Interview: Matt Charman, Co-Screenwriter of “Bridge of Spies”

Posted on January 25, 2016 at 3:31 pm

Matt Charman is a British playwright whose first script (with the Coen brothers) was for the Steven Spielberg movie, Bridge of Spies. It is based on the true story of an insurance lawyer named James Donovan (Tom Hanks), who negotiated a spy swap with then-communist East Germany in the tensest days of the Cold War. In an interview, Charman told me how he first discovered the story of Donovan, what he learned from Spielberg, and what he, as someone who is not an American, most admires about the US Constitution.

I had never heard the story of James Donovan.

I didn’t know all of that either Nell, I was reading a biography of JFK that Robert Dalleck wrote called An Unfinished Life and there is a chapter on Cuba. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco JFK sent somebody to negotiate with Fidel Castro for the release of the 1500 servicemen that had been caught and captured. And I was really amazed to learn that it wasn’t a CIA guy or anyone from the State Department; it was a lawyer. It was a New York lawyer, a guy named James Donovan. And in the footnote of the book it said “Donovan first came to prominence for the part he played in the spy swap with Gary Powers and Rudolf Abel.” That was it. The only mention in the book. And the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I couldn’t believe I never heard of this guy. It seemed to me that he had taken part in two really huge moments in history. The more I dug around the more I realized there really wasn’t any definitive account and there wasn’t anything out there that encapsulated the entire journey he was on. So I started to research the New York Times Archive and the Presidential Library and I went to meet with John Donovan, his son.

What I pieced together was what “Bridge of Spies” became, this remarkable untold story about a true American hero, a man who believed so strongly in due process and in the Constitution that he was willing to follow it all the way from a courthouse in Brooklyn to the Supreme Court through the Berlin wall in order to represent his client.

Your background is in writing plays. What did you have to learn how to do in telling a story cinematically?

There are huge differences. I grew up primarily with movies because I used to live in the middle of nowhere with my folks so I think I caught the bug for storytelling through largely watching American films. When I first came to London I started to have access to London theater and so I saw a lot of plays when I was studying in London. I mean it’s no surprise to me that Stephen Spielberg tends to work with a lot of playwrights who have become screenwriters, Tom Stoppard, Tony Kushner, who wrote the Abraham Lincoln film most recently. He gravitates towards writers who can build a scene, writers who can create a scene that have a start, a middle and an end, that have characters that want things, that make arguments, that believe strongly in certain values. They don’t have to be lawyers or presidents but these are people who stand for things. And I think my background playwriting meant that when I came to write this, this is my first original screenplay that I was really able to channel all the things that I knew about building characters to create this movie which is very much about a man arguing his case.

What did you find out about the British-born Soviet spy Abel, who is portrayed so brilliantly by Mark Rylance in the film?

His time in New York is sketchy. He was an enigma. He stayed undetected for 15 years operating as the top state of the art agent in America at the time. And one thing that I really, really sort of hung onto and was really impressed by was I read that he had a very bright sense of humor and I read that he had this very close relationship with Donovan, despite their different ideologies and their different backgrounds. There was something about both man that was very dutiful. Say what you like about Abel but he did his job, he executed his job in a way that was impressive and dedicated and it took him away from his family for a long time and yet he believed enough in what he was doing to kept going. And I think even though Donovan was completely at the other end of the political spectrum he admired the way in which Abel conducted himself throughout the trial. That blossomed into a friendship between them. So exploring Abel as an enigma but as somebody who slowly revealed himself through the movie was something that I was desperate to do. And really what was so exciting was when Steven said, “Listen, I’m going to call Mark Rylance.” I have known Mark Rylance from stage in London. But he hadn’t really done many movies, so suddenly an American audience particularly is seeing a man that they have no background for, they have no reference point, and they are seeing him slowly reveal himself to them through the course of the movie and I think that was genius in the casting from Stephen.

It’s always a challenge to introduce the main character to the audience in a way that is telling and gains our interest and loyalty, and as a lawyer I really enjoyed Donovan’s first scene, negotiating a settlement of an insurance claim.

