the script and other dumb stuff like that and try to sign him up?”]

AM: It took me about a year. After I went back to the screenplay, I started it before the motion picture [“Good Will Hunting?”] and I went back to it, and it took me over a year to get the screenplay to point where I felt I could shoot. By that time, I was casting. And it was just before “Good Will Hunting” came out that I cast Matt.

Q: [unintelligible; sounds like: “Didn’t some old lady write a book about this story? Booo-ring!”]

AM: She [Patricia Highsmith, author of “The Talented Mr. Ripley”]died within a few days of my starting working.....I think it’s much easier to work on a book while the author is still alive. I loved to spend time with Michael Ondaatje [author of “The English Patient”]. It was one of the best times I have ever had in my life, to be able to re-imagine the book and then send every drop to the writer to get his comments and his guidance and his approval, because then you know that the desicions you’re making are consummate with the world of its original conception. And it was much harder to re-imagine this book without the blessing of the author. So, I would have much preferred her to be with me and to be onset and to be sure that......

Q: Are you afraid that fans of the book are going to be critical or disappointed?

M: Well, all I can say is that I know for a fact that if we were a reading group—let’s say that this is a reading group and our week’s project is to read “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and then we all said, “Okay, what do you think was great about the book?” I know that we would end up with one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight different versions of, no the key moment is this moment, no it’s not about that, it’s about this. And you have to accept, with a certain amount of chastening, to accept that all I can do is to record as passionately and enthusiastically as I can what I felt I was reading and accept the fact, because everybody’s playing the perfect version of a film in their head when they read a novel. That’s one of the wonderful things about reading. It’s so intensely personal and perfect. All I can do is tell you about my experience with that book and try and console myself with the fact that the book remains intact, with respect to any misconception that I may have had. And try and just feeling like I’m being a good reader of this book and reporting it as faithfully as I can while understanding that every single decision I make will betray as much about me as  it will about the film.

Q: [Unintelligible; I’m guessing it’s something like “was this on Oprah’s Book Club or something?”]

M: No.

Q: With that reading group example that you’re talking about..........

M: Well, let me say this. Let’s extend our reading group into a screenwriting group now. The novel is, Patricia said herself, she felt as if Ripley was writing the book over her shoulder, that he was typing the story for her. When you go back to the novel, you’ll see that it’s entirely implicit. It’s all about a way of looking at the world. It’s not really about activity and the problem with film is that it’s explicit. It’s about people doing things, so Ripley has to meet people. He has to do things. So, the minute you start to make a screenplay, you’re going to be inventing. You’re going to be inventing somebody he meets, inventing somebody he doesn’t. Because you don’t have information in the novel that will say, “He spent six weeks in Rome. It was glorious.” Well, unless I put a caption up on the screen, there’s no way of dealing with it, except by saying, “What does it mean to be glorious?” I’ve got to send him to an opera. I’ve got to try and do the things that I felt would be consummate with his sense of enjoyment. So, I wasn’t trying to editorialize the book. I was simply trying to pick it up from its interior experience and make it an exterior subject to the film. It wasn’t about my saying, “Well, I’ve got to throw in some characters I just thought of today.” It is simply the prosaic business of, if you’re in a house, you’ve got to put a bathroom in because you’re going to need to go to the bathroom at some point. So, that’s the job of the builder is to make the house practical. It’s not about any sense of me wanting to have my say, particularly. What I would say to you though, and I think it’s a fair way of talking about this film, is that there seems to me always a difference between what the story was and what the film was about. And you could argue, and I would find it hard to defend, if you said, “You’ve made the film about something different than the story.” Because it seems to me, I love the idea of a film about a man who commits murder and gets away with it because it’s so unconventional and so audacious. But, I’m also the least nihilistic and the least cynical person and I want to think about what the consequences of that are. There seems to me to be a distinction between the public accountability and justice. Ripley very well may not be caught  in the end, but he’s in a prison from which there’s no escape, which is the prison of his own head. That isn’t necessarily what the thrust of this sequence of novels was. It was what I felt was my argument with the events of the film. I was reading about  [Cosimo de Medici?] and he said that the painter always paints himself. What one of the most disturbing things for a writer and for a filmmaker is that whatever it is you think you’re doing, you always end up feeling incredibly exposed because you’ve made a thousand decisions everyday. Somehow, the .......always exposes what your taste is and what you’re take on the world is. At some point you’ve just got to say, “You know what? I may not be the best adaptor or this may not be the truest version, but this is all I know how to do and I’ve given all I can to make it as interesting and as complex as I can. But, in the end, it’s some of my own faults.

