(By Stephen
Galloway & Matthew Belloni, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 November 2012)
Ben Affleck
shares a traumatic on-set memory, David O. Russell reveals which film he made
with his "head up his ass" and Quentin Tarantino on when he'll call
it quits: "I don't intend to be a director deep into my old age."
In 1997, indie filmmaker
Gus Van Sant directed an unknown actor-writer named Ben Affleck
in Good Will Hunting, which launched Affleck and his buddy Matt Damon
to stardom (and won them a screenplay Oscar). Fifteen years later, Van Sant, 60 (Promised
Land), and Affleck, 40 (Argo), arrived at The Hollywood Reporter 's annual Director Roundtable as peers,
both riding awards buzz for their latest dramas. The duo joined Tom Hooper,
40 (Les Miserables), Ang Lee, 58 (Life of Pi), David O.
Russell, 54 (Silver Linings Playbook), and Quentin Tarantino,
49 (Django Unchained), for a spirited discussion at Milk Studios, during
which Affleck acknowledged his acting roots. He quipped (only half-jokingly),
"I'm the only one here who could be hired by everyone else."
The Hollywood
Reporter: What's been your toughest moment as a director?
Tom Hooper: I was 14 years old. I was directing my
brother Ben in my second movie, Bomber Jacket. This involved my brother
finding an old Second World War bomber jacket in his cupboard and putting it
on. And as he zips it up, he's transported to a Second World War airfield,
where he's haunted by Second World War bombers. So I'm on location. I've got
100 feet of film, which I'm running at 16 frames a second, which gives me a
shooting ratio of about 1.2 to 1. And my brother suddenly realizes that he has
a power over me that never in his life before he ever imagined, which is that
if he intentionally makes a mistake on tape, my 100 feet is whittled down to
nothing. And he literally had me in tears.
Gus Van Sant: I also experienced making a film at
14 with my sister -- you know, your brothers and sisters, they're not exactly
with you, and they don't really want to be doing it in the first place, at
least in the case of my sisters.
Ben Affleck: And they don't respect you. (Laughter.)
David O.
Russell: Lots of good
training.
Quentin
Tarantino: (To Affleck)
But then you cast your brother [Casey Affleck] in your first movie [Gone
Baby Gone]!
Affleck: On the set, he'd go, "This is
shit." (Laughter.) A scene we did with my brother, we set the shot
up, "We're gonna see down the hall, you're gonna come into the room and
f-- the girl up." So we start the shoot. My brother walks in and goes to
another room. (Laughter.) Everyone's standing there. There's an empty
hallway. Nothing's happening. And I just said: "What are you doing? Don't
walk into another room where no one can see you!" It was tough. But I cast
him because he's such a great actor, and part of why he is a great actor is
'cause he will walk into a room where he knows the camera isn't, whether it's
to f-- with you or because he really thinks it's real.
Tarantino: The telling of the story, dealing
with the actors, dealing with the cameramen and everything -- to me, that's the
easy part, that's the part where I think, "I was meant to do this."
It's just the shouldering of the entire production and leading the army and
inspiring everybody every day. You want to have a temper tantrum. You want to
just say, from time to time, like, "I've f--ing had it." But you
can't say that because everyone really is counting on you to get them up that
hill.
THR: Have you
ever had a temper tantrum?
Tarantino: We all get frustrated.
Russell: Well, speak for yourself. (Laughter.)
Tarantino: I haven't had a temper tantrum, not
yet. You know, it's like, I can't really have a temper tantrum and still be a
boss that's respected, at least as far as I'm concerned. But, you know, at some
point, though, people got to know that there's a penalty for f--ing up.
THR: How do
you deal with executive interference? When Django was running three
hours and Harvey Weinstein was pressuring you to bring it lower, how did you
handle that?
Tarantino: It's not a big deal. I didn't want a
three-hour movie, either. It's a big epic and everything, so I figured it would
be around 2:45, and that's what it is. When you're cutting it down, at that
moment in time, before you watch it with an audience, you know it's too long,
but you can't imagine taking anything out. So then you watch it with an
audience, and then all of a sudden -- "Oh, wow, that is kind of boring
now!" or "No, this is not as suspenseful by the time we got to it as
it needs to be." But you can only go so far in the Avid room on your own.
