Patricia Clarkson: The Hollywood Interview

Patricia Clarkson: The Hollywood Interview

Yale  

Actress Patricia Clarkson.


PATRICIA CLARKSON: BELLE OF THE BALL
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: This article appears in the March 2008 issue of Venice Magazine.


Patricia Clarkson should be designated a national treasure. One of America’s finest actors, she first appeared on movie screens (and made many man’s heart-a-flutter) in Brian de Palma’s The Untouchables (1987), playing the wholesome wife of Kevin Costner’s intrepid G-man Eliot Ness. Since that time, Patricia Clarkson has appeared in over 60 roles in TV and feature films, playing everything from suburban housewives to drug-addled lesbian actresses. The diversity in her body of work betrays a talent that seems to grow and evolve with each passing year, a rare mark that only the real mccoys of the artistic community can boast to bear.

Born and raised in the Big Easy AKA New Orleans, LA., this southern belle made her debut on the world stage December 29, 1959, the fifth child (and fifth daughter) of a father who ran the Louisiana State University Medical School and a mother who would go to onto become a renowned city councilwoman. After graduating Yale University’s prestigious drama program, Patricia never stopped working, initially trodding the boards on the New York stage, and soon landing plum supporting roles on television shows such as The Equalizer and Spencer: For Hire.

After making her feature debut, just a few of the noteworthy cinematic turns Patricia made include Rocket Gibraltar, Everybody’s All-American, The Dead Pool, Tune in Tomorrow, Pharaoh’s Army, Jumanji, High Art, Playing by Heart, The Green Mile, The Pledge, Wendigo, The Safety of Objects, Far From Heaven, Dogville, Miracle, The Dying Gaul, The Station Agent and last year’s sleeper hit, Lars and the Real Girl.

2003’s Pieces of April nabbed Patricia many much-deserved kudos, including: An Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and best supporting wins from The Boston Society of Film Critics Award, The Chicago Association of Film Critics Award, The National Board of Review, and a special jury prize from Sundance, which was also given for her work in that year’s The Station Agent and All the Real Girls. Patricia also won two Emmy Awards for her recurring role on the HBO hit Six Feet Under, as well as an acting prize from the Deauville Film Festival for The Safety of Objects, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for her work in Far From Heaven.

2008 has also proven to be a busy year for the lovely Miss Clarkson: Married Life, from Sony Pictures Classics, features Patti as a housewife circa 1948 whose seemingly idyllic marriage to successful corporate exec Chris Cooper is not all that it seems. Pierce Brosnan and Rachel McAdams round out the cast of this fine drama from co-writer/director Ira Sachs, which is punctuated with bursts of black humor and satire. Patti also just wrapped Woody Allen’s latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Isabel Coixet’s Elegy, and will start work on Martin Scorsese’s latest effort, Shutter Island, this summer. Patricia Clarkson sat down with Venice recently to discuss her latest work, her remarkable past accomplishments, and her pride in being a New Orleanian.


After seeing Married Life I thought immediately what a great double bill it would make with Far From Heaven.
Patricia Clarkson: (laughs) Yeah, that’s true. They’re very different films, but they’re both period pieces about secrets and intrigue and marriage.

I thought it was very Bergmanesque in the way it examined relationships.
It’s so funny you bring that up, because there is great humor in many of the scenes. We were just in the Miami Film Festival and the audience was just rolling in the aisles during some scenes laughing, and gasping in others. But when Chris and I were actually shooting a lot of these scenes, we went for broke, and it was like Ingmar Bergman. So although people might be laughing at certain points, these are very, very intense scenes and in order for them to have any kind of pay-off, we had to play everything completely straight. We were as invested as any deeply dramatic film I’ve ever done.

I think it was probably nervous laughter you were hearing.
(laughs) Well, yes!

Patricia Clarkson in Married Life.

I thought it was such a brilliant metaphor with the cast playing charades at the end.
Yes, and then putting the house back together.

Tell us about working so closely with Chris Cooper.
He’s an incredible man, very bright. He’s a real man. Everything you would want him to be, he is. Sometimes you meet or work with a star, and they disappoint. He doesn’t: he’s a gentleman. He has crazy talent. We actually worked together years ago in a film called Pharaoh’s Army (1995). It’s a tiny, little Civil War film where Chris plays a Union soldier and I’m a confederate woman on a farm whose husband is off at war. Chris and his men come and basically take over my farm. It’s this kind of chaste, dark love story in a way between me and Chris. It was actually the very first independent movie I ever did, before High Art. So we’ve been friends for years, and I’m friends with his wife, so that made doing this film with him very easy, because I was able to build on the intimacy of our friendship that was already there. Because you can only act so much, as an actor. There has to be some kind of connection there. He’s very giving, very selfless, which is rare.

Clarkson and Chris Cooper in Married Life.

It was great to see Pierce Brosnan on-screen again. He’s like this generation’s Cary Grant.
Yes, he’s got all the talent and all the charm. He’s timeless and effortless and…how much more thrilled could I be that I’ve got Chris Cooper as my husband and Pierce Brosnan as my confidante! Pierce is a real gentleman, too.

You’re a southern belle, born and raised in New Orleans. You’ve also played some great repressed women, all of whom could have easily slipped into caricature but you made them very real. Being from the south did you grow up around a lot of these types of women?
Well Pat is not repressed, so to speak, she’s secretive. I think Pat, for a period woman, without revealing her secret, is quite a sexual, sensual modern woman. She’s trapped by the times, but the era might repress her, but I don’t think Pat is a truly repressed woman. I think she’s a woman that has to adhere to the constraints that are placed upon her. I think if she’d been born ten years later, she’d have had a very different life. I think would have had a career, and lovers, and…a fast car! (laughs) And lots of lipstick! (laughs) So there was a certain repression to women of eras gone by that we associate with period films, but if you think about what she says at the get-go, that love is sex, many people still find it shocking now that I say that!

That’s too bad.
(both laugh) Yes, it is.

L to R: Patricia Clarkson, co-writer/director Ira Sachs and Chris Cooper confer on the set of Married Life.

But you had a very dynamic, working mother growing up, so that had to have had an influence on you.
Oh, absolutely, but she didn’t go to work until we were a little older.

How many siblings do you have?
Four older sisters, and we’re all eighteen months apart.

