Howard who stories peapo.., p.12
The Best Film You've Never Seen, page 12
What are some of the inherent difficulties of translating a play into the medium of film?
HILLER: You have to think about it differently. But it always amazes me, like when I saw Amadeus onstage, I just loved it so much. I was just so bowled over by it as a theatrical event. I loved the directing, I loved the acting, I loved the play—just everything. I came out off the ground, thinking, “Boy, that’s theater!” And I felt it so strongly that I couldn’t go to the movie when it came out. I thought, “It’s just never going to live up.”
Finally, after a few months, I did see it, and I loved the movie. And the same writer, Peter Shaffer, wrote both. And I presume that he or Milos Forman realized they had to change it because onstage it was basically Salieri and God. And in the film it was mostly Mozart’s story and they could be a lot more visual about it.
And we made changes in Man in the Glass Booth, but only because I felt that, onstage, it was intellectual game-playing. And I thought, that’s not going to work as well on film; we need more emotion. And so we worked on it that way. And Robert Shaw was very upset with us. Eddie Anhalt wrote the screenplay. And Shaw was so upset with the way we were doing it, even though we were saying we were going to be really honest to him, that he wouldn’t put his name on it. And he wouldn’t even let us say it was based on his play.
Let’s talk about Ely Landau. What was he like to work with?
HILLER: He was very determined and very caring about the theater. He was trying to bring theater to the whole country, not just to major cities. But [to see the American Film Theatre productions] you had to subscribe to the series. Usually, it was a Monday. That’s the night with the least amount of business at the theater.
And you’d see an interesting and provocative play that didn’t lend itself to being a commercial film. But at the time the intention was that the films would not be seen again. They were just meant to be seen that one time and that’s it. And indeed, not many people have seen them.
What Landau and the American Film Theatre didn’t realize was that they were preserving stage theater on the screen. And by releasing them on DVD, they’re going to let a lot of theater jewels be seen or reseen by hopefully a bigger audience.
Frankenheimer said that this was his greatest ensemble feat. Reflecting on the film, what do you think your attraction to it was?
HILLER: It got to me emotionally. And it got a hold of me and kept me. It made me see not just with my eyes but with my gut, and that did it, it did it for me. Frankenheimer and I, we always said live television, if it was still around, we’d rather do that than film.
Really, why?
HILLER: It’s unbelievably exciting, because no matter how prepared you were, no matter how organized you were when the clock hit the top, you had to pray, because anything could go wrong, and you couldn’t stop it and do it again. It was there, that’s it. But you got good rehearsal time and good actors and then camera rehearsal over and over again. You had to do it while you were doing it, figure out things. It was like opening night.
16
Michael Polish
Institute Benjamenta
Michael Polish almost didn’t choose the Quay Brothers’ Institute Benjamenta for this book, because of the parallels to his own life and work. Not because they share similar themes or styles—it was simply because he wanted to avoid pairing himself with another set of identical twin brother filmmakers. (Michael collaborates with his own twin brother, Mark.)
Yet the pull of Institute Benjamenta was too much. Institute was the first live-action feature by the Quays, Philadelphia natives who had only made esoteric, puppet-populated stop-motion animation in England. Polish says, “Institute Benjamenta really makes you take a step forth into their own realm and participate in a way that you are just not normally participating in movies.”
Michael Polish, selected filmography:
Twin Falls Idaho (1999)
Northfork (2003)
The Astronaut Farmer (2006)
The Smell of Success (2009)
Stay Cool (2009)
For Lovers Only (2010)
Big Sur (2013)
Institute Benjamenta
1995
Directed by Stephen and Timothy Quay
Starring Mark Rylance, Alice Krige, Gottfried John, and Daniel Smith
How would you describe Institute Benjamenta to someone who’s never seen it?
POLISH: It’s hard to really give a plot, because it is all atmosphere and atmosphere-driven. I think if somebody says, “What’s it about?” you’d say, “Look, it’s an institute for servants and servitude, the whole movie’s about servitude, and at the end of the day, we all end up servicing.” But that doesn’t do it justice.
Institute Benjamenta unveils itself after the opening. It sets you up for a riddle in pictures, because they’re gonna put these pictures side by side, and you’re gonna have to put them together in the puzzle. And you’re gonna force yourself to find a narrative structure when there really isn’t one. But it’s amazing how as an audience member, or as somebody who writes stories, you just automatically try and do it. You’re in their dream, and it’s a dream that the brothers envisioned, and you have to participate or not participate.
What was interesting to me, though, is it’s a school for almost a masochistic form of servitude—almost to the point of self-flagellation.
POLISH: Yeah, it’s choreographed. It’s choreographed in a way that it flows. It’s almost a fetish, a fetishized quality.
When did you first see this film?
POLISH: I saw this film in ’96. I think it opened for a week at the Nuart, but I just remember this was sort of its last run. And I remember I scratched my head and thought, “Yeah, the Brothers Quay, they did all those animation shorts that I saw in college.” And I go, “This is their first live-action; I’m gonna go check it out.”
