Contrary to popular belief, many directors are genuinely modest and can honestly maintain that they make movies for the love of cinema (rather than the money, stardom, hedonistic lifestyle, etc.), but it is still surprising to find one who is unwilling to reveal their identity. This is the case with the director of LYNCH, the new documentary about David Lynch, who is choosing to remain anonymous behind the pseudonym blackANDwhite. He (for blackANDwhite is a he) initially drew attention to himself with this refusal to stand in the limelight, and prompted the press to speculate that the film was in fact directed by Lynch, and the anonymous director was nothing but a fabrication. However this is not the case: I myself uncovered a picture of blackANDwhite, clearly showing his face, and also his real name. Or maybe just another nom de plume of a self-professed lover of pseudonyms...

At his request, I have kept blackANDwhite's identity secret, and so the mystery surrounding him remains, and we can shift focus to his excellent film. Documentaries about filmmakers and Hollywood easily become banal 'making of' movies, however this is far from the case with LYNCH. Shot in black and white and color across a variety of formats, and edited in an organic, impressionistic style, the film beautifully echoes the creative idiosyncrasies of David Lynch's own work in the way it captures his life and creative processes. Though there is no adherence to a traditional linear approach in the way footage is presented, watching the seemingly random moments of Lynch filming Inland Empire, making art at his home or taking photos in old Polish factories, a curious, crazed logic emerges as we glimpse the very essence of Lynch, the artist and the man.

Filmmaker conducted a (typographically distinctive) interview with blackANDwhite over email, and corresponded with him about spending two years filming David Lynch, his shadowy identity, and fond memories of childhood cinemagoing with his grandmother.



Filmmaker: Tell us a bit about yourself, like your age, nationality and background, how long you've been in film.

blackANDwhite: LET'S SEE WHAT CAN I TELL YOU ABOUT MYSELF------ I AM 36 YEARS OLD, I HAVE GERMAN AND IRISH ROOTS------ I WENT TO COLLEGE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AND RECEIVED A BACHELOR'S DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY----- MOVED TO SAN FRANCISCO----- DIDN'T FEEL COMPLETELY AT EASE THERE---- DONT GET ME WRONG IT IS A GREAT CITY TO VISIT BUT IT NEVER FELT LIKE HOME TO ME........... I THEN MOVED DOWN TO LA AND FOUND MYSELF WORKING AT A MANAGEMENT COMPANY DELIVERING SCRIPTS AND RUNNING ERRANDS-------- THEN I GOT THE JOB AT ASYMMETRICAL AND MY LIFE CHANGED--------- I BEGAN WORKING FOR DAVID AND I THINK THAT IS WHEN I CAN SAY I REALLY BEGAN TO THINK ABOUT A CAREER IN FILM............ THAT WAS ABOUT 9 YEARS AGO.

Filmmaker: How did you first meet David Lynch?

blackANDwhite: I FIRST MET DAVID IN THE HALLWAY OF HIS OFFICE------- I WAS THERE WAITING TO BE INTERVIEWED FOR THE ASSISTANT POSITION.

Filmmaker: Can you describe your relationship with David Lynch?

blackANDwhite: MY RELATIONSHIP WITH DAVID HAS CHANGED DURING THE COURSE OF THIS PROJECT........ I CONSIDER DAVID NOT ONLY A MENTOR BUT A FRIEND AS WELL. HE IS AN AMAZING PERSON AND I THANK HIM FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART FOR ALLOWING ME THIS OPPORTUNITY.

Filmmaker: Did you instigate this doc or did he?

blackANDwhite: WE INSTIGATED THE DOCUMENTARY----- THE PRODUCER OF THE FILM JON NGUYEN CALLED ME ON THE PHONE AND ASKED IF I THOUGHT DAVID WOULD LET US SHOOT SOMETHING ON HIM------ I DIDNT THINK HE WOULD BUT IT WAS WORTH THE SHOT TO TRY AND FIND OUT---- SO I FLEW OUT FROM NYC TO LOS ANGELES TO ASK HIM.

Filmmaker: How did documenting David's life so closely change the way you perceived him?

blackANDwhite: THE FILM DID NOT CHANGE THE WAY THAT I PERCEIVE DAVID. HE HAS ALWAYS JUST BEEN DAVID TO ME---- SOMEONE WHO IS INCREDIBLY PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT HE DOES FOR A LIVING AND INCREDIBLY PASSIONATE ABOUT THE WAY HE LIVES HIS LIFE.

Filmmaker: What new or interesting things did you learn - both about David, and about yourself - during the two years making this film?

blackANDwhite: I DEFINITELY LEARNED A DEEPER UNDERSTANDING OF TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION DURING THIS PROCESS-------- AS FAR AS WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF--------- I AM NOT QUITE SURE ABOUT THAT ACTUALLY---- I THINK MAYBE THOSE ANSWERS WILL COME ONCE THIS WHOLE PROCESS IS OVER AND I CAN LOOK BACK ON IT WITH FRESH EYES.

Filmmaker: Did you approach the film as an outsider or insider?

blackANDwhite: THE FILM IS AN INSIDER'S LOOK AT THE WORLD SURROUNDING DAVID AND HIS CREATIVITY-------- IT WAS THE ONLY THING I FELT I HAD TO OFFER THAT WAS UNIQUE--------

Filmmaker: What were your influences for this film (both cinematic and otherwise)?

blackANDwhite: I THINK THAT ONE OF THE GREATEST DOCUMENTARIES I HAVE EVER SEEN IS D.A. PENNEBAKER'S DON’T LOOK BACK----------- THAT FILM CARRIED ME THROUGH A LOT OF SOLITARY TIME WHEN I WAS AT THE CABIN [editing the film].