Wow…all that hot southern blood in one house! Dad had to have at least one shotgun loaded at all times.
Oh, I think he had several! (laughs) But we were like his harem. My father is a remarkable man. He’s a very kind, gentle soul, and is very witty. He’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known. He started out running a children’s home when we were little, then got a PhD in Public Health, and ran the LSU Medical School Department of Medicine. He wasn’t a doctor. He was an administrator. But he’s retired now and lived in a house of six women and two female dogs. I mean…but I think he kind of loved it! (laughs) He has male grandchildren now, so the estrogen count that he had to live with has petered out somewhat.

Do you and your sisters all look alike?
We all have similar timbres to our voices and similar mannerisms, so you know when you see us together that we’re sisters. I look like my mother, especially in this movie. In the poster for the movie, oh my God! (laughs) My sisters are all very accomplished and have beautiful lives. My oldest sister isn’t married, but my middle sisters all mix family and marriage and very challenging careers.

Did they all stay in the South?
Yes, they all stayed in the New Orleans area except for one, who lives in Dallas.

So you’re the only defector then who not only defected, but went to that ultimate Yankee state, New York.
Yes, when I was 19. I transferred from LSU to Fordham University’s College at Lincoln Center. My parents were…it was difficult for southern parents to let their daughter go off by herself to New York City. They agreed to let me go to New York if I finished my bachelor’s degree. So it was a real stretch for my parents, putting their fifth child through school, and they weren’t rich by any means. We were middle, or upper-middle class, but New York has always been incredibly expensive. So the sacrifices they made to send me there were enormous.

They must’ve seen something in you early on.
My mother especially knew that I was serious about being an actress.

When did you know you were an actress?
Probably when I was 13.

What happened?
I gave a speech in speech class, and my teacher said “You know, I think you’re an actress. You should join the drama department.” And I did! And that was it. I did a play called F.L.I.P.P.E.D.: Feminist Liberation Idealist Party for Permanent Equality and Democracy. The drama teacher was a major feminist. It was 1974 or ’75 and we did this rockin’ play! I had great training in New Orleans and great mentors, believe it or not. So I went to Fordham and had an amazing mentor there named Joe Jezewski, and then I got into Yale. I went right from Fordham into graduate school there. It was a fantastic, and rigorous experience. I mean, it was eighteen hour days. But in so many ways I didn’t realize at the time, it prepared me so much for this business, and not in the sense of auditioning and “the business,” but in a chemical, physiological way because it required so much of you. Then I graduated in ’85 and lived in New York.

The first thing I remember seeing you in was when you played the butt-kickin’ bride on that great episode of The Equalizer.
(laughs) Oh my God! I have to tell you, I did The Untouchables before I did The Equalizer, and I also did a Spencer: for Hire. (laughs)

Oh my God, it’s ‘80s night!
(laughs) Right? I played a murderer on that one. Foreshadowing. (both laugh)

But I imagine having a film like The Untouchables be your first feature must’ve been an amazing experience.
It was! Working with Brian de Palma first out of the gate was a great education. Again, it was illuminating and it was real on-the-job training.

Clarkson and Kevin Costner in The Untouchables (1987), her film debut.

It must’ve been especially tough with your stage background because, if memory serves, de Palma shot you almost entirely in extreme close-up.
Yes. I couldn’t touch a cup of coffee during that shoot! (laughs) But Brian really helped. You never forget your first, and he really took me under his wing. We keep in touch still. We’re friends, and I adore him. He has a great, wicked sense of humor.

You did about 2-3 years of stage work before your film career really took off, right?
Right. I was doing a lot of off-Broadway and Broadway. It was a dream, just beautiful shows, like The House of Blue Leaves. I met John Guare, and Richard Greenberg, and Nicky Silver. I was lucky and had great fortune to do this wide variety of parts on stage and then slowly doing these films like Rocket Gibraltar and Everybody’s All-American, which took place in Louisiana, but I played the Yankee! (laughs) And then I did The Dead Pool. Then things were cool for me for a while, while I was in my early ‘30s, and that was an interesting time for me.

That’s a tough age for actresses. It’s like the old saying about the three stages in an actress’ life: babe, district attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.
(laughs) Yes, it’s so true!

You mentioned The Dead Pool. Tell us about the great Clint Eastwood.
I had just done Everybody’s All-American, and flew to San Francisco and met him for the first time. There were women screaming outside the restaurant, and just about everywhere we went: just mobs of people. He’s such a movie star. Working with George Clooney down the line was quite similar: just the sheer power they have with people. But at the same time, they’re both very real, and approachable and first-class people. But being the female lead in the final Dirty Harry movie was amazing! You know that Clint is famous for doing one take, right? So here I am on maybe my third movie, this huge part with lots of dialogue, playing an anchorwoman rattling off all this dialogue, paragraphs worth, and Clint would be looking at me and would say “That was good for me. Was it good for you?” I’d say ‘Uh yeah, sure!’ “Movin’ on!” (laughs) He was cutting Bird at the time, and was really burning the candle at both ends, and was still just unflappable. I’m very grateful that part of my “lore,” so to speak, will be that I worked with Clint Eastwood.

When you look at your career, it’s quite obvious you’ve chosen quality over quantity from the get-go. You easily could’ve gone the “starlet/babe” route when you began, but you never did. What motivates your choices for picking the right project?
There were some movies I passed on early on, and some movies I didn’t get, some big studio films. But now I look back and I realize that I really came later in life to a kind of career. I was somewhat typecast as suburban “mom” type roles early on. But I’ve always had this deep voice, so I think it was tough sometimes for directors to cast me as the ingénue. Because I’d walk in and look a certain way, then open my mouth and have this…voice! (laughs) So I think I sort of grew into my voice, my face, my body as I got older.

So you think of yourself as a late-bloomer?
Mm-hm. And, I hate the cliché, but maybe I’m an old soul. I think it all works better now, somehow. It’s all more symmetrical. (laughs)

Some of our greatest actors have had careers like that: Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman. Even Gena Rowlands didn’t really come into her own until she did A Woman Under the Influence when she was in her 40s.
Those are all my heroes! I’m lucky because now I have choices that I never had. In some ways, it’s “be careful what you wish for,” that I have the career that I have. That doesn’t mean that I don’t still have heartbreak, and disappointment, or feel that I’m sometimes underpaid (laughs). Shooting some of these independent films, and I am for the most part, an indie actress, but you know what? It’s tiring sometimes not having a place to sit between takes! (laughs) The amenities of shooting with money cannot ever be underestimated! (laughs) That’s why Married Life was a great job. It was truly an art film, I felt, with a great cast, but we also got paid. They treated us beautifully.