The whole idea behind that scene really was to meet James Donovan as he was before he got this case which is in a way a challenge to an audience because he is an insurance lawyer. And furthermore he is an insurance lawyer who was trying to limit the liability of his client and therefore trying to deny claims against his clients. So I’ve always enjoyed the fun of that scene. You are expecting a Tom Hanks as Atticus Finch or whatever and what you meet is a guy in a bar or rather in this club who is kind of down and dirty negotiating and backing his client the full way. Steven always loved that scene because it’s such a playful way to meet Donovan. And then we take this guy from an insurance lawyer through this transformation into somebody who is really remembers his calling, and his service at Nuremberg, and he remembers all the good things that that meant to him and then hr ended up taking on this remarkable case. But it was fun to meet him in that way, I think.

Was it a challenge for you as somebody who did not grow up in America to tell such an American story?

I never saw that it as a challenge probably because I’ve always watched so many American movies and read so many American books, and also growing up being so influenced by Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and all of those American playwrights. So no, to be honest with you it wasn’t. What I always knew I was doing was telling a story of a man, he had a family, he had wife, he had a job, he had the hallmarks of the kind of person I would live next door to in London. So he felt utterly grounded and utterly normal to me so it was the most natural thing in the world really.

The scene that seemed to me to be the essence of America is when he talks about people coming to this country from all over but having one thing in common: The Constitution. His affection — and yours — for the Constitution is very touching.

The Constitution of the United States is the most beautiful thing and I think it’s something that anybody can look at and appreciate, and hold up as being a set of values and a codified way of governing in a way as being so aspirational and so inspirational as well. I think anyone from any country can appreciate that, so I’m a huge fan of extolling its virtues.

So tell me a little bit about what you learned from working with Spielberg about filmmaking. What was the most important thing you learned?

I had this remarkable experience with Stephen which was a true collaboration and really where he was so pleasant, he was so open to dialogue and to talking things through, just trying things and being able to, not pressured at all which was wonderful because this is a man who has so much filmmaking experience you could imagine that he knows a certain way of doing things, and he would want to do it his way. He doesn’t at all and when you sit with him on set he is thriving on people’s ideas and their contributions that they’re making in that collaboration.
So what I learned from is two things really. First, he’s the most organized man I’ve ever met in terms of his preparation. He is like a military general. Second, he knows exactly what he wants to do and how he wants to do it but he has his remarkable ability to improvise. There was a moment when we were filming where suddenly he looked down on the floor and saw all these flashbulbs lying on the floor in the courthouse in the scene where they come out after the verdict. And he grabbed the camera and he got down on the floor with the camera himself. He said, “Okay, this here is what we want to do,” and he suddenly built the end of the scene where they walk out with the flashbulbs all over the floor. it’s a gorgeous moment with a bit of texture. He didn’t storyboard that, he didn’t plan for that but he saw the opportunity and he grabbed the camera and did it. So you have this man who is able to build complex sequences but also somebody was able just like a student filmmaker to adapt and adjust and improvise and for me that was kind of inspiring to see.

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Read 2015’s Best Screenplays — For Free

Posted on January 24, 2016 at 3:33 pm

You can read some of the best screenplays of 2015 for free on the great Go Into the Story website. Even if I have seen the movie several times, I always learn more from reading the script, and especially enjoy the writers’ directions and commentary. It’s a fabulous selection, from “The Big Short” to “Danny Collins,” “Ex Machina,” “I Smile Back,” “Inside Out,” “Room,” to “The Hateful Eight.”

These wonderful videos from the New York Times series “Anatomy of a Scene” let the directors explain what they do to tell the story.

Interview: Jared Hess on the Biblical Archeology Comedy “Don Verdean”

Posted on December 14, 2015 at 3:35 pm

Jared and Jerusha Hess are best known as the co-screenwriters of the offbeat comedy Napoleon Dynamite, which Hess also directed. Their latest film is “Don Verdean,” with Sam Rockwell as a hapless Biblical archeologist who commits fraud to satisfy backers eager for artifacts from the Biblical era, including Goliath’s skull and the Holy Grail.

Tell me about the very funny dance number that appears out of nowhere in the middle of the film, when Boaz (Jermaine Clement) takes Carol (Amy Ryan) out to a club.

Jermaine is quite a dancer. It was just supposed to be a small little moment but it’s tough to pull that guy off the dance floor. So we rolled a couple of different takes and it was just him doing his interpretation of what he thought was some kind of traditional Israeli dance would be like if it was mixed with techno. It’s his seduction dance anyway but the subtleties of his moves are very funny.