Filmmaker: Why is the film called LYNCH (one) on posters? Are there more films to come?

blackANDwhite: THE LYNCH SERIES WILL BE COMPRISED OF 3 FILMS. LYNCH (one), LYNCH2 AND LYNCH three.

Filmmaker: I know you're shooting at the moment. Are you working on the second part of the LYNCH trilogy?

blackANDwhite: AT THE MOMENT I AM WORKING ON AN ENTIRELY NEW PROJECT BUT I WOULD LIKE TO KEEP IT UNDER WRAPS FOR A BIT LONGER-------- I WILL SAY THAT IT INVOLVES A 5 WEEK ROADTRIP ACROSS THE UNITED STATES............. WORK ON THE LYNCH SERIES WILL BEGIN AGAIN IN 2008 IF ALL GOES WELL.

Filmmaker: What are your reasons for calling yourself blackANDwhite?

blackANDwhite: I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED WITH PSEUDONYMS....... AS FAR AS THE IDENTITY GOES IF IT NEVER GOT OUT I COULDN'T BE HAPPIER--------- I ENJOY MY PSEUDO-ANONYMITY.

Filmmaker: What was your response to the suggestion that blackANDwhite was in fact David Lynch?

blackANDwhite: I WAS SURPRISED......... I HOPE THAT PEOPLE ARE NOT DISAPPOINTED THAT IT IS NOT DAVID.

Filmmaker: Is this the first pseudonym you've used? Are you going to use more in the future?

blackANDwhite: I HAVE USED MANY PSEUDONYMS IN THE PAST AND WILL CONTINUE TO USE THEM IN THE FUTURE--------- A CERTAIN NAME FITS A CERTAIN TYPE OF PROJECT I BELIEVE.

Filmmaker: Recently, you've been doing Q&As on the film festival circuit – how have you managed to remain incognito?

blackANDwhite: I THINK I WILL TAKE THE 5TH ON THIS QUESTION IF THAT’S ALRIGHT.

Filmmaker: What was the reason for you shooting in black and white and color in the film?

blackANDwhite: I SHOT IN BOTH BLACK AND WHITE AND COLOR BECAUSE I FELT THAT CERTAIN THINGS LIVED MORE IN A BLACK AND WHITE WORLD AND CERTAIN THINGS LIVED BETTER IN A COLOR WORLD.

Filmmaker: The film is edited in an unconventional, impressionistic way – what was your approach?

blackANDwhite: I APPROACHED THE FILM FROM THE STANDPOINT OF FEELING---- IF I DID NOT FEEL A CLIP IT DID NOT MAKE IT INTO THE FILM------- I WANTED TO GIVE THE PEOPLE THE FEELING OF WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO BE AROUND DAVID----THE THOUGHTS THAT HE MAKES YOU THINK-------THE AVENUES YOUR CREATIVITY GOES DOWN.

Filmmaker: What level access did you have to Lynch's world?

blackANDwhite: THE LEVEL OF ACCESS WAS INCREDIBLE----DAVID LET ME SHOOT EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED TO SHOOT.

Filmmaker: Where was the line drawn?

blackANDwhite: THE LINE WAS DRAWN AT PERSONAL INFORMATION WHICH WAS NOT IMPORTANT TO THE STORYLINE............ ALL THINGS CREATIVE WERE FAIR GAME.

Filmmaker: Do you think the current popularity of documentaries is a fad, or are they here to stay?

blackANDwhite: I HOPE THAT THEY ARE HERE TO STAY. I ENJOY WATCHING THEM AND FEEL THEY ARE A GREAT SOURCE OF INFORMATION.....THEY INSPIRE ME.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

blackANDwhite: I REALLY CANNOT REMEMBER THAT---------- I DO REMEMBER MY GRANDMOTHER TAKING ME TO THE MOVIES ON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS WHEN I WAS ABOUT 5 THOUGH........ WE WOULD SIT THROUGH THE FILMS TWICE---- IT WAS THE GREATEST.

Filmmaker: What's the strangest thing you've experienced during your time working in film?

blackANDwhite: I THINK IT WOULD HAVE TO BE THE AMOUNT OF MONEY THAT PEOPLE MAKE IN THIS BUSINESS-------- I USED TO WORK ON COMMERCIALS AND THE WASTED EXPENSES WOULD ALWAYS BLOW ME AWAY---------- VERY STRANGE HOW THIS BUSINESS CAN BE SO FRUGAL AND THEN AT THE DROP OF A HAT BE SO EXTRAVAGANT.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 10/26/2007 05:57:00 PM Comments (0)

Some people go through their whole lives searching for what they truly want to do, but those fortunate souls who find their vocation early in life can achieve incredible feats. New Zealander Robert Sarkies made his first film, Snap, Sizzle and Bang, when he was only 10, and by his early twenties his acclaimed shorts Dream Makers (1993), Flames from the Heart (1995) and Signing Off (1996) had played at film festivals around the world. Sarkies made his feature debut with Scarfies (1999), a black comedy about a group of students who discover a stash of marijuana in a seemingly deserted house — and then have to deal with the repercussions. The film was a huge hit in New Zealand and gained cult success internationally, however Sarkies failed to use Scarfies as launchpad for an immediate follow-up. In fact, it was five years later he was approached about writing and directing a film which, quite literally, was very close to home for Sarkies.

