Interview: Director Ed Zwick of ‘Defiance’

Posted on January 14, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Edward Zwick, the director of the new Holocaust movie “Defiance,” is well-known for both historical dramas (“Glory”) and intimate personal stories (the television series “Thirtysomething”) – and for finding the small moments in big stories and the big emotions in small ones. This is the ideal sensibility for the new Holocaust drama “Defiance,” the true story of The Bielski Brothers, who hid and protected 1200 Jews from the Nazis and the Russians in the Belarussian forest.

I spoke to him in Washington, D.C., where we quickly discovered that we graduated from different campuses of the same high school in the same year and have a friend in common and that lead off a lively exchange about the movie’s themes and what went into getting it made.

What are some of the movies that influenced and inspired you when you were still in school?

“The Guns of Navarone and “Lawrence of Arabia when I was young, but I was a real addict of “The Late Show” and watched everything, especially anything from John Huston, Howard Hawks, and George Stevens.

Is there one theme or thruline that is a part of all the projects that interest you?

You’re the critic — that’s for you to pick out. If I try to think objectively about myself and my work, I would say I want to be intuitive and distinctive. You can’t help but reveal your bias, and you can’t but invest personally in any story that you tell. I like to reveal people with some of the niceties of social behavior stripped away and the moral, ethical, and political issues are revealed.

One of the questions that drew me to this project was the question of how Jewish culture has survived. The Passover Seder is about telling the story of the exodus. Stories are one of the means by which a culture preserves its identity. There is a perverse irony in commemoration of the dead in the Holocaust with little attention to the survivors and the resistance, especially the Jewish resistance. Its immensity can’t be underestimated and it is a story that needs to be told. We all know these iconic images of Jews in the Holocaust and those are important but we have come to accept them as the only images and that needs revision.

It came to our attention through Tuvia’s obituary. We found our way to the family and they were very generous with anecdotes, pictures, videotape, and Tuvia’s unpublished autobiography. The comment at the end of the film underscores the rising to the occasion aspect of what they did. They took off the mantle of responsibility and the burden of doing certain things they were not proud to revisit. They had a hard-won normalcy. Having done things that were very extreme and had to do with survival, they preferred that it was not better known.

You had three actors, two British and an American, playing brothers. How did you create that sense of connection and history between them?

I did some of it and they did some of it. They created this lovely kind of rough-housing sibling regressive behavior that they developed on the set and it was an approximation of their boyhood. Liev Schreiber and Daniel Craig got into this very competitive sibling thing that was important for the relationship of their characters. We also had an extraordinary dialect coach, because we wanted a consistent sound, that commonality.

And we worked with Jenny Beavan, one of the goddesses of the costume design field. Her gift was to find the real pieces, to find in each character that silhouette and watch that silhouette change, to subtly watch characters become more assimilated, losing and picking up pieces. At one point Liev steals the coat from the milkman, and then we see Daniel’s wearing the coat and then he gives it to Alexa and then we see it covering them in bed. There were no new things but everything had multiple uses and that, too, helps to tell the story.

Tell me about working with James Bond – Daniel Craig has been working in a very different genre.

He is a character actor, real protean, and he is very determined not to be only one thing. He reminds me of Anthony Hopkins who is also a working class classically trained British actor and there’s nothing like that. He is very internal. And he wanted Liev’s character to seem more dominant; he is very generous that way.

What were some of the issues presented in telling this story?

It is a complex subject, but it is important to understand the difference between passivity and powerlessness. These people were stateless. They had no access to weapons. The police were hostile. But they had this urban natural setting. Everywhere there was a forest, a part of the natural world, there were Jews who hid in it. There was God in the forest – denoted, in the juxtaposition of the natural world, the forest as a place of sanctuary. It embraced and sheltered them.

It was important for me not to describe this group as a monolith, all of them like each other and acting as one force. That objectification leads to prejudice and genocide. There were many divides: religious and secular, class, sexuality, aggression — all ways to individuate it. I think of the W.H. Auden poem “September 1, 1939,” when he says “I and the public know/What all schoolchildren learn,/Those to whom evil is done/Do evil in return.” In the interest of survival they may cross lines even into the emulation of their tormentor. For me, that made it more heroic because it made it more believable.

It also happened to be true.