At some point, you have to watch it with an audience. And then literally 15
minutes just come flying out, where before you couldn't imagine a minute
leaving. (Laughter.)
Russell: You sit through one of those
screenings where all of a sudden everyone's bored, and then you come back and
just like …
Tarantino: "I mean, guys, the story could
never make sense if you take one more minute out of it!" And then you
watch the movie and 15 minutes are gone by noon the next day! (Laughter.)
THR: Harvey's
known for that, scissor-hands.
Tarantino: Well, if he treated me that way, I
wouldn't be working with him for 20 years.
Russell: I welcome them into the edit room,
and I will go toe-to-toe with anybody on any note, and I welcome all
collaboration because I'm not precious about it. I'm not gonna have you drain
the energy out of something, but let's try it, or I'll just disagree honestly
about it. But it always ends up making the movie better. Bradley Cooper
was in our editing room. Harvey came in. Jay Cassidy, who's a fantastic
editor.
Affleck: Actually, being an actor was a
real advantage for me in having that discipline. I've been through so many
experiences where I'd go and watch some cut that was very long, and I would go
to the director and say, "Man, I'm in the movie, and I'm bored. So
surely the audience is gonna be."
THR: Ang,
what's the worst moment for you as a director?
Ang Lee: When I have to replace someone. Once I had
to replace a composer. I won't tell you which film, but that hurts. I have
hits, I have not-so-hits. But I was always proud of them, proud of everybody's
work on them. But something like that happens -- I felt defeated, choosing
between a good person, a loyal person, a good artist, but something's not
clicking.
Russell: That happened to me with Jon
Brion, who's a wonderful composer. He composed the music for one of my
earlier films, and then on The Fighter he came to see an early cut, and
he said, "You don't need a score." I said, "Well, we need a very
light touch," knowing that he's a man who writes strong melodies. As
friends, we wanted to work together. We then proceeded into this bad idea of
him writing melodies that were very strong that did not belong in the movie.
And I did not use it, which is heartbreaking.
Affleck: I've fired a couple of actors.
It's the worst thing in the world because I know, as an actor, what it's like.
I was a child actor, and the director threatened to fire me. That traumatized
me. I was 13 years old. And I went around in fear of being fired. So this movie
[Argo] was the only time I really fired people, but I had to do it. I
had all these Persian actors who were supposed to speak Farsi. And often they
would audition in English and I would say, "You can speak Farsi,
right?" "Oh, yes, yes." A guy came in for a really crucial part,
and on the day of shooting, we were blocking the scene, and this guy's got this
mini speech. And the guy did it, and it was just terrible. He was sort of like,
you know, twisting the mustache and being the Iranian villain and having the
accent and adding all these flourishes. A couple times I said: "Just do
nothing and say your lines. Let's try that." And just previous to that,
there was this guy who had a little bit in the movie. But it was so nice. And
then when this other guy was blowing it -- and not just blowing it, but hamming
it up -- it made it easy to say, "No, you know, you're trying to ruin my
movie."
THR: Did you
ever fear you wouldn't make it as a director?
Russell: My greatest struggle was losing my
way, you know. You can be given enough rope in this business to hang yourself
if you're not careful, and I see it all the time. I experienced it where you
start overthinking things and you try to make things too interesting, become
too particular. Nothing feels right, you know, no project feels right. That was
around I Heart Huckabees. After Three Kings, I had had three
movies that had done well. I overthought what I was gonna do next, and I think
I had my head up my ass on that movie. And then I came out of it. My whole life
changed. I got divorced. I had kind of a wilderness period. I made a film that
never was finished [Nailed], which is unconscionable 'cause this
financier kept running out of money. That was the nadir of everything for me. I
was like, "Wow, man, I don't think it's gonna get worse than this."
And then Sydney Pollack gave me the book [Silver Linings Playbook]
five years ago, and I thought I was gonna get to make that. And then Harvey
wasn't ready to make that, didn't have the money. And I thought, "Well,
when am I gonna get my chance?" Because that was a personal story to me
because of my son [who has struggled with bipolar issues] and everything. So I
got to make The Fighter, which I never expected. That's a project, 10
years ago, I might have looked at and said, "I don't know, what is
this?" I would have been above it. But I said, "Why don't you try to
do this really good?" But now I feel like I'm doing what I can do good
work at.