Out of the Blue tells the true story of the Aramoana massacre in which, on November 13, 1990, unemployed gun collector David Gray shot and killed 13 people in the sleepy fishing village near Dunedin, Sarkies' own hometown. Despite Sarkies' personal connection to the tragedy, Out of the Blue is a film that tells the story of the horrific events without melodrama or emotional manipulation but gains remarkable, haunting power from the unadorned manner in which it places the viewer in the center of the massacre. Despite its straightforward, experiential approach to the narrative, Out of the Blue is still strongly cinematic, its stunning cinematography drawing attention to the beauty inherent in the darkest moments. Sensitively co-written by Sarkies and Graeme Tetley, the film features fine performances by Matthew Sunderland, who brings incredible humanity to his portrayal of David Gray, and 72-year-old debutante Lois Lawn, who plays Helen Dickson, the personification of pure good, with deeply moving sincerity.

Filmmaker spoke to Sarkies about the challenge of telling the story of New Zealand's darkest day, his love of Tim Burton's movies and how going without lunch for four years changed his life.



Filmmaker: I believe you lived very near Aramoana in 1990 when the tragic killings took place.

Sarkies: I lived in the town just next door [Dunedin], so was very aware [of what had happened]. I remember thinking at the time, “Gosh, that’s an incredibly awful thing that’s just happened. There’s probably a film in it, but who would ever dare to make it?” I guess 15 years later your attitude towards that can change a little. [laughs] Little did I think I’d be the one.

Filmmaker: Did you approach the people involved in the tragedy and ask for their advice and guidance? Did you feel the need to ask their permission to make the film?

Sarkies: Yeah, very much so. I strongly felt that if people weren’t going to talk to us then we didn’t really have the right to make [the film]. We found another writer [Graeme Tetley] for me to co-write with, and the two of us went down to Aramoana for a week so that people could approach us. It’s a very small community so the strangers in town soon get recognized, and it meant that people could challenge us to our faces if they wanted to. What we were trying to do was go down there, talk to people and see what truths bubbled up to the surface, and once we had those we’d look to place a structure on it.

Filmmaker: And were people responsive to your presence in the town?

Sarkies: It was fantastic because people came to visit us, they showed us their scrapbooks, they chatted to us. A few people challenged us on what we were doing and we were often able to have long and smart conversations with them. The difficulty when you come in as a filmmaker at the end of an event like this is that you’re going into a community that very often has been jaundiced by the press because they’ve had 15 years of the media wanting stories, and part of what we were trying to do was explain to them that actually our role was quite different. We were creating something that we were trying to make artful and truthful and that was able to explore something deeper than can be explored by a 3-minute news item.

Filmmaker: What were the challenges of casting the roles of David Gray and Helen Dickson?

Sarkies: I think the challenge of casting anything in New Zealand is the relatively small talent pool and trying to find people who could give the roles something that felt real and resonated some of the truth of the characters we were depicting. In fact, we were very lucky. Matt Sunderland, who plays David Gray, had been in a few no-budget feature films before so he had a bit of on-set experience. He’d gone through drama school and he had a reputation as an absolutely committed actor. In many ways, I think it’s a role he was born to play, we were just lucky we made the film when he was exactly the right age. So he was easy: as soon as he walked in the door, it was just obvious. The Mrs. Dickson character was equally important and it’s tricky working in that age group (she’s in her seventies) because there aren’t many elderly women actors still acting [laughs], especially in New Zealand, where there isn’t a lot of work for young woman actors, let alone elderly ones. So we did a lot of street casting, basically. We went through all of the drama groups in the country, we had someone scouting down in the Dunedin area, just looking for normal people. In the end, we found Lois Lawn. She helped out in the wardrobe department of a local theatre group in Dunedin and she was encouraged to come along and audition and we just fell in love with her instantly.

Filmmaker: She’s amazing in the film, but you’re saying she had no acting experience at all?

Sarkies: She’d done a little bit of amateur dramatics when she was 18. She was 72 when we shot the film.

Filmmaker: Did you shoot the film near Aramoana?

Sarkies: Yeah, it was in the next bay along, literally over the hill where another similar town existed that was quite well preserved. We had to grunge it up a bit because these places get a little more trendy 15 years on, but there was an area there where we were able to build our house sets and replicate exactly the houses that were burned down. We were really aware of the sensitivity of what we were shooting: we had to be really cautious even about the terminology, so instead of calling out “Shooting!” — which is always a bit dangerous when you’ve got guns on set anyway… — the 1st A.D. would call out “Filming!” We often had to be sensitive because we had people who had been involved in the event come and visit the set, so it was quite intense.

Filmmaker: All the principal characters are incredibly well drawn, and as a result your portrayal of David Gray almost makes him sympathetic.

