Interview: J.C. Chandor of ‘Margin Call’

Posted on October 21, 2011 at 8:00 am

J.C. Chandor wrote and directed “Margin Call,” a sharply-scripted thriller about one night at a never-named Wall Street firm. The top executives discover that they are at risk of catastrophic failure and have to decide before the markets open in the morning whether they or their clients will take the losses. The movie stars Jeremy Irons, Keven Spacey, co-producer Zachary Quinto, Stanley Tucci, and Demi Moore. It is specific enough to make some very pointed commentary on the financial meltdown but universal enough that its themes of betrayal and externalized costs could be set in any industry or indeed in any organization.

How did you come to write about the financial meltdown?

I had written several different things in several different capacities but had never done anything even sort of remotely topical let alone completely topical. This was being written for myself to direct so it was from a very personal place, not a Hollywood script to go out and sell. A lot of what has become the strength of the project and drew people to it came from an odd place, from production restraints I placed on myself to keep the budget realistic.

I’m a total real estate junkie and took time off to set up a partnership to renovate an old building and it happened to be on the other side of the real estate bubble. The godfather of one of my partners was a very prominent investment banker, a ground-breaker, an intellectual, invented the concept of a real estate hedge fund, a whole new model. He intervened in his godson’s life and about halfway through our project came to him and said, “Those offers you’ve been getting to buy the project half-completed — take them. I’ve been leaving millions of dollars in deposits on the table because it is time to get out.” We took his advice, mostly because we were having trouble with one of the other partners but also because we had the feeling things were not going well in the markets. We just broke even and felt like a defeat at the time but a year and a half later I felt I had a new lease on life.

As things really started bubbling to the surface I thought back to that man and what it was like to be walking around — you never know for sure, but he felt pretty strongly things were bad enough that he had to take a financial hit to avoid a worse one and warn us. I thought it was an interesting issue to look at it from the inside, and do a small character-driven story about investment bankers as they see what they thought their lives were about changing in a deep way and what their responsibility was, all those things that were a little bit unsaid in the film but that the actors and I knew were all there. I have only so much time, so much energy, this skill set, and this is what I’ve used it for.

It has the setting of a drama but it feels like a thriller.

To be there on that day was an interesting limited view into a wide problem. It’s a ticking time bomb structure, which is a thriller by its very nature. The one total deviation is that 45 minutes into the movie you know the bomb can’t be defused. The drama is who will they hand the bomb to?

Do you see them as villains?

What most people would choose to do in this scenario is what these characters do — to look out for themselves. To look at it in the macro viewpoint, they made the decision when they walked into the door coming out of Harvard or wherever they were to use their time and skills and very intense intelligence and education and have the big majority of those people get siphoned off into this world. People who have already made that choice when they walk in the door it is unrealistic to expect them five, ten, fifteen years later to make a different choice about who to take care of.

Your father worked on Wall Street, at Merrill Lynch. Did he guide you at all on the script?

For superstitious reasons I didn’t show the script to anyone in my family. I’ve had a lot of false starts if you know what I mean! I didn’t really tell my family I was doing this until we were really at the point of no return. But what I learned from my father and from friends over the years is the toll that it takes on the people who stay behind and keep their jobs when others are let go. It’s one of the only businesses that even in their best years still culls 5-10 percent of the workforce every year purely for motivation. The people who last are the ones who play the game correctly. For certain characters like Spacey’s it’s not about greed; it’s about survival. For others like Simon Baker’s and Demi Moore’s it is about ego and the way you define yourself.

I originally wrote the scene when it wasn’t the big dramatic day, yet. It was supposed to be more run of the mill, but as things developed in real life by the time we shot it, it became too subtle.

The way it was revised though, gets Stanley Tucci’s character out of the building, and that is important for the plot.

The fun thing about Stanley’s character, Eric Dale, is that I have a hard time naming characters and I usually use names from people in my life. Eric Dale just worked and it is amusing for him because every character says the name through the film as he becomes the symbol of the paranoia that the information will get out.

I won’t give it away, but I wanted to tell you how much I liked your ending — you took something of a risk and it paid off.

