Tuesday 17 September 2019

Theo Angelopoulos: Landscape and History

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopoulos)
“The Travelling Players may be thought of as a meditation with three dimensions: history, myth and aesthetics. The viewer is constantly invited to alternate between emotional engagement and intellectual analysis.”

– Dan Georgakas, The Last Modernist: The Films of Theo Angelopoulos, 1997

Made under the watchful eyes of the last days of the Greek military junta, Theo Angelopoulos’s formally and thematically ambitious masterpiece follows an acting troupe in the war-torn years between 1939 and 1952 as they attempt to stage a production of the pastoral play Golfo the Shepherdess.

Highly stylised in its pageant-like movement through history, encompassing the Metaxas dictatorship, World War II and the Greek Civil War, the film is notable for its protracted and elaborately choreographed tracking shots. Reminiscent of the technique of filmmakers such as Max Ophuls and the Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó, these labyrinthine long takes wind tortuously around the actors and action, sometimes switching historical era within the same shot. The result is a radical and challenging chronicle of a nation’s recent history.

These same travelling players are encountered on the road by two vagrant children in search of their father in Angelopoulos’s later classic, Landscape in the Mist (1988).

The following is an extract from an interview with Theo Angelopoulos in 1974.




Q: When did you decide to shoot The Travelling Players, and what were the political circumstances at the time?

TA: We launched the film on the eve of the Polytechnic events. In any case, since the film deals with the 1939-52 period and refers to all sorts of unmentionable historical episodes, the Papadopoulos censors wouldn’t have been very likely to approve it. Nevertheless, we decided to go ahead and shoot the film. Shortly before we started, the Polytechnic incidents erupted in all their vio­lence followed by the Ioannides putsch. At this point we wondered whether it was worth making a film that might very well never be shown in Greece. And what would be the sense of such a decision? We discussed the matter with the producer, and he agreed with us that even if the film was to be banned in Greece, it would achieve its purpose through the echoes of its screenings abroad. In January and February 1974, as the terror was reaching its peak, we decided to go ahead with the film. We were prepared to make our film disregarding any censorship threats whatsoever.

Q: What was the original idea?

TA: I first thought about a travelling company touring the smaller towns around the country. A journey through the Greek landscape and history, following a group of actors from one town square to the next. Later, more elements were added like, for example, using the myth of the Atrides for the relations between the actors. I used an existing formula-father, son, mother, lover, their children . . . power . . . murder - which functions both as a myth and as a basis for the plot. It was a liberating decision, since I had made up my mind from the very beginning this was not supposed to be a lesson in history. The myth of the Atrides offered the option of a social unit that I could observe all through the period from 1939 to 1952. The Days of ’36 revealed the portrait of a dictatorship. The Travelling Players is a kind of se­ quel, giving names and specifications to this portrait. It goes up only until 1952, because I believe that year’s massacres put an end to the civil war and consecrated the triumph of the right wing and the victory of Papagos. That is, the story covers the period between the overt dictatorship of a general to the veiled dictatorship of a field marshal, who was viewed by many Greeks, exhausted by all the catastrophes they had experienced before, as a liberator.


There were a number of obstacles I had to overcome in order to achieve my purpose. First, to combine all these elements into one structure, but also to avoid conventional scenes of the kind you encounter so often in these cir­cumstances: hunger, death, persecutions, etc. For this reason, the film begins in 1952 with Pagagos’s election campaign. I wanted to portray the generation of the Resistance, the people who were against the Metaxas dictatorship, who fought in WW2, who joined the National Front of Liberation and retreated later into the mountains. All those who were forced by the events to take a stand and, finally, were considered the "Resistance generation" from the left­ist point of view, naturally. Three persons represent this generation in the film: the older 1939 militant and two younger persons suspected of sympa­thizing with this man and his opinions. All three of them join the Resistance and are arrested. One of them is deported and released in 1950 after signing an anti-communist declaration. The second is executed in 1951 for refusing to give up the armed struggle. The third falls ill in prison, is released for "health reasons," and will carry with him the "revolution trauma" for the rest of his life. Time has stopped for him in 1944; he constantly projects the events of that year into the future. The entire picture bears the stamp of this trauma. All the characters suffer from it. Some have signed the declaration, others have died in prison or lost their minds.

Q: You claim you used the myth of the Atrides to avoid the artificiality of a con­ventional arbitrary form. Aren’t you worried that such a myth, so deeply entrenched in the cultural traditions of our civilization, would create an opposite effect, by imposing on the film an inexorable fatality? You obviously wish to use the myth as an historical model, but it could lead to the wrong conclusions. Some people might take the film as another interpretation of the myth.


TA: To begin with, the presence of the myth is not that evident in the film. We do not use names, there is no Agamemnon, no Electra, no Pylade, not even a Nikos or Pavlos. The only name in it is Orestes, who for me is a con­cept more than a character: the concept of the revolution so many dream of. The affection many of the characters lavish on him represents their yearning for the ideal notion of the revolution. Orestes is the only one who remains faithful to himself and his goals, and is willing to die for them.

Q: Isn’t there a risk in identifying your protagonists with the heroes of the myth (Electra, Orestes, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra) and then placing them in a different historical context?

TA: The motivations are different, the circumstances are not the same. His­ tory affects them, changes and transforms them. All I did is sketch them, and this helps me to define more accurately the historical space in which they are allowed to move. In the film, Aegisthus is a militant for the August 4 party and finds himself involved in pseudo-collaboration with the Germans. The concept of power is revealed in him by his attitude to the other actors, after the death of Agamemnon. Attempting to analyze his personal motivation would lead to a psychological drama about the primal reasons that made Aegisthus what he is. And that does not interest me at all. What I was trying to achieve is a kind of Brechtian epic, where no psychological interpretation is necessary.


Q: How did you put the script together?How did you use the myth in it?

TA: First of all, I tried to use the 1952 events as a point of departure. From that point, I looked back, but not in the classical flashback tradition, because these are not personal recollections of one definite character, but collective memories, giving me the freedom to plant inside the 1952 sequence certain historical episodes from the past. The first scene takes place in 1952, the last in 1939. As you can see, I am progressing in the opposite direction. In the final scene we see all the characters who participate in the film. Some of them, we know, have been already killed in action; others are in jail. The survivors are old by now; they have broken up, have been barely released from prison. They walk towards each other, they stop in front of the camera, and we hear the text of the beginning: "In the summer of 1939 we reached Aigion. We were exhausted, we hadn’t slept for two nights." The only differ­ence is the year-instead of 1952 in the opening scene it is now 1939. The characters here are still full of hope for the future, but we know what is in store for them. It’s like an old family picture we look at, knowing only too well what is going to happen to each of the persons in it.


Q: How did you select the historical events you wanted to show on screen?