Sarkies: We were fascinated by the psychology of not only how someone could do this but also how they might be feeling once they’ve done it. We saw photographs of the bedroom where he slept that night, after he’d done most of the shooting, and I was just fascinated by a detail in the photograph of this ashtray filled with cigarette ash. So very clearly, this man who had shot 13 people, including children, had slept alone in this child’s bedroom, empty except for him, smoking cigarettes all night. You can’t help but wonder what must have been going through that man’s head. I think it’s very easy to look at people who do things like this and demonize them, however the people who perpetrate those monstrous acts are actually still human beings. We wanted to find the human being in the David Gray character, at least at times. You put an audience in a very weird and uncomfortable place where you help them empathize with a person who’s done terrible things, but I don’t think we cross the line.

Filmmaker: A major theme of the film seems to be people’s inability to comprehend and respond to the magnitude of such events.

Sarkies: I always thought that this event represented something of a loss of innocence for New Zealand at the time. The whole tone of the place was incredibly innocent, it’s just the sort of ordinary fishing village where old people go and retire. The fact is we’re so used in the media to seeing these sorts of events where people go mad with guns that we sort of say, “Oh, when that happens everyone would run screaming and it would be just like the movies.” But the reality is that if it happens in a faraway place like this, in a little sleepy fishing village, you wouldn’t believe that it was happening in your village and you would just react. A lot of the people involved thought it was firecrackers that were going off because in a big open space that’s what a gun sounds like. I think all the film does is reflect the reality of what it was actually like for the people who were involved, and we did that very intentionally because I didn’t see any point in overdramatizing that. To me it was more interesting that people came towards the fire and the gunshots than fled them.

Filmmaker: It seems as if you were trying to capture what went on in a purely experiential manner.

Sarkies: You said the word yourself, “experiential,” which was my key ethos in making it. The only way that a film could be different from anything else that had been done about this event — and documentaries had been made about it, books had been written, and there were newspaper articles ad nauseam — was to actually place you in the situation. That’s what films do best, and we figured the thing to do here was to place the audience in the middle of that village that night, in the dark. I wanted the whole thing to feel ultimately really claustrophobic, like for 100 minutes we’re trapped in this village while this gunman is on the loose.

Filmmaker: There seems to almost be a provocativeness in the way you linger on the beauty of the village and country around it and the burning village while such horrific things are taking place?

Sarkies: Actually the contrast inherent in the event struck me from day one. The fact is these horrendous things did happen in this most gorgeous of places, which seems so incongruous. I remember driving along the motorway in Dunedin on that day, being well aware of what was happening just 20 minutes away, and looking at the sky and realizing, “Wow, this is just the most stunning, stunning day that we’ve had” in this Southern town that, believe me, doesn’t have many stunning days in the year.

Filmmaker: What has been the reaction to the film in New Zealand?

Sarkies: Before it came out there was a lot of media about it, [and] I think a lot of people expected it to be some sort of splatterfest, probably not respectfully done and not a very good movie. Once the movie was released, the attitudes of the people in New Zealand completely changed when people actually saw that it was a good film. It moved them. The critical response was pretty amazing, and the response of the New Zealand public was also pretty amazing. It did extremely well when it was released in October last year, and now it's the tenth most successful domestic release of a New Zealand film ever, which for a film about such a dark event — that's clearly not a date movie or a feelgood movie — is pretty impressive. It would have been hard if New Zealanders had hated it, because really we made it for New Zealanders.

Filmmaker: Can you pinpoint the moment you became interested in cinema?

Sarkies: Well, I grew up in the 1970s, so I can't say that my cinematic influences were particularly exciting, they were pretty mainstream. I think one of my earliest cinematic experiences was the original Poseidon Adventure, when I was about ten, which was so full-on I thought it was amazing. I grew up on a diet of Spielberg films — E.T. would have been my favorite movie for quite a while, until I was about 20! [laughs] That gradually shifted as I got a bit older and went to university and started to appreciate foreign films a lot more.

Filmmaker: Which film do you wish you had directed?

Sarkies: I love a lot of Tim Burton's work, especially the slightly earlier, fantastical, imaginative work. I'd love to make a great children's film one day — I was very saddened when he made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I couldn't. [laughs] But he's Tim Burton and I'm who? It's always inspiring to see a film you wish you could have done yourself because it really reminds you that this business that we work in still has magic to it, even when you're one of the wannabe magicians.

Filmmaker: What's the smartest decision you ever made?

Sarkies: To save up my 50 cents a day lunch money when I was 10 years old to be able to afford a movie camera. I guess if I hadn't saved my lunch money rather than eating it then I wouldn't have had a camera that enabled me to start making films.

Filmmaker: So you just went hungry for all that time?

Sarkies: Yeah, I went hungry. I was a real thin child, [laughs] and I used to eat quite a lot of cereal when I got home. Literally for four years, my parents didn't realize that I didn't spend any of my lunch money on lunch. I had 50 cents lunch money every day (which doesn't sound like a lot now) and the camera that I wanted to buy was worth $300. Once I combined birthday money and Christmas money and lunch money, I could afford to buy a camera every year and a half. [laughs] I couldn't afford to buy the film, but my dad was pretty with that, he said, “You buy the camera, I'll buy the film.” He just didn't realize I was starving myself to buy the camera.

Filmmaker: Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers?

Sarkies: Follow your instincts, because it's all you've got. If you follow your own instincts, your own sensibilities, you'll create original work that reflects who you are.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 10/19/2007 12:46:00 PM Comments (1)

Leading up to the Oscars on Feb. 24, we will be highlighting the nominated films that have appeared in the magazine or on the Website in the last year. Nick Dawson interviewed Lars and the Real Girl director Craig Gillespie for our Director Interviews section of the Website. Lars and the Real Girl is nominated for Best Original Screenplay (Nancy Oliver).