The ending and the music are the things most people feel comfortable having an opinion about. For me, the movie started with the ending and then you figure out how you get there. Kevin Spacey would say something different but for me the most important thing is what’s behind him, the house. It became very important to understand that in his mind, he did need the money. No matter what you make, the way people rationalize their connection with money is almost identical. As Paul Bettany says in the film, “You learn to spend what’s in your pocket.”

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Interview: Tiffany Shlain of ‘Connected’

Posted on October 2, 2011 at 8:00 am

Tiffany Shlain’s new film is “Connected,” a personal memoir and broader exploration of the ways we connect and misconnect through technology. The film is opening in select theaters across the country: It opened in LA at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood on September 30, and opens in Seattle on October 7 and in NYC at The Angelika Film Center on October 14. For more information, follow Connected on Facebook and on Twitter @tiffanyshlain.

She wrote:

I hope that Connected will help create a global conversation about what it means to be connected in the 21st century. I believe that by engaging people to talk about connectedness in their own lives and in the world, the ripple effect of these conversations will have far reaching impact. Appreciating that this is a huge subject, I employ many tactics (humor, animation, archival, and my own personal story) to attempt to untangle what interdependence and connectedness mean in terms of the history of the human species and moving forward. Through this journey, I wield a large magnifying glass to look at some of the absurd and beautiful behaviors of our species and our world. While the core components of humans desire to be “connected” have not changed since we first appeared on this planet, I believe a new zeitgeist is emerging through all these new technologies that are making our world smaller and more intertwined, and that that zeitgeist can make the world a better place.

Shlain, whose film about Barbie and the woman who created her explored Jewish identity, answered my questions about the way technology aids and thwarts communication.

When was the first time you went online and what was it like?

1995. I was working on a CD-ROM on the musician Sting. (remember the CD-ROM days;) someone said to me, “you have to see this thing called the web, and he showed me this website where people from all over the world were talking about how they loved Sting. I was blown away. I knew it was going to change the world.

What keeps us feeling optimistic that despite the odds that our next email is spam or some dumb joke that’s been circulating since DARPA-NET we keep checking because it might be something great?

We are linking up everyone on the planet and creating a central nervous system. The fact that we are going to such a diversity of ideas all circulating is going to help us tackle some of our biggest problems. We are just at the beginning of seeing what collaborative tools online can do. That gets me excited. Also, I think we are opening up new channels for empathy….people are sharing more. These are all very good things. The internet is just an extension of us…all that goes with that. With “Connected,” we hope to trigger a conversation about the good, the bad, the hope. We think now is the perfect time to talk about what all this connectedness means in our lives personally and globally.

I believe in humans and humanity and in our innate ability to change for the better. Look at the end of slavery and apartheid, the women’s rights and civil rights movements, and other political and social transformative movements in the last few hundred years, and you can see how we are indeed evolving. There are two things that make me optimistic. We as humans are curious and we have a deep desire to connect. These two things will make us move us forward to a better place.

How did you look for the archival footage you used and how does it help tell the story of technology that is less than a decade old?

Ever since I was young, I had always loved film and technology. When was at UC Berkeley, I took “history of film,” as an elective with an incredible teacher, Marilyn Fabe. She had an infectious enthusiasm about how each technological advancement in film radically changed how ideas could be conveyed and activate the viewers to think in a new way. I was hooked. This was the way I wanted to convey ideas. However, there were no film production facilities, so mostly I edited together archival images I found from old movies or sound slug on a 16 mm editing table I discovered in the back of the architecture department. Recontextualizing images from many different eras to get at some larger ideas was very exciting to me. That archival aesthetic still informs my style today. Around 70% of our film “Connected,” is comprised of archival images from every era imaginable sewn together with original animations by the very talented Stefan Nadelman, in my attempt to put my arms around our world, where we came from, and where we’re headed.

What is the source of the little hits of pleasure we get from feeling connected through technology?

I found clues when reading about the hormone oxytocin, which the brain releases when humans connect with each other. Oxytocin decreases fear and anxiety, creates empathy, trust, and cooperation, and reinforces our urge to connect. The human brain is also designed to seek pleasure because of a hormone called dopamine. Researchers now know that the brain releases dopamine when new information is received. So every click, search, tweet, or text has the potential to stimulate the same hormonal rush as sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll. But an interesting thing happens with dopamine—you never feel fully satiated. It’s called an “infinite dopamine loop,” leaving you constantly wanting more. The combined release of oxytocin and dopamine when plugged into cyberspace helps explain humans’ insatiable hunger for knowledge, approval, and being constantly connected.