THR: For many
directors, there's a period when they do great work and then they don't, and
it's often brief. Are you afraid that you might have talent for a moment and
then it's gone?
Hooper: I think you have to keep people
around you who are going to be absolutely brutally honest to you, and I wonder
whether what happens to some people is, they get to a place where they don't
want to hear brutal truths anymore about their work. My family are my most
important first critics, and they are totally harsh. A couple of them came to
my [Les Miserables] mix review last week, and they were like,
"You've got pacing problems." I said, "How can I have pacing
problems?" And as a result, I then found a solution.
Affleck: A really big-time studio
executive, when I first got out here as an actor, told me in a sort of cavalier
and slightly dismissive way that directors are like tuning forks. First we go
"Bing!" -- we hit the fork. And for a while it stays in tune.
And then at a certain point, it just goes out of tune, and it never comes back.
At the time, I was like, "Well, I don't care about that. I'm an
actor." (Laughter.) But I think that view exists about directing.
THR: Ang, did
you feel added pressure on this film because the budget was higher than you've
worked with?
Lee: It's crazy. But when you're working,
that's when you're sane. It's the in-between that's crazy.
THR: How do you
go insane? You look like the most sane person I've ever met.
Lee: That's just the surface. But that's
not the real reason I feel insane. It's the next movie I want to do that is a
drive. There's focus, fear. Those visceral feelings keep you alert and alive.
Van Sant: Dennis Hopper said that
something harder than making a movie is not making a movie.
THR: You've
all had a lot of success. Are you afraid it will end?
Tarantino: No, not at all. But I don't intend
to be a director deep into my old age.
Russell: Wait a minute. That's bad news for
everybody.
Tarantino: I'll probably just be a writer, or
I'll just write novels, and I'll write film literature and film books and
subtextual film criticism, things like that.
THR: In how
long do you plan to make that change?
Tarantino: Well, part of the reason I'm feeling
this way is, I can't stand all this digital stuff. This is not what I signed up
for. Even the fact that digital presentation is the way it is right now -- I
mean, it's television in public, it's just television in public. That's how I
feel about it. I came into this for film.
Affleck: Digital projection as well?
'Cause film's over. I mean, there are no film projectors in the country.
Tarantino: Yeah, and that's why --
Russell: I won't shoot digital.
Tarantino: No, I'm not talking about shooting
digital.
Russell: Do you shoot digital?
Tarantino: No, I hate that stuff. I shoot film.
But to me, even digital projection is -- it's over, as far as I'm concerned.
It's over. So if I'm gonna do TV in public, I'd rather just write one of my big
scripts and do it as a miniseries for HBO, and then I don't have the time
pressure that I'm always under, and I get to actually use all the script. I
always write these huge scripts that I have to kind of -- my scripts aren't
like blueprints. They're not novels, but they're novels written with script
format. And so I'm adapting the script into a movie every day. The one movie
that I was actually able to use everything -- where you actually have the
entire breadth of what I spent a year writing -- was the two Kill Bill
movies 'cause it's two movies. So if I'm gonna do another big epic thing again,
it'll probably be like a six-hour miniseries or something.
THR: How is
the final cut of Django different from what you initially wrote or
envisioned?
Tarantino: It's shorter. (Laughter.)
THR: Ben, what
did you learn from Gus on Good Will Hunting?
Affleck: A lot. Gus was the first great
director whom I worked with. We had read and rehearsed and practiced stuff in Good
Will Hunting for three, four years, so I had like 50 ideas on how to play
each scene. So I do a take, but Gus doesn't say anything. And I really did not
know what was going on. I'd say, "Gus, what did you think?" He was
like, "I don't know, what did you think?" It was this
transforming experience where I realized I'm responsible for my performance.
I'm responsible for my life, my place in the creative universe.
THR: Gus, did
you think Ben would have this filmmaking career when you worked with him?