In one of the more unusual coincidences on this year's movie release schedule, Craig Gillespie has seen his first two movies, Mr Woodcock and Lars and the Real Girl, released within a month of each other. Gillespie, an Australian who came to the U.S. to study at Manhattan's School of Visual Arts and never left, worked at an ad agency for eight years, then moved on to directing commercials. After twelve years as one of the most successful directors in his field, Gillespie helmed his first feature, Mr Woodcock, a broad comedy starring Billy Bob Thornton, Susan Sarandon and Seann William Scott about the titular gym teacher from hell who returns to torment an old student. Gillespie, however, was not ideally suited to the film and failed to nail the tone the studio wanted, so Wedding Crashers' director David Dobkin was called in to take charge of (uncredited) reshoots.

Gillespie, though, says his second movie, Lars and the Real Girl, is exactly his kind of movie, and there is a restraint and quiet poise inherent in proceedings that suggest that he was much more in his element. With a script by Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver, Lars and the Real Girl is a distinctly offbeat romance about a socially and emotionally maladjusted young man, Lars (Ryan Gosling), who tries to reengage with the world around him through his new girlfriend, Bianca — an "anatomically correct" sex doll who he believes is totally real. With the help of Lars' brother (Paul Schneider), sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) and the understanding local doctor (Patricia Clarkson), the whole town agree to play along with the fantasy in the hope that Lars will eventually recover from his "delusion." Oliver's sensitive script, Gillespie's surehanded direction and a sterling supporting cast are a number of the film's genuine strengths, however it is Gosling's exceptional performance that illuminates Lars and the Real Girl and takes it to another level. Whereas most actors would have made Lars one-dimensional and risible, Gosling brings an incredible humanity, depth and subtlety to the role, not only making a complex character believable but also, against all the odds, utterly charming.

Filmmaker spoke to Gillespie about his two, highly contrasting first features, the influence of 70s cinema, and why Crocodile Dundee forced him to lose his Australian accent.



Filmmaker: How long have you been here in America?

Gillespie: 20 years. I came over when Crocodile Dundee came out and it was fun to be Australian for about three weeks, and then I had to lose the accent because I couldn’t get through a conversation without people going, “Oh, my God, you’re Australian!”

Filmmaker: When you were in advertising, was it always your aim to get into directing?

Gillespie: Yeah, I mean features was [always the aim]. I enjoy doing commercials, it’s a great way to try things and take risks and work with really good people. The cinematographers you get to work with, everybody works in commercials: Adam [Kimmel, the DP on Lars and the Real Girl] I did hundreds of commercials with, and Rodrigo Prieto I worked with, who did Babel and Brokeback [Mountain]. There’s all these guys you get to pick their brains and learn from, so it’s great from that aspect.

Filmmaker: So was there a conscious game plan to get into features?

Gillespie: Well, for the last seven years I’ve been trying to do a movie! [laughs] Woodcock happened to be the one that I got to do first, and it was a great learning experience and I’m actually really happy it worked out this way. In some ways it was humbling, and then to be able to take those things that I learned and worked through and then apply them to Lars was great.

Filmmaker: Mr. Woodcock wasn’t the smoothest of productions.

Gillespie: Depends what you mean by smooth. [laughs] I was trying to make it an Alexander Payne film, which didn’t suit the concept. I was making a much more dark, complex film than I think the concept could sustain. It’s a great concept, but it’s a broad concept. What I realized when we went to a test screening [is that] it’s a gym teacher from hell that torments this guy, and they wanted those big gags in there and I miscalculated the audience.

Filmmaker: There were reshoots, weren’t there?

Gillespie: Yeah, and David Dobkin came in to do those. It’s a sensibility that I think he was better suited for.

Filmmaker: Mr. Woodcock certainly seems like much more of a David Dobkin kind of movie, and is comedically extremely different from Lars and the Real Girl.

Gillespie: They're dealing in very different ways. In Mr. Woodcock it’s a conventional comedy in the sense that it’s all about the writing and the punchlines, and that’s what a large studio comedy is. It’s about the witty one-liners, and each scene builds to that moment, whereas in Lars it’s much more of a character story. The humor comes from the relationships and it’s not about the writing, it’s about the situations. It’s a different kind of humor.

Filmmaker: You said Mr. Woodcock was a learning experience, so what lessons did you take away from it?

Gillespie: Honestly, the really basic one [is this]: I came into Woodcock a first-time director and I thought that I had to show that I know exactly what I’m doing and the reins were really tight and I had to have all the answers, and so I would say, “You’re doing this and this and this, and this is how it’s going to work,” and it wasn’t as collaborative as it really should have been. After that experience, I came into Lars and I realized it’s really a group effort and you’ve got to let everybody contribute.

Filmmaker: So you’re saying you were being too controlling?

Gillespie: Yeah. It was really liberating [on Lars and the Real Girl]. I could come in and say to the actors, “So, what do you want to do?” and turn to the DP say, “What do you think?” It was a creative process with all of us and you have all these great ideas coming up.

Filmmaker: Was there about a year between the two films?