TA: The choice of some dates and events is evident at first glance. The first "historical fact" we run into, in 1939, is the declaration of WW2. This "fact" affects everybody and is therefore introduced at a popular festivity, the actors and many other people being there at the same time. The German victory is represented by the capitulation of a small Greek garrison. The Liberation is seen through a popular revolt. Later, in December 1944, we have the mea­sures against possession of weapons, the civil war, and the elections of 1952. Also, when selecting the events, I preferred those I found to be most repre­sentative of Greek characteristics. For the 1944 events, it was the people in the street and the dimensions of their reaction I was concerned with, not the governmental decisions as such. The people consider December 1944 as their revolution, a revolution that was cut off in the middle, before it reached its natural conclusion. Why? My film does not offer a straightforward answer to the question, but there is plenty of evidence in it to find the answer. For instance, why didn’t the ELAS [The Greek Popular Army of Liberation] reach Athens? And there are more events we all know are part of the historical background of that period. Everything is shown through the perspective of simple people-the same people who have to bear the effects of these events. The film is a popular epic much more than an analysis of recent Greek his­tory.


Q: Unlike your first two films, the erotic element is of major importance in The Travelling Players. What is its significance in relation to the political elements in the picture?

TA: The sexual element is integrated in the characters. Clytemnestra’s affair with Aegisthus and Electra’s reaction are all based on their respective personali­ties. There is however a point when these relations stop being only personal, for Aegisthus is more than just the lover of the mother. He is also a traitor. He is killed not only because of his affair with Clytemnestra or because he has successfully ridded himself of Agamemnon, but for betraying Agammem­non and his son to the Germans. Electra’s rape is a political act as well. I believe that at the origins of every act of violence there is some kind of sexual impulse. Since Electra is raped in interrogation, the act becomes automati­cally political. The film also introduces the concept of prostitution. Chryso­temis is a prostitute who later marries an American soldier. This kind of marriage may solve a certain problem, but at the same time it represents the bankruptcy of moral values. The sexual element is therefore transferred to a political-ideological level.


Q: What does the stage play Golfo the Shepherdess, produced by the players in your film all over Greece, mean to you?

TA: The play functions on several levels. First, it is the means for these play­ers to make a living. But it is also art, since they perform it on stage. Then there is the text they use and the myth of the Atrides. The text is always interrupted at some stage and never completed on screen. And finally, add­ ing the historical background, the play itself gains another dimension. Let’s take, for example, one line from the play: "Are we being watched?" This doesn’t have anything to do with the popular drama anymore; it refers to the fate of the actors themselves, the characters of the film.

Q: It seems as if Golfo is the only play they ever perform. And you have to agree that both thematically and dramatically this is a very conventional play. Politically speaking, it rather mystifies instead of clarifying the true antagonism between so­cial classes. Don’t you feel there is a contradiction between the distinct political position of the actors themselves and the reactionary ideology of the play they keep producing?

TA: Golfo in nothing more than a convention, a Greek version of Romeo and Juliet. The actors are not really conscious of the conflict between their per­sonal politics and the ideology of the play. All they want is to make a living by offering their audience the kind of fare they like to see.



Q: What about the relations between theater and cinema? The stage sequences raise the question of realism, in the sense that an actor plays an actor who plays a role in a play, so what is real in all this?

TA: I have given a lot of thought to this matter. The actors play actors. Masks, costumes, sets, they are all extremely important elements. The change of costumes, for example. When the Englishman puts an actor’s beret on his head and gives the actor another hat in exchange, he becomes an actor in the play as well. When the British perform on the improvised set or sing "Tipperary," the actors are the audience. When Golfo is supposed to fall down, dead, a British soldier falls too, killed by a bullet, as if he, at this spe­cific moment, was playing the part of Golfo. Certain acts and events are re­peated all through the film and given more than one sense, and the performance of the play is never concluded because it is always interrupted by the political events taking place at the same time.

Q: Does your film adhere to a clear aesthetic concept established beforehand?

TA: Despite rumors that I have a definite aesthetic concept with which I will stick through hell and high water, I would like to insist on the fact that I do improvise a lot. In the film there are a certain number of very dynamic scenes featuring a large variety of actions, and also static scenes, the three mono­logues. Since I wanted to have one distinct aesthetic approach, I tried to com­pensate through camera movements in every possible instance, except for the theater production and the three tales. For these scenes, the camera stood still, facing the actors. The basic principle governing all the film is the se­quence shot, whether the camera is moving (which it is most of the time) or immobile. This way, the scenes gain much in depth and detail, with the edit­ ing being done inside the camera. We never shot two scenes, if we had the option of doing it in one.


Q: You feel much more comfortable with the sequence shot and prefer it to the traditional editing process.

TA: It is my own notion, possibly a very personal one. The sequence shot offers, as far as I am concerned, much more freedom, but it is true that the spectator needs to be more involved in it. There is another advantage I like in the sequence shot that you cannot have in traditional editing: the empty screen, when the action is implied, taking place elsewhere.

Q: We could say the sequence shot adopts the concept of montage but instead of using traditional editing, it combines together various elements in one scene, which, through the movement of the camera, stimulate the imagination of your spectators.

TA: It is equally important to mention that through the sequence shot it is possible to preserve both unity of space and unity of time. The film does not acquire an artificial pace at the editing table. Also, once you change the frame, it is as if you’re telling your audience to look elsewhere. By refusing to cut in the middle, I invite the spectator to better analyze the image I show him, and to focus, time and again, on the elements that he feels are the most significant in it.


Q: Did you encounter any difficulties during the production of the film?

TA: First of all, the weather. I was persecuted by beautiful weather. I needed a clouded sky-I couldn’t imagine the occupation under sunny skies. But Greece is well known for its magnificent weather and sunny sky, summer and winter alike. You can’t imagine how much trouble this was! When you have scenes where the first part is shot in Athens and the second in Amfissa, you need to have similar meteorological conditions; the mood, the atmo­sphere have to be as close as possible. And that is rarely evident in a film. On top of that, we went over budget, and worst of all, we were afraid of shooting this kind of film under the present conditions you are only too familiar with.

– A journey through Greek Landscape and History: The Travelling Players. Interview with Theo Angelopoulos by Michel Demopoulos and Frida Liappas, 1974.

Tuesday 2 July 2019

Writing ‘Hud’: A Conversation

Hud (Directed by Martin Ritt)
The distinguished screenwriting team of Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., first met as young writers at MGM and were married in 1946. Irving Ravetch, born in Newark, New Jersey, was an aspiring playwright, who’d attended UCLA before coming to MGM. Harriet Frank, Jr., was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and eventually attended UCLA while her mother was working as a Hollywood story editor. After their marriage, the Ravetches worked independently for over ten years before beginning their first collaboration on Martin Ritt’s The Long Hot Summer (1958) starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. This experience initiated a remarkable series of collaborations with Martin Ritt that extended over eight films and included Hud (1963), starring Paul Newman and Patricia Neal, for which the Ravetches were nominated for an Academy Award; Hombre (1967), also with Paul Newman; Norma Rae, featuring Sally Field, for which the Ravetches received their second Oscar nomination; and Stanley and Iris (1990), starring Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda. They also wrote various scripts for other directors, including an adaptation of William Inge’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), directed by Delbert Mann and starring Robert Preston and Dorothy McGuire, and an adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Reivers (1969), directed by Mark Rydell and featuring Steve McQueen.