Who were your influences when you were growing up?
Oh, everyone from Ingrid Bergman to Lucille Ball, and Peter Sellers!

He’s one of my heroes. Every Pink Panther movie that came out…Oh my God, my father and I were obsessed with The Pink Panther movies! And The Party, what a brilliant movie! So I had odd, for New Orleans anyway, odd influences.

I don’t know about that: N’awlins is an eclectic city.
Yes, at heart it’s a European city.

It’s not the United States, not at all. It’s its own country.
And you’d have thought with the reaction to (Hurricane) Katrina that it wasn’t part of the United States! It was always everyone’s biggest fear, and it happened.

You were involved with the relief effort.
I was able to get back into the city because my mother is a councilwoman and so I just started helping wherever I could. It’s hard to talk about it…it’s difficult because I didn’t lose my life, so to speak, in Katrina. I witnessed people I love lose things. Fortunately no one in my family lost their life, but they lost a hell of a lot of other things. So I can talk about the gravity of it as an event, but at the end of the day, if you’re in the middle of it, it’s an entirely different thing. I love my family dearly and I love the city of New Orleans, and it’s not going anywhere! It’s rallying. It needs help, but it’s rallying. So what else should we talk about? What else do you have written on that little pad? (laughs)

Well, let’s see…You mentioned High Art earlier. Your character in that film had to go into some very dark places.
Oh my God! It’s interesting. That film changed everything for me. It was a glorious opportunity, one that I didn’t even realize at the time. I loved the movie and I loved the part, although I’m not German, I’m not gay and I’ve never even smoked pot! But (writer/director) Lisa Cholodenko had faith in me that I would transform and that I understood Greta in some way.

How did you get that accent down?
I don’t know. (laughs) It was cast and shot very quickly because we had no money. I mean, it cost $500,000. I knew a German woman and tried to learn her voice and her inflections, but there was no time for a dialect coach or anything. Plus I had to wear those hot leather pants…

Yes, they were…
No! I mean hot as in melting! (laughs) You’re bad…But it was a new beginning for me, in a way, and I’ve been offered magnificent things since then. I think it kind of shattered whatever the view of me was, then you do something that changes that perception. “Wow, if she could do that, maybe she could play my circus trainer who speaks in seven dialects.” (laughs) They start to think that maybe you could become something that’s impossible to picture, which is a great place to be, and a place that I always wanted to be in this business: people seeing me as an actor who could play…almost anything. (laughs)

If you look at your filmography though, it is a pretty diverse slate of characters.
Yeah, but even great movie stars are shape-shifters. Great acting is great acting, whether you’re a movie star or not. It’s interesting, this businesses. I think there’s more breadth in this business (among the talent) than we give people credit for, and people have greater imaginations than we give them credit for. (pause) And I say that because I’m not working right now! (laughs)

You worked with two amazing shape-shifters in The Pledge: Jack Nicholson and Sean Penn.
Again, they were two who don’t disappoint. They’re both consummate artists, two of the greatest actors of any generation, and Sean was a dream director. I was fortunate enough to be cast in the movie, and there was Jack, who knew when to have a light touch off-camera, and then when to drive it home. He’s a master. So I’m always thankful when I get to work with people who expand you, and hopefully make you a better actor. That’s what I seek…God, could I sound more pretentious: ‘That’s what I seek!’ (laughs) But that is what I seek: the idea of working with certain directors and actors that I’ve worked with, because that’s what I love: the actual work, going to work. I love the intimacy, even though it’s sort of a false intimacy you have with directors and other actors. There are times when you form a real friendship, and sometimes you have a real love affair, even though I haven’t! But even in the moment, it is manna from heaven. There is nothing quite like that feeling.

And without sounding pretentious on my end: it’s like a spiritual realization for you.
Yes, and hopefully you keep continuing to have those realizations. Otherwise, if you don’t continue to challenge yourself, you should just stay at home. That’s my motto! (laughs)

Let’s just go through a list of Patti’s greatest hits. You did a movie for writer/director Craig Lucas that was so twisted, but I loved it: The Dying Gaul.
Oh, thank you! Of course the hardest part was that bikini! (laughs) Somehow a bikini is harder than nudity. It’s a weird thing. I’m being sort of facetious…(laughs) That was a beautiful experience, and I loved making that film. I thought it was an incredibly provocative, sexy film.

It also had a lot of very intelligent truths to tell about “the business.” Oh, very much so! Craig Lucas is a beautiful man, and gifted and just a warm, inviting man that you fell incredibly…you feel you can be in a bikini with! (laughs)

Patricia Clarkson in The Station Agent (2003).

The Station Agent: loved it.
That film cuts across all time and place. Whatever country I’m in, people have seen this film. It’s the most universal film I’ve ever made. They all fall in love with this movie.

It has a very gentle spirit and it came out at a time when we needed some gentility in the world.
Yes, it did. Tom McCarthy is a great director. That was his first movie, and for him to capture that tone…I’ve had great luck with first-time, and young directors, knock on wood… (Patricia proceeds to knock on the wooden end table nearby) Here, I’m superstitious! Not so much in age, but first-time, second-time, neophyte filmmakers. I hope to continue to have that in my career, and hopefully they’ll have money! (laughs)

Good Night and Good Luck was the best movie of 2005, I thought. I grew up listening to the stories of the Army-McCarthy hearings and Edward R. Murrow from my parents, and I felt like George Clooney really captured a bygone era with that film.
Even though it wasn’t a large part, it was quite choice, and I love the fact that I am forever a part of that film.

Clarkson in Good Night, and Good Luck (2005).

Did you all know you were doing something special when you were making it?
I think we knew to an extent. We were all thrilled to be on that set. It was all shot on a soundstage. We’d walk through that door, and it was like walking through a time machine once we crossed through into that CBS studio to shoot the film. Everything was right, and we’d just enter. George is really brilliant. This was his baby. For him to set out and direct this movie as his first, it just shows the level of talent that man has.