Gillespie: There was a year, but literally Lars got set up three weeks after I finished principal photography on Woodcock. Actually, we had the great luxury of prepping Lars for a year, so I went to Canada three times and scoured it, and worked with Ryan [Gosling] for months in advance, and we really got to thoroughly prepare for this movie. All those visits to Bianca down at the factory… [laughs]

Filmmaker: The film is set over the course of a long winter, so how long did you shoot for?

Gillespie: 31 days.

Filmmaker: That’s quick for a whole winter.

Gillespie: Yeah, and particularly because there’s 196 scenes in the film. There were days when Ryan would go through nine different scenes and wardrobe changes, basically go through the [timeframe of] the whole movie in a day, and all the different grieving processes and alienations. But it was a movie that we thoroughly blocked out beforehand, my DP and I, and we were very economical on the coverage which I think served the movie and the tone of it.

Filmmaker: There seems to be an interesting conflict between the low-key tone of the film and what was presumably a very frantic feeling on set, due to your restricted shooting time.

Gillespie: The shooting style came from the creative process rather than from the schedule but we approached the way that we were telling story in a very 70s style. I looked at a lot of 70s movies trying to figure out how they captured these tones in this moment, and one of the basic things is there’s not a lot of coverage. You let scenes play out, and you let them play out in wide shot.

Filmmaker: Which 70s movies did you watch as reference points for this?

Gillespie: The closest were the Hal Ashby films, like Being There. The best thing that I wanted to capture from Being There was the sense that [Chance, the protagonist] is in this protective bubble, and you hope all the way though the film that it’s not going to burst and that his story’s not going to be ruined. I wanted to try and capture that in Lars and try and figure out what that tension is that you have to keep sustaining so the audience is invested and on the edge of their seat a little bit but ultimately totally relieved that it works out. That was a good reference in terms of the pace and the patience of that film. We [also] looked at Harold and Maude, Local Hero, but the funny thing with those films is that they didn’t go to quite as deep an emotional place as I knew Ryan would want to go. That was the part that I really felt like we were going out on a limb, the part that was really interesting.

Filmmaker: How clear a vision of the film did you have when you first read Nancy Oliver’s script?

Gillespie: Honestly, it’s the only script I’ve read that I knew exactly how I wanted to shoot. I don’t know particularly why that is, but there’s a style to her writing that I completely got the tone of what was going on, and that hasn’t happened before or since.

Filmmaker: You’ve said that Ryan Gosling was first choice for the role of Lars, and yet it's totally unlike anything he’s done before.

Gillespie: It’s completely unlike anything he’s done before, but I was first and foremost approaching this from a dramatic place and treating the material with the utmost respect, so I wanted an incredibly capable actor. When I met him, he has this accessibility and this openness about him, and as we discussed the scenes I could see this innocence in the way that he would think about things. Within 45 minutes, I thought, “This is the guy.” And it was really exciting to see that it was him and that he’d be able to take it to some really emotional places and not shy away from that. I wasn’t quite sure how far he would go, but that’s what was exciting.

Filmmaker: How involved was Ryan in the creation of the character?

Gillespie: Enormously. All the details and the clothing, the layers, the blanket, the watch, the moustache, the weight, it’s all stuff that he builds slowly and is part of the process of figuring out his characters. It’s all stuff that’s not on the page that we have to talk about and design and discuss. He gets consumed with it, and completely gives himself over to it.

Filmmaker: It’s heartening to see that, despite his success, he’s still doing character roles like this.

Gillespie: I felt we were being spoiled while we were making this film because we truly had the freedom to explore the character and try things in scenes and make mistakes, and we were allowed to go out on that limb. It’s such a rare thing these days. We stuck very closely to Nancy’s script but there are half a dozen scenes that were really Ryan’s creation that are some of the most memorable moments in the movie for me, like when he’s dancing at the party or the resuscitation with the teddy bear. There are some beautiful moments that aren’t on the page. We’d get a call from the studio: “I guess you didn’t shoot the script yesterday.” [laughs] But they were OK with that, it wasn’t a big deal. I think they instilled confidence in us with that.

Filmmaker: If you had an unlimited budget and could cast whoever you wanted (alive or dead), what film would you make?

Gillespie: To me, the unlimited budget part's not really relevant because I don't think you need a lot of money to make a beautiful piece. Honestly, I'd like to work with Ryan again. Just to find that collaboration, somebody that you're in sync with, is rare. There's actually a project that we want to do that we can't get, so I won't get into the details of that. It's frustrating. It's a book, and we're still working on [getting] it.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Gillespie: I remember seeing The Poseidon Adventure when I was four at a drive-in. I don't think it was the best choice my parents made. [laughs]

Filmmaker: Did you have nightmares afterwards?

Gillespie: Yeah. I remember the kitchen scene, throwing the jacket over the burnt face. That was the first [movie] I can remember.

Filmmaker: What impact did it have on you?

Gillespie: It's funny, I didn't really create a passion for film until I was in my twenties, and even then it was a friend of mine who got me into directing, because he was doing it. So it wasn't really on my radar. I enjoyed films, but it's something that I became more educated in as I got older.

Filmmaker: Finally, what was your dream job as a kid?

Gillespie: I wanted to be a pilot, a jet pilot. I wasn't smart enough. But I feel like now I'm in my dream job. I've made a film that's a good reflection of me and my sensibilities and was a great experience.