For Hud they took a minor character from Larry McMurtry’s first novel Horseman, Pass By, and transformed him into one of the most eerily compelling characters in motion picture history. The Ravetches’ uniquely close relation with the film’s director Martin Ritt, and also with its leading actor, Paul Newman, led to a devastating cinematic character study of evil and self-absorption.

– The following extract is from a conversation with William Baer in which Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. discuss their screenwriting collaboration, working with Martin Ritt and the depiction of evil in Hud:




BAER: After the success of ‘The Long Hot Summer’ (1958), you wrote your second film for Martin Ritt, an adaptation of Faulkner’s ‘The Sound and the Fury’ (1959). Then you wrote screenplays for Vincente Minnelli (‘Home from the Hill’, 1960) and Delbert Mann (‘The Dark at the Top of the Stairs’, 1960). How did you come upon the source material for your next film, Larry McMurtry’s first novel, ‘Horseman, Pass By’?


RAVETCH: I found the book in a bookstore, took it home, and read it. Then I asked Harriet to read it.


FRANK: It’s a beautifully written book. McMurtry was very young at the time, and it was clear that he was a very gifted writer.


RAVETCH: And since we’d enjoyed working with Marty and Paul so much, we wanted to do it again, and we thought the book could be adapted in such a way as to create a leading role for Paul. So we acquired the rights to the book.

BAER: Before we get to the specifics about writing ‘Hud’, I’d like to ask you about your approach to literary adaptation and literary collaboration. First, let’s talk about adaptation. In the past, you’ve referred to your scripts based on other literary sources as being more like ‘hybrids’ than adaptations.


RAVETCH: Yes, very much so. The Long Hot Summer, for example, was probably 95 percent ours and only 5 percent Faulkner. The Hamlet’s a marvelous book—brilliant and hysterical—and Faulkner’s Barn Burning is one of the great American short stories, but in actually writing the film, we basically took one of the characters from the novel, altered him drastically, and then created a new story around him. On the other hand, The Reivers, which we did many years later, is almost entirely from the book. It’s 100 percent Faulkner because we found it readily adaptable to film. So our approach to adaptations, whether it be Faulkner or someone else, really runs the gamut because it’s always crucial to focus on what’s best for the film.


BAER: Faulkner, who was a screenwriter himself, seemed to understand that approach since he called ‘The Long Hot Summer’ a ‘charmin’ little movie.’


RAVETCH: Well, I’m glad to hear that. Faulkner is absolutely our favorite novelist of all American novelists, and we always worried that he might have hated what we did in The Long Hot Summer.


FRANK: Faulkner’s definitely America’s glorious writer, but you’re right. He knew all about screen adaptation. He’d worked with Howard Hawks, and he worked on the screen adaptation of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not, so he knew from personal experience that film and fiction are two very different mediums.


BAER: So how do you collaborate? How do you actually go about creating a script together?


FRANK: First, we talk out an outline, and since we want to stay married, we talk it out very amiably. At that point, we’re not laying out an absolute chapter-and-verse for every single moment in the screenplay; we’re, instead, creating large blocks of organization, so we can visualize the line of the story, and get ready to go. We usually start with a one-page outline listing about thirty-five to forty-five major scenes.



BAER: Irving once said that ‘The script is not so much written as it’s talked onto the page.’


FRANK: That’s right. That’s how we do it. Once we’re ready to begin, we start ‘talking’ the screenplay to each other. Out loud. It’s a line-for- line conversation. In truth, we get so involved that we can’t even tell who starts a line or who finishes it. It’s a very animated, running conversation where we act out the lines – Irving’s a very good actor and I’m not! – along with a running commentary like, ‘That’s good,’ or ‘That’s lousy,’ or ‘Why not try this?’


RAVETCH: And there’s no ego involved. None. Over the years, we’ve heard about a number of other collaborators who do a lot of screaming at each other, but we never raise our voices.


FRANK: We want to stay married!


RAVETCH: Yes, but as conscientious writers, we can’t let our egos get in the way; otherwise, it will start to interfere with the work and ruin it.


FRANK: And from many years of experience, I can tell you that Irving is never a man of ego. He’s never aggressively critical, although, if he hates something, he’s very honest and plainspoken. So we have none of that push-me-pull-me business. We work things out amicably, and we don’t waste time arguing.


RAVETCH: Who was that married couple at Metro who collaborated on so many scripts? They did The Thin Man and It’s a Wonderful Life.


FRANK: Hackett and Goodrich.


RAVETCH: Yes, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Apparently, they also had a seamless and unegotistical collaboration.

BAER: So who types the script?


RAVETCH: I do. I sit at the typewriter, and Hank paces around. We always work in the mornings, nine to one, five days a week. Usually, we’d get about three pages done each day, and those pages are finished pages. We’d polish them as we go, over and over again, doing our revising as we proceed. So when we’re finished, we’re really finished. We very seldom do any revising.



BAER: How long does a script usually take?


FRANK: About ten weeks.

BAER: Now the McMurtry project, which was eventually titled ‘Hud’, was the first film in a three-picture deal for the newly-formed Salem Pictures, which was established by Martin Ritt and Paul Newman in agreement with Paramount and Columbia. Were you partners in Salem Pictures?


RAVETCH: No, we weren’t.

BAER: But Irving was listed as a producer on the film?


RAVETCH: Well, you know that Hollywood is always pretty loose with the term ‘producer.’ All I did was find the source material.


BAER: But I think you’re being too modest. The whole idea for the picture came from the both of you. Weren’t you involved in the casting?


RAVETCH: Yes, Marty always kept us with him, from the beginning to the end.


FRANK: Yes, he truly embraced us as collaborators. It was a very unusual relationship. Just glorious!

BAER: Let’s talk about that relationship.


RAVETCH: We made eight films with Marty Ritt, and on every single one of those pictures, we were with Marty from the pre-production and casting to the final advertising campaign. We were also on the set every single day, and he invited us to the rushes every single morning. It was a true collaboration, and we always had a marvelous time. Marty Ritt was an extraordinary man in many ways, and unlike most directors, he never insisted on a vanity credit.


FRANK: That’s right, Marty’s films never opened with the credit, ‘Film by Martin Ritt.’ Never. He was a class act, and he was never concerned with ego.


RAVETCH: And he was always willing to try something new, something ‘difficult.’


BAER: Well, ‘Hud’ was certainly a unique picture in many ways, but, most significantly, it dared to portray a central character who was a ‘pure bastard’ – and who remained totally unredeemed and unrepentant at the end of the picture.


RAVETCH: Yes, we sensed a change in American society back then. We felt that the country was gradually moving into a kind of self-absorption, and indulgence, and greed – which, of course, fully blossomed in the eighties and the nineties. So, we made Hud a greedy, self-absorbed man, who ruthlessly strives for things, and gains a lot materially, but really loses everything that’s important. But he doesn’t care. He’s still unrepentant.


FRANK: In our society, there’s always been a fascination with the ‘charming’ villain, and we wanted to say that if something’s corrupt, it’s still corrupt, no matter how charming it might seem – even if it’s Paul Newman with his beautiful blue eyes. But things didn’t work out like we planned.