Q: [unintelligible; it has something to do with some joke or comment made on the set of “Ripley” that was reported in a “Premiere” article by Christine Spines. Apparently it wasn’t as outrageous as Minghella suggests here because I can’t find any other reference to it anywhere]

M: Oh God, I just want to kill myself. I was on the set at the time. It was about the seventh day of shooting. I mean, it was an entirely specious remark and if I could go back and realize and there was someone on the set who wasn’t part of the filmmaking experience, I would eradicate that moment because it was a joke. And I think that what I was concerned with is trying to make sure that we didn’t pull our punches. That there was a real sense of romance in the film, irrespective of which gender was involved. Just as when Ripley is with Meredith, I wanted to be as authentic and pungent a moment between two people as I could manage. So, when it was a moment between Ripley and Peter Smith-Kingsley [the character with whom Ripley has his most overtly gay scene] I want it to be as authentic and as glamorous a moment and as truthful a moment. And not to try and comment on it. And so, I was working and working to make that moment as pure as I could and when I felt that they’d done that, then I made a joke, which was, “Now they’ve done it. Now we’re in trouble.” It was only that. It wasn’t for publication and I have more faith in an audience than that suggests, so far as I would make this movie if I felt that the audience was sufficiently happy to think and to feel and to be challenged as I am as an audience member myself.

Q: Do you have any problem with the studio pushing the film as a romance between Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow when it seems clear that the romantic interest is elsewhere?

AM:  This is a sort of tough room. I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty, which is the studio, both Paramount and Miramax, have been incredibly supportive of this project and very supportive of me as having a singular vision of a film. It could very well have been challenged. I could be sitting here with you trying to explaining why Ripley is caught in the end, why there’s no Peter Smith-Kingsley in the film, and I’m not. They supported a view that I had on the material and the take on it. Of course, there was apprehension and I think if I ever make a film in which there is no apprehension, then I should stop doing it. I’ve got a journal entry from when The English Patient was released in which I wrote, “If there are more than ten people  at this film, I will be astonished and I was astonished. I hope that there will be the same sense of astonishment about the degree of sophistication that the audience has for this movie. I think there’s a great sense that people want to be challenged. After all, I’ve made four movies. I’ve seen maybe 4,000 and I’m much more often a member of the audience. I’ve got to assume sometimes that there are lots of other people like me in the audience and all I’m trying to do ever is to try and make the kind of movie I’ve loved myself, which I’ve revisited myself. I think that movies which simply assert that status quo, which simply tell you that the world is exactly the way that you imagined it was, are a complete waste of time. For me, I’m not interested in them. I want to go and see a movie where I can say, “Well wait a minute. The world is different today than it was yesterday for me.” I remember going to see “Tree of the Wooden Clogs” and feeling like my head had been spun around. I’ve always wanted to try and make a movie in which I felt that one’s head would be spun around and what seemed to me is the center of the story, which is an assertion of the fact that everybody feels alone. We’re so encouraged to feel worthless and disappointed in ourselves; that we’re so encouraged to believe that it is better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody in our lives. Every magazine, every commercial says, “Don’t feel good about the way you look. Don’t feel good about your nose or your eyesight or your hair or you clothes or you lifestyle. Cash it in. It’s not good enough.”

Q:  [Unintelligible. Sounds like: “Does this  ‘Ripley’ tee-shirt make me look fat?”]

M: I think you’re very smart to say that. I would also like to say that one of the reasons that I cast Matt was that I thought he was a Dickie Greenleaf and that this character, Ripley, can’t see that everything that he has is perfectly good enough. But, he’s  got such a distorted view of himself. And that the irony of the film, the tragedy of it, is that he gets to a place in the film, finally, where somebody would say, “Here are your talents. Here are your gifts. Here is who Tom Ripley is.” and it’s too late. He’s annihilated Ripley. He’s annihilated the possibility of a love. If only he could see exactly what he had to begin with, none of this would have happened. You’re absolutely right to say that in the middle of this film are some of the icons by which we are tormented. I’m not being disingenuous to say that wasn’t quite what I thought I was doing when I cast the film, but you’re right to say it’s one of the most complex things about the movie, is it’s a film about people inventing themselves and making themselves up and people are dissatisfied with themselves. The very things that we are encouraged to think about and aspire to are these characters and these actors.

Q: Why is Matt Damon the ideal person to play Ripley?