Labels: OscarPreview2008

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 10/12/2007 01:41:00 PM Comments (2)

As a Hollywood screenwriter, Tony Gilroy has brought an insistent energy and intelligence to the projects he has worked on, so it was a totally logical step that he should progress to becoming a director. New York native Gilroy grew up with writing and the movies in his veins, as he is the son of Frank D. Gilroy, the Pulitzer prize-winning writer and filmmaker, possibly best known for writing The Only Game in Town (1970), starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. Gilroy Jr. debuted with the superior ice-skating romcom The Cutting Edge (1992) before embarking on a creative collaboration with director Taylor Hackford which produced Dolores Claiborne (1995), The Devil's Advocate (1997) and Proof of Life (2000). Gilroy is most famous as the architect of the Bourne trilogy, the superlative spy thrillers starring Matt Damon, which are ostensibly based on novels by the late Robert Ludlum, but are in fact almost entirely Gilroy's own creation.

Compared to the Bourne movies, Gilroy's debut film as director is a distinct change of pace: Michael Clayton is that most rare of movies, a smart, thoughtful thriller that takes its time. The film revolves around the eponymous main character (George Clooney), a “fixer” at a big New York law firm who is forced to question the path he has taken in life when his company's most brilliant lawyer (Tom Wilkinson) goes insane while defending a large and unscrupulous multinational peddling fatal pesticides to farmers. Beautifully written and directed with deft confidence, Michael Clayton is compelling not only because of its tight plotting but because Gilroy fully acquaints us with his characters so that, unlike in a conventional thriller, their problems, tribulations and mistakes are utterly affecting.

Filmmaker spoke to Gilroy about working as a writer for hire, the unexpected success of the Bourne movies, and the night he spent choosing machine guns with Russell Crowe.



Filmmaker: The Cutting Edge was a movie I saw and really enjoyed when it came out, but it seems the odd movie out on your resumé.

Gilroy: I'd begun to be paid [to write] a couple years earlier, and I was really desperate to get a film made. I had a script that was very much like a Preston Sturges [movie], about a bickering couple that had invited the president to their wedding. Robert Cort, who was running Interscope at that point, had read it. He came to New York and said, “I want to do a movie about figure skating,” and I said, “Man, I don't really [want to do it], but if I nail it will you make it?” And he said, “Yeah, if you nail it I'm going to make it.” Even now, it's still constantly reissued on DVD.

Filmmaker: And there was a sequel to it made just last year.

Gilroy: That was a trip. You want to know the truth? It's amazing, [but] I never knew about that. I was literally going out to dinner when someone called me up and said, “Hey, what's this thing that's on TV tonight?” “What are you talking about?” We turn on the TV, and I was like, “What the fuck is this?!” I called my agent, [and he told me that] from an original script, $1500 was all I got paid for the character rights for that sequel. I saw five minutes before we went to dinner, and I was like, “This is appalling!” I wanted to do a really tragic sequel where he's an alcoholic and she's gotten fat and they're in the Ice Capades. I wanted to do Who's Afraid of the Cutting Edge?, but I couldn't get anybody interested in that. I wanted Soderbergh to do it.

Filmmaker: Starting with Dolores Claiborne, you developed a creative partnership with Taylor Hackford.

Gilroy: That was huge, that was everything for me. Taylor came on [when] the script was already written, and that was a blessed project all the way from the very beginning. It was a great experience. Taylor [and I] hit it off instantly — we're both the same kind of asshole [laughs], and we have the same pain threshold and I think we're both secure enough... Of all the writer-director collaborations that I know about, it's really one of the best. Not at all without conflict, but really one of the best. And he's a dear friend still.

Filmmaker: You worked on Armageddon, where there are six credited writers, and you've written scripts entirely on your own. What's the ideal set-up for you as a writer?

Gilroy: I didn't actually work with anybody on Armageddon, but at this point it seems I've done every conceivable kind of writing job you can do: I've come in for two days, I've come in for a week, I've come in just to talk, I've come in from the very beginning to the very end. I've worked on movies where I've never seen the movie I've been so pissed off, I've worked on movies where the director wasn't allowed to talk to me. [Michael Clayton] was the best experience, to be able to be in complete control, to say, “This is mine.” But the great perk of the whole gig is to be able to go and pick up weekly work, to pick up the phone and say, “I've got some bills to pay. I need a month's work right now — who needs something?” I worked for [Jerry] Bruckheimer for a year and a half — it wasn't just Armageddon, it was a bunch of films. Not only was it good economically, but fun. It was very un-neurotic work. You know what the target is, you know what you're supposed to do, and there's something very satisfying [about that]. It's extremely debilitating way to live if you stay, if you don't have a deadline to it, but as a temporary thing it's a good way.

Filmmaker: How did you approach the process of adaptation in the Bourne movies?

Gilroy: We didn't use the books. The first ten minutes of the first film is out of the book, but after that it's mine. I invented an entire different cosmology, naively and innocently, as is reflected in the fact that I am not the owner of any of this. Doug [Liman] had a script by someone who'd tried to do the book, but no one was going to make the movie. I said, “I have no interest in [rewriting] that, but if you want to do a teardown, [I can do one]. What happens if you have somebody who has amnesia who keeps finding out that the things they know how to do are bad? That's kind of interesting.” It was so low pressure and the script came out of it very quickly, it was very interesting material. That turned into a two-year saga. No one ever thought there would be a sequel of that first movie. I'm not going to get into all the production insanity and everything else but, believe me, I never would have killed Clive Owen or Chris Cooper if I thought there was going to be a sequel. The minute there was a sequel, I went back and put the tape in to see if there was any way that Clive could have crawled out of that field. We never, ever thought there would be a sequel, so once we had to go on we couldn't use the books. There was nothing.

