Interview: Allen Zadoff of Since You Left Me

Posted on October 26, 2012 at 9:38 pm

I last talked to Allen Zadoff about his book, My Life, the Theater, and Other Tragedies. He was kind enough to give me another interview about his new book, Since You Left Me. Once again his hero is an unhappy teenage boy who feels isolated (and who shares his author’s initials).

Your main character’s internal and external struggle is exemplified by his name: Sanskrit Aaron Zukerman. How do his feelings about his name tell us about him?

Poor Sanskrit. The battle lines of his life were decided at birth. His Jewish mother is a yoga practitioner and named him after her favorite thing, Sanskrit, the ancient Indian language used in yoga practice. Now in his teens, Sanskrit attends a religious school in Los Angeles because his grandfather left money in a trust for him to get a Jewish education. So Sanskrit is caught in the intersection of family tradition and contemporary life. The teachers at his Jewish school call him by his middle name “Aaron” because it’s familiar to them. Outside of school people call him “Sanskrit”. In a real sense, my hero doesn’t know who he is—Sanskrit or Aaron—and it’s the journey of this novel for him to find out.

Why did you decide to tell the story in the first person? What can you do in that voice that you cannot do any other way?

The first person narrator brings you directly into a character’s thinking process, and with my characters, that’s usually a funny and embarrassing ride. At one point in Since You Left Me, Sanskrit is hiding behind an expensive gift basket while his parents fight, and he has a realization and says, “My family is less painful when viewed through cellophane and foreign chocolate.” That’s the kind of experience you only get in first person.

Also because Sanskrit is on a spiritual journey of sorts, the first person allows me to reveal the twists and turns of his thinking in an immediate and exciting way. We are on the journey with him, understanding what he understands, and experiencing his revelations in real time.

Sanskrit has experienced a lot of loss and disappointment. How has that affected his view of the world?

He’s jaded at sixteen and wondering if God exists. It’s a classic situation—Life doesn’t go your way, and you start to wonder if there’s anyone or anything in charge. As things get more out of control in his life, Sanskrit does what many of us do, he tries harder to make it work out the way he thinks it should be. For example, his mother is threatening to leave the family because she believes she’s found her true love (in India of all places), and Sanskrit’s determined to find a way to make her stay. It’s a dilemma I understand from my own life. When should I apply my will and effort to change a situation, and when should I relax, let go, and accept things as they are? It’s not always easy to know.

What made you decide to write a story set in a religious school? What are some of the most significant struggles teenagers have with spirituality?

I don’t know what struggle teens have, only the struggles I had as a teen. My novel Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have was based on my experience being overweight in high school. And Since You Left Me is based on some of my spiritual struggles in high school and also as an adult. When I was young, I went to Hebrew School once a week on Saturdays and I was bar mitzvahed, but I had no real relationship to something greater than myself. Frankly I didn’t think I needed it. I thought being smart, talented, and hardworking would get me where I wanted to go in life. I didn’t think I needed help from God, and I didn’t understand the idea that we might ask God what he wanted from our lives, rather than deciding for ourselves what we want or what might feel good. It’s what Rick Warren calls The Purpose Driven Life. As with many people, my own spiritual journey grew out of hardship. In my case it was an eating disorder that nearly took me out. At 28 years old I was in serious trouble, and I had to find a new way to live in the world. I tell the story in some detail in my memoir Hungry: Lessons Learned on the Journey from Fat to Thin.

Your characters often have to deal with parents who behave more like children than their kids. As a writer, what possibilities and themes does that present to you?

It’s true that kids in my novels are often struggling with absent or neglectful parents. Sadly, I have some experience with that—parents who were doing the best they knew how, but who weren’t always there for my brother and I. Often in a novel I’ll take a kernel of my own experience and magnify it for dramatic effect. I also feel it’s an author’s job to understand and have compassion for every character. In Since You Left Me, Sanskrit’s mother is incredibly selfish, a fact that has inspired many readers to write me letters and tell me about their own kooky parents. But as the author, I really understand why this mother does what she does. She tells her children, “How can I love you if I don’t have love in my own life?” It’s twisted logic, but it makes sense in a way. I can imagine a character neglecting her own children while chasing love, thinking all the while she’s doing something positive for her family.

As for the theme, you might say that Since You Left Me is about the moment when we realize our parents are just people, and they are fallible. How do we deal with that realization and what it means for our lives?