Interview: Steve James of ‘At the Death House Door’

Posted on January 3, 2009 at 8:00 am

I last wrote about the superb documentary At the Death House Door when I interviewed its subject, Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as the death house chaplain to the infamous “Walls” prison unit in Huntsville. The film was the first-time direction collaboration between award-winning directors Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”) and Peter Gilbert (“Vietnam: Long Time Coming”). James was nice enough to answer some of my questions about the film.

How did you first hear about Pastor Carroll Pickett?

Steve James: Gordon Quinn at our film company Kartemquin was approached by The Chicago Tribune because they thought we would be interested in doing a film focused entirely on the investigation of the Carlos De Luna case by Steve Mills and Maurice Possley. Gordon knew that Peter and I would be interested in the subject and set up a meeting with the reporters. In the course of telling us about De Luna, they also mentioned Pastor Carroll Pickett who had been haunted by the memory of De Luna, and recorded these feelings in an amazing audio tape about the execution right afterwards. When they revealed he’d recorded audio tapes about all 95 executions he’d
ministered to, we were hooked. We decided from the get-go, that we wanted Rev. Pickett’s journey to be our main story, and bring us to why De Luna was so important to him.

What was your original intention for the film and how did it evolve?

SJ: See answer above… As stated, the original intention of the Tribune was to have us do a film about Carlos De Luna, but its hard to do a film about a man who was not famous or led a well-documented life, and who was executed 17 years before. With the mention of Pickett, it was clear that we had a unique and potentially powerful story to tell about a man’s past and also who he is today. This is one time when the original conception of what the film could be was pretty much on target for what the film ultimately became.But that doesn’t mean that the filmmaking process did not evolve. We didn’t anticipate guard Fred Allen, nor Carlos’ sister Rose, nor Carroll’s family and the significance they would all play in the film. Nor did we anticipate just how closed and “well armored” Carroll was as a person and how this film would ultimately – in his words – prove to be “the therapy he never got.”

What films inspired you to create documentaries? What documentaries most influenced your approach?

SJ: I was initially influenced by fiction films – one director in particular whose work was always characterized by complex portrayals of his subjects. That director was the great Jean Renoir, director of such classics as The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion. But I was also affected by less celebrated films of his like “Toni” and “The Crime of Mister Lange.” Renoir was the ultimate humanist filmmaker, a great observer of the human condition. Documentary influences were the films of Barbara Kopple, particularly Harlan County, U.S.A., 35 Up by Michael Apted, and The Times of Harvey Milk by Rob Epstein.

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Interview: The Tustys of ‘The Singing Revolution’

Posted on January 2, 2009 at 8:00 am

Tea thrown overboard. Freeing the prisoners. Knocking over a statue. Every revolution has a moment when the people say that they will no longer tolerate tyranny. In the case of Estonia, the Baltic nation that suffered under two of history’s most brutal and oppressive regimes, the Nazis and the Soviets, it was a song.

Laulupidu, the Estonian song festival held every five years that features 30,000 singers on stage In November 2003, UNESCO declared Estonias’s Song and Dance Celebration tradition a masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. In 1988, 300,000 Estonians in Tallinn sang national songs and hymns that were strictly forbidden during the years of the Soviet occupation, as Estonian rock musicians played. It signaled and hastened the end of Soviet domination.

I was delighted to see this film because my family has been to Estonia and we heard a little bit about the Singing Revolution when we were there. I began by asking Maureen and James Tusty how they came to make The Singing Revolution documentary.

MT: We never get tired of talking about it. We spent four years in production and the past year in distribution and promotion and we are still excited about it.

Jim’s father was born in Estonia, in Tallinn. We had a chance to teach in the first media program in the Baltics. We were teaching filmmaking and people started telling us stories. We asked ourselves, “How could we not have heard of this?” If we were ever going to take on a personal project this would be it. They came up with the name “the singing revolution.” It is central to the Estonian nature. It is such a small country and they are quite modest. People would talk about these events and we would say, “You did what?” “Oh, well, I told my mother and the babysitter to come,” they would say it so casually, and here was this event that was so transforming.

JT: The Estonians in particular dislike bragging and as a result they did not boast about what happened.

How did you shape the story as you filmed and edited?