BAER: It actually backfired.


RAVETCH: Yes, it did, and it was a terrible shock to all of us. Here’s a man – Hud – who tries to rape his housekeeper, who wants to sell his neighbors’ poisoned cattle, and who stops at nothing to take control of his father’s property. And all the time, he’s completely unrepentant. Then, at the first screenings, the preview cards asked the audiences, ‘Which character did you most admire?’ and many of them answered, ‘Hud.’ We were completely astonished. Obviously, audiences loved Hud, and it sent us into a tailspin. The whole point of all our work on that picture was apparently undone because Paul was so charismatic.



BAER: Paul Newman actually took much of the blame on himself, feeling that he’d portrayed Hud as far too vital and appealing and charming. But Martin Ritt disagreed, saying that the film clearly revealed Hud for exactly what he was, and denying that any of the film’s creators could have possibly anticipated the rising cynicism of the baby-boom generation. How do you feel about that?


RAVETCH: I think they were both right, and both innocent. We could have never anticipated the reaction of those audiences, especially the young people, and if we had known beforehand, we would have definitely done things differently.

BAER: That was a time when young people were looking for rebels to emulate.


FRANK: That’s right.


RAVETCH: That’s true, but Hud’s more than just a bit rebellious. He’s truly villainous. But, of course, that’s the way things have gone in our society. In many movies today, there’s a stream of endless violence and murder and high-tech fireballs, and the young audiences are eagerly clapping, and laughing, and banging their feet. They love it. So what have we created? What kind of society is that? Back in the early sixties, we knew something was in the air, but we never could have anticipated what’s come to pass.

BAER: In McMurtry’s novel, Hud’s a minor and infrequently seen character, so one of the key changes in the script is the expansion of Hud’s role. Was that alteration made to accommodate Paul Newman?


RAVETCH: Yes, we were specifically trying to create material that would interest both Paul and Marty. So we enlarged the character of Hud and wrote the part with Paul in mind.



BAER: Many critics have drawn comparisons between ‘Hud’ and ‘Shane’ since, in both films, a young boy is attracted to a charismatic man. Shane, of course, despite his past, is an admirable western hero, but Hud is not, and young Lon must decide whether he will be lured into the immoral but seemingly exciting lifestyle of Hud, or whether he’ll eventually side with his grandfather, Homer Bannon, a man of high integrity and old-fashioned values. Was it a complete coincidence that the role of Lon was played by Brandon de Wilde, who’d also played the part of Joey Starrett, the young boy in ‘Shane’?


RAVETCH: I never thought about that before.


FRANK: I don’t think it ever crossed our minds.


RAVETCH: I can certainly see that there’s lots of parallels in the two stories, but the casting of Brandon in Hud was just a coincidence. He was the only young actor we could find who we felt was right for the part...

BAER: Alma’s an excellent counterpart to Hud, who, as his father clearly states, is an ‘unprincipled man.’ But in the novel, Hud’s even worse, and I’d like to ask you about two important changes that you made in the script. The first is the fact that in the novel, Hud actually rapes Halmea, whereas in the script his assault on Alma is thwarted by Lon’s intervention.


RAVETCH: Well, the change highlights Lon’s significance in the film, and it also helps to keep Hud human. We didn’t want to create a character who was totally and simplistically evil, so Lon’s intervention prevents the drunken Hud from going too far.


FRANK: Also, in the film, Alma’s definitely attracted to Hud. There’s a real chemistry between them – there’s clearly something in the air – and the two of them are playing a very sophisticated, sexual ‘card game.’ But when Hud gets drunk, he ruins everything, and his attempted rape both insults and violates Alma, and she decides to leave. But up to that point, things might have worked out if Hud hadn’t been so crude and vile. At the bus station, Alma clearly admits it, saying, ‘You want to know something funny? It would have happened eventually without the roughhouse,’ and Hud’s final comment to the departing Alma is: ‘I’ll remember you, honey. You’re the one that got away.’ So thwarting the rape in the film allowed for much more subtlety in their relationship.

BAER: Similarly, at the end of the novel, Hud actually shoots his wounded father-in-law, claiming it to be a mercy killing, and he ends up indicted for ‘murder without malice’ – although he expects to get a suspended sentence. In the script, however, Hud doesn’t kill his father, who dies of his injuries and a broken will.


RAVETCH: That’s another attempt to humanize Hud, so he wouldn’t be one-dimensionally evil. In that scene at the end, with his father dying in his lap, there’s a subtle sense of unspoken grief. Hud’s a villain, but he’s a villain with seeds of something worth preserving.


FRANK: What? Leave the room! We’ll have none of that, Mr. Ravetch!


RAVETCH: But he’s human; he’s not all dark.


FRANK: We can discuss that tomorrow morning in divorce court!



RAVETCH: But in that crucial scene with Lon and his dying father, Hud tries in some way – a very laconic way – to give the young boy some kind of consolation. There’s something decent going on.


FRANK: But not nearly enough. There’s something in the American psyche that’s sadly attracted to the dangerous, the flamboyant, and the immoral. And that’s exactly what we were trying to show in that film.


RAVETCH: Well, now you can see how we collaborate!


FRANK: Yes-no, yes-no, back-and-forth.


BAER: Let’s try another important topic. One of the most famous scenes in the film is the killing of Homer’s herd of cattle to prevent the spread of hoof-and-mouth disease. The scene is expertly directed by Martin Ritt and powerfully shot by James Wong Howe. A number of critics have suggested that the scene, in some way, recalls the terrible human genocides of the twentieth century. Was that on your minds when you were writing the scene?


RAVETCH: Yes, we certainly had that in mind when we were writing that scene.


FRANK: Yes, the undertone was clearly intended.


RAVETCH: Definitely...



BAER: Let’s talk about the end of the script. Just like in the novel, young Lon leaves the ranch to get away from Hud, and he hitches a ride with a trucker who recalls Lon’s grandfather, Homer, and refers to him as the ‘old gentleman.’ But this scene was eventually cut from the movie. Do you know why?


RAVETCH: It was too much of a dying fall. Marty always had a gutsy, muscular attack on life in general – and, in his films, he would always opt for the punchiest moments he could get. And it definitely seemed more dramatic to end the film with Hud shutting the door and making his ‘The hell with you’ gesture.


BAER: Was the script ending ever shot?


RAVETCH: No, Marty was satisfied with closing on Paul, and so were we.


BAER: Let’s talk some more about that final scene. The film ends with Hud completely alone on the deserted ranch. He goes into the empty house, gets a beer, and comes back to the screen door. Then he looks out, as if wondering if he should go after Lon, but then he shrugs, makes a dismissive hand gesture – as if to say, ‘the hell with it’ – and shuts the door. It’s a very powerful ending – reminiscent of the Greek tragedies and so many of Faulkner’s novels – illustrating the fall of a once-great household. Did you think about that larger theme as you were writing the script?