And yet no one would take him seriously for nearly the first 15 years of his career, pre-ER.
Well, he always worked, shooting lots of pilots, and he was always handsome! (laughs) But I see what you mean. That’s the thing in this business: sometimes it can shift so quickly, but you have to be prepared for the shifts.

And a few young actors of late haven’t, which is very sad.
Mm-hm. It is a business that can be glorious one moment and deadly the next. But you have to remain hungry for the right things.

That’s the key mantra isn’t it: “stay hungry”?
Yeah, for the right things, for the right aspects of this business. All the other stuff you have to do is crucial, but always for me, it has to be just about wanting to work, and not in a 9-to-5 way. You have to be inspired. You have to be thrilled. You have to be all of those things. And maybe not every single job is going to make you want to run around naked (laughs), but in some movies you might have to run around naked! (laughs) So you better be prepared.

What I hear you saying is: it’s the process you have to love.
You do. You have to love the process. And you have to give your life to it.

Clarkson and Chris Cooper in a scene from Married Life.

Steven Soderbergh: The Hollywood Interview

Steven Soderbergh: The Hollywood Interview

Steven Soderbergh  

Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh.


STEVEN SODERBERGH:
HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT
By
Alex Simon

Editor’s Note: The following article appeared in the July 1998 issue of Venice Magazine.

Steven Soderbergh was born January 14, 1963 in Atlanta. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he was still in high school when he enrolled in a film animation class at Louisiana State University, where his father was dean of the College of Education. Soon he began making film shorts with equipment he had borrowed from students at the university. After graduating high school early at 17, he decided to skip college and headed for Hollywood in a frustrated pursuit of a movie career. Back in Baton Rouge, he worked as a coin changer at an arcade and in his spare time made a humorous short called Rapid Eye Movement, about his Hollywood non-experience. Eventually, he landed a job at a video production house and enjoyed some success as the director of a music video for the rock group Yes, which was nominated for a Grammy. He began writing screenplays and directed a short called Winston, about sexual deception, which he later developed into his first feature Sex, Lies and Videotape, which was the hit of the 1989 Cannes Film Festival, winning the coveted Palm D'Or as Best Film, as well as the International Critics Prize and Best Actor for James Spader. It also earned an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Soderbergh followed this with Kafka in 1991, a surrealistic mystery/suspense film which combined fiction with elements of author Franz Kafka's life. He followed that with an adaptation of A.E. Hotchner's memoir King of the Hill in 1993, a heart-rending coming-of-age tale set in the depression-era midwest. Despite not fairing well at the box office, it remains one of the best-reviewed films of that year. 1995 brought The Underneath, Soderbergh's take on Raymond Chandler-esque mystery, set in present day Austin, Texas. 1997 saw two Soderbergh releases: Schizopolis, a low budget, experimental comedy in the spirit of Richard Lester and Buñuel, and Gray's Anatomy, a filmed version of Spalding Gray's comic monologue.

Soderbergh's latest is one of his best, and certainly his most commercial efforts yet. Out of Sight, from the novel by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), reunites Shorty screenwriter Scott Frank with the author and boasts an all-star cast featuring George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks and two huge stars (who will remain nameless) in very crucial cameo roles. Out of Sight is a treat for the brain, the eye, and the funnybone, a film which combines the best of 1970's American film grittiness and a 90's hipness that makes for one very refreshing celluloid cocktail. Universal opened the film wide on June 26. Odds are you'll want to check it out more than once. Steven Soderbergh sat down recently to discuss his latest film opus, as well as his past triumphs, tribulations and disappointments.

I'm a big Elmore Leonard fan and I thought you really captured his voice with Out of Sight, which isn't easy to do on film.
Steven Soderbergh: It's tricky. It's an odd tone. We had two things going for us: Scott Frank, who understands that tone, and we put together a cast that I made sure understood that tone.

Have you always been a fan of Leonard's work?
Yeah. I've read probably six or seven of his novels. I've seen almost all the movies that are based on his work. So I was very familiar with his work.

I was excited when I heard you were doing this film, because like Elmore Leonard's novels, most of your films have subject matters that seem very serious when you first hear about them, but they always seem to have undercurrents of humor. Even with Kafka, a writer whose work most people find to be completely bleak, but I've always found to be blackly hilarious, you seemed to find that same humor and absurdity.
I think Kafka's work is extremely funny in an absurdist way. With (the film), I think a lot of people took it much more seriously than we intended, dealing with that character and all, leaves you open to that. But we really saw it as a carnival ride.

The Underneath struck me as sort of an homage to a Raymond Chandler-type crime story, whereas Elmore Leonard definitely has a more modern take on the genre, more straightforward.
Well, ultimately (The Underneath) was kind of a mess. I didn't quite unlock it or figure it out. Some things about it are interesting, but others are...if there's a successful element to The Underneath it was finding a way to use color in the same way that noir films used to use black and white. That was the one part of the movie that worked. Everything else about the movie I can't defend. It was a failed experiment, but a good experiment to attempt. The results of that experiment were necessary in making (Out of Sight). They can't all be gems. It's a process.

I noticed you were very specific about the color palates in Out of Sight, depending on what city the scene took place in. Did you use a blue filter in most of it?
No. More often than not we shot with a half-85, which cools things off a bit. Then on some stuff we'd just pull the 85 completely, and let it go blue, then print it back. And what happens when you do that is there's a patina of coolness in the blacks. And that gives you a different feel than if you shot it with an 85 and then tried to tone it down, trying to get it to look like winter, for example. We did a lot of experiments, depending on how the light was that day. I love that look. It's very evocative. It's what I saw when I read it. It had that feel...It felt like a real 70's movie to me.

Another filmmaker that comes to mind when I watch a lot of your work is Antonioni, especially in your specific use of color.
I think a big problem with The Underneath was that I was in danger of becoming too much like Antonioni. I think he's terrific, but I think at some level, it's not an appropriate style for an American filmmaker because it runs so counter to our zeitgeist. I appreciate the rigor of that style of filmmaking, but what I felt Out of Sight needed was a combination of being that thorough, with a much more jagged energy and a much more rough style.