JT: We shot about 40 days over about 3 months, February to July 2004. We pre-interviewed about 200 people, then interviewed about 40 on camera and of those maybe half of them ended up in the film. We wanted not only the leaders but also those who simply participated. One of the interesting things is that there was no one character to focus on, no central hero in the film. It is easier in one way because the entire nation is the hero. But it is a challenge in another way. How do you make that a personal story? The film gave the nation a personality.

The first singing protest was in 1988 after a rock concert. There was no one person saying, “Here’s what we do.” Everyone just came together. It was one of the pivotal events and the leaders emerge after the will of the people is evident.

How did the Estonians respond to the film?

JT: The film premiered in Estonia on December 1, 2006. We were concerned that they would feel, “Who are you to tell our story?” but we got an unprecedented standing ovation. I think it was good to have someone who cared about Estonia but who also had an arm’s length view and some objectivity. What they did not even really have a name at the time but now everyone thinks of it as “the singing revolution.”

There had been other versions of the story focused on all three of the major events, but this is the first one to show how these three movements interwove with one another. It was released theatrically in Estonia and became the most successful documentary ever shown there. The history of the song festival is a possible project for us in the future. It always had a political aspect – it was founded with a view against tsarist Russia.

MT: Part of the challenge was the way we represented the leaders. Many are still involved in Estonia today. We spent quite a bit of time to make sure we had the balance and accuracy of the events. We finally had all three of these different factions agreeing, “Yes, this is how it happened.” Each knew only what they had been talking about.

JT: We did that independently so they could each make sure we had their part right. It would be like getting Al Gore and George Bush to agree on the Florida recount!

And what about in the US?

MT: It was released just a year ago in NY and LA. We wanted to go for a theatrical run, but the majority of distributors were discouraging. We just felt this story would so resonate with people that we decided to go for it. It was held over for five weeks in NY. We were able to play in over 140 cities across the US and Canada and it is still playing even though the DVD is out.

JT: Part of what makes our film unique is that we had a regular theatrical release; it was not just an event film. We got to experience the film in many different cities. It brought in several different kinds of audiences: Baltic-Americans, singers, people interested in non-violence, and people in the freedom movement. It began with those four constituency groups in particular, and we would narrowcast our marketing, but then word would get around town and by the third week the general community would find us.

MT: Estonian choral music is quite known in the community of people who sing in choruses, so they really supported this film.

JT: And they are already organized, so they would come in groups.

What else have you done to help people understand the extraordinary events of the singing revolution?

MT: We have developed a three-DVD educational set for high schools and colleges with teacher materials, maps, and PowerPoint, so that schools can use this story to teach students not just about Estonia and this particular struggle but about non-violence and freedom fighting. To accomplish what they did without violence is really remarkable, especially with what they had lived through, an amazing human story.

JT: Ironically, the Estonians are quite an independent people, as they said, “The miracle is not that we beat the soviets, it is that we got hundreds of thousands of Estonians to hold hands together.” We have done dozens of films, but this one is highly personal and unique. We feel there are millions to reach with this story because of the grace and elegance of the protest and how effective they were. We think we have it hard sometimes, but look at the Estonians and see how they prevailed.

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Interview: Scott Derrickson

Posted on December 22, 2008 at 7:00 am

Scott Derrickson is a rarity in Hollywood — a committed Christian director who openly admits that his films reflect his religious views and serve as a kind of testimony. I spoke to him about his latest film, the remake of the 1951 Cold War classic The Day the Earth Stood Still. He was nice enough to begin by saying that he is a fan of Beliefnet.
I am glad to be talking to a website about messages and ideas. I read the site and like it very much. I have an ever-growing feeling that movies should have messages that trust the audience and do not give all the answers. I am resistant to being told what to think or how to vote. This movie has a lot of things to say but it is less a message than a very American perspective about America and human nature itself. We have this dual side to our nature, destructive and creative and at the same time as individuals and as a nation and as a species we have to make mistakes and evolve and grow. If you can get something like that into a big Hollywood popcorn movie without sounding preachy, that is a great thing.
Did you see the original film as a child?
The first time I saw it was in college. It was very much a product of its times, the Cold War, the bomb, the U.N. This is the story for a new time and a new era; this is a post-September 11 movie, a movie that acknowledges being in a country that has experienced a bit of a disaster.
How does this movie address its moment in history?
I knew that the movie would come out when we would have elected a new President but before he took office. This campaign was different — no one made a big deal about the race issue until Obama was elected and then everyone on all sides agreed that it was something to celebrate, a step toward healing the deepest wound in American history.
I read something recently: “We’re now living in a time when we saved our banks but destroyed our biosphere.” The movie is a reflection of that idea, of these messes that we’ve gotten ourselves into, but it is not cynical or pessimistic, it has a refreshing sense of optimism, of radical change for the better coming to the world at large. Things have gotten bad enough that we are going to roll up our sleeves, start admitting our mistakes and start dealing with them.