M: Well, first of all, to answer the question honestly, who knows? When you cast it, it’s not really a judgment on other actors, it’s a judgement like a blind date. You think, I could go on a journey with this person. When they talk, I understand and when I’m talking, they seem to understand. I have to tell you, if you allowed me to, I would spend the rest of the day telling you about Matt Damon because I think he’s the most astonishing actor. He is the best accomplice a director could ever wish for. We shot 96 days. On the last shot, he was as excited, devoted, and focused as he was on the very first. He’s as smart as can be. He’s as kind to the crew and he’s such an example of a young American actor. He’s absolutely exemplary. And also, he dignified the writing to such an extent. I mean, I’m a writer first as well as a filmmaker and I hear every moment and imagine every moment. It’s so wonderful when you watch somebody working and they give you back all you hoped for and more. My one fear for him is that his performance is so new, so quiet, and so unshowy, and delicate that people may not understand the what the transformation of the acting performance is. It doesn’t have the sort of pyrotechnics, which people seem to go for. It’s done very very carefully. In some ways, I felt that he took responsibility.......It was a series of duets, the film, in many ways that Ripley encounters. I think he welcomed every actor into the film , welcomed every character in, but........

Q: Are you a fan of  “Purple Noon?” [Rene Clement’s 1860 adaptation of the same novel]

M: Yeah, you know I’ve talked about “Purple Noon” more in the last 24 hours than I’ve ever thought about it in my life. I like the movie very much. I thought it was of its time. I didn’t  seem to have very much to do with the novel, and I certainly didn’t feel like I was treading ground that had already been covered in any way. I thought that Alain Delon [Ripley in “Noon”] was probably the most beautiful person that I’d ever seen in my life.

Q: Did the sexuality ever go further or did it play on the screen exactly......

M: It was no more. We didn’t have any more material. In some ways, I thought we dug out every possible moment that we had. I loved the idea, I made a scene in  “The English Patient” where Kristen Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes were in the bunker and I thought it was a scene in which the work was wonderful, and I wanted that to be an equivalency between two men in this film, which was as delicate as that scene was and which was as unabashed as that scene was. I think that Ripley is so at odds with everything about himself, in terms of sexuality, so at odds with every part of his being that anything more explicit than that would have terrified him. You’ve got to remember that part of this film is about 1958, you know? What it meant to expose your ideas and desires is very very different from now and much more different, I think, than we can imagine.

Q: [unintelligible; something like, “Gwyneth Paltrow is so great! How great would you say she is?”]

AM: Well, you know, she has such an effortless ability to summon class and privilege and also a generosity of spirit. I have this whole notion of taking Gwyneth as this welcoming sunny girl, this beauty, and saying, “What journey might she go on?” And I had this notion that she had this kind of leak in the emotional temperature. She started off at 82 degrees in the first scene and then the second scene, it was 81, then 80. By the time she’s in Venice, she’s been transformed from the Gwyneth that we knew into this woman who is so exasperated and heartbroken and changed and cool and dangerous. And that just seemed exciting to take what we know and transform it. I think that, again, I felt very lucky in this movie with both Gwyneth and Cate [Blanchett], who I think, as good as it gets, would be willing to sign on to a movie for the movie and not for a particular part, but just to be part of an idea of a film. That was very much her.

Q: .....What does this movie portray about you?

AM: That I’m a frustrated composer, that I’m a bad jazz pianist, that I’m the worst player of Bach in the world, but that I love all these things.

 
Just a footnote: Minghella died at the same age as did Krzysztof Kieslowski in 1996, both after surgery — Kieslowski for his heart on March 13, Minghella on his tonsils on March 18 . So I guess the lesson is that if you’re a famous 54 year old filmmaker and it’s March, hold off on that operation.

3/20/2008 3:12:46 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Last year I had the chance to talk with director Ang Lee on the occasion of the release of his steamy, unrated film “Lust, Caution.” Ever the champion of beautiful young women who appear naked on screen, I asked him if he was concerned about the impact the film would have on Tang Wei, who engages with Tony Leung in numerous graphic and anatomically challenging sexual acts. After all, I pointed out, this kind of exposure has traditionally had a bad effect on an actress’s career, as witness Kerry Fox after “Intimacy,” Chloe Sevigny after “The Brown Bunny,” Maria Schneider after “Last Tango in Paris.”

He seemed genuinely worried. “Oh gosh,” he said. “I hope not. I try everything to protect the actors—and not just the sexual scenes, but a whole career thing. Before she was nothing and now she’s getting so much attention. I try every step of the way to protect her and educate her—make sure she’s going on the right path. I helped her find her next project. I do the best I can. I have not sent any young actor in my career to a mental institution. [as did Schneider].”

Turns out my concern was not unfounded. She hasn’t ended up in the loony bin, but her Pond’s cosmetics ads have been banned in mainland China because of the movie, even though it had been cut to accommodate the local censors. True to his word, Lee has backed his star up, saying, "I am very regretful that Tang Wei has been hurt by this decision. She gave a great performance in this properly produced and distributed film. I will do everything I can to support her in this difficult time.”

Let’s see if that takes some of the sting out of her financial loss -- her contract with Ponds was paying her $845,000.