RAVETCH: Not specifically, although it’s clear that the film is about the fall of Homer Bannon and everything he’d built and stood for. But in writing the very end of the film, we relied more on a gut instinct that that’s exactly how Hud would have reacted under those circumstances. He’d be consistent. He’d be Hud. It’s an odd movie in a way because Lon is the central character in that he’s the one who has to make the crucial choice, but Hud’s also the main character since he’s always at the center of everything. So Marty decided – we all did, in fact – to end the film with Hud...



– William Baer: Hud: A Conversation with Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr. Michigan Quarterly Review vol. XLII, no. 2, Spring 2003. For the full article see here

  

Monday 15 April 2019

Theo Angelopoulos: Writing and History

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
The script is the raw material for cinema, as soon as it is written I forget all about it. A script becomes something else when it is transferred to film… For example, the script for ‘Voyage To Cythera’ and the actual movie have a distant relationship. Scripts remain much closer to the original idea behind a movie. Nevertheless, their role, their meaning alters significantly as soon as filming begins or, to put it in a slightly different way, a script is the movie up until the moment when the first scene is shot. As soon as this happens, the script and the movie go their separate, often considerably different pathways.  – Theo Angelopoulos
The great Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos collaborated with Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra and the Greek novelist Petros Markaris on several of his films. In the following extract from an interview with Dan Fainaru in 1999, Angelopoulos discusses his writing methods and the personal and political background to his work:

Q: This is a strange relationship, him [Tonino Guerra] being an Italian who does not speak Greek, while you do not speak Italian. And yet, it is with him you start writing your scripts.

A: It is true we do not need to speak the same language, but we are both men of the South. I believe that all the Mediterranean people have some­thing in common. Not only because there are ancient roots common to all of us, having been in contact with each other for thousands of years, but also because of the proximity of the sea and the similitude of the climate. I never feel abroad when I am in Italy.

With Tonino, it was an instant relationship. He was working at the time with Andrei Tarkovski in Rome on Nostalghia. Andrei and I shared the same flat for a couple of weeks, a flat owned by an assistant director who worked with me on Megalexandros and with Tarkovski on Nostalghia. All I knew about Tonino at the time was his work with people like Fellini and Antonioni, but Andrei seemed to be very happy with their collaboration. I asked my assistant, the owner of the flat, to introduce us, and he arranged for me to go over to Tonino’s place. I intended to meet him, get to know him, and then see whether there was a way for us to cooperate.

Five minutes after I stepped into his flat, we were already at work. We immediately realized we were speaking the same language – in film terms of course, because when we met I spoke French and he spoke Italian but we understood each other perfectly. We also discovered there are many things for which we share the same affection and love. What I like about Tonino is not only the fact that he is a poet, but also that earthly, peasant side, which for me, is very important.

The Travelling Players (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: In practice, how do you proceed when you meet to work on a script?


A: I must first explain that while basically, I am the author of my own scripts, I always need another person who will play the devil’s advocate, the psychoanalyst or whatever, to give me a different perspective of the things I have in mind. He is to be the first person to hear my ideas in the raw, and his feedback helps me choose the right direction. In the case of Tonino, most of the time he acts the part of the psychoanalyst. I am not sure many people work together the way we do.

Once a film is finished and I feel I am ready to start the next one, I go to his village in the mountains. We sit down, talk about everything and any­thing, have a drink, and then go to lunch. Later, as we sit down and relax, he will ask me whether I have anything in mind I would like to work on. At this point I am still doubtful. I start talking, telling him different stories I had been reflecting upon, ideas that caught my fancy, images that stuck in my mind, nothing yet very organized one way or another. I am walking back and forth; he listens to me, sitting down. When there is something he con­siders to be of particular interest, he stops me and writes it down...

The Hunters (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Later, we go through all the things he has noted, and we try to see whether there is a coherent idea in there. To do this, I take the notes, go to the room he has prepared for me, pore over them for a few hours, then come back to the sitting room, and suggest a way to proceed. We go out, have a coffee, talk about the direction I proposed. He would tell me whether he likes it or not and add a few other related ideas he had in the afternoon while I was working in my room. Out of it comes another version, an im­proved one, of the same idea, and we go on like this for three, four days, discussing various options for the script.

But we do not do it all the time, from morning till night. We eat, we go for long walks, we meet people in the village, and we also talk about the script. When I leave, I already have in mind a first draft. I call him and tell him about it, or I put it on paper and send him a copy. But he, too, prefers to hear me tell it, rather than read it. He gives me his opinion, and then I start working with a second person.

Tonino assists at the birth of the original idea. And sometimes he can be quite insistent on certain details. For instance, he once called me in Greece after we had already completed the script for Landscape in the Mist, and he told me: ‘Listen Theo, we absolutely have to have a hen in the movie.’ ‘Where do you want me to put it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know where,’ he re­plied, ‘but I feel we have to put a hen, somewhere.’ He was right and one of the scenes in the film opens with a hen.

O Megalexandros (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
The second person I work with is my first reader. In the past it was Tha­nassis Valtinos; these days it is Petros Markaris. Through him I get a first reaction to my script. Markaris, by the way, has written a whole book in which he describes our cooperation on Eternity and a Day. He never told me, but he documented everything we did, all our phone conversations, our dis­cussions – he didn’t leave anything out.

Part of his job is to take the script I have written by hand and type it into a computer – I still can’t use a type­writer, let alone a computer. He sends me this draft, and I put in my own corrections and additional remarks, and send it back to him. This goes on for some time, we either meet or exchange faxes of the drafts as they progress from one stage to the next, until I reach the point when I feel the others have given me everything they can, and I put in the last touches on my own. But the final shooting script you will find only if you take it off the finished print of the film. If you compare that with the script I have when I start shooting, you will find there are huge discrepancies between them.

O Megalexandros (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: You have often talked in the past about the possibility of your adapting a literary work but until now it has never happened. All your screenplays are based on original scripts.


A: I tried my hand at adaptations several times, but every single time, I gave up in the middle. It is difficult to adapt a book, certainly a book you love, without losing some of its original flavor and qualities. I can’t think of a successful adaptation of a great novel. I believe the best novels to turn into films are either thrillers or second-class literature.

Orson Welles, for instance, took a rather routine crime story and made a masterpiece out of it in Touch of Evil. There are many more examples of this kind, for instance several of Godard’s films. As for myself, right now I do not feel like doing a crime story, though I am still tempted by Malraux’s Human Condition. But I realize that there will be always something missing in the transition to the screen...

Voyage To Cythera (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: Your parents are from the South, the Peloponnesus and Crete. And yet you seem to be obsessed with the North, with dark skies, cold winters, heavy rains.


A: It’s a question I am often asked. I have no explanation. I have often tried in the past to find one, but couldn’t really. Maybe one has to look far back; a psychoanalyst might unveil the real sources. What I can tell you is that when I set out to make my first feature film, Reconstruction, I remember one after­noon, in the small village where the story took place. The landscape was all shades of gray, the dark sky, the drab little houses, the stony hills. It was raining, just a drizzle; a thin fog was covering the mountain, and the village was practically deserted. Most people had gone to Germany like so many other Greeks in the fifties, in search of a better life. Only a few old women dressed in black, barely visible in the gloomy light, sneaked silently through the narrow streets.