Out of Sight didn't feel "slick." I noticed you didn't use many dolly shots, did a lot of hand-held stuff, and a jarring editing style that was very effective.
Yeah, for this material I felt that if the movie smelled like Hollywood it would just fall apart.

You had a star-studded cast in this film right down to the smallest parts. How did you attract such a stellar group?
Well, Elmore Leonard's got a reputation for writing great parts, even great small parts. But in the case of the two cameos, we were really lucky. Both actors were intrigued by the idea of doing these small roles that were extremely important to the story in spite of their size, and also they did it as a favor. But, particularly in the last scene, if it weren't (this actor) it had to be someone who had an extremely powerful presence. Because you're talking about a guy who you have to establish in no time at all that he's "the dude." The break-out artist of all time, otherwise the last scene of the film wouldn't work--if that guy didn't have that power.

The other great thing was that everybody in the film underplayed, very naturalistic.
That's Leonard's style, too. The characters have no self-awareness at all, so if you cast an actor who comments on their performance while they're giving it, you're dead.

Talk to us about George Clooney, who I think is an incredibly underrated actor.
He absolutely is. He's in that weird spot, which I hope he won't be in much longer, where people are saying "He should be a movie star!" He makes four movies and they do okay, but they don't set the world on fire, and everybody blames him. I've always thought that the guy was ready to happen, and there was no question in my mind that this was that part for him.

How do you direct actors?
I try not to ask them how they like to work, I try to find out, and that's where rehearsals come in...I try to have a week to ten days of rehearsal, which is really for me, not for them. It's for me to watch them, and get a sense of how they like to be treated, how to communicate with them so that I don't have to figure it out on the set, where I'm not as patient. (All the actors) are different, so you have to treat them accordingly.

What sort of space do you like to rehearse in?
We just had an open space, sort of a holding room, over at Universal that was fairly good-sized. I'd bring in some props and tables and things, do a read-through for a while, then put it on its feet, do a little blocking.

Do you have a clear idea of how you're going do shoot beforehand? Do you storyboard at all?
No. Figuring out where to put the camera is usually the easy part. It's coming up with some way of staging the scene that's interesting, that's the hard part...the only thing I boarded on this movie, because we shot the whole sequence out of order, was I took stand-ins and moved them through the entire mansion sequence from beginning to end, and then with a still camera with a zoom lens, shot from every angle I could think of, then put those up on a big board. Every time we did a shot, I'd put a piece of red tape on that corresponding picture.

Hearing you talk, you seem to have a natural affinity for filmmaking. Did you always love movies growing up?
Oh yeah, I always loved movies, but I don't think...I think it's something I like to do and something I feel comfortable doing, but I don't think I have an innate ability for it. There's certain things I think I do well, but I see films by other people all the time where I say "Jesus Christ, I could never do that!" There are a lot films that just leave me in awe...Something like Titanic, you could put a gun to my head and say "Direct this." I'd say "Go ahead and pull the trigger," because I wouldn't know where to start. My mind just doesn't work that way. But, odds are that (James Cameron's) version of Sex, Lies...would be pretty strange. (laughs) But he's good at what he's good at. It takes a while to figure out what you're good at. Part of maturing I think is recognizing what you're good at and refining that and focusing on that, instead of spreading yourself out too thin and trying to be a jack-of-all-trades. And that takes a while to learn, because the ego part of you wants to say "I can play on anybody's court, anywhere, anytime." Instead of saying "Hey, you know what, I'm not very good on clay, I'm gonna stick to grass." And it's true.

Were your parents involved in the arts?
My dad was a college professor who drew a little bit, and he loved books, and he loved movies and he loved music. My mother when she was younger painted, but by the time I was growing up had stopped. It was certainly a household where I was encouraged to explore that stuff and supported endlessly by them.

Any siblings?
Yeah, I have three sisters and two brothers...I was the fifth.

You didn't go to a formal film school, so how did you develop yourself as a filmmaker?
Trial and error...I was hanging out with these LSU students when I was in high school who had access to some university film equipment and we were all sort of experimenting with this stuff. And some of the people I'm still working with. Paul Edford, my production sound mixer, was one of the members of that film class. It was a pretty unique group, all have gone on to do interesting things.

Did those early films that you all did get you attention early on?
Not really. They were just résumé pieces for me that I'd show to people for specific reasons.

I heard your first move to L.A. wasn't so pleasant.
Well, I came out here when I was 17, was here for a year and a half and I was getting some editing work for a TV show called Games People Play that got canceled. It was a dreadful show, but the segments that we got to do were interesting. They were filmed segments, which in the early 1980's was a new thing to do, shoot 16mm negative, transfer it to tape, and then post on tape. So, the show got canceled, I kept doing piddly jobs and figured, 'Well, I can starve a lot more comfortably back in Baton Rouge.' So I moved back, kept making shorts, kept writing and...writing is really what kept me going. I eventually wrote enough stuff to get an agent and get work, and with that money I financed a short film...and eventually did Sex, Lies.

How did you get the job for the Yes concert film?
I had been doing freelance work for Showtime and someone there recommended me to the band. They wanted to make a little "on the road" documentary, so I figured what the hell, I'll never see these people again, so I edited it into this sort of snarky, cheeky 30 minute film about life on the road with the band. They really responded to it, thought it was really fun. So they called me up and asked if I wanted to do the concert film. I said "Shit, yeah!" Here I was, 22, a pretty big thing to do...So I got an agent out of that and had been writing now non-stop for five years and had just started writing stuff that didn't completely suck.

How many did you have to write before they stopped completely sucking?
Probably one a year, from '80 to '85. Then in late '85, I wrote three back-to-back in like six months. I finally just crossed a line where something unlocked and I wrote these three...and that's when things started to open up. The first paying writing job I got was to re-write a one hour Disney TV movie that never got made.

Was there any one movie that really captured your imagination growing up and inspired you?
There were lots, tons. I'm editing a book of interviews right now that I did with Richard Lester. He was a huge influence, still is.

One of my favorite movies is Robin and Marian.
Great film. Look at this guy, talk about underrated and under-appreciated. He invents rock video with A Hard Day's Night and Help. The Knack, How I Won the War, Petulia which is a masterpiece, the Three Musketeers films which are hilarious and fun, Juggernaut, which is a great movie...Great filmmaker, with a wide range of films and genres.