Needless to say, Leung doesn’t seem to have suffered any lasting consequences, except maybe some snarky remarks from acquaintances about his bobbing scrotum. In general, the men get off pretty easy (no pun intended) in these movies. True, Vincent Gallo’s career hasn’t exactly taken off after Sevigny put the finishing touches on his “Brown Bunny” (coming up for Gallo, the role of “Kevin Stiff” in “The Funeral Director”). But nobody came out of that film in good shape.

By way of contrast, however, there’s the case of Mathieu Amalric, who prior to starring in the Oscar nominated “Diving Bell and the Butterfly” showed the world what was lying idle in that wheel chair in “The Story of Richard O.” No locked in syndrome for Richard O!

So: there’s no justice. In fact, though, there is. You might recall the loathsome John Gibson of  Fox radio mocking “Brokeback Mountain” star Heath Ledger just after his death, homophobically noting that “we learned how to quit you.” Well, likewise I’m sure, as low ratings have lead to the cancellation of Gibson's show. And so, though dead, Ledger still outshines Gibson, receiving glowing accolades for his appearance as The Joker in the trailer for  the yet to be released Batman movie, “The Dark Knight.” Looks like Ledger’s getting the last laugh after all.

 

3/16/2008 3:42:46 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

The heated, ongoing Democratic presidential nomination contest might be an interesting historical footnote, but what really concerns most Americans at the moment is, what’s wrong with Oscar? I thought the ceremony went rather briskly this time, but then again I was also eating pizza, doing the Sunday “Times” crossword puzzle and paying my bills (don’t ask!) while watching. Much of America apparently disagreed, however: the ratings were the lowest ever, rivaling those of the last Republican debate. Nor was this a fluke, but part of a inexorable trend since the Awards reached a peak in 1997 when the winner was “Titanic.”

So, what to do? Top among “Entertainment Weekly”’s suggestions is “picking better nominees.” Starting, I’d argue, with the songs. I think every one of the performances of the three “Enchanted” tunes probably bumped off a good 5 million viewers. But then again, that’s what mute buttons are for.

So really it comes down to the nominated films which were, admittedly, grim and poorly attended. In short, the kind that critics like myself adore. Not to brag, but of late the award winners of the Boston Society of Film Critics (of which I’m a member) and the Academy have been eerily similar.          

To wit:

This year the Academy echoed our choice for Best Picture (“No Country for Old Men”), Best Actress (Marion Cotillard for “La Vie en Rose”) and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem for “No Country for Old Men”). And our winners for Best Director (Julian Schnabel for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), Best Supporting Actress (Amy Ryan for “Gone Baby Gone”), Best Screenplay (“Ratatouille”) and Best Cinematography (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) were all Academy nominees.

And last year we did even better, the Academy matching our winners in Best Picture (“The Departed”), Best Director (Martin Scorsese for “The Departed”), Best Actor (Forest Whitaker for “The Last King of Scotland”), Best Actress (Helen Mirren for “The Queen”),  Best Screenplay (“The Departed”) and Best Cinematography (“Pan’s Labyrinth”).

Hey guys, we didn’t know you were going to take us seriously. Well, as was pointed out in one non-Oscar-winning hit movie, “Great power brings great responsibility.” Should we lower our standards so the Academy doesn’t go bust? I don’t think we have to; just cut out the snobbery when a blockbuster movie like “The Bourne Ultimatum" also happens to be one of the year’s best films.

 

3/11/2008 3:45:32 PM by Peter | Comments [1] |  

Everybody knows what a terrific motion picture “Chicago,” winning the Oscar and all a few years back. But who knew it’s been made into eight sequels already? Where was I when this happened? We’re already up to “Chicago 10” already and having seen the movie, I don’t see how it ties in. At least it doesn’t have Richard Gere tap dancing. Let’s see if the director Brett Morgen can  fill us in.

          He’s kind of in the middle of a thought, something about the illusion of objectivity in documentary which accounts for the animation in this film, if not the godawful production numbers in the original…

BM: [LOUDLY]…So, I think in this idea--when I got into documentary filmmaking in 1991, I came in as a filmmaker--not as a journalist or a historian. I love  research and I love the process of doing that but ultimately I have yet to make a film where I think I have to make an objective thing. I think it’s dangerous to be talking about this sort of thing at this day and age that all nonfiction and journalism is subjective--and if you want to be honest you need to somehow insert Brecthian elements into the work, or some self-referential elements into the work to have an awareness of the subjectivity in order to be really honest about it. By animating the trial in Chicago, it becomes clear that this is representational and it’s not supposed to be some sort of fact. I’m sure you can tell you got me excited because this is an issue I feel is very dear and near to my heart.

