The Real Story: Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway

Posted on May 29, 2012 at 3:32 pm

HBO’s new movie “Hemingway and Gellhorn,” premiering this week, stars Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman and is directed by Philip Kaufman (“The Right Stuff,” “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”). Today Ernest Hemingway is revered as one of the formost authors of the 20th century for his spare, masculine stories like For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises, and A Farewell to Arms. Martha Gellhorn, who became his third wife, was a pioneering journalist and war correspondent who covered armed conflict around the world for five decades. Some of her writing is collected in The Face of War. She wrote a memoir called Travels with Myself and Another and there is a biography by Caroline Moorehead called Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life.

Unabashedly anti-war and politically left-wing, Gellhorn met First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt when she was working as a government investigator reporting on the Depression for the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and they became close friends. She was on her way to report on the Spanish Civil War for Collier’s magazine when she met Hemingway and they went to Barcelona together. She also wrote about the rise of Hitler and WWII battles including D-Day, which she covered by pretending to be a stretcher bearer. And she was one of the first to write about the Dachau concentration camp. Hemingway admired her courage, intelligence and talent but did not like her absences while she was reporting. Their years together were scrappy and they both had affairs with others. She refused to discuss him in later years as she continued to cover conflicts through the war in Vietnam and wrote fiction and non-fiction. But today she is best remembered as the only one of Hemingway’s four wives to ask him for a divorce and the inspiration for the character of Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway committed suicide in 1961. Gellhorn, blind and ill, also committed suicide, in 1998.

Critic Odie Henderson describes the HBO film as corny but entertaining:

This is Kidman’s best work in years, smart, brassy, funny, sexy and tough. She brings her A-game because Owen’s showier role must be legendary, a larger than life evocation of masculinity suited for the name Hemingway. Cinematographer Rogier Stoffers introduces Owen in a desaturated fishing sequence that culminates in an explosion of bright red blood. Owen’s Hemingway grabs the bull by the horns, resisting cliché just barely enough to feel the breath of caricature on his neck.

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Interview: Writer-director Marc Erlbaum Asks About the Meaning of Life

Posted on May 14, 2012 at 4:32 pm

I am always happy to talk to Marc Erlbaum, who makes films that inspire and challenge as they entertain. I love his audacious new project. He is “crowd-funding” a new film about the biggest question of all: the meaning of life.

Where did this idea come from?

I’ve been researching crowdfunding sites lately because we’re considering a campaign to raise money to do a soundtrack for my film “A Buddy Story.” I get requests all the time for the soundtrack of my last film “Café,” but the distributor never produced one, so this time we’re thinking about doing it ourselves. Simultaneously, we have this great facebook community for my company, Nationlight Productions, and so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how to keep people entertained, engaged and energized on a regular basis. As I was exploring the crowdfunding sites, it occurred to me that it would be great to come up with a huge campaign to involve people in something big and meaningful and push the envelope a little bit.

What is crowd-funding and why is it the best way to launch this project?

Crowdfunding is this innovative and alternative way for people to get projects funded. Rather than raising large amounts of funds from traditional investors, it’s a way to harness the communal spirit of the internet to pitch a huge number of people on giving you a small piece of your goal. For the one raising the funds, it opens up a tremendous potential funder base. For those contributing, it offers the opportunity to get behind something from the inception and help it along toward realization.

As far as this particular project goes, crowdfunding is the best way to launch it for 2 reasons:

1) Pragmatically, it would be hard to convince someone to invest the requisite funds for this – the revenue potential is iffy at best, and frankly it’s a bit hair-brained (but in a good way!). With crowdfunding, the contributors aren’t looking at the financial revenue potential, they’re supporting something that interests them, and they’re more concerned with helping out and being entertained than they are with fiscal rewards.

2) Ideologically, I believe the “meaning of life” probably has something to do with community and generosity. Undertaking this kind of project with thousands of collaborators is much more exciting than going about it yourself or with a few people looking over your shoulders to see if you’re making the most commercial decisions. We’re going to be asking our contributors where to point our cameras – they’re feedback and participation is what’s going to make this interesting.

Where do most people get their ideas about the meaning of life?

Good question. My sense is that most of the time we’re too busy or distracted to think about the meaning of life. Those who are involved in some sort of spiritual practice – whatever it may be – do seem to tend to set aside a fixed amount of time either each day or each week to consider the bigger questions, but then we get engrossed in our mundane affairs and we may lose consciousness of what’s really essential. My goal has always been to try to keep my head in the clouds and my feet on the ground – engage in the world, but don’t lose awareness of a higher purpose, and never stop trying to figure out what that is at any given moment.

Where will you find your interview subjects?

From the Beliefnet files of course! The truth is that we’ll be doing a lot of research on our part to find both known and obscure figures who have something to say about life and its meaning. But we’ll also be looking to our contributors and fans to make suggestions – someone’s shoemaker may be an amazingly profound person who no one has never thought to interview before.

How will you keep your funders up to date?

We’re going to launch a website called lifemeanswhat.com (I’ve already paid $9.99 for the url, so I better raise this million dollars!) In addition to videos that we plan to post a couple times a week, we’re also going to have an ongoing blog which will keep everyone right there with us every step of the way.