Why does Sanskrit have such a hard time trusting or being honest with the people around him?

I think he’s been hurt. By his parents’ divorce. By his mother’s self-involvement. By the feeling that he’s different from the kids in his school, in particular his best friend Herschel who seems to live a faith-based life very easily, while it’s an enormous struggle for Sanskrit. He’s also hurt because the love of his life in second grade seems to have forgotten that he exists. When you get hurt, it becomes hard to trust people and believe that things will work out for the best. This is where faith comes in for many people. Without faith, it’s just you battling your past experiences that have conditioned you to deal with the world in a certain way. But with faith, I think healing is possible. Faith and therapy. I’m a big believer in both things.

What inspires you?

I’m very inspired by music. I listen to music when I write, probably 4-6 hours of it a day. I have mixes on Pandora, Spotify, Songza. I listen to everything from indie rock, to punk, to international hip hop, to jazz, to religious music. I’m all over the map. I have enormous respect for musicians and the joy their work has brought me.

What makes you laugh?

Girls on HBO. Not being a girl in my 20s, I thought I would hate it. To the contrary, I think Lena Dunham is brilliant, and I love her voice, the frankness and humor with which she captures her characters’ lives. And of course Judd Apatow, her fellow executive producer, has a lot to do with that, too. I think it’s an amazing collaboration.

Do you have an e-reader or do you still prefer books on paper?

I’m all digital, and I get some flack about it from book lovers. I understand their appreciation of the physical book, and I share it. But as I’ve grown towards middle age, my vision has gotten worse, and e-books have become a godsend. So I guess I’m in the camp of people for whom e-readers are an accessibility device and not just a luxury item. I’m looking forward to further innovations that will capture more of the artistry of book design (internal and external) in the digital form. I think Kindle’s new “Publisher Font” setting is a step in the right direction. Readers can now opt to read an e-book in the font the publisher has selected for the work. It seems a small thing, but it’s a very important decision that publishers, authors, and designers make. It communicates the story of the book on an unconscious level, and sadly, it’s one of the many things that had gotten lost in the rush to the digital format.

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Interview: Frank Manno of Spiritual Sobriety

Posted on October 20, 2012 at 3:57 pm

I was very moved by Frank Manno’s new book, Spiritual Sobriety: Freedom & Recovery from Cultural Christianity. He says, “The purpose of Spiritual Sobriety is to reveal and release what the Bible describes that it takes to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ in contrast to the benign and oft-anemic “pop dedication” that has pervaded the church, especially in the past fifty years. Spiritual Sobriety is the inviting and tangible story of my journey from being a cultural Christian to an intimate follower of Jesus Christ. This book will take readers by the hand and lead them on a scripturally based, real-life journey by a path that winds from tearing down the stealthy façades of man-made religion, around the potholes of legalism and busyness, toward a destination of a grace-filled, authentic, God-empowered Christian life that walks in daily, hand-in-hand intimacy with a loving Father.”

He was kind enough to answer some of my questions about the book.

What is “cultural Christianity?” How does it differ from spiritual sobriety?

Cultural Christianity is what we are left with after centuries of authentic Christianity being sifted through pop-culture values, watered down thought political correctness and conforming the church to more of a business paradigm rather than an organic, living organism, which is how it is described in the New Testament. In many churches and denominations, the Pastor is viewed as a CEO and is evaluated on his performance to grow the church numerically rather than on his spiritual integrity. The congregation has been reduced to consumers needing to have their preferences appeased as opposed to sheep that need to be lovingly shepherded and spiritually nurtured.

Cultural Christianity often purports an “easy-believeism”. If you would only “walk the isle” or “sign a membership card” you’ll be on your way to heaven. I’m not saying that either of those actions are bad in and of themselves, but sadly, that’s where the church stops. There is no development or discipleship. Did you know that nowhere in the Bible does it say that Christians are to make converts? The Bible says that we are to make disciples – literally little pupils – of the teaching of Christ. This is often referred to as discipleship. It is time intensive and requires a transparency and intimacy that most shy away from.

I know I’ve painted a pretty bleak picture so far, and I’m not saying that these things are true of every church. But, in my years of pastoring, church planting, counseling and doing consulting work with churches across the country, I have found this to be the case to at least some degree a good part of the time.