I went to Hampshire College and the reason I got into documentary was in 1987--I had always wanted to be filmmaker, I went to the only junior high school in America at the time that offered a curriculum in film, you know we were into the French New Wave at 14--and I got to Hampshire college and I wanted to make alternative fiction films and I took a class called Ethnographic Film taught by an anthropologist named Leonard Glick and it was sort of a survey course trying to define, “what is documentary?”--a question I still ask myself today, 20 years later--but in the course of that class we saw Lumiere, then Direct Cinema, onward to Robert Gardner and also Ross McElwee. There was a film we saw in that course called “The Nuer”  by a filmmaker named Hilary Harris, which was--in essence--a montage of a tribe in Africa. Now, at that time in ethnographic film, you’d also see these movies--something like “Yammama collecting water” and it would be 48 hour footage of a African tribe collecting water in order to achieve some sort of objectivity. What Hilary Harris tried to do was create an aural and visual montage that gave you a sense, a very subjective, interpretation of who these people were. I remember telling my professor that through that film I had a much deeper understanding of them. I could smell them in a way I couldn’t in those objective films. It was that moment I decided to take off on this journey that I’ve been going on.

PK: Well, I saw this movie with a bunch of geezers like myself and one of the biggest criticisms was the soundtrack, because everyone remembers the greatest hits of the 60s, and maybe it’s because the music was so interconnected with the politics of that time that we couldn’t understand why you chose not to go with…

BM: Because it’s not a movie about 1968. I don’t know how to be clear about that.

PK: That aspect of 1968 is sort of mythological, as you’d put it: you’ve got the politics and the culture fused as one.

BM: Yeah, but my interpretation of it--let me say this, I thought that by using contemporary music over images that are almost forty years old it brought the past into the present the way that wouldn’t happen if I used Buffalo Springfield at that moment. I think the music of the 60’s has become so clichéd.

PK: Like it’s being used in SUV commercials?

BM: Exactly--it no longer has that impact that it had at the moment. It would ultimately alienate a young audience, which I’m trying to get at with this film. So what I like to say is I didn’t want to use the soundtrack of my parents generation--I wanted to use the soundtrack of my generation. There wasn’t music in 1968 that, to me, would capture the energy --what was I going to use, Phil Ochs? I mean, after Chicago, music got a little angrier and a little darker. I feel like I’ve seen that film before, Peter, and I wasn’t going to make that film. Certainly, I open myself up for criticism in doing so--and it would have been a lot safer to use traditional music of the era. For every Boomer that I alienate, I believe that I’m engaging a younger audience. I just talked with some girl who couldn’t have been more than 20 from George Washington University who told me that the music made the film for her. So, I think that it’s somewhat generational. I think that the history of the 60s is so heavily documented and recorded that we don’t need to be precious about it. No needs to worry that I’m going to fuck it up because it’s already recorded. So, let me do my interpretation of it. It’s like taking Shakespeare and adapting it to modern times. Now, I will be the first to tell you that when I saw “Marie Antoinette,”  I hated her use of the music. It’s because her performances and script were so stylized to point out how personal and contemporary it was--I got that from everything else in the film, I didn’t need it from the music as well. When you’re dealing with archival imagery, however--the only way I was able to modernize it was through sound design and score. So you take that scene with the Beastie Boys and it doesn’t seem forty years old anymore.  

PK: Well, you do include a postscript saying what happened to the various outcomes of the trial. The historical outcome, you could argue that this whole thing contributed to the election of Richard Nixon because…

BM:{interrupts]…once again, you’re talking about it as a historical film about 1968.

PK: But if you’re going to engage people in the spirit of revolution you should also let them know what the consequences could be.

BM: Ok, but Peter, you know I got in this argument with Todd Gitlin. He said “you need to put a postscript on that says that 59 million Americans watched the riots in from of the Hilton and Nixon won by 500,000 votes, the war went on for seven more years.”

PK: I think that sounds good.

BM: Well, let me tell you something--what you saw in 1968 on TV is not what the audience is seeing in my film today. I saw every news report from Chicago from all three networks and I’ve seen every movie made about Chicago. I can absolutely assure you, with total confidence, that what the country saw on TV was single-camera footage of riots. Maybe they would run 40 seconds at a time. There was an electrical deficit in Chicago that week and the media had very limited availability to film that week so each network would send one or two cameras out there. That’s what America saw. What I have been able to do is reconstruct those riots using source material from over 40 different sources to give perspective on them that if it had been broadcast to the world at the time, I don’t think public support would have swayed towards Daly. So, at the conclusion of my film, how would that statement resonate? I mean, I would sit there thinking--that’s outrageous? How could America possibly support [Chicago Mayor] Daley after the images I just presented to you? Well, they didn’t see those images. The movie, as I said, there’s no postscript. It’s very much presented as myth or fairy tale. If my goal was to depict  1968, then yes--you’re absolutely right. But I’m tryign to draw parallels to contemporary life. One other thing I’d like to add--when I talk about the legacy of Chicago--I think it’s still being written today. If you go online you can read some blogs from a college screening. There were dozens of kids at that screening that were completely inspired by Abbie’s actions to become a little more active in how they engage with politics. The legacy is still being recorded today as far as I can tell. 