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Interview: Laurent Cantet of ‘The Class’

Posted on December 18, 2008 at 5:00 am

The top prize at Cannes this year went to an extraordinary film called “The Class” about a year in the life of a dedicated French high school teacher and his students, many of whom are immigrants. It is now the official French entry for the Oscars and opening in theaters across the US. I spoke to director Laurent Cantet about making the movie, which blurs the line between documentary and feature film.

Did you have a favorite teacher?

I have a few memories of some teachers who made an impression on me. I studied in school about 10 years after May 1968. Professors had also started to question their methods, and I had teachers like Francois who really tried to introduce questions, not just lectures. My parents were professors who encouraged student participation and I spent my childhood listening to people talk about school and pedagogical methods. That made an impression on me. And I have children so I see what school is like now. The French title is “Within the Walls.” I wanted to compare my experience with contemporary reality.

This film is designed to see what happens behind the scenes because school is a very private place. Children want to keep the space as a space that is theirs, their first place of independence. Professors protect themselves behind the walls of the schools.

One aspect of the school that will strike many Americans as unusual is that there are student representatives attending the faculty meetings. And indeed, the teacher in the movie finds that it creates some problems for him.

That is a requirement. It seems natural to French people to have students there, a question of honesty. There are two class representatives in staff meetings, entrusted with explaining the students point of view to professors and reporting to each student what is said about him.

What makes a great teacher?

If I knew I might be a teacher! It is indispensable that they take into account everything that the students live outside of the classroom. So the school can never seem like a sacred separate space. The world is more complex, I think, the personal stories of each of the students are more difficult, each with a very different trajectory, more than when I was in school.

The movie has elements of both documentary and fiction. It features non-professional performers and it feels very improvised, but in fact it was scripted, right?

In every movie there’s this question of reality and fiction. I like to give news, stories from the world, but I never want to do it as a thesis. I want to evaluate reality through the paths of different characters. I worked with non-professional actors who bring a way of being in front of the camera, notably they bring the experience of their own life. My job is like an orchestra leader, bringing out snippets of what they do and bringing it all together, which does not prevent me from writing a script.

What I had written was the story of Souleymane (the uncooperative boy who gets into trouble, played by Franck Keita). I met FranÃ§ois Begaudeau (who plays Francis, the teacher), a professor for 10 years in this kind of school, who had written about little moments of classes that he had himself. It was very easy for me to offer the role to him.

We had acting workshops every Wednesday for a year, improvised with the students and he proved to me that he was terrific. We opened the workshop up to all of the students and those who stayed with it got to be in the movie.

The actress who played Souleymane’s mother was the only one who was not the real-life parent. His real mother was not in France. But as in the film does not speak French, and she did children who lived through similar situations. She created the character based upon her experiences and a way of being.

When I met her she said, “When I go to a disciplinary hearing I am going to dress myself in the most dignified way possible, like a queen.”

The boy who played Souleymane, though, in real life is the complete opposite, very nice, very laid back, almost shy. But I felt very quickly that he liked acting. I had a hard time getting him to be tough enough until we were trying on costumes. When he was dressed very differently from how he dressed in real life, he felt the character. And the goth boy is not a goth in real life either. He felt like trying out something he would not dare to do in real life, and the costume did that immediately.

There have been a lot of very high-profile movies about teachers with difficult students. What makes this one different?

Those movies were my opposite example, exactly what I wanted to avoid, to be everything except Robin Williams in “Dead Poet’s Society.” I wanted the professor to have his weakness, not to have a magic wand to solve everything. Through most of the movie we see the school can be a safe place but also a place of excluding people, like Souleymane who can’t find a place in the system but also people like Henrietta who lose interest and don’t understand what they are doing there. There is a roller coaster feeling, with great moments, great depression as much for the students as the teachers. What I want to do is describe the world in all of its complexity and contradictions.

Many thanks to translator Paul Young of Georgetown University for his assistance with this interview.

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