I even liked Cuba, which got killed when it was released.
That's a fascinating movie. Flawed, but really the things that people disliked about it when it came out are what makes it interesting now, it's refusal to sort of play to the idea of a war-torn romance. An absolute refusal to be sentimental or easy about anything. Brooke Adams' character was really fascinating. Here's a woman who says "Look, I don't know what little fantasy you've got in your head, but don't play it out on me, because I'm not that." And this guy (Sean Connery) who wrestling with the fact that the kind of guy he is is obsolete now...It's a really interesting movie.

Why did Lester stop making films?
It was a combination of things triggered by the death of (actor) Roy Kinnear during the making of Return of the Musketeers. Lester was absolutely devastated by that and hasn't made a feature since. But he's an incredibly bright, kind, funny man. For my money, I wish he was still directing movies because I think he's still got movies in him.

So many great directors from that era that inspired your generation seemed to have just vanished. What happened do you think?
Well, as we know from reading the Peter Biskind book (Easy Riders, Raging Bulls), a lot of them just self-destructed. It was their own damn fault for the most part. Part of it was the business changing, but the lion's share of it was them. They just went out of their heads...I watched a lot of 70's films preparing for Out of Sight: all of William Friedkin's films, all the early Hal Ashby films. It was a great time.

Let's talk about King of the Hill, which reminded me of some of the best of Truffaut and Louis Malle.
They were definitely in our minds, especially The 400 Blows...Everything about that movie went flawlessly during the shooting. Then once it was done, everything went wrong. We finished the movie, took it to Cannes, got our heads handed to us. They fuckin' hated it. Hated it! Just a disaster. Not good long lead reviews, very mixed. Then we're coming out in August of that year on the heels of ten movies with children protagonists. Ten! Then the daily reviews come out and they're as good as I've ever gotten, but by then it was too late. It was a disaster.

I think it will be one of the films that you're remembered for.
It's the movie that people always bring up to me the most as their favorite of mine. As a classical piece of American narrative, that's about as good a film as I know how to make. But what happened afterward doesn't affect my memory of making the film, which was a great experience.

Let's go backwards and talk about Sex, Lies. Walk us through winning the Cannes Film Festival.
Well, the great thing about it is that it's a surprise. You don't take out ads to win the Palm D'Or. We screened very early in the festival, within the first couple of days, and notoriously that's not a good spot. But, the film went down well, we did our press, and then we went home, back to L.A. A couple people said that I might have a shot at the Camera D'Or, for best first film, and that they'd let me know. Then I got a call from Mike Watts, who was running Virgin at the time, and he said "I think you better get on a plane. I think you're gonna win the Camera D'Or and it's worth coming over for." So I got on a plane on Sunday, get off Monday afternoon and get handed the International Critics Prize, which I would've come back for anyway! So I thought, 'Wow, that's great.' They rush me into the ceremony. Then I see Spike Lee and say "What's going on?" And he says he didn't get anything for Do the Right Thing. I couldn't believe it. It's a great movie and should've won something. So we sit down, then James Spader wins for best actor. And nobody's there but me, so I run up and accept for him...Somebody grabs me as I walk offstage and says they need to get me back to my seat. Sits me down in my seat as Wim Wenders is speaking, I don't think in English, about the Palm D'Or winner, saying it's a film by a young filmmaker, this is all being translated for me...and I'm thinking okay, could it be Mystery Train, could it be Do the Right Thing...and he says "Sex, Lies and Videotape." And immediately it's like you leave your body and watch yourself trip and stumble over people as you go on-stage. And at that point, I know I stood at the podium and said "Well, I guess it's all downhill from here," and I have no idea what I said after that. It's all a complete blank. I know that I was taken and put on live French television immediately afterwards, next to Denys Arcand and Bertrand Blier, neither of whom looked very happy, and I gave this interview, got up in a daze and walked out of the building, and left the Palm D'Or under my seat! (laughs) And as I was walking out the door, somebody says to me "Uh, do you think you want to take the award with you?" (laughs) It's more amazing to me in retrospect than it was at the time. It was almost like someone hitting you with a wand and saying "You're John Lennon for three hours," with that kind of attention focused on you. Having been back to Cannes a couple times since and watching from the outside, I think 'Man, that must've been nuts!'

Many people credit Sex, Lies with jump-starting the independent film business in this country.
They key word there is 'business.' If Sex, Lies had made half a million bucks, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It made money, and as we know if something makes money, people are suddenly interested. As far as its cultural impact, it comes down to just that: money.

Do you have any advice for first-time directors?
Don't wait for permission. There is a long list of reasons you can give yourself not to start: "I don't have enough money." "I have some but I need a little more." "I don't know anyone." There are gonna be so many people who will tell you 'no,' don't add yourself to that list. Whether you do it or not, nobody gives a shit. The only person who gives a shit at the end of the day is you, and you can't worry about how it will look, or anything, you've just gotta go. You've gotta go. The rest of what happens to you will rest on the film itself, which is how it should be. But I always tell people, people are their own worst enemy. We know that. They key is to remove yourself from the enemy list.

VERA FARMIGA: The Hollywood Interview 2009

VERA FARMIGA: The Hollywood Interview 2009

Vera Farmiga  

(Vera Farmiga, right, and George Clooney in UP IN THE AIR.)

by Terry Keefe

(Currently appearing in this month's Venice Magazine.)

The first time we interviewed actress Vera Farmiga was in early 2001, at Swingers Diner on Beverly, over French fries. It was around 8 in the evening, as she had to spend the day auditioning for a network pilot. She was promoting a supporting role in a relatively forgettable Robert De Niro-Ed Burns cop thriller called Fifteen Minutes, where she played a Eastern European hairdresser who witnesses a murder. Parking was scarce in the neighborhood, to the point that we first met that night while angling for the same spot. Today, things have changed somewhat. We’re meeting at a ridiculously large and posh board room at the Beverly Hilton, which reminds of the one in Network where uber-exec Ned Beatty chews out Peter Finch’s Howard Beale. Valets take care of the cars. A number of publicists and assistants abound. It’s all part of the studio publicity machinery for Up in the Air, the feature film directed by Jason Reitman, in which Farmiga stars with George Clooney. Strong Oscar buzz abounds on the film, not just for Reitman and Clooney, but also for Farmiga this time around.