Does use of social media strengthen or weaken our ability to create in-person intimacy?

I think it does both.

Do you ever take a break from technology? Do you have any technology-free spaces in your home or day?

My father loved quoting Sophocles, “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse.” So, from the beginning of time, every new technology and advancement brought with them a complex mix of positive and negative repercussions as well as unintended consequences. “Connected” addresses the potential of these new 21st century technologies, the importance of harnessing their powers, but also covers the ramifications when these new technologies take over and even overwhelm our personal lives.

I’ve started practicing what I call “technology Shabbats” with my family. Every Friday at sundown, our whole family disconnects until Saturday night. No cell phones, no internet, no television, no Ipads. No multi-tasking. We disconnect completely. Or maybe I should say we connect completely – with ourselves and each other.

I am learning that turning off technology is just as powerful as turning it on and that our society needs both. Technology can be so enticing and overwhelming, but we also need to remember how important it is to be fully present with the people you love and also be alone and quiet. The potential of technology globally and personally is exponential, but we need to know where the off switch is and when to shut it down.

Do you see social media or multi-player games replacing the shared experience of seeing a movie in a theater?

No. these are all new experiences but nothing will replace being in a darkened theater experiencing something together with a group. Laughing, crying, thinking together. We are social creatures. We will always go to the movies.

What has surprised you in the audience reaction to the movie?

At the end of the screenings, after sharing something so personal everyone in the theater feels very connected to me and to each other, which I didn’t expect. Normally, after you feel connected with someone, you are compelled to share some part of yourself with them..but with “Connected,” here I was experiencing the reverse. In the film, I share and then people feel connected. It has been exciting to then see the audience in turn feel connected to not only me, but to the bigger ideas in the film.

And lastly, everyone is ready to have this conversation about “what does it mean to be connected in the 21st century?” It feels like everyone has been waiting to have it. No one wants to leave the Q & As. Our goal is to trigger a global conversation about “connectedness” and it seems people are ready.

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Interview: Adam and Mark Kassen of ‘Puncture’

Posted on September 28, 2011 at 8:00 am

Brothers Adam and Mark Kassen co-produced and co-directed “Puncture,” the true story of an idealistic but drug-addicted young lawyer from Houston who took on the mammoth pharmaceutical companies on behalf of a quirky inventor who came up with a simple and inexpensive new life-saving technology to prevent health care workers from being infected by used syringes. Because the big companies did not own the retractable syringe technology, they would lose revenues, so they fought to keep it out of hospitals. Chris Evans (“Captain America”) plays Mike Weiss, the young lawyer, and in addition to co-producing and co-directing, Mark Kassen plays his law partner Paul Danziger. The cast also includes Jesse L. Martin (“Law & Order, ” “Rent”), Michael Biehn (“Terminator”), and Kate Burton (“Law & Order”).

I spoke to Adam and Mark about the movie and about why so many successful Hollywood teams are brothers.

This is such a powerful story. What message do you want this movie to carry about the role of corporations in healthcare?

Mark: Adam and I are focused primarily on the movie’s mission and the more it can get out there we hope it will connect to a larger conversation.

Adam: We’re not investigative reporters. This is a film, not a documentary. It is entertainment. But we hope that it has a larger message. We hope people will watch it as entertainment and then start a conversation afterwards.

There’s kind of a connection between your flawed hero, who is addicted to drugs, and the industry he takes on, which is addicted to money and power.

Mark: That’s a cool analogy. It’s an addiction to money, an extra $40 billion that gives nothing back to the industry, growing itself at any cost. And a drug addict will get high at any cost. It’s a more fertile ground to an already-burgeoning problem.

Adam: These group purchasing organizations run by the health care industry started out with good intentions. It was a more streamlined way to get the products to hospitals at the best price. But that became, like almost everything else in the health care industry, guided by the profit motive. It turned into the opposite, squeezing out products that doctors want and nurses want, but because of politics, money, and corporations they cannot get them.