PK: You say you don’t want to make a film about 1968, but you have to admit that the 60s are pretty hot in cinema right now. You have “I’m Not There,” "Across the Universe.” It seems like there’s a nostalgia or a rebirth of the 60s in people’s consciousness.

BM: I totally concur, but what you’re now saying is that--you use some examples, but I think they’re more postmodern than anything. I think what we’re now doing. The generation that was active in the 60s have documented their time well. I think what’s interesting now--my generation, like with Todd, are able to put their stamp on it and draw whatever parallels we want. This film, if anything, will make more people interested in this history. When I was in film school in 1988 and we were watcing John Ford’s “The Searchers” and kids were laughing at certain anachronisms. Things that were so unintentionally funny--kids were laughing at how dated things were. I mean, I didn’t want kids to see this film and laugh at the bell-bottoms and some of the fashion elements that are dated. People were wondering why I didn’t put Judy Collins’ testimony in the film and the marshal gagging her after she sang. That was such a strong image in 1968. My fear of putting that in the film today, however, would be that the audience would applaud the marshal for gagging Judy Collins. It’s all context--that song is not the anthem of kids today. It feels a little dated. The equivalent would be a song like Eminem’s “Mosh” and they can relate. And I don’t want to dumb the film down to the audience. I grew up thinking that people in the 50s didn’t have sex until I met Bob Evans. 

3/7/2008 6:02:39 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |  

Now, as far as I know, unlike the ill-fated “The Signal,”  “Chicago 10”  is still  in the theaters. So I can run the lengthy phone interview I conducted with the director, Brett Morgen. And it’s a good thing, because I think this part animated, part archival recreation of the events leading up to the anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 and the subsequent trial of the “ringleaders” provides some useful services.

First of all, even though we’ve got the unpopular war and the frustrating Presidential campaigns just like in 1968, we’re missing a key element -- the draft. So not a lot of people going to march out in the streets and get clubbed and tear gassed this time. But that’s no reason why we can’t relive some of the spontaneity and funky fun of those Yippie protests, which, as Morgen points out below, was part of the reason he made the movie. Maybe a video game might be the next step? Just tossing out ideas.

And secondly, and this might be tiresomely theoretical, “Chicago 10” brings up some key issues about the nature and function of documentary. Is this medium supposed to show us the truth, i.e., “objective” reality, or “the truth,” as in, this is how I see it? Morgen, as he points out emphatically, is a this is how I see it kind of guy. And a real lapel grabber -- Bill O’Reilly will have his hands full if he ever tangles with Morgen on Fox. 

PK: Last night you had a panel discussion with a screening of the movie--how did that go?

BM: It was great. It was with Paul Krassner [one of the co-founders of the Yippie movement]  http://www.paulkrassner.com/who’s always entertaining, Jeremy Schick from the MOCA here in L.A. and Aaron Sorkin who is writing the  adaptation of the Chicago 10 [ which Steven Spielberg might direct. Or might not.]

PK: And the topic you were discussing was the comparison between 1968 and 2008…

BM: Art in the age of activism.

PK: Yeah. I was watching the movie and thinking about the similarities between this year and 1968 with the war and so forth. And I was wondering what the likelihood of anything remotely like those events happening now might be. Any thoughts?

BM: I feel like more people are better schooled in that than I am.

PK: So you don’t foresee any kind of rioting in the streets or anything like that?

BM: One of the things that I think is important is, well,  it looks like Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate and obviously both Democratic candidates have a pretty strong anti-war platform. However, I think it’s important for people who are against the war, or whatever your cause, is to go to the Democratic convention--and the Republican convention -- and let your voice be heard. I mean, that’s basically what the conflict in Chicago came down to -- the protesters feeling was, “Look, if you’re going to have a national convention, you then need to expect there will be protesters. That’s what happens -- we get together once every 4 years and it’s a time for people to come together in whatever movement they are in and raise their voice so hopefully, you know, send a signal to the delegates inside who are writing the party platform. And in Chicago, they basically said, “We’re not going to let the protesters come.” And it was like, if you’re going to have a national convention in your town, you’re going to have protesters.

PK: Were you an activist protesting the war yourself?