On the other hand, spiritual sobriety is an awakening. It’s a realization. It’s in many ways the Reformation of our generation. It is simply, yet profoundly, getting back to what the Bible teaches about Christianity; both what it is and what it isn’t! When a person searches the Scriptures and realizes what the Bible says it takes to be a Christ follower and then you hold that up to what Christianity has become in our culture, we discover a stark contrast. It’s that contrast that I report about in my book, as well as how to receive and enjoy the loving, life-giving relationship that God desires with us. Unearthing this truth is liberating in so many ways! Yes, there is a personal cost to follow Christ, but how freeing it is when the light bulb goes on above your head and you realize that being a Christian isn’t a list of rules, isn’t dependent on your works or how “good” you are and that you are loved unconditionally by a divine parent we can call Father. It feels so good to be sober!

Why is it hard for us to acknowledge the cost of faith?

Either consciously or subconsciously, we want a god on our terms. Like a potter throwing clay, we want to shape and personalize our deity’s attributes, personality and motus operandi. It’s inescapable that most people feel (whether we are willing to admit it or not) that God is there for us. He is there to bless our plans, heal our illnesses, find us jobs, find us partners, meet our needs AND wants, etc. Even thousands of years ago, in Genesis chapter 11, we read about a group of people building a tower who were basically trying to create a god according to their specifications.

The truth is that we exist to worship God. He owes us nothing; we owe Him everything. If God never lifted a finger to redeem our souls from sin and the devil via the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, He would still be God and still worthy of our worship. This line of thinking so contradicts what might be considered simple human logic. That is why we have trouble with the cost of faith.

So, when we approach God or religion with that consumer sort of mindset, it’s very disturbing to think that I must sacrifice some of my personal desires and, dare I say, sacrifice my own will to follow God. You can see how churches might significantly shrink in size if this sort of message were preached. This is just one contrast between cultural Christianity and spiritual sobriety.

How do we learn to relinquish our pride?

This can be so hard, especially if we approach it from the wrong perspective. So many people fear giving up their pride and being humble because they envision humility as something lowly and embarrassing; leaving them frighteningly vulnerable. Pop psychology has made such a significant issue of blaming a majority of our personal problems on a lack of self-esteem. I don’t think that is true. When you look at what is happening on the world stage, the escalating divorce rate, and dare I say, the abortion issue, I think some may have too much self-esteem!

I feel the real issue is not that we lack self-esteem, but rather, we lack God-esteem. If people got to the point where they saw themselves through the eyes of God and how He sees them, so much would change personally and globally. If people realized how much they are loved, valued and treasured by almighty God Himself, it would be easy to let go of pride.

Pride and self-esteem say, “This is who I am… check me out… value me for what I’ve accomplished… I survive on your admiration and approval…” God-esteem says, “This is who I am… loved and cared for by God Himself, who desires a personal relationship with me… I’m created in His image… I don’t need to prove myself to you for I am already fully accepted and unconditionally loved by my heavenly Father… I am content…”

How does fear become an obstacle to our connection to God?

The answer is found in this simple but pregnant equation:

-The root of fear is the loss of control.

-Control is the opposite of faith.

-Without faith, it is impossible to know God or please God.

I think we see this formula laid out much more elegantly in Scripture. Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”

If a garden hose is our relationship with God, then fear is a hole in that hose draining off water and diminishing pressure. When I am fearful, I am basically saying, “God, I love you and all, but I don’t fully trust You”. Now, imagine saying that to a close friend or spouse. What would that do to the relationship? It wouldn’t end it, but it would certainly hinder the intimacy and the quality once experienced. This does not mean that God loves us less when we are fearful. God is immutable; He doesn’t change. We don’t lose our salvation when we are fearful. However, that object of fear in my life becomes the hole in the garden hose of my relationship with Him, draining off the intensity of my connection with God and diminishing the joy and contentment I experience with Him.

What do we learn from pain?

Whether it is emotional, physical or spiritual, “pain” is something to which all people can relate. Pain is the great “sifter” – dividing what really matters from the frills of life. I think one of the greatest (but not only) lessons learned from pain is that trials and suffering force us to take inventory of our lives, our relationships, our values and our choices. It can bring focus and clarity in ways that nothing else can.

One of the great promises of God toward His children that is so comforting during these times is found in Romans 8:28: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” It doesn’t say that all things that happen to us in life are good, but that God can take a bad situation and use it for our good and His glory. To know that your pain, despite the source, can be used for good, both in the physical and spiritual realms, is a very comforting lifeboat to be in during the storms of life.