You assembled a remarkable cast.

Mark: Adam’s been trying to get me for a long time. I had my mom do the negotiation.

Adam: He had so many demands, a big trailer…

Mark: Adam agreed to give me the part if I finally told him he was right. Well, first and foremost, we had to get the right actor to play Mike. We were introduced to Chris Evans by a mutual agent. We had seen “Sunshine,” the Danny Boyle film, which he was great in. And whatever he was in, he is always great. We wanted somebody for that role who would have a sense of tragedy but not self-indulgent but dynamic, charismatic, exciting.

Adam: Like the real guy was. Chris is this multi-layered actor and he knocked it out of the park. We cast around him with really great actors. Jesse L. Martin is a good friend of ours and did it to help us out and because he was excited about the material. Kate Burton (who plays the Senator) came down for a day.

Mark: There are upsides and downsides to making a small movie like this. Once we got Chris, we that means you have just this much money to get the movie made. So, people say, “this guy plays a second lead on that TV show, so he’s worth this much money,” and we didn’t do that. With our casting directors, we were able to get just good actors, the best we could. Brett Cullen is actually from Houston. The last scene in the movie, the camera shoots out the window, you can see the Cullen building. In Houston we got so many great local actors. We were surprised by how many people we could get from the area.

For a lawyer who appears in court, Mike was a very flamboyant dresser.

Adam: We talked to so many people who knew Mike, opposing counsel, judges, people he went to high school with and one of the most consistent through-lines beside his brilliance was the way he dressed, where he had them tailored, where he bought them. There were all these stories about his suspenders and wild colored shirts and how he thought he was the Man!

It’s surprising how many brother teams there are in Hollywood today — the Coens, the Farrellys, the Wachowskis. What is it about the brother relationship that works in film-making?

Adam: We’re used to being around each other.

Mark: In all honesty, if making a film is all about communication, you’re used to being able to communicate with each other on an intimate level and that gives you a good start.

Adam: There’s a lot of debate and conversation and exploration involved, in a good way, with the actors, the editors, the DP. Being brothers, we’ve been debating for a long time, and if you are friends as brothers that means you have done it successfully. Being on a film set is stressful at times, but no more stressful than doing the dishes together after dinner with your parents. You’re used to debating in that high-stress environment. And you know each other so well. You recognize that look that’s been making you angry since you were 10 years old that someone else might not notice. But it’s over very quickly as well, so arguments don’t resonate. We have similar creative sensibilities and that really helps. And we have that basic level of trust.

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Interview: Charles Martin Smith of ‘Dolphin Tale’

Posted on September 21, 2011 at 8:00 am

Before he was a director, Charles Martin Smith was a teen actor who appeared as “Terry the Toad” in “American Graffiti.” He starred in Carroll Ballard’s “Never Cry Wolf” and appeared in films like “The Untouchables” and “Starman.” While he continues to appear as an actor, he has most recently been more active as a writer and director. He did both for his new film, “Dolphin Tale,” opening this Friday, inspired by the true story of Winter the dolphin, who now has a prosthetic tale. It was a delight to talk with him about breaking the first rule of show business (“don’t work with children or animals”), what he learned from George Lucas, and why the color blue is so important in this film. He made me laugh as soon as we met because he started “directing” where we would sit. “I often say I became a director because I like to boss people around,” he told me, “but it’s just a line.”

They say it’s always a problem to work with kids and animals, but in this movie you did both.

I might be the only filmmaker that really gravitates toward that. I really like working with kids. And I really like working with animals! They’re so pure and honest and they’re never really acting, at least not in my movies. Well, maybe Rufus . People sometimes try to impose things on them, a character they have in their own mind. I think it’s much more interesting when working with an animal to find out what that real animal does and try to capture their essence and their behavior. It’s almost a little bit of a documentary type feel. We’ve got the real Winter playing the real Winter.

Have you worked with dolphins before?