BM: Well, I sort of go back and forth with my movies. I mean, I think “On the Ropes”  is a pretty socially conscious film -- which is funny, because I set out to make an entertaining movie about boxing and I ended up making a movie about the judicial system. With “Chicago 10,” last night Aaron Sorkin and I were talking about activism in film and art and we both agreed on one point, which is, my first goal is to entertain -- because, I think, without that you’re not only preaching to the choir but you’re preaching to empty air. I’m not an activist per se, you know, I’m not the most politically sophisticated person. The reason I got inspired to make [“Chicago 10”] is that what was happening with the war was a moral issue, as much as it was a political issue.  

PK: Now this is the war in Iraq you’re talking about, right?

BM: Correct. I felt a sort of moral imperative to do something in whatever way I could and one of the things I wanted to do was make a movie that’s rooted in ‘68 but that’s really, ultimately, about today. I think any artist who is making a portrait of a time that predates them -- that piece of work is usually more reflective of the time they’re writing it in than the time they’re writing about. I certainly think that’s true with “Chicago 10” -- as you notice, there’s very little context in the year ‘68. The movie is more of a parable or fable for all times. There’s a war going on, there’s opposition to the war and there’s a government trying to silence the opposition. It’s an age old story. When I did the European premiere  for the film this summer I was asked numerous times by journalists, “Were you making a film about Tiananmen Square?” “Were you thinking of Seattle when you made this film?” I think part of the reason they were thinking that is because you can sort of project any of those stories onto the screen.          Ultimately, since the 1960s have been so heavily documented in both books and films. It sometimes feels like anyone who was alive in the 60s has written a memoir. So, I didn’t really feel the need to make another historical document about 68 -- I wanted to make a film that was very much steeped in mythology and I approached this film as such, same as I did with “The Kid Stays in the Picture.”History has become this dry, empirical exercise in facts and dates--very academic. I wanted to try to do something more akin to what Truman Capote was doing with history. When I was in college I heard a lecture from Ken Burns. His  filmmaking I have very little in common with in general, but Ken was saying that since the beginning of man --- and that’s a terrible sentence, but so what -- stories were  always done in the oral tradition. They were passed down from generation to generation and each generation would enhance the story and make it their own. In the process, those stories became mythologies and folklores. Well, that’s pretty much what “Chicago 10” is -- it’s a retelling of these events through the filter of today and I tell audiences that if they don’t know the history of Chicago, you should read a book. If you want the experience of Chicago, though, I think my film is uniquely suited for that. I think the problem with a lot of historical documentaries  -- even a film such as “No End in Sight”  -- could easily have been done in book form. They’re not really exploiting or taking advantage of the breadth and width that cinema has to offer and having explored the entire canon of work about the 60s the one thing I felt that I could add was something uniquely cinematic, using the full breadth and width of the sound design, which we spent a year on, and creating this montage, this visceral experience. We can try to capture the energy and experience. That’s why I call the film “experiential” cinema, because rather than learn about facts or watch people talking about what happened, you actually get to experience what happened in a very visceral and immediate way. 

PK: Nobody reads books these days, anyway.

BM: [laughs]

PK: You’re either going to see the movie or go online, or something.

BM: That’s true.

PK: …or watch Fox News.

BM: The other thing I’d like to add, Peter, is -- going back to context to a moment -- if you were around during the 60s, or you were schooled in the 60s, then you are going to bring all that history with you to the film. You know about Bobby Kennedy, know about McCarthy, know about McGovern and you can brign that with you. If you’re not schooled in it, then you don’t really know what you’re missing and you can experience the film on its own terms. I think that’s the difference between the way a really young audience experiences the film versus people who are active at the time. And we’ve had tremendous responses from both groups. We did some focus groups with the film and some of our highest marks were from high school kids and college kids, who would say things like “It’s so great that this is the vision for my generation--it made these images relatable to me.” Or, well, “I’m so glad I didn’t have to look at my grandparents talking to the camera.” Or, one of the best lines I heard was, “I feel like I finally understand my parents.” And with the Boomers, people who were active at the time, you know -- to quote Tom Hayden [a Chicago 10 defendant] at Sundance, “I don’t know how someone who wasn’t alive at the time could have gotten it so right, because what you’ve done is really captured that energy of the moment and unleashed it today.” He went on to say that a lot of histories and books about the 60s tend to intellectualize something that was rather organic  and this film really tends to capture the energy. He said, “Look, there’s stuff you didn’t put in that I would have if I was making a film about my experiences with Chicago -- you know, Bobby Kennedy and whatnot.”