Why is making a movie a better way to explore this question than writing a book?

The primary output of this project will be a year’s worth of web content which we may or may not decide to compile into a feature film when we’re done. Contributors are buying into a year long experience rather than a one-time program. I think this will feel more like one’s along for the ride rather than just getting it all at once. One could do it as a serialized print piece, but I’m a visual storyteller, so I’m probably a bit biased toward visual media. What I really love about doing this as a web project is the transmedia opportunity to document our search in so many different ways. There are some who love to read, and those who never read anymore – so I think we’ll have something for everyone.

Why is this question so hard to answer?

That’s too hard, I can’t answer that!

But that won’t stop me from giving my opinion of course. I think that everyone wants meaning, but a lot of people don’t want it to be shoved down their throat. And we’re suspect of those who try to push it on us. How do I know that your meaning is THE meaning? Is there only one meaning, or can everyone have his/her own meaning? Unfortunately, purveyors of meaning have often exploited something pure for purely selfish aims, so we don’t know who to trust and we’d often just prefer to distract ourselves with more immediate concerns than wander into those murky waters.

Why is it important?

My goal is not to push any one meaning of life. What’s important to me is to encourage people to search for it. There are those who believe there is no meaning, and others who have never really been encouraged to stop what they’re doing and look around. My feeling is that if we can make the search fun and relevant, people will be surprised what they find even if the ultimate riddle still remains to be solved.

Who have been your most important guides and teachers in answering this question?

My parents taught me to always think outside the box. My wife and children teach me that every moment is precious. The Baal Shem Tov taught that it is not enough to find one’s own way, but each of us needs to carry a torch that shines a light for those around us as well.

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A Mother’s Day Tribute from Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins

Posted on May 13, 2012 at 5:51 pm

The Lanyard – Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

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Interview: Simon Wincer of the Horse Racing Film “The Cup”

Posted on May 11, 2012 at 8:00 am

Australian director Simon Wincer specializes in movies featuring big animals. His most successful film is “Free Willy,” but his most frequent stars are horses, in films like “The Young Black Stallion,” “The Man from Snowy River,” and the fact-based “Phar Lap.” His newest film, “The Cup,” is based on the real-life story of the 2002 Melbourne Cup, when jockey Damien Oliver, devastated by the loss of his brother, best friend, and fellow jockey Jason Oliver in a tragic racing accident, rode the Irish horse Media Puzzle, to a triumphant win. I spoke to Wincer about working with the great Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, who plays the Irish trainer, about the real-life mother of the Olivers who supported her sons even though their father died in a racing accident, and what he wants families to learn from the film.

What were some of the challenges you faced in making this film?

Raising money to make it was one. It took a while but they were changing the track where we were shooting the film. I wanted to capture it as it was before it changed, so we had to shoot some of it in advance. Then eventually when we did start production, it didn’t take all that long, although because of Brendan Gleeson’s availability—he was just available for a very short window—we ended up having to shoot the film in winter. and of course, it was Melbourne’s wettest winter I think in almost forever. So the racing sequence had to be abandoned and shot in the spring when the tracks had dried out. It was an adventure, but it was fun. The weather is always a challenge. I’ve been to places in the world, as for example, in Turkey where it has never ever snowed on the Mediterranean, and of course we were shooting there and bang! Snow. I’ve seen it in the desert where it hasn’t rained in five years and guess what happened when we arrived to make a film? We got ten inches of rain, so that tends to happen to film crews, but that’s the whole fun of it.

It was a very big important story in the news when it happened, but what made you think it would be a great movie?

It was such an extraordinary story, the fact that the mother had been through it twice really interested me, how a woman can be so strong and put under such extraordinary stress in life. I suppose I’ve always wanted to do a film set around Australia’s biggest annual event, which is the Melbourne Cup. In Australia it’s called “the race that stops the nation” because literally everyone in the country stops—this is the Melbourne Cup and every office has a suite, everyone has a bet on. It’s a tradition and it’s part of our culture. This year it’ll be the 152^nd Melbourne Cup, so it’s a very old tradition. It’s a public holiday and all that sort of stuff, so it’s just part of that culture, you know? And that fascinated me to build the story around that; you need a good story to do it and I felt that was the story.

Tell me more about Mrs. Oliver. She lost her husband and her son and still wanted her other son to keep racing.

She’s a very strong lady. She was very much part of a racing family and it was just their lives, despite the fact that it’s touted as the world’s most dangerous job. It’s highly dangerous, but it’s just in their blood. She’d seen these two little boys wanting to be like their dad and grandfather. I think she just wanted Damien to make up his own mind whether he decided to ride or not. She’s quite an extraordinary woman. She’s quiet, but she’s very strong and very, very brilliant to go through that emotionally, which I tried to capture when she walks into the hospital to see her son, flashing back to the memory of her husband, which was exactly what she had been through pretty much. It was extraordinary. I suppose it comes from a slightly different era when values are different and she’s just one of those stoic women, just extraordinary.