Up in the Air introduces us to Clooney’s Ryan Bingham, a corporate down-sizer who travels the country some 300 days of the year firing vast numbers of employees for companies too gutless to do it themselves. Bingham has been aptly referred to by Reitman as a sort of “new species” of human, in that he travels so much that his home is in the air. He obsessively collects frequent flyer, hotel, and rental car points, and seems to have adapted the philosophy that if he just keeps moving, he’ll never have to get too tied down to any place…or anyone. At a hotel bar, he meets someone he perceives to be the female version of himself, Farmiga’s Alex, who shares a uniquely modern courtship scene with Ryan, as they seduce each other with the power of each other’s preferred traveler club cards. “Just think of me as you with a vagina,” Alex says to Ryan, and with that, he believes he has found his perfect woman. What Ryan doesn’t realize is that in his relationships with Alex, and his unlikely young protégé Natalie (played by Anna Kendrick), he is unconsciously forming a sort of surrogate family. In the sky.

The films of Jason Reitman walk a fine line between comedy, often black comedy, and drama. Deep characterizations of unlikely heroes are found in his Thank You For Smoking (2005), Juno (2007), and Up in the Air, but the films are also sprinkled with sharp comedic dialogue. Farmiga fits well into the Reitman universe, as she is able to deftly hit the comedic beats, but also bring to the surface the largely unspoken levels of loneliness which are definitely an element of what drives Alex. The world of plane-rental car-hotel-conference-plane that she inhabits is in part a role-playing fantasy, something she knows inherently but which Clooney’s Ryan must learn the hard way.

Between our first meeting with Farmiga and this most recent one, we also spoke with her in 2005 about Down to the Bone, the low-budget character study in which she plays a sometimes-recovering heroin addict (read that interview here). Down to the Bone won a Special Jury Prize for Acting at Sundance, and although few in the general population of moviegoers saw it upon release, Farmiga credited the film, at the time, with helping her land a role which just about everyone saw, as the psychiatrist Madolyn in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed in 2006. It seems likely that Farmiga was consequently offered a lot of paycheck-style studio film roles in the wake of The Departed, although one has to assume that Farmiga has largely avoided those projects. While she has made somewhat larger commercial films such as the recent Orphan, she has also continued to pursue roles closer to the indie Down to the Bone in both scope and spirit, playing a disability-obsessed sexual explorer in Quid Pro Quo, the wife of a Nazi officer in the bleak children’s tale The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, and a woman in an interracial marriage in the lower-budgeted Never Forever. She had mentioned at the time of Down to the Bone’s release that these type of smaller, character-driven roles were where her heart was. You hear talk about wanting to mix more commercial projects with smaller, higher-quality ones from actors on the rise all the time, but Farmiga has actually followed through on it. With Up in the Air, she’s landed the rare project that is the best of both worlds these days, a studio film with dynamite characters.

[Note: There are some indirect plot spoilers in the text of this interview.]

Jason Reitman wrote this role for you in Up in the Air, but he also made you audition.

Vera Farmiga: Yeah [laughs]. Yes, he did.

What’s up with that?!

[laughs] He’s a master of contradiction. Look at all his characters. You know, I was very pregnant when we met. And then I was even more pregnant when he handed me the job, and by the time we started filming, I weighed more than George Clooney. I had just delivered a baby, and the studio was stressed about the decision. And so, he just said, “Vera, I hope you don’t mind,” and we’d already met, up for a chamomile tea, at Gramercy Park Hotel, early on in the process, but he couldn’t quite make the decision, because it was a big decision to make for him. I kept insisting…I said, “Call up every director. Call up Scorsese, he’ll tell you about my record...” [laughs]

Scorsese should be enough of a good recommendation, right?

But Jason said, “No, I talked to everybody!” And so I said, ‘Well, if I tell you I can do it, I can do it.”

Was your pregnancy the main issue?

Yeah, I think he was more…not so much physically…he was more worried about my mental capacity, and if I could handle all of it. In my eighth month of pregnancy…I think it was in my favor that everybody else that was being considered probably was pregnant, too. [laughs] But so, he actually made me read the scene with Anna Kendrick’s character. And he came back, to the Gramercy Park Hotel, with a video camera, and he’d hired two local actors from the city to sit in and read for George’s and Anna’s characters, and he videotaped me, and I got a call that night. [laughs]

(George and Vera compare frequent flier and travel mileage point cards.)

You do a lot with silence in this film. Her non-verbal moments aren’t just reaction shots. She’s an enigma, and hiding a few things, and you can feel that in her glances. How much of that silence are you consciously filling, and how much is just your screen presence?

I love the silent moments. I cherish the silent moments in film. It’s even more important and telling of a character what they don’t say, what they choose not to say…and what they may be thinking but don’t say. What they can’t say. What they’re incapable of saying. That is as revealing, if not more, than what a person actually says, so I love that, and that for me is something that I focus on as an actor, and obsess over, and relish. [laughs]

It occurs that you have to be in the moment to do silence properly on-screen.

And sometimes I take it to extremes, because Jason’s biggest direction of me was, “Vera, you gotta say it faster. Can you pick up the rhythm?”

I guess I can also see that, because the first scene where you and George meet has a real Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell-His Girl Friday fast repartee to it.

Yeah, you’re right, because there is a rhythm...there’s a rhythm to Jason’s writing, and you have to honor it. It’s like the metronome’s on, and you do have to honor that metronome, and keep up with it. And that’s part of what’s so sexy [about the two characters], the rhythm, the tennis match, the banter. They finish each other’s thoughts, and they’re on very even, equal footing. But then there were moments, like at the wedding, when you see them exist without any words. What’s so sexy about this relationship is…it’s hardly anything that happens in the bedroom. There’s no allusions, there’s like one allusion to them having a romp, but I think what’s so sexy about it is that Jason is just very old-fashioned in the way he portrays a romance. Look at Juno. You root for the relationship, and it’s just so authentic and heartbreaking, but it’s really just the conversation between them, and who they are together, and words that they exchange…that’s what’s so sexy. I love that because I’m always on a hunt for a good old-fashioned romance.