(more…)

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Interview: Michael Damian, Writer-Director of “A Princess for Christmas”

Posted on October 19, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Michael Damian played heartthrob Danny Romalotti on “The Young and the Restless” for 18 years, returning for the show’s 35th anniversary. He is an award-winning singer and songwriter and more recently he has been a writer and director. He and his wife co-wrote the charming modern fairy tale A Princess for Christmas and he directed it as well. He took time to talk to me about directing Roger Moore and the surprise actress he added to the film.

How does your experience as an actor help you in casting your films?

I know what the actors are going through when they go into the casting room, and I do understand that it’s very important to have a director who gives, off-camera, really good readings to actors. I think it helps tremendously, and we were very fortunate that our casting director London did a great job; she gives fabulous off-camera reads to the actors and really helps to get in on the character. I’ve been in casting rooms where the person reading with you is so terrible that it’s just like… “So what do you need?” and like, oh my gosh, please tell me they’re not going to read every line like that (in my head, of course, I’m saying it.)

You have to find a way to rise above that, but fortunately, we have really good casting people that worked with us out of London and when Sam came in, you know, he was amazing. Right away when we saw him we’re like, “Okay, there’s Prince Ashton. There’s our prince.” He was dynamic, he was charming; he had a sensitive side you could see, there was warmth in his eyes—it wasn’t very difficult to make up our minds once we saw his recorded audition. I wasn’t in London when it happened, I was in Romania in per-production, but I got the feed over the internet of the casting session and we were like “Wow, he’s fantastic!” And he’s even better in person and did an amazing job getting him on camera.

Tell me about working with Roger Moore.

Sir Roger Moore is phenomenal. He is so funny, you know? He’s got an incredible sense of humor, and that’s really wonderful because you’ve got to have that when you’re not shooting, because otherwise it can be very, very uncomfortable on a set when you have a star of his stature to be just not having a good time—and Roger Moore just really enjoys the process. He gave 110%, he was there for all the off-camera line reads, he was present, he was just a total joy. All the actors loved working with him and he treated them with great respect and kindness. And I’m such a fan of Roger Moore, I mean, The Spy Who Loved Me is one of my favorite Bonds. I had such high expectations just from a personal level, you know what I mean? He met them and exceeded them and it was just such a pleasure and honor to direct him and his lovely wife, Lady Kristina, was fabulous. I put her in the film because she was so gorgeous—and I didn’t realize that no one’s ever asked her to be in a movie. And I said, “Lady Kristina, you need to be in the film,” and she was like, “Oh, I would love to.” And I was like, “You’re in the next scene…” so in all the ballroom scenes, you see this beautiful, elegant, radiant woman in black that he says hello to at the entrance, and then you see her reacting during all the drama that unfolds…that’s his wife, Lady Kristina, she’s gorgeous. They’re a great couple, and they’re so in love with each other. I got to have dinner with them on their anniversary.

Tell me about Romania.

Well, Romania was an amazing experience. First of all, to find a castle like Peles Castle up in the mountains with this beautiful, I mean, just stunning. And to have the natural snow falling and the setting was so inspiring…it was a bit cold, 14 below zero, but besides that, it was a thrill.

Sam also did mention the cold.

Did he tell you how cold it was?

Yes, he did—and I thought, “well, if an English guy is cold, it’s probably pretty cold.”

It was cold, it was a crazy cold. But they were brilliant, nobody complained, Sam never complained and I hope he had a good experience, I mean, we had a great experience.

What were you going for in the costume designs to strike a balance between modern day and fairy tale?

First of all we’ve got this castle with all the staff and I wanted to keep them proper and dressed proper as staff, like “Remains of the Day” or one of those great films, you know? You keep everybody pretty formal. Katie’s dress, we had the costume designer, Oana Draghici, make several things for her and sometimes Katie McGrath would come in with something and she’d say, “What do you think of this?” and I’m like, “Great. Where did you get that?” And she’d go, “Oh, it’s mine, I brought it,” and sure enough, she wore it in several scenes and I’ve had so many people asking where they could buy it. I think it’s in some of the artwork or the press photos, it’s kind of a knit, sweatery dress or something that she wears and everybody keeps asking about it. I go, “well, it’s Katie’s personal dress, so I can’t help you with that, you’re going to have to call her.” You mix and match, it depends on which character. The great thing about Castlebury is that it’s our own—we created this small country that’s kind of like a Monte Carlo, so we were able to have a little more free reign with certain styles and things that people wore, you know, and the family starts in Buffalo so it’s pretty straightforward, there. I pretty much know how they dress in Buffalo and have a lot of friends that live there, so just try to keep it real…really each character define them and make sure they have their own style and that you just don’t, “Oh, yeah, put that on him, who cares?” I want to really make sure that it works with the character and that it works with the scene. Unfortunately, sometimes, it could be freezing cold but you’ve got to make it work. You put too many jackets on and it’s really unattractive, do you know what I mean?