I haven’t. I’ve been interested in them and interested in science. You hear all about how intelligent they are but you can’t comprehend it until you really spent time with them. They’re certainly as bright as we are. The first thing I did when I got involved with the movie was go to Clearwater, Florida to spend time with Winter, just to observe her behavior. She does all kinds of interesting things. She’s very playful; she loves toys. She’s still young, the equivalent of a 10-year-old kid. She loves her blue mattress and her rings. So we put that in the movie. I wanted to give her a special ring with something cute and iconic so I thought we’d give her a yellow duck — do you know how many different versions of rubber ducks there are? We spent months designing this thing. The expense we went to! She makes that Tweety Bird sound all the time, so I said, “Put it in the movie!”

And working with kids?

I like kids. I find them fascinating. They give you real things. Since I began as a child actor I understand what they’re going through and it’s great to see them blossom and learn. I am not just a director but an acting coach and teacher on set and I love that. I really made an effort to keep the kids real, to act like real kids. So many movies have “movie kids.” I didn’t want to do that.

There were no kids in the true story but when Alcon developed the project they wanted it to be kid-centered to make it more accessible. I wanted to bring something of a magical quality to it, some wish fulfillment. How many kids have their own dolphin? Having the aquarium be this grand, mystical place that Hazel has complete run of and where she knows all the turtles and dolphins. And the houseboat, so she had a fun place to live with a crows nest she could decorate herself. And Rufus. All to bring a slightly magical fantasy element. I originally conceived Rufus as a seagull, but Alcon suggested a pelican — a true collaboration.

And two 11 year olds save the day. It would not really happen that way, probably, so that is a little bit of a fantasy, too. But that made it even more important that the kids were grounded in reality and acted like real kids. When Clay tells them he has to close down, Hazel runs. Kids don’t want anyone to see them cry. Cosi (who plays Hazel) is amazingly gifted, so good, so real, as good as any adult actor I’ve ever worked with. She had just been in community theater, never done anything in movies or television. And she’s a good kid; they both are. They both come from very religious families, Christian families. They’re such good kids. I’ve never had a set before with no profanity, not even from the crew!

You did an amazing job of achieving a really sun-drenched look that really felt like Florida.

The wonderful cinematographer was Karl Walter Lindenlaub. He did a lot of big sci-fi films like “Independence Day” and “Stargate” and he did a Scottish film, “Rob Roy” that showed he could do lovely things outdoors. We talked a lot about the hot look and we certainly had hot weather. I wanted a sort of sci-fi feeling to the movie, that first scene, under water. We meet the pod under water and see how inquisitive Winter is. I wanted to see the world she comes from. In a way, it’s like another planet, an alien from one planet that washes up, stranded, on another and is rescued by a boy. I wanted to do that with the look of the film, too. I wanted the underwater to be all blue and rich. And then we made the neighborhood drab, and took all the blue out of it, all oranges and rusts and earth tones. And then the aquarium is a blue building — which it really is. And inside, that’s a set actually, he walks in and sees all the blue, watery, rich look and it’s like he’s underwater. Then he goes back to his world and it’s all brown again. But gradually we had some blues show up in his clothes to show how his worlds were coming together.

What did you learn from the directors you worked with as an actor?

I picked up stuff from everybody. I worked with a lot of great directors. George Lucas was very good in the way he directed young actors on “American Graffiti.” He’s not generally thought of as an actor’s director. But one of the things he did was cast good actors and get out of our way. I learned so much about the importance of casting. But he said, “I wrote the script; you can change any line you like. I have an in with the writer!” Some directors want every single word done the way it was written but that’s too stultifying to a child. And he would ask us what was comfortable and organic and honest for us he wanted to do and he would build the scenes around that. But the one I learned the most from was Carroll Ballard. No one deals better with the subject of nature and man’s collision with wildlife than he does. The way he edits, structures things, he’s always been my hero. Every day on this movie I would think, “What would Ballard do if he were here?”

I loved the real footage at the end.

That was what I saw the very first day, seeing children with disabilities coming and being inspired by Winter. The editor, Harvey Rosenstock, got the footage and cut it together beautifully. It was so good we didn’t want to run it with the credits over it. It works too well; it’s too beautiful.

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Interview: John Madden of ‘The Debt’

Posted on August 30, 2011 at 8:00 am

John Madden, director of “Shakespeare in Love” and “Proof,” came to Washington, D.C. to talk about his newest film, “The Debt.” It is a remake of an Israeli film about three Mossad agents who are revered as heroes for capturing a Nazi war criminal, who was then killed trying to escape. The film moves back and forth in time between the capture in the 1960’s and 1997, when a book about it, written by the daughter of two of the agents, is published. We spoke about the challenge of casting a villain,

How did you become involved in a remake of an Israeli film?