I went to go see it on a Sunday, and it was a one o’clock showing. There were only a couple of showings, and there weren’t very many people in it. The first image came up, and it looked like you were looking through gauze. It was so heavily layered, through filters, and I can just remember saying to myself, “Here we go. You’re gonna stick on this, or it’s gonna really freak you out.”
But it was exciting, and that was what was neat about it—that no matter what I felt, it was exciting. It was exciting to see that for all the films that you’ve watched, this instantly tingled you. You had that feeling around when you watched it, like, “Wow, they put a lot of thought behind this.” It was their overall appreciation.
The story was taken from Robert Walser, a Swiss writer. He wrote novels and poems and then committed himself to an asylum in 1929, refusing to write anymore, saying that he was “not here to write, but to be mad.”
POLISH: From what I understand, his writing is very experimental, and that goes hand in hand with the Quay Brothers. They have taken that literature and inherently turned it into a visual, and it seems to go really well.
Let’s talk a little bit about theme of repetition in the film.
POLISH: I went to the California Institute of the Arts, so I remembered “institute” as one of the connections. The school I went to was repetitious—the first year was very heavy repetition. You had to draw black lines, India-ink black lines with a ruler for six months before you could do color. And so it was this repetition of how you saw lines and the width of lines, and it was really rigorous—it was very Swiss, the way they taught how to look at paintings and art in general. So yeah, prepping your canvas in art school was just as important as painting on it.
So it was one of those same repetitions when I saw that. And I saw those guys [servants in training] setting those forks and doing the napkins, and I was like, “Wow, somebody got it.”
Did your Cal Arts education and focus on preparation carry over into your filmmaking?
POLISH: Yeah, because I also learned, doing film, that you can never be overly prepared. What you’re trying to do in filming is trying to delete all the accidents that might come in. What I try to do is prepare visually and have this film as set up as possible through storyboards and pictures, and control as much I can. That doesn’t mean I won’t change it or won’t make some alteration when we’re doing it. You’re trying to eliminate all the possibilities so you know exactly what you’re doing when you get there. If anything goes wrong, you have an answer for it.
What is your favorite scene?
POLISH: It’s when the spider monkey answers the door. It’s a very frail monkey that in some cultures is represented as very spiritual and very magical. You look at Indian culture, you look at others; they were painted so heavily, these monkeys, that it was nice to see that type of monkey answer the door—that he had his own door.
Would you agree that this is a difficult movie to understand?
POLISH: It’s no doubt a difficult movie to ingest. I watched it again and I just thought, “It’s still a difficult movie to get through.” It doesn’t get easier. It’s incredible. You might get used to it, you might get used to the images, but for the first few times, it’s gonna keep you off guard.
Reviews of this film say that it is exquisitely crafted but remote and emotionally barren. Critic Michael Wilmington wrote that the characters seem more puppet-like than the puppets in their earlier films. Is that a valid criticism?
POLISH: It’s a valid criticism. They’re coming from a world where they can tweak everything. It is live-action, but it’s not that unlike what they were doing before. They are the master puppeteers, and to make a live-action movie, it’s gonna be hard to remove that control that they’ve had.
The only thing they probably can’t control is the heartbeat of the actor. Anytime you put live-action, or a live actor, in your movie, you’re gonna witness something that you can’t control—just their breath and how the camera picks up the intuitiveness of somebody’s soul.
With them controlling everything, they end up making things colder. It’s not going to be accessible, which is automatically gonna turn off 90 percent of the population.
But it’s not without humor….
POLISH: It has its humor, and what I find amazing is that they also have very provocative images, too, with that lady sweating. That it’s sexy at the same time.
Yet their obsessions resurface as well, with their characters searching for pieces of themselves.
POLISH: There’s this serious oppression that you feel with their work, and their love of Kafka and those writers of the Eastern Bloc comes through a lot. There’s a sense of oppression and that idea of the one person against the world. But it’s pushed way into the Brothers Grimm realm.
And what do you make of the signs shown in the background throughout the film? Those signs that say WORK MORE, WISH LESS. It plays against the modern fairy-tale perception, because so many people think that modern fairy tales are about simple wish fulfillment.
POLISH: Yeah. I think you’re right with that analysis of the fairy tale, because you’re the second person I’ve heard compare it to a fairy tale and the way they construct the fairy tale. And I think they’re going back just to the way they started animation, growing up in a very Disney-oriented world. I think they’ve been trying to break through that.
They’re reclaiming it, making it the way they would like to have tweaked the Disney movies.
What did Institute teach you?
POLISH: We all, as artists, love to get instant gratification, because that’s what validates us. We get a sense of validation when our work is on display and it gets appreciated. When that doesn’t happen, it does shut down a little bit of your progress. You can’t be one hundred percent of an artist and say it doesn’t matter. But you would love for the Brothers Quay to come out to a wider audience.