And the dress Amy Ryan wears is in that scene is a hoot, sort of Disco Barbie Ice Skater.

Yes we wanted something that was over-the-top or what Boaz would think was sexy and beautiful and made somebody feel like a princess even though it was pretty hideous with how it’s bedazzled. It was like a competition gown from the 90s.

If you yourself could find some holy artifact and assuming that there were no laws preventing you from taking it home what memento from the Bible would you want to get?

Oh man! You know I think The Holy Grail would have to be the one if all the legends are true about eternal life and all that good stuff. That would be a fun one to find.

What is it that is so endlessly interesting about people trying to cheat each other?

I always find it funny and probably it’s more tragic when people are lying to each other because they think it is for a good cause or for the greater good. In reality it’s just hurting themselves and everyone around them. To me that kind of tragedy lends itself to comedy.

What locations did you use for the Holy land scenes?

We actually did shoot a little bit in Israel believe it or not. It was mostly second unit stuff. Our cinematographer went over there and shot a bunch of locations. But then we shot the bulk of it in southern Utah. St. George Utah is where we shot stuff that doubled for Israel.

I really enjoyed the little short about Don Verdean at the beginning of the film that looked so authentically amateurish. How did you develop the cheesy, low-budget look?

It was funny because my grandma would buy all these different archaeological Biblical videos and a lot of them looked super homemade, shot on a VHS camera. I feel most comfortable behind the lens of a VHS camera myself because it’s where I got my start as much a kid making films and so it was such fun to shoot in that very low resolution format and then go in with an old title maker and do those transitions and wipes. There are so many videos like that that with people who discuss their discoveries and often times make up excuses for why they no longer have the evidence of their amazing find.

Is that where the idea came from?

Jason Hatfield, one of our producers, turned me on to the world of Biblical archaeology or at least pseudo-archaeology, with people who don’t have any credentials going out with the Bible and trying to find really sensational objects like the ark of the covenant or Noah’s Ark or any other big object in the Bible. They pop-up in the news occasionally and I read a story a couple years back about a group of Christian Chinese college students that were going out and thought that they had found Noah’s Ark and it turned out unfortunately just to be like a Ranger cabin and they were sorely disappointed. There was just something so funny about the idea of being an amateur archaeologist that isn’t formally trained in the discipline but with imagination and the Bible they can go all there and find it with the help of God.

Are you especially cautious about making fun of religious people?

Not really because to me, it wasn’t so much about making fun of religion as it was about getting caught up in a world of lies. It’s something that Don Verdean believes in. He is a believing Christian guy but he’s willing to commit fraud, to do what he thinks is going to help people find God. To me, that dynamic was funny that people do make really bad decisions when they’re trying to promote the religious cause. Christians are always looking to convert the world on some level and to what extent people will go to accomplish that I think is interesting. And so are their fears. In the 80’s and 90’s there was this big fear of the occult creeping into pop culture, cartoons, video games and that kind of thing and there was so many funny examples. My mom was like:“You know, a group of scientists at school were watching He-Man one time and they saw Satan’s symbols in Skeletor’s lair.” Even as a kid I am like, “What group of scientists watch He-Man for things like occult symbols?” There are people that were former Satanists turned Christian that go around and give these talks to different churches and groups about how they became saved and that to me is such a funny, silly world. It’s sensational and anything that will give your story some juice.

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Interview: Bill Riead of the Mother Teresa Film, “The Letters”

Posted on December 8, 2015 at 3:58 pm

William Riead is the writer/director of the lovely film about Mother Teresa called The Letters. It was a great pleasure to talk to him about his dedication to sharing her story. “I wanted the story to be accurate when I started researching Mother Teresa’s life. What I wanted to do was let the chips fall where they may, if she’s a good person let’s find it out, if she is not who we thought she was let’s find it out, and so I just sort of let the story tell itself and let the script sort of take its own direction as I was doing my research. And when I came upon the letters that she had written, I couldn’t think of a better actor to cast than Max Von Sydow and let him tell her story through reflecting back on the letters that he received over a 40 year period. There were three of four trunk loads of these letters which told her story and I took it as a responsibility to let it be told truthfully by her own words.”