I want to ask you the same question I asked the director of “Secretariat,” which is how do you make a race exciting when everyone knows the outcome?

People have said to me in Australia, “God, you know, I was on the edge of my seat, thinking that he wasn’t going to win the race, even knowing that he won the race.” I wanted, first of all, to make it real. I didn’t want it be hokey. Quite often in these horse-racing movies you see the hero horse gallop past and if you look closely, the horses are being gently held by the jockey so the hero’s horse can run past them. I decided not to do that. Because I’m also a horse person and I’ve been riding and around horses all my life, I can certainly detect something like that, so I just wanted to keep it real. And I wanted to capture the sound. It’s incredibly dynamic when those horses go fast; I can remember every take, the crew— many of them hadn’t been to the races in their lives—just the excitement to see these things come passed us at extraordinary racing speed and so close together. Everybody just goes, “wow.” So, I wanted to capture that on the screen. I couldn’t change the result because there it was in history, but I just thought if we could make the staging and the filming of the race dynamic enough, people would get wrapped up in it because they’ve shared in this transformational journey before the race happens, and then they can share it and triumph when he eventually does win. The race which we restaged is almost identical to the actual race, and I was a slave to that and wanted to do it exactly the same. It’s been viewed by so many people, I didn’t want it to get it wrong, you know?

You had quite a casting challenge, not just to cast actors to play real-life people who were well-known, but also to cast the horses. How did you cast the horses?

We looked at about 800 horses, I think, before we eventually settled. We bought 60 and leased another 40, and again, I wanted them all to match the originals. In real life Media Puzzle wasn’t an easy horse, it was a difficult horse. Somehow of course, Damien has this incredible relationship with it, so you need to find something a bit special that’s got a bit of attitude and all that sort of stuff. You have to have several because one could get injured, and you can only do a couple of takes a day when you’re doing the racing scenes. Then you have to change the whole field. So we had more than one Media Puzzle. The main one who did the close-ups with the actors was a horse called Spike. He’s now in another show I did, playing a tribute to a famous horse called Phar Lap, which is another movie I made a long time ago. He’s just a wonderful horse because he just has this sort of attitude and you know, he’s a bit of a handful, but that’s what you want because they easily make wonderful trained horses. He does the most extraordinary act in this new show and it’s quite moving because he’s just so graceful when you see him galloping into the arena in the spotlight, all on his own, no bridle and stuff like that, it’s fantastic—and that’s what you look for, you just look for something just a little bit special with the right look in the eye and that sort of stuff.

Brendan Gleeson is wonderful in the film.

Brendan is another joy, yes, he is one of the world’s greatest actors, I don’t think anybody would dispute that when you look at the body of his work which is extraordinary. When I first talked with Brendan, I was introduced to him by telephone, and I was in Australia and he was in Ireland. He told me, “I’d just like to clear one thing up, I think that the Irish dialogue needs a little work,” and I said to Brendan, “That’s just what a Texan and an Australian think of as Irish dialogue.” That sealed the deal, because he was concerned that he didn’t want to change a word without our go-ahead, of course, but his input was fantastic. So, I happened to have to go to Dublin, and Brendan and I were able to spend a couple of days together going through the screenplay and all these scenes and then we were able to introduce him to the real Dermot and then he was able to go down and spend some time with Dermot, just outside Dublin and really get to know a bit about a trainer’s life and boy, he’s just wonderful—I guess when you work with a great actor, it raises everybody’s game, and it might be playing tennis with someone better than yourself and you rise to the occasion. I can’t speak highly enough about what a nice man he is and what a pleasure to work with and what he brings to the set, not only the energy and good vibes but just great ideas.

What lesson would you like families to take away from this film?

The theme is how we choose how we to want to live. Damien chose to do it by riding in this race. I suppose it is the drive and the human spirit. He was so down and everyone thought he shouldn’t be doing it and he had this terrible losing streak but persistence wins through in the end. It’s about dealing with adversity in a positive way. I think if people are lifted up at the end, then I’ll be very satisfied because while it’s extremely sad, it’s incredibly uplifting at the end when he rides — and that magic moment when you touch the heavens, it’s been forever etched in Sydney Australian sporting folk lore.

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Tribute: Maurice Sendak

Posted on May 8, 2012 at 9:30 am

A sad farewell to children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who has died at age 83. Where the Wild Things Are is one of my favorite books for any age, from its magnificent first line “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him WILD THING” through the grand rumpus and the terrible teeth to the perfect conclusion: “he found his supper waiting for him, and it was still hot” it is a story of endless depth and poetry. I love the Nutshell Library with “Alligators All Around” to teach the alphabet, “One Was Johnny” to teach the numbers, “Chicken Soup with Rice” to teach the months, and the best of all, “Pierre” to teach children never to say “I don’t care.” There are superb animated versions of his work, especially Where the Wild Things Are…and 5 More Stories by Maurice Sendak and the Carole King versions of the Nutshell stories, called “Really Rosie.” The live-action version of Where the Wild Things Are is a brilliant exploration of childhood for grown-ups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3DRUJUWgOA

Adults will enjoy his salty interview with Steven Colbert. May his memory be a blessing.

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