Suddenly I heard an old, cracked voice, singing a very old song. It was an ancient old man, singing ‘Oh, little lemon tree . . . Oh, little lemon tree . . . ,’ the song I finally used in the film. It was a magic moment which marked me for life: the rain, the fog, the gray stones, the women in black looking like ghosts, and the old man singing. This deserted village, a forgotten corner in a land ruled by military dictatorship, was for me the image of a country drained out by the constant flow of departing emigrants, and the only thing left in it is an old love song.

This image has probably imprinted itself in my subconscious, the matrix for all the films to follow. This is the reason I believe the first film is the original seed. Everything that comes later is either a variation, a development, or an elaboration evolving from that first theme. For me, Reconstruction contains all the themes I later developed. I really think one always does the same film, over and over again. Lately I watched again a number of Bergman films, and this is true for him as well.

Landscape In The Mist (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: Was it at home, from your parents, that you first acquired the love for culture?

A : Not really. My father was a shopkeeper, my mother was a simple house­wife mostly concerned with the well-being of her children. I don’t remember the origins, but I know I started writing for the first time during the civil war, in Athens, towards the end of 1944, a period we still call ‘The Red Decem­ber.’ The communists, who suspected him of being a liberal, arrested my father. As a matter of fact, the person who arrested him was my own cousin, because you have to know that my family – like the rest of the country – was divided in two, part liberal and part communist. During my father’s absence, for reasons that are still not very clear to me, I wrote my first poems. And since that time, I sincerely believe that poetry was the foremost influence in my life...

He was away for a few months, kept somewhere in the center of Greece, and once he was released, he had to walk all the way home, half the length of the country. I remember seeing him at the end of the street, at the time children were still playing in the street, walking slowly towards us. I rushed home and called my mother. We knew he was supposed to come home, but when I told her I’d seen him, she rushed into the street to greet him. Once back inside, we were in such a state, no one could utter a single word. We sat around the table, drank our soup looking at each other in silence. We all felt like crying but kept back our tears. This is, as you may remember, the opening scene of Reconstruction.

Ulysses’ Gaze (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: Do you remember anything of the German occupation?


A: I have said it often enough – I am a war child. When I was born, Greece was ruled by a dictator, General Metaxas. In 1940, the Italians invaded Greece. The first sound I remember is that of the war sirens. And the first image is that of Germans entering Athens, just as I painted it in the opening sequence of Voyage to Cythera. It’s all there, including the episode of the young German soldier directing traffic, the child touching his shoulder, and then running away into a maze of narrow streets with the soldier chasing him. One way or another, I have the feeling that we always dip into our own reservoir of memories and relive certain episodes we have experienced in real life. My work is full of all those special moments of my childhood and adolescence, my emotions and dreams at that time. I believe the one source for everything we do is there.

Q: When did you first take on a distinct political stand?


A: As long as I was in Greece, I considered myself apolitical. Only when I got to Paris did I choose, consciously, to join the Left. Of course, in the fifties, I took part in all sorts of student demonstrations, for instance to support Cyprus, but there was no political conscience behind it. I stayed away when­ ever left-wing and right-wing students would fight on the campus.

At the same time, that is after I graduated high school, I was beginning to realize that my interest in cinema was gradually growing almost into an obsession. I was frequenting all-day cinemas showing detective stories of which I saw a lot. Naturally, the American classics of the genre – Huston, Polonski, Hawks, Walsh – figured at the top of the list. But the first film I ever saw was Michael Curtiz’s Angels with Dirty Faces. I still remember the scene where James Cag­ney is taken to the electric chair, the shadows on the wall, his scream: ‘I don’t want to die.’ I must have been nine or ten at the time. This may ex­plain my fascination to this day with detective stories, be they novels or films...

The Suspended Step Of The Stork (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: History and  politics were once in the forefront of every film you made. Now, they are still there, very evident, but much more in the background. Not to mention the quote from ‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’ which says: ‘Politics is nothing more than a career.’ You said earlier you were a man of the left; you certainly still are, but not in the same way.

A: I think many things have changed around us through the years that have been making film. Already in Megalexandros I tried to portray a freedom fighter that turns into a tyrant. I felt that everything we believed in changes once it touches power. The film was a reflection on two themes, power and property. They corrupt all those who, to start with, may have been sincere idealistic socialists. I saw all around me the things that were happening under socialist regimes. I couldn’t help noticing the changes taking place in all those people who were behind May ‘68. All the ideals we once had were being twisted and fading away.

My first film to move history from the fore­front to the background was Voyage to Cythera. It deals with people who be­lieved once in historical perspective and political change, only to discover, thirty years after sacrificing practically everything they had for the revolu­tion, that they are rejected by one and all. It is a political odyssey that ends with the old man, the hero who once dreamed of changing the world, and his wife, the only one who remained at his side, drifting out into the sea...

The Suspended Step Of The Stork (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: It has been often said that each one of your films is a sequel of the previous one. Do you agree?


A: It’s true. This is the reason you will never find the word ‘End’ at the end of any of my films. As far as I am concerned, these are chapters of one and the same film that goes on and will never be finished, for there is never a final word on anything. I believe we never manage to do more than a frac­tion of the things we’d like to do. My last film, Eternity and a Day, is attempt­ing to convey the idea that a few words, acquired here and there, are never enough to complete a whole poem.

Q: Your films seem to be very personal not only because your way of doing them is so different from all others, but also because they really talk about yourself, all through. One is often under the impression that your protagonist, even though an actor plays the part, is a reflection of yourself projected in a dramatic context quite close to certain aspects of your life. You even told me once that you seriously consid­ered playing one of the parts, yourself.


A: Yes, it is a bit like that. There are of course directors who play in their own films, like Orson Welles. Sometimes one cannot avoid the feeling, particularly when the film is very close to yourself, that no actor could do justice to the part. I felt like this in Eternity and a Day. In the early stages, I was uneasy with Bruno Ganz in the lead, but deep down it was my own identification with the part that generated my fear that no actor could fully satisfy my expectations.

This is the reason that, at a certain point, I stopped the shoot. I needed to put myself at a certain distance from the script, put it in perspective and see the character wearing the features of another person. One could say the same things when discussing Voyage to Cythera or Ulysses’ Gaze. The truth is that these characters are composite images. There is a smaller or greater part of yourself in each one of them, but there are also other persons you have known. It is never quite you but certainly some of you is always there. And the deeper you go into those characters, the closer they are to your intimate self.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: Another constant concern in your films is the father-son relationship.


A: As I have told you before when we talked about my childhood, the father figure is very important in my own past. The absence of the father who has been taken away – and we had no idea whether he was still alive or not – has been a heavy load on all of us. Since my very first film, it was a crucially important point. Reconstruction opens with the return of the father. Later films deal with the search for the father figure, whether a real or a fictitious father, one who could be a point of reference for the entire film and its pro­tagonist.

Q: Another characteristic of your films – practically all of them are road movies.