Affleck: Don't answer that. (Laughter.)
Van Sant: I can't remember. I don't think Ben
said that he was interested. But later, when you were making moves towards
directing in Gone Baby Gone, I remember Ben was very --
Affleck: I was grilling Gus. I was
like, "How the f-- do you deal with actors?"
Van Sant: Well, when I saw Gone Baby Gone,
I thought that you had done something that was way beyond what I had tried to
do with mixing nonprofessionals with professionals. I was sort of jealous.
THR: But you
didn't imagine that when you did Good Will Hunting?
Affleck: Gus didn't even know my name
on Good Will Hunting. (Laughter.)
Van Sant: I don't know. I'm always surprised
when people choose to be directors because it's kind of a weird job. And so when
they actually choose, then you think to yourself, "Well, they're in for a
lot of shit."
THR: Do you
have to have a certain amount of craziness to be a director?
Russell: You have to have a lot of passion,
and you have to be very strong.
Hooper: On Les Miserables, many
people lined up to tell me not to do the singing live. But in the end, you've
got to go with your gut instinct.
Affleck: You have to shoulder too much
responsibility and burden to be really crazy as a director. There's a little
more crazy in actors. There's an actor who's a great actor but who takes a
Geiger counter and sees how radiated his wardrobe is. A little nuts, yeah. But
the guy's also a genius, he does incredible stuff, so who gives a shit?
THR: It's Matt
Damon, right? (Laughter.)
Hooper: Also, you're only as good as your
powers of advocacy as a director, and almost all your power comes with consent.
THR: Well,
David, on The Fighter, Melissa Leo made her displeasure clear until she
saw the film and won an Oscar, and then she said, "You know what? David
was right." So how much is advocacy and how much is imposing your will?
Russell: You've got to be strong. You've got
to stick to your guns, and you've got to be patient. And then let people have
their choices. And half the time you end up in the editing room, and I say,
"You know what? I'm glad they did their choice because that turned out to
be more right for me." I don't always know what's right, but I know I've
got to try the one that I'm feeling in my heart.
THR: Quentin
said he's planning to leave the film business. Do any of you imagine that you
will?
Hooper: No. I will die in the trenches.
Russell: Yeah, that's how I feel. Like John
Huston with the air tank.
Hooper: If you talk about the insanity of
doing it, I think about the insanity of not doing it. My unhappiest days have
always been when I'm not making films.
Affleck: Usually the business shows you
the door before the Grim Reaper does.
Hooper: That's a cheery thought.
Van Sant: Yeah. I wonder if people are still
gonna hire me, but if that's the case, there are other disciplines that are as
fascinating, like theater or painting or writing.
Tarantino: I don't know about the tuning fork
idea. We can all cite examples of where it's not the case. But it's age, it's
absolutely age. I'm really well versed on a lot of directors' careers, you
know, and when you look at those last five films when they were past it, when
they were too old, and they're really out of touch with the times, whether it
be William Wyler and The Liberation of L.B. Jones or Billy
Wilder with Fedora and then Buddy Buddy or whatever the hell.
To me, it's all about my filmography, and I want to go out with a terrific
filmography. [2007's] Death Proof has got to be the worst movie I ever
make. And for a left-handed movie, that wasn't so bad, all right? -- so if
that's the worst I ever get, I'm good. But I do think one of those
out-of-touch, old, limp, flaccid-dick movies costs you three good movies as far
as your rating is concerned.
Russell: I agree with you completely. I also
welcome, as a life challenge, remaining emotionally relevant and compelling.
THR: Quentin,
great poets write hundreds of terrible poems and 20 that are great. Don't you
have to measure the artist by the handful of great works and accept that failure
is part of the process?
Tarantino: It's a grade-point average. I think
I risk failure every single time with the movies I do, and I haven't fallen
into failure. Risking failure is not what I'm afraid of. Failing is what
I'm afraid of. (Laughter.) No, they're not the same thing, and I do
think it's a young man's game. I really do. I also have this little idea in my
head, and then I'll stop talking all this bullshit. I discovered Howard
Hawks when I was 15. I saw Rio Bravo and thought it was fantastic.
Then I ended up going to some film festival, and I saw His Girl Friday.