Filmmaker: I believe the idea for Michael Clayton came out of experiences you had while researching The Devil's Advocate.

Gilroy: Exactly. Wandering off the recce tour at the law firms, I was really struck by how unrepresented an actual law firm was on film. It's either like L.A. Law, or it's like The Firm, or it's like Devil's Advocate. They have that wood paneled room, it's just that no one ever goes in there and the real work is taking place in these huge backstage industrial areas with documents and people working. When you go to a law firm to shoot location at 3 o'clock in the morning, it's shocking: there's three or four lights on on every floor and some poor person buried under paper. It's not pretty people and it's not a pretty atmosphere, it's really a grind. That's fertile territory for a film.

Filmmaker: This is a real change of pace and seems like a very conscious attempt to step away from the Bourne style of filmmaking.

Gilroy: This was the temperature that this movie wanted to be at. If I was doing something else, I'd want to reserve the right to be as kinetic as I possibly could be. I've written a lot of thrillers and a lot of uncredited stuff, and this was a real opportunity, not as an intellectual exercise but just as an instinctive thing, to write the moments that normally get left out. The traditionally Hollywood storytelling technique, even in a great film, is that the villain is presented fully formed, and at the end has a series of scenes or speeches that really underline a cogent villain's worldview. But I'm much more concerned in this movie with the creation of the villain, and the moment when people decide to do what they do. There's a whole bunch of moments and ideas that had got thrown off the truck over the years in these other films that were really interesting to me to find a place where they worked. And they worked on this film.

Filmmaker: Was it easy to convince people to let you direct?

Gilroy: Oh, it would have been much easier to go do an action picture. It would have been vastly easier to get four times as much money, $80m, and do an action picture, bizarre as that sounds. If you're cheap and confident and know what you're doing and you understand production, you're a real good value for them. The dirty secret on the big action pictures is there's a lot less personal direction than there is in any other thing. It's a whole community of people that make the picture, it's a much more communal filmmaking style.

Filmmaker: Were you nervous on your first day?

Gilroy: Oh yeah, but nervous in a good way. It's really silly, the weekend before you actually start you realize you're going to have to say “Action!” and “Cut!”

Filmmaker: Did you rehearse in front of a mirror?

Gilroy: [I rehearsed] with my family. I got merciless shit from my family for weeks: “I wanna hear you say it again! How're you gonna say it?” It was the source of much amusement in my household. I got no shortage of grief.

Filmmaker: Michael Clayton is reminiscent of movies from the 1970s, when thrillers could be thoughtful and slow-burning.

Gilroy: 70s movies are the heart of where my moviegoing obsession really began, and they're still the films I go back and look at the most. It was a combination of muscular filmmaking with great subject matter. And ambiguity. Muscle and ambiguity and complexity and loose ends. That's been ghetto-ized off to the side now to the Sundance film or the super-indie film, where people are really hanging on for dear life [because] they don't have enough money to make their movies. They have the twentieth choice of actor, and their crew's doing everything for the first time. But that era of balls-out, tough, full-stop, pro moviemaking that didn't have the chaos beaten out of it, there are so many movies that fall into that category: the [Alan J.] Pakula films, Klute was a big influence, Point Blank was a huge influence, all the Gordon Willis films, Sidney Lumet, Hal Ashby, Frank Perry – and Sydney [Pollack].

Filmmaker: Do you see yourself directing more movies after this? Is the success of Michael Clayton integral to that question?

Gilroy: I'd love to keep doing this. I can't stop writing, but I have something I'm trying to get off right before the strike. I'm working very aggressively right now to get something off in March. Michael Clayton's already satisfied what it needs to satisfy. I've had great success from showing it to other actors and saying, “Trust me,” and that's the coin of the realm.

Filmmaker: What were your major cinematic influences growing up?

Gilroy: Growing up, it was all the films of the 60s. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was a huge influence on me. But when it came to going to movies in the 70s, that's really when everything [came together]. I moved to Boston when I was 17 years old as a musician, and there was the Orson Welles, the Harvard Square, the Brattle Theater, the Central Square Theater — within 15 blocks, there were five or six amazing rep houses that were changing movies every day. Imagine if there were 18 Film Forums. I used to see everything, and then I started working back and seeing all the Billy Wilder films, the old [Ernst] Lubitsch films. So those were the years that I really fell in love with movies.

Filmmaker: What's the strangest thing you've experienced in the film industry?

Gilroy: [laughs] Oh my God, that's a long list! I'll just have to pick something at random... Picking weapons with Russell Crowe and Taylor [Hackford] in the penthouse room in the Argyle Hotel from ten o'clock at night until six in the morning. [We were] picking weapons with an armorer for Proof of Life with I don't know how many weapons in that room. Unbelievable. SAS guns and an armory in the penthouse apartment on Sunset Boulevard.

Filmmaker: Finally, what's the best advice you could give to a young filmmaker?

Gilroy: Have fun, but be cruel. You really have to be cruel to yourself, don't fool yourself. It's that fine balance between being really enthusiastic and free and loose and imaginative, and being really tough on yourself. Be tough on yourself before somebody else is.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 10/05/2007 05:44:00 PM Comments (0)