A: Yes, but with a difference. Usually, in road movies, the characters roam from one place to another without a definite purpose. In my films, these journeys always have a goal. In Voyage to Cythera, for instance, it is the journey to the imaginary island of one’s dreams, the island of peace and happiness. In Landscape in the Mist the children are looking for their father. The reporter in The Suspended Step of the Stork is travelling around for a definite reason; he is trying to unveil the mystery of the politician who disappeared. In Ulysses’ Gaze the entire trip through the Balkans is determined by the wish to find some pieces of lost film.

Q: You said once that some films come from the heart, others from the mind. Is it true in your case?


A: Some films have at their origins an intellectual premise. In others, it is sentiment. For instance, The Hunters was almost entirely conceived intellec­tually. The same for Days of ‘36. The Beekeeper comes straight from the heart. Most of my films are in-between, a combination of both.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
Q: There are, in your films, whether they come from the heart or the mind, magi­cal moments that will stay with me forever. The party in ‘The Travelling Players’, the last shot of the old couple on the raft in ‘Voyage to Cythera’, the rape in ‘Land­scape in the Mist’, the wedding in ‘The Suspended Step of the Stork’, the New Year party and Lenin’s statue on the barge in ‘Ulysses’ Gaze’, the bus ride in ‘Eter­nity and a Day’. And these are only a very few examples. Every time they occur, one is left amazed again and again by their originality, their imagination and poetry. Is it something that just happens while you’re shooting the film or is it carefully prepared beforehand?


A: Both. The bus ride was not at all written this way. Originally, in this scene, there were just the writer and the boy. It was an almost realistic scene, which could, of course, be very moving. Two persons in an empty bus, cross­ing the city in the rain. But somehow, I had the feeling it was not enough. This is why it took so long to shoot this scene. As we were shooting, I was gradually changing it. Finally, I did the scene twice, once following the script, a second time throwing the script away. The second version is the one we used. The scene of the party in The Travelling Players, when two men are dancing the tango together, had originally a few lines of dialog. Once we started rehearsing it, I decided to change it.

The scene was taking place in 1946 – people were still wearing at the time bowler hats, striped suits, and so on. At a certain moment, during a break in the rehearsal, I noticed two men, both wearing bowler hats, standing next to each other. The pianist was play­ing a few notes of a tango, one of them approached the other, and they started dancing together. That was completely unexpected. I had not written it in the script, not even thought of it, but that is how I rounded up this scene, and I believe it was the right way to do it. Sometimes, it’s this kind of improvisation on the spot; sometimes you know what you’re going to do a few days early. For the rape scene in Landscape in the Mist, it was like that. It was not in the script, but I had it already in mind several days before we shot it.

Eternity And A Day (Directed by Theo Angelopolous)
As for the marriage scene in The Suspended Step of the Stork with the bride on one side of the river, the bridegroom on the other – when I wrote the script, the scene was different, but I felt something was missing there. Then, one day, I was in New York on a bus going to Bronx through Harlem. At a stop, I saw a small black boy improvising some dance steps on one side of the street, and on the other side, there was another small black boy, who was answering him with his own dance steps. Nothing out of the ordinary, maybe, but I immediately saw the river in the middle.

And there is some­thing else, something I read in 1958 about an island near Crete, a very small one, completely isolated in the winter. During those long months, the shep­herds who live there use a sign language to communicate with a Cretan priest, who would watch for them at certain hours. They would inform him if someone was dead on their side, he would say mass in Crete for the de­ceased person, and they would bury the corpse on the small island. The combination of these two sources of inspiration resulted in the marriage as you see it in The Suspended Step of the Stork. The New Year party in Ulysses’ Gaze was written more or less the way it is played. I knew it was all going to be in one shot, but I felt, when writing it, there was something missing, and as we were rehearsing, I added light touches here and there.

As for the barge with Lenin’s statue on it, this marks for me the end of an era. I had prepared the sequence beforehand, but the idea of having the peasants watching it float down the Danube and crossing themselves as it went by originated with something I saw in Constanza, a Romanian port on the Black Sea. A crane was moving a huge head of Lenin from a ship to a barge, when a fishing boat just happened by. The couple on it, a man and a woman, stood up, shocked, as if Lenin had just come back to life. The woman covered the man’s eyes and instinctively made the sign of the cross.

But I have to say that strangely enough there are scenes you believe are crucial when you write the script, but do not seem at all like this once you have shot them. While other scenes, which you may not have been very keen on, turn out to be key moments in the film.

– Extracted from ‘Dan Fainaru: And About All The Rest’ in Theo Angelopoulos: Interviews (Ed. Dan Fainaru, University Press of Mississippi, 2001)

Monday 11 March 2019

Frank Darabont: On Adapting Stephen King – II. The Green Mile

The Green Mile (Directed by Frank Darabont)
Creative Screenwriting Magazine caught up with writer and director Frank Darabont in 1997 and 2000 as he was finishing some pick-up shots on The Green Mile. An adaptation of King’s serialized novel of the same name, The Green Mile tells the story of Paul Edgecomb, who in 1935 must balance his humanity with his job as a guard on the Green Mile (death row) in Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Paul’s views of life, death, and humanity are challenged with the arrival of John Coffey, a gentle giant convicted of a horrible crime who has a magical effect on the guards, the inmates, and a mouse.

What did you bring to the adaptation of ‘The Green Mile’?

Oh, golly – this is going to be a very unsatisfying answer. The normal set of changes one usually brings to something. In that sense, it was no different from Shawshank. You’re trying to exploit or heighten the dramatic turns as much as possible; you either pull out or circumvent or reinvent narrative that can be more concisely presented. You’re trying to tie up any loose ends that might be there. But for the most part, trying to mimic King’s voice; trying to speak in his patois – not just in terms of dialogue, but in terms of the characters. You’re trying to be very true to the author of the original material, as much as possible – at least I do. And that does involve a certain amount of texture and a certain amount of poetry. It’s not just, ‘Let’s put the simplest version of the narrative on screen that we possibly can,’ because often that winds up being unsatisfying. If an adapted story tells you the story but you feel it’s not quite the same – well, we’ve all had that experience of seeing a book we loved turned into a so-so movie. It’s the same story but it’s missing the soul; it’s missing the blood in the veins, somehow. And that’s because often times [writers who adapt are] focused on narrative and they toss out a lot of that in-between-the-lines stuff, which is another thing that makes King such a compelling writer. There’s a lot of between-the-lines stuff with his characters, and with his texture, that’s important. So even when I invent new material, I try to keep it organic to the story that I’m telling. For example, there’s a scene in Shawshank where Andy locks himself in the warden’s office and plays his Mozart over the prison speakers – that doesn’t exist in the book. That was invented by me, out of whole cloth, because I love that aria. I was listening to The Marriage of Figaro quite a lot while I was writing. And I thought, ‘What if Andy locked himself in...’? That thought took me into a different place, but it worked very seamlessly with the story that King was telling. So I try to do that as much as I can. Speak in the author’s voice, even if you’re using your own.


How long did it take you to write the adaptation for ‘The Green Mile’? 

Two months. To the day.