But, you know, everyone is going to have their own film. When I first started to talk to survivors of Chicago, the conversations would usually begin with, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re making this movie -- I’ve had this in my head for four years. Here, let me tell you the movie you should make.” I sort of felt like -- you know what? I’m going to take all of this media -- all of this primary media that we spent three years collecting, exhaustively. It’s 1200 hours of film and 14000 photographs and 500+ hours of audio. And make my own conclusions and make my own portrait, the way that someone paints a picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River. That person wasn’t there -- it’s their interpretation of their events. I was just speaking with a journalist about Steven Spielberg doing the adaptation of the film and isn’t it weird that it’s Spielberg since, and this is the journalist’s words, “when I think about Spielberg in the 60s, I think of the hiding out at Universal.” And I said, well, you know -- it’s sometimes best to have an outside perspective on things. You know, there’s two schools of thought. You can either do the Chicago experience from the autobiographical perspective of someone who was incredibly involved in the movement, or you could sort of do what I did and approach it with fresh eyes, which I think adds some value in a certain way.       

PK: You said in the panel discussion that “the distinction between fiction and nonfiction in films is totally archaic.” Isn’t that kind of a dangerous position because one of the things that got us into this war was that we couldn’t make the distinction between fact and fiction?

BM: Absolutely. There’s actually a line from my film that I wanted to get in there from Allen Ginsberg, when he says, “Politics had become theater and magic, it’s a manipulation by the media through imagery to seduce the country into believing in a war that doesn’t really exist.” When I was reading those transcripts, and this was shortly after Colin Powell was testifying in front of the United Nations, it was like -- there it is. I think that we have a covenant as artists or journalists with our audience -- and it’s important that when you read the “New York Times,” and you understand how they’re going to editorialize it so you understand how to absorb or read that information. But you know that there’s a difference when you read a story in the “New York Times” versus the “New York Post.”

 I’m talking about art here, I’m not talking about history or journalism. What I was referring to in that panel is that truth exists in fiction and truth exists in nonfiction. Truth is not singular -- we have have different ways of seeing things. Anyone who sees a Michael Moore film and thinks that they’re getting an absolute, objective truth is  sadly mistaken. And they should know that based on the conventions on the style of filmmaking -- he’s making an entertaining movie. And as such, he’s going to take certain license. I felt liberated by the fact that I was approaching this as mythology. I don’t think anyone can look at this movie and not get that -- it’s animated for Christ’s sake. It’s pretty blatant.

When we did “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” we used the line -- “there’s 3 sides to every story: your side, my side and the truth”--and that was our attempt to create a covenant with the audience and let them know that this was not the “objective truth” that you are about to experience. We follow that up by opening the film with some red curtains that tell you you’re in a theatrical environment, but those curtains open up and you’re in the backyard of a man -- a real backyard of the real subject. Basically, what we’re saying is that this whole man’s life is theater -- and, you see, that was our covenant with the audience. As a result, I didn’t fact-check a word about what [Robert Evans] said. I’m not a journalist. I tell stories. I’m particularly interested in mythology--you learn a lot from these sort of myths. I think there’s a lot you can learn about Chicago from this film but it’s certain not some sort of objective--I don’t believe, as an artist, in any objectivity of my world.      

PK: But you’re not saying that the facts are distorted or changed in the movie?

BM: Well, what facts, Peter?

PK: Well, you said that you compiled thousands of hours of  video and other primary sources.

BM: But, but, but, but, Bobby Seale had a very different experience than Tom Hayden who had a very different experience from Abbie Hoffman. Let me tell you something interesting -- early on in the film, when I did my first cut, I invited some organizers who were in Chicago to screen the film. After the screening, one of them said to me: “Listen, I love the movie -- you totally captured it, but I take a huge issue with something you did with the film.” And I asked, “what’s that?” And she said, “Well, Sunday night -- the Festival of Life -- there was no rioting that night. It was peaceful, it was beautiful -- you’ve destroyed it. You’ve taken this Black Sabbath music, all this tear-gas -- it never existed. That didn’t happen until Monday night.”[ pause] She was totally wrong, Peter.   

PK: She was wrong that it didn’t happen?

BM: She was wrong in that it didn’t happen- -- but in forty years, her memory had created a revisionist take on what had happened. I knew that it had happened because I was immersed at that point in the research and had every government report and they all talked about the Sunday night riots -- including the slates on the news cameraman’s film, which had a date and a time on it. So she, thought, in her mind -- she could have passed a lie detector test -- that there were no riots that night when there were.

PK: Yeah, but there is an objective standard that YOU can rely on which is the archival film and the reports... 

BM: …I don’t know why we’re talking about objectivity in cinema. I mean, I just don’t understand that.

PK: I just mean, I think that part of the problem with the way the country’s going is because people don’t believe there is any objectivity.

BM: But that’s a problem not with a filmmaking. I think you’re confusing journalism with filmmaking.

PK: Ok, but there is a tradition in documentary filmmaking that it is a kind of journalistic...

BM: Well, I’m trying to smash that sort of belief for the last 10 years. That might have been the case, but that’s not where we’re going now.

 

3/3/2008 3:02:16 PM by Peter | Comments [0] |