What is it that we love about fairy tales?

Well I think, first of all, there are a couple of things here. You’ve got one of the most beloved holiday seasons, Christmas, and it’s my favorite. My wife and I love Christmas movies, and so we thought, “okay, what if we made a Christmas story/fairytale?” and it started with just a line. We were sitting in our office and and you know, “Once upon a time in a land called Buffalo,” and then we just started, “okay, let’s start from there, okay…” and we want to make it modern day, so we take a modern-day family—and what would happen if they found out that half of them were royal and didn’t know it? And went on this journey to this magical place, this beautiful castle and found the rest of their family that they didn’t know? What would that be like during Christmas? Could they come together and resolve all their differences and find love and find romance (I’m talking about Jules and Ashton.) So there are several different kind of stories running simultaneously. You’ve got Jules and her journey just to be a good adoptive mother. She’s young and she really hasn’t experienced love. There are a lot things in her life that she, I’m sure, was hoping to do and life sort of threw a curve at her and she now has to adapt and make it work. Without giving away too much of the story, you’ve got that and then you’ve got a lot of the things that unfold at Castlebury and one, being, of course romance. Which hey, come on, who doesn’t like that? You’ve got a Christmas movie, you’ve got a fantasy, you have the prince kind of story, you’ve got the family story and you’ve got the snowy white Christmas setting, so…there’s are all the big things that we talked about. Those are all the things we love, can we put them into a script? And shoot it and have people enjoy it and enjoy the journey, because you know really, as a journey, it’s about family coming together, resolving differences, it’s about forgiveness, which is very important.

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Mel Brooks to be Honored by AFI

Posted on October 5, 2012 at 3:46 pm

The American Film Institute has announced that Mel Brooks will be presented with its highest honor. “Mel Brooks is America’s long-reigning king of comedy – and as he taught us long ago, it’s good to be the king,” said Sir Howard Stringer, Chairman of the AFI’s Board of Trustees. “He’s a master of an art form that rarely gets the respect it deserves, and it is AFI’s honor to shine a bright light on laughter by presenting Mel Brooks the 41st AFI Life Achievement Award.” Brooks is best known as writer/director of “The Producers” (he also adapted and wrote the songs for the Broadway musical), “Blazing Saddles,” “High Anxiety,” and “Spaceballs,” but he also produced the serious drama “The Elephant Man” and the lovely “84 Charing Cross Road,” both starring his late wife, Oscar-winner Anne Bancroft.

The award ceremony will take place next June and will be broadcast on TNT. I’m sure AFI will have a lot of fun putting together the line-up of stars and presentations to honor Mel Brooks, and I can’t wait to see it.

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Interview: Nicholas Jarecki of “Arbitrage”

Posted on September 10, 2012 at 8:00 am

Documentary-maker Nicholas Jarecki wrote and directed his first feature film, “Arbitrage,” with Richard Gere giving one of his best performances as a hedge fund manager hiding massive losses who gets caught up in an even bigger cover-up when he and his mistress are in a car accident and she is killed. Susan Sarandon is superb as his wife and indie darling Brit Marling plays his daughter and CFO of the hedge fund. Gere and co-star Nate Parker give two of the year’s best performances. I had a chance to interview Jarecki following a screening of the film in DC.

What could you say in a feature film that you could not say in a documentary?

I think they are actually pretty closely related arts. What you can do is create a world, whereas in a documentary you document a world. In a documentary you shoot for a year and a half and you have got to find the story as you go along, but with a film you design the story in your mind first, and then you work with the group to unlock which you could not see alone in a room, and make it all that more sweet – so there is a real collaborative element to it. You get to make use of many different, exciting, artistic disciplines — set design, performance, music, staging, lighting, you combine all of those things. In the documentary you document reality, though to an extent you bring a stylistic component to any documentary (the good ones do in my opinion) so it is fake. Documentary is fake, too, but maybe less fake.