He begins the film with an investigation to consider Mother Teresa for sainthood. “In real life the Vatican does assign a postulator for someone that they designate a candidate for sainthood. And in this particular case I created this character to go out and investigate whether she was worthy of canonization or not. And so little by little he concluded that she was beyond saint-worthy for sure. That was my conclusion when I finished writing the script and ultimately made the movie, I knew that there wouldn’t be one man, woman or child who left the theater who wouldn’t draw the same conclusion that I drew: that she is a saint.”

Mother Teresa’s letters created some controversy because she was candid about her doubts and frustrations. “People who know that I made this film would approach me and say, ‘You know Mother Theresa lost faith in God right? You know that?’ And I have to straighten them out and say, ‘No, Mother Teresa never ever lost faith in God. She felt like God had abandoned her, and lots of saints do, it’s called the dark night of the soul. And she experienced that like all the saints.’ She was very human. We can all aspire to be as selfless as she was but she was very much a human being. All sainthood really means is someone who the Vatican has declared for sure has made it to heaven and is experiencing God and so that could be any of us. And my feeling is if Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu who would become Mother Theresa of Calcutta didn’t make it to heaven, none of the rest of us have a shot at it.”

The movie shows her experiencing what she called “the calling within a calling,” when she was already a cloistered nun but felt that God told her to work with “the poorest of the poor.” Riead said, “Her first calling was she wanted to be a missionary when she was a little girl and that didn’t become practical. Where she got the thing with the poor is she would be sitting at the family dinner table in Albania and her mom would go to answer the door and there would be a poor family who would be at the door because mom was out somewhere that day, found the poor family and invited them to her home to have dinner with them at the dinner table. She didn’t just give them money and give them food out on the street. She would say, ‘Come eat with us.'”

“So Anjezë experienced this sharing and decency from incredibly wonderful parents and then when she went off to become a nun and then ultimately settled into the life of a teacher at the Loreto Convent School. Her mother sent her a letter saying, ‘Anjezë do not forget why you became a nun.’ That was to help the poor. But she was a cloistered nun, she had taken the vows of a cloistered nun, which mean you cannot go outside of the convent walls. She realized that her mother was right and that her true calling was to help the poor and to be a selfless person and so she gave her life to God and said, ‘I’m going to do everything I can to honor what I think you put me on this earth for.’ And so she then absolutely dedicated her life to helping the poorest of the poor and that ultimately led to her having to start her own order because Mother General didn’t want her to leave. She was simply protecting her turf and when students started abandoning the Loreto Convent School and going off to join Mother Teresa, she had not started her own order yet but they just wanted to help, Mother General became extremely upset and said she was pilfering their students and so forth. I did not put that in the film because I felt that that would upset the Catholic community even though it’s the truth. There’s nothing about my film that is not the truth. I spent twelve years as a journalist so I wanted to get this right but Mother General eventually came around. Mother Teresa’s kindness, goodness and selflessness eventually so impressed Mother General that she became a fan as well.”

Riead was impressed to learn in his research that Mother Teresa was both driven and egoless, a very rare combination. “How can you be that driven without an ego? Because she felt she was a pen from God’s hand. When I was putting this project together I experienced the same thing. When I set out to make this film I became obsessed and the more obsessed I became the less ego I had. The more exposure I had to Mother Teresa the more I became like Mother Teresa. When we were filming in India there wasn’t one of us on the cast or crew who didn’t feel Mother Teresa’s presence. All of us left India and went to our respective homes Juliet Stevenson to England, and me to Los Angeles and so forth and all of us left not the same people we were when we arrived there, none of us. We all felt Mother Teresa’s presence.”

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Interview: Teyonah Parris and Spike Lee on “Chi-Raq”

Posted on December 3, 2015 at 1:01 pm

“Chi-Raq” is one of the best films of the year and one of the most important films of many years. It is a searing wail of love, grief, and fury inspired by “Lysistrata,” a play written in 411 BC. A small group of reporters spoke to star Teyonah Parris and co-writer/director Spike Lee.