"I love the silent moments. I cherish the silent moments in film. It’s even more important and telling of a character what they don’t say, what they choose not to say…and what they may be thinking but don’t say."

What is true of all of three of Jason Reitman’s film is that he keeps this fairly light tone overall, but also has these deep characters and overall themes. How much of the tonal balance, and how it should be played, is obvious on the page, and how much do you have to find in the execution?

He’s a master of finding that, and we also struggled at times. There are certain lines that my character has that are hilarious, but could be as vulgar as could be if you don’t hit the right chord with them. The “vagina” line [Editor’s Note: the classic one-liner delivered by Farmiga’s character.] is an example. Just talking about genitals is a funny thing, is a tricky thing, and the word “vagina” is not a word that you hear all the time. It’s such a critical word, but actually, when you say it, there’s all sorts of imagery that pops up, and you know that line, in particular, is probably going to be a sound bite in the film. And there’s a lot of pressure on that line, and I find with Alex, she says the most …she’s a sexual adventuress, the things that she says are demanding and liberal and unapologetic, and yet the key was to find a dignity in delivery, and infuse it with as much dignity and self-respect in honoring thyself, herself, an integrity of self, as possible. That was the key to Alex.

The key one-liners like that one…how much did you practice them on your own in front of a mirror?

That one – in my trailer, all the time.

If I remember correctly, that line is also delivered on the phone with George. So you didn’t have him to play off directly on one of the biggest quips of the film.

Yes, but George was in the room. He’s very generous and he’s available, and he was there, that was one of the first things we shot. The first scene is always the hardest scene for me in any film, always the first scene. I gotta get that out of the way, and then I can relax into a performance. It’s just how it is with me.

As Ryan falls in love with Alex, did you play her as falling in love with him, also? Because she pretends not to, but -

Well, I don’t know if she pretends not to, and this is interesting about how Jason directed me, because I wanted to infuse it more…look, it’s undeniable what they have is a real thing. And obviously she’s pretending through it, but she wouldn’t be there if she sincerely didn’t enjoy it. You look at them, and I think what exists is a real thing. Call it love, call it what you may. She’s just someone who follows her rules, that she’s established. I always pressed Jason, I wanted to know, “What’s going on with her? What’s happening in her life? Is she insatiable? Is she uninspired? Is she … um ... a player? Is she so dissatisfied” He said it didn’t matter. I said, “But it matters. I need a backstory.” Who’s to say, that in her home life, people aren’t condoning that kind of behavior, and saying, “You know what, you look like you need something I can’t provide…” And who’s to say that she doesn’t have a very liberal partner? Okay, so the thing was to not judge it, that was the biggest thing for me, was not to judge that character, and not even to determine why she is the way she is, but like a court-appointed lawyer, before the jury of an audience, defend that character. Find something to defend, and this is a woman … who is compartmentalizing her life, and you only see one facet of it. You see her as a romantic operative. You see her in the romance aspect of her life, and we don’t know what happens everywhere else, in those other compartments.

You don’t even know what she does for a living, exactly.

You don’t. That’s another thing I kept pestering Jason about. “What does she do? Who is she?” He goes, “I don’t know.” I’m like, “What do you mean you don‘t know? You’re the writer. Tell me what she does!” [laughs] And then he had to give me [something], because I said, “Listen, it’s gonna determine what shoes I wear, it’s gonna determine if I have a clutch or a handbag or a backpack or a briefcase.” He’s like, “Uh, let’s make it the same thing as Ryan - she instructs companies how to run a better business. She’s a businesswoman, in short.” But so, yeah, you don’t know much about her, at all.

It’s interesting because Jason also said last night at the Q&A that he doesn’t like back story. And back story is such the rage in American films today. We have separate films in super hero franchises just to explain the back story.

Yeah [laughs]. That’s true. It’s funny.

What did you have going through your head, though, in the scene when you are standing in the doorway, with him standing outside? You must’ve come up with some additional back story for her in that moment.

The staging of that scene is pretty genius. Jason’s got me at the top of the steps, with the exterior lighting of the brownstone highlighting me, and there’s George on the bottom of that staircase, looking up, meaning his big brown hound-dog eyes are gonna be the biggest, brownest hound-dog eyes he’s ever given, as he looks up, and she’s unattainable. So just that proximity and that elevation above him, in being on the top of the stairs when the truth of who Alex is unveiled…did a lot of the work. And then for me it was just responding to what I was being given. I was reacting to what George was being given, and was giving me, and that’s it…that reaction. I wasn’t really thinking, but sort of just looking at George, and reading his face, and just sort of serving back what he was serving me.

(Farmiga back in 2001, in FIFTEEN MINUTES.)

Jason has mentioned that George never leaves the set. Which could drive you crazy with some fellow actors, or it could be great. I assume the latter with George, because everyone seems to love him.

It’s good with George. You want him around, because he’s single-handedly responsible for that tone onset, which is a very frivolous jungle gym. Sense of humor is everything to him. He loves being at work. He respects the crew. He befriends them. He befriends everybody. He’s very open-hearted, and childlike, and happy-go-lucky, and eager to share himself. He loves to make people feel special about themselves. It’s a great gift that he has. He’s a magnet.

"I find with Alex...she’s a sexual adventuress, the things that she says are demanding and liberal and unapologetic, and yet the key was to find a dignity in delivery...That was the key to Alex. "

Let's talk about the shooting of the scene where you and Anna Kendrick meet and compare your expectations of the ideal man in front of George. It's one of the best scenes in the film and also reveals new levels in both the female characters.

That was a long day. We shot the whole morning, so it wasn’t the whole day, but it was the first time that Anna and I got a chance to work together. It was really two different storylines. She was never onset when I was there…and we established our different relationships with the crew, and so I got very quiet that day, and I just wanted to watch her work, because she is so compelling, and she’s such a force of nature, at her age, she’s so self-possessed, and has a wicked sense of humor, and so sharp, and I loved watching her work. I became very sort of quiet that day, and even took my cues from her, watching someone being given this tremendous opportunity, and using it as a springboard…and I love the scene, and for Ryan it’s wonderful, because it’s everything his character has fought against, which is paternity, and husbandry, and yet here he is, taking to his somewhat…his travel wife and his business daughter. That was cool.