The music was extremely well-chosen in the film. Tell me a little bit about it.

We have for the score the wonderful Cliff Martinez, who I did not know before I began working on the film. We would put in temporary music, contemporary score pieces. Every time I would say, “What is that? It is great!” it was Cliff. He had been Steven Soderbergh’s composer, “Solaris,” which is just a beautiful score, “Traffic,”a lot of great film scores, and he had just done “Drive.” It was just amazing to get to work with him and we worked very closely together, I played some piano so I drove him nuts pretending that I knew something. He was very tolerant…he said I made him write more cues for this film than his last three films combined.

I think that’s a compliment!

I’m not sure he meant it as a compliment by the end. Then for the other stuff, it was finding the right feeling for a scene, so I just thought, “What would be in these characters’ world? What would his mistress listen to?” I love Stan Getz and that kind of stuff. So I put some of that in there, and in the car crash sequence. There is this wonderful Billie Holiday song from the end of her career. That one was not easy to find. My music supervisor had evaluated 1100 songs, scores, and he actually said at one point “the song doesn’t exist, you are insane, no song will satisfy you.” And I said “no, we have to keep looking,” and so we did, and I must have listened to four or 500 of them and it was the last one he found. It was number 1100. That is kind of how I operate. Billie was expensive, so we ended up getting a great deal on that because it was one of her lesser known songs, which I even like more, it was a bit of a discovery. We wanted something romantic, nostalgic, kind of cocoon-ish feeling of embrace, and yet had some lyrics that resonated with what was going on. Bjork does the closing credits song, and she is one of my favorite artists forever, never licenses for music for film. I just wrote her a letter and she said “yeah, go for it…” So it was great.

You cast two of my favorite young performers, Nate Parker and Brit Marling.

For both of those parts. I saw 40 or 50 people over the course of a year and Brit I met really towards the end. I met Nate very early on and then I had to do a silly process where I did not realize immediately that obviously, the part was his, so I had to go all around the world to come back and understand that it was Nate, but he would write me these great e-mails. He would give me a book to read, I would read it, I would say, “Hey, have you read Pictures at a Revolution?” and then he would write me some five pages about the book and it was really great. Brit we met through Skype, video Skype and she told me very quickly that she had gone to Georgetown and been an economics major and then was offered a job at Goldman Sachs, so once I heard that I was like, “Really? Okay, well, can you come to New York and meet me and Richard,” and she said “when?” And I said “now.” And she left that night and showed up the next morning and we went to my loft and we rehearsed for about 15 min., the three of us, and we all kind of looked around and it was “Yeah, okay, let’s do it!” That was it. So, they were just a joy to work with. I think they’re both really gifted, emerging people, unique, you know? They have something…Britt’s got a look like she kind of looks like everybody else, but not at all, so it’s kind of the movie-star quality, and then Nate has an intense physicality, strength…Britt said about Nate that he radiates integrity.

He does, that’s what’s so unusual. You don’t expect that in his character, and that’s what keeps you interested in him.

Yeah, he brings some humanity to it.

All the other people are very compromised and in his own way he’s the most honest person in the movie which I think is great. How do you continue to make us root for Richard Gere when he keeps doing so many terrible things?

Well, it’s a combination of, obviously, Richard’s incredible performance and his incredible charisma, you know? He’s so charming…what did my mother used to say? He could talk a dog off of a meat wagon, but I think also the design of the film helps. I’m a big fan of Aristotle, he wrote a book called The Poetics a couple of thousand years ago, which is pretty much a manual for dramatists, and I try to follow his paradigm of a tragic hero. It’s not a Madoff where, excuse my language, but he said from jail “f*** my victims.” That to me was a sociopath, and I wasn’t interested in exploring that character but I thought, “Can we do in the Aristotelian way, a good man who was great and got a little carried away?” And then bought into a kind of irresponsibility, but because you can sense that he was good at one point, I think you want it to work out for him.

What’s next? Do you want to do more documentaries, now? You want to do more feature films, you want to do both?

I would say everything. I might actually even make a commercial, which is something I’ve always wanted to do. So, I like that format, the 30 second idea, to do something beautiful, find an emotion in 30 seconds. That’s interesting to me.

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