An agent called Ari Emanuel, the brother of Rahm represents Matthew Vaughn and the producer of the original film. Because it was in Hebrew it did not get a release anywhere else, but they thought it was an interesting project to reconsider or adapt for a wider audience. So Matthew wrote a script that was faithful to the original story but it was structurally a little different. The original film cross-cuts more between the two time frames. He sent it to me, so the first way I came across the material in that form. I thought it a very compelling and interesting story which I immediately wanted to unravel. I did watch the original film — it’s the raw material and I wanted to honor that. But I hoped it would not be very good! It would be easier. But it was good, very arresting. It didn’t daunt me or arrest me. It excited me because I could see it was a very powerful piece. We inevitably developed the story in different ways, with different emphasis. The material is sufficiently strong and charged and complex that as a director you need to find your own way through it.

I’m always interested in what goes into casting the villain, especially in this film where you have an actor who is unknown in the US and who gives a spectacular performance.

Jesper Christensen plays the villain. He’s Danish and fantastically highly regarded and respected actor with a very long list of stage and movie credits. I didn’t want an audience to be able to say immediately, “Oh, here’s the villain.” The preoccupations of the story is about moral responsibility. I didn’t want the ground to be completely solid. One of the things you wonder as the Navy Seals must have wondered as they came into the compound in Abbottabad not knowing if the person there was Bin Laden. You do find yourself thinking even once he’s in captivity, “Have they got the right guy?” He is clever enough to exploit the weaknesses in the scenario to his own advantage. A Nazi doctor is about the apotheosis of villainy in a certain kind of cinematic literature and that’s a trap, a danger of two-dimensionality, and Peter Straughan and I were very conscious of not wanting this character to cooperate with the script, not wanting him to be this monstrous presence. He does say things that are monstrous, but even that you have to contextualize that he’s a man fighting for his life and looking for any advantage. He can be quite charming when he says he would prefer to be fed by Rachel, who had, he says, the makings of a nurse in another life. There’s something beguiling in that sort of wisdom and you find yourself agreeing with him when he says that.

We were under a lot of pressure to change the title at one point. It’s somewhat of a negative signifier in this modern age though I always thought it was a marvelous title. In the interest of collaboration, I said, “Well, if we can come up with another one,” and one we thought of was “Another Life.” He is a man who makes another life for himself, or tries to. Watch for the moment when he starts speaking in English. And there’s Rachel, looking out behind sunglasses which are supposed to protect her eyes from the sun but she’s looking out at a life she should never have had, that is a false life, that seemed a provocative and interesting idea.

It is very Israeli to have such an international cast. Israel is even more of a melting pot than the US.

I’m slightly conscious of the fact that other than the Israeli actors, the principals are not by in large Jewish. That wasn’t by intent. But the internationality of the cast gave me a kind of latitude. I don’t think anyone watching the film would know where Jessica Chastain or Marton Csokas was from. He’s actually half Hungarian. And Jesper is a Dane who blessedly is completely fluent in German and English.

Did you have the actors who played the younger versions of the characters work with the actors who played their older selves?

Only Helen and Jessica. That symbiosis is necessary for the story and I set higher standards of physical affinity. I wanted Jessica to be an unknown but she’s less of an unknown now! I looked at the photos of the men side by side. But David is almost unrecognizable to himself, one of those situations where you might say, “I saw him the other day and you wouldn’t recognize him.” So resemblance was less important.

It is a story about stories, isn’t it?

There’s a lot of thematic richness in the film. It’s about a need for heroes and the way we mythologized them. This country’s whole political discourse and movie culture is based on the idea of the hero. It’s a very potent idea to deconstruct. And we all mythologize our own histories with an unconscious editing of our own behavior. You know you’ve got a good story when it starts talking back to you and revealing things that you haven’t foreseen. It’s the daughter’s unawareness, the way she is enveloped in a lie — the mother has to do something truly heroic, to immolate herself in order to release her daughter from the contamination of the lie.

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