But the independent world is just as ruthless as Hollywood; independents eat their own. Independent filmmaking and this community—this ruthlessness is part of the game, but it’s no different when you’re working with a studio. At least the studios are up-front with what they want to do.
I’m sure you hear what I’m saying about the discovery of now and the discovery of later. They’re two very powerful things, and they’re each their own. It’s just unfortunate sometimes that the person who suffers the most is the person who created it.
What are the hurdles with translation to the screen, of never having it turn out on film the way it does in your head?
POLISH: I feel that comment is directly about Northfork, because that movie is as close to the dream state that the Institute has. Trying to get Northfork made for eight years, even after doing two other movies before that, felt like I had a commitment to bringing that screenplay as close to what I visually imagined as possible—even if that meant stripping all the color out and filming it through gauze. It had to feel a particular way for everybody to believe that it was rural Montana and on that ride. The Quay Brothers reinforced that it’s great that people are doing this work. You don’t have to be totally arty to get something unique on the screen.
The film is directed by identical twin brothers. Did you intentionally choose this film because you are an identical twin?
POLISH: That’s weird, isn’t it? I almost didn’t pick them because of that.
Why?
POLISH: Well, they direct, they do things together. Me and Mark, while we are identical twins, are very decisive in what we do. I direct. He produces and writes. I have my share of writing involved, but what makes us good is that we don’t have a singular vision; we have two different interpretations of what we write. Me being the director, I get the overall say, which drives him nuts most of the time.
But the arch in Northfork is from my drawings, and that’s the way I wanted to see it. It’s acceptable because he wrote that scene, but I don’t think it’s the same arch that he thought that he saw.
Do you think that there’s anything about the Quays’ fraternal relationship that you understand?
POLISH: I think confidence behind the visuals that they both reinforce is probably the same support team that Mark and I have. What’s nice about their relationship that parallels our relationship is that we reinforce each other’s ideals without having to go to get each other’s opinion. Our visions become very particular—become our own quicker—because we have a support team. I didn’t know they were twins for the longest time. I just thought they were brothers. But they are so twins. They are so much more than what me and Mark are.
The Quays have said that it’s best to abandon the idea of translating the action in a literal sense. Their justification: if somebody tells you about an extraordinary dream, you don’t pick it apart later and say it had a lousy story; you accept it as a whole.
POLISH: Dreams have a symbolic nature. They come to you in symbols, because it’s very hard to put a narrative structure to a dream. You might be linking pictures in a narrative way, but the way they are coming at you, you accept them. Maybe that’s what they were leaning toward: you accept a dream, but you are not really controlling it. You are participating; that’s all you’re really doing.
Is that one of the reasons why this film is difficult at times?
POLISH: Yes. And I also find that connection with Northfork. You’re more of a participant, and we are allowing you to think much more than you are usually allowed to think. It’s allowing people to make up their own conclusions. But ours isn’t as complicated or as complex, maybe, as what the Brothers Quay were doing. Institute Benjamenta really makes you take a step forth into their own realm and participate in a way that you are just not normally participating in movies.
The Quays have said, “We can’t be responsible for the meaning of our work; the viewer has to determine that for themselves.” As a filmmaker, what is the inherent danger in that philosophy?
POLISH: The danger is that as an audience, you feel that there’s a reckless abandonment to your work in the way you are getting what you want, and you’re not asking for approval. They’re kind of extending themselves.
It’s tough, because ultimately you are responsible for your work, even if you say you’re not; you’re putting it out there. You have rappers today saying go shoot this person, go shoot your girlfriend, but you have to be somewhat responsible for saying that. By saying they’re not, they really are. They created it. There’s meaning behind what they created. Ultimately I don’t know what that means, but I’m going to put it out there anyway.
As an artist, it’s hard not to say that you’re not responsible. I could easily say I don’t have responsibility for the meaning of Northfork, and yet it lives and it breathes and it’s a reflection of who we are. Ultimately, you are not responsible for anything you put out there, but it’s a reflection of you.
17
Joe Swanberg
ivansxtc
Sometimes a movie is about a central performance. Even if the other elements of a film don’t support it, a single performance can be a mesmerizing force that gains your loyalty and admiration.
That’s what happened to Joe Swanberg while watching Danny Huston in director Bernard Rose’s ivansxtc (also known as IVANSXTC, Ivan’s XTC, and ivansxtc.).
“It’s rare to see something so alive on the screen, something that feels so unforced, where somebody’s humanity is that big and that present,” Swanberg says.
The film follows a drug-addled Hollywood superagent (Huston) through his last days, in a story based partly on Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and partly on Rose’s own agent.
“It was digging a hole in my brain until a couple of days later, I went and saw it again … but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Swanberg says.
Joe Swanberg, selected filmography:
Kissing on the Mouth (2005)
Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007)
Nights and Weekends (2008)
Alexander the Last (2009)