Then all of a sudden I'm at home, and I notice that a movie called Barbary
Coast is being played, and it said in the TV Guide, "Directed
by Howard Hawks," and so I watched that. Well, those three movies in a row
really got me into that director. So I fantasize about another 12-year-old girl
or boy, 20 years after I'm dead, seeing one of my movies, liking it. "Who
the hell did that?" Seeing another movie, and then whatever they choose
from the pile -- 'cause they don't know what's good and what's bad, all right?
-- I have to keep their dick hard! I have to keep them wanting to go back for
more. They can't grab Buddy Buddy! They can't grab Buddy Buddy!
It can't -- that can't happen!
THR: What is
the weirdest or most interesting interaction you've had with a fan?
Affleck: I had a letter from someone in
China that said they were glad about what we did to the Japanese in Pearl
Harbor. I wasn't sure if they understood that it was a historical movie or
what, or why they even watched the movie.
Van Sant: One exec wanted me to make a film
about a bathroom attendant, which we wrote for him, and then-
Affleck: Three and a half hours. (Laughter.)
Van Sant: It was really about the Wall Street
crash, actually, what we ended up writing. And then he didn't do it.
Lee: Recently I was interviewed by this
woman journalist. At the end, she said, "I want to see you doing Fifty
Shades of Grey." (Laughter.)
Russell: Since I just made a movie which has
some bipolar behavior in it, I had someone write me a letter that said I should
make a movie about a bipolar superhero, and the letter itself was bipolar
because it was delusional. But it was halfway interesting. The motto of the
superhero was, "I hate being bipolar, it's awesome." (Laughter.)
Tarantino: This young 14-year-old girl wrote a
little synopsis for Kill Bill Vol. 3.
Affleck: Wow.
Tarantino: She wanted to play the daughter
grown up, or at least at her age. And I actually read it. I called her and thanked
her for it. I thought it was just so sweet that this little girl liked the
movie so much that she continued the story herself. I always really hope that
people take the story on themselves and take it to a different place and fill
in the blanks that I didn't tell them about.
Van Sant: We made a silent version of Restless,
which was nice, because we did so many silent takes that we cut together a
silent version.
Russell: Oh my gosh. Could have beat The Artist
to the punch.
Affleck: It would have been very
easy to do a silent version of the [Terrence] Malick movie I did [To the
Wonder]. No one talked on set. (Laughter.)
Russell: Back to Quentin, about his whole thing
about the young man's game. First of all, I'm gonna try to convince you to keep
making movies 'cause I love watching your movies. Second of all, I remember
saying to Diane Keaton about 10 years ago, "What is it with Woody
Allen?" I felt like his work had gotten shaky. And she said: "I
don't know. I don't know how many times he can go back to that well." But
the fact that Woody Allen, every year, gets up and makes a movie, I think
that's a good way to live, and he hits a good average sometimes. I really loved
Midnight in Paris.
Tarantino: It was my favorite movie of last year,
actually.
Russell: So I want to be John Huston
with the tube in my nose, and I want you to be up there.
Affleck: I'll be in either of those
movies.
♦♦♦♦♦
Ang Lee, Life of Pi: Lee's $120 million-budgeted fantasy epic could
win him his first directing Oscar since 2005's Brokeback Mountain.
Ben Affleck, Argo: Affleck's third feature as a director takes
viewers inside Hollywood's role in the Iran hostage crisis of 1980.
David O.
Russell, Silver
Linings Playbook ;Bradley
Cooper stars in Russell's follow-up to The Fighter, a dramedy about the
impact of mental illness on a family.
Gus Van Sant, Promised Land: The anti-fracking drama stars Matt Damon, who won
a writing Oscar with Affleck for the Van Sant-directed Good Will Hunting.
Tom Hooper, Les Miserables: Hooper, whose The King's Speech won best
picture and director Oscars in 2011, recorded live singing in this musical
epic.
Quentin
Tarantino, Django
Unchained: Jamie Foxx and
Christoph Waltz star in Tarantino's latest, about a slave who teams up with a
bounty hunter in the American South.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ben-affleck-quentin-tarantino-4-394576
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