Parris told us that she actually performed in the original Lysistrata when she attended Juilliard. “I did not get to play Lysistrata but I have always studied Shakespeare and Greek plays and Chekhov and I love working on that sort of text. There is so much to mine from it. And so when I got this script for ‘Chi-Raq’ and I realized this was a modern retelling of that story I was all in. And then to hear Spike talk about what he was doing with the movie — the first thing he said is, ‘I’m trying to save lives. We have to save lives,’ and I was all in, there was no question about it. Spike certainly has an out of the box approach to his work but I think that’s why people gravitate towards him. He gives us another way to look at things. It is a bit more unconventional but I certainly think that it will resonate with our current generation because it’s Spike. It’s hard to put your finger on what it is he does that makes it hit right here but I think that people will watch this movie and certainly understand what we’re seeing and what the message is.” She acknowledged that the film is bound to be controversial. “The title has gotten a lot of flak but the no one has actually seen it and heard the message and seen what we’re trying to say but I know that Spike’s intentions and mine and everyone that is a part of this film, our intentions are pure and were trying to make a difference and get this conversation started so that people can actively make some changes. The issue that we’re dealing with in the film with our young brothers killing each other — to talk about that I don’t think eliminates the conversation which has been on everyone’s minds and hearts with the police brutality against particularly young black men and women. I think that those conversations can be had simultaneously. There is a lot more at play and we talk about it in the movie, the fact that there are no jobs in these places. People are trying to feed their families who are given no other way out.”

The character she plays in the film is confident, forthright, and very capable of weaponizing her sexuality. She is a long way from the more realistic characters she played in “Mad Men” and “Dear White People,” and the distinction is clear in her physicality as well as her dialog and responses to other characters. She spoke about the costume designer and movement coach who helped her create the character. “I call the costume designer Master Ruth Carter. I remember being in those fittings saying ‘Ruth, don’t you want to add a little bit more fabric, a little more here and there?” but I loved it. I thought it certainly was a physical representation of who this woman was and the confidence that she has and how she moves about the world and finding her physicality. It felt very theatrical which is no surprise because it’s from a play. So finding who this woman was and how she walks into a room or walks down the street, I certainly had lots of assistance from a wonderful woman name Maija Garcia who was our movement director, and we worked on just finding her strength and, how does she stand and how does she command a room simply by being there without walking around or whatever. It took some work. I didn’t just show up to set; I had to explore it before getting there and I definitely had the assistance of Maija Garcia. We just did little exercises, exploring what does it feel like to walk in 6 inch heels and how that changes you.”

Parris was excited to work with Lee and to play the central role. “She’s the hero. She comes in and she sees the issue. There has to be a strength and a determination not only for her to carry on her mission but for me also the actress to figure out what she’s trying to do and how she has to do it and in such a very short time. We shot this in five weeks, the entire thing. And I had to use every bit of my artistic being in this film from the dancing to just finding my center and my strength and how do I affect people and how to effectively lead people. Yes, I think those are some of the things that made it a challenge for me but they are a welcome challenge.”

Lee emphasized that this movie is not for any particular demographic. “The film talks strongly about guns and that affects everybody, all Americans.” But it was not easy for him to get it into production, in part because it is so unusual to have an entire screenplay in verse. “I’ve never done this before so it was a challenge to get this made. I think that one of the reasons why everybody said no in the process is because of the verse, because it’s hard to read, and that’s why before Amazon said yes we had two readings. They wanted to hear it, they want their ears to hear it, and I don’t blame them because even when I write my own scripts reading it and hearing the actors say the lines is two different universes. And that doesn’t even happen till you hear bits and parts during casting. I do a lot of rewriting during that period because I hear it for the first time.”

The training Parris got at Juilliard helped prepare her for speaking in verse as though it was natural conversation. “Essentially the idea is that the structure is different but your intentions are still the same. You are trying to affect something. You are trying to get something out of someone. So what are you doing? And you have to continuously remember and remind yourself that you don’t get lost in the sing-song or the verse of it. Nick Cannon] and I frequently had conversations about that, just reminding ourselves and each other what is the scene about, like what are we trying to do so that we don’t get lost in the sound of it, so to speak.”

Like Lee’s earlier film, “School Daze,” this film ends with someone calling on us in the audience to “wake up.” Lee said, “We’ve been using those two words, that’s the last two words of ‘School Daze:’ wake up, from Laurence Fishburne. ‘Do The Right Thing’ begins with Samuel Jackson saying ‘wake up’ and closes with him saying ‘wake up’ as Mister Senor Love Daddy because consciousness is not something that is at use all the time.”

Parris added, “I agree with what Spike said. I think our role as artists is to show, to be a reflection of our community and the world in a way that even though it may not be comfortable to watch or to receive its truthful and makes you think about the state of our community.”