Some reports implied it was an ongoing process, over years.

You’ve been looking at the Internet, I bet [laughs]. The wellspring of misinformation and speculation. I promise you, the adaptation took two months. With one exception, I have never spent longer than two months writing any script. Shawshank was the same thing. That tends to be my rhythm. I lock myself in; two months later, I come out, like a groundhog, see if my shadow’s there, and then I move on.

When you go into a new script, are you confident that it’s going be a two-month hike, and that you’ll have a great piece when you’re done? Or is there still that ‘What the hell am I doing?’ aspect to it?


A little of both. The ‘What the hell am I doing?’ aspect doesn’t ever go away – nor should it. It keeps you on your toes; it keeps you trying. But I’ve noticed that in recent years, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m at least relaxed about my uncertainty. I feel like I’ve done it enough times – and it’s worked out well enough – that whatever the problems that arise, I’ll manage to figure it out somehow. And that’s a nice place to arrive at, because I never thought that I would.


When did you arrive at that point?


Post-Shawshank. Pretty much in the last couple of years, writing The Green Mile, doing work for Steven [Spielberg] on Saving Private Ryan, and some of the other things that I’ve been working on in the last three years or so [his ongoing adaptation of the Robert R. McCammon novel, Mine]. It doesn’t make them any less challenging to write. You always feel like you’re making it up for the first time as you’re going along, as if you’ve never done the job before. But at least I figure I have a decent shot at making it work. So I’m a little more relaxed about that aspect of it. I’m hoping that one day I can look that way at directing.

You open ‘The Green Mile’ script with a one-page scene of the manhunt. What is the function of that scene?


I’m not sure how obvious it is on the page, but the way it works in the film is that it’s a very provocative shot. Because you don’t know what the hell’s going on. Obviously, something horrible and heated is happening. But in a subtle way, it also serves to introduce us to the old man [the old Paul Edgecomb] in the nursing home, because the scene functions almost as a dream he is having. It’s the past torturing him in his head, even in his dreams, even after sixty years. And when he wakes up, all of these events are very much on his mind. As the story continues and we see how those events unfold, we wind up understanding exactly what that shot meant at the opening of the film. It’s pretty cool.


It sets up certain questions.

I love setting up questions about the movie that the audience is seeing. I love people not getting it until later. Because that makes for a much more satisfying storytelling experience for the viewer. If you know everything that’s happening every inch of the way, that’s boring. You’re not involved in the story so much as you are watching it. If the filmmaker poses questions, and you have to be patient to see what those questions mean, it makes for a much more engrossing experience. It’s the more cerebral version of the set-up and pay-off. And those questions are wonderful. There’s a scene in the first five minutes of the movie with old Paul in the nursing home. He’s in the TV room, and the channel is being changed on the television set and he sees Top Hat playing. And it’s the moment in Top Hat when Fred Astaire starts singing ‘Cheek to Cheek’ to Ginger Rogers and they begin to dance. And this huge emotional train wreck occurs in the character of old Paul watching what is an innocuous and lovely moment from an old movie. It prompts him to tell his story to his friend, Elaine. It’s the past catching up with him. The audience hasn’t a clue what it means. It’s unexplained, until later in the movie. Very late in the movie, you find out how Top Hat figures into all this. That is pretty satisfying, when filmmakers can work those kinds of threads into a film.

In ‘The Green Mile’, you set up the question about John Coffey much like Andy Dufresne in ‘Shawshank’ – is he guilty or not?


But those are red herrings. What’s fun about working with such material is ultimately, the question of their innocence takes a back seat to the story. It’s not a huge gasp to reveal that Andy Dufresne is innocent. It’s not a huge gasp to reveal that John Coffey is innocent. They’re amazing in other ways. And it’s how they effect those around them that is significant. That’s the character-based, character-driven story that I’m interested in telling. Are they innocent, are they guilty? It’s not the big plot point of the movie. So I love those red herrings.


Could there have been a middle ground between innocent and guilty? Could the story have functioned if Dufresne was not shown to be a victim of circumstance, or if John Coffey may not have committed that particular crime but may have had a record. Dirtied their souls a little bit.

A story can work in that fashion, but I think these stories could not have worked in that fashion. It’s more than a question of a sympathetic main character for the audience. Both characters have a purity of soul that drives what they do and what they are, and if either of them was guilty of their crimes, it would so fundamentally change those characters that the stories wouldn’t be the same. But I can see a story being compelling about a man who is guilty, who finds a redemption through the process of incarceration. In fact we’ve seen that story told very well. Frankenheimer’s great movie Birdman of Alcatraz leaps to mind.

And in some ways that’s a more easily told story, because the path is from dark to light. It’s always hard to write a hero, and it’s hard to write a hero who stays a hero. 

Is it? I don’t know, I have no basis of comparison necessarily. Although most of the characters I’ve known as a writer have traveled something of a path from darkness to lightness. Those are the characters that I love: those who seek some kind of enlightenment or betterment, a nobler sense of themselves. Those are the characters I tend to write. It’s a recurring theme in my work.

I love that. I want more movies showing us the potential of ourselves. People seeking what Abraham Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature,’ rather than necessarily being mired in all the ways in which we can fail – spiritually or emotionally. I want to see more movies about working through those pitfalls and coming to a better place. Hey, I just described Frank Capra, didn’t I? [Laughs] That’s another thing I’ve always admired so much about Steven Spielberg’s work, and George Lucas’s work. Not to say that there isn’t room in this world for nihilism, but we seem to be nihilistic at the exclusion of all else in our movies of late. And that’s very disheartening to me. I don’t want to get into a big debate about Hollywood’s responsibility, but it’s all too easy to tell a stupid story about a guy who solves his problems by picking up a gun. We’re better than that. Not that I don’t like the original Die Hard, because it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen [laughs]. I love that film! But even there, there was something greater going on. There was more to it than just body count. I’ve always described Die Hard as a guy who spends the entire movie [laughs] trying to make up with his wife.


What is the meaning of Coffey’s inevitable end?

I haven’t the foggiest clue. And that’s the truth of it. The exciting thing about The Green Mile to me is that I can’t sum it up. I don’t know how many times that’s going to happen in my life. But it’s for the audience to define this one, not for me. Shawshank, I can tell you what that’s about. It’s about hope and resilience and the redemptive essence of the human spirit. Boom, I just told you. I’m not sure what The Green Mile is about. All I know is that it’s a hell of a story. And it will be fascinating to see what conclusions are drawn by the people who see it. Because I’m not sure that I’ve drawn my own yet.

At the end of the story, when Paul explains his situation, he has his theories as to why he is where he is. But even in the context of the story, these sound more like theories than answers. It seems that an answer might be that this was Coffey’s gift.

But Coffey doesn’t quite understand the downside of that gift. That’s a perfectly good answer. And on that level, it would be my answer. But there’s also the ‘because it feels right’ answer. There is a poetic irony that – as compassionate, as well-intentioned as Paul is (and he is, very much so) – a man who makes his living from death winds up having to live. There’s a monkey’s paw beauty and clarity to that, poetically, that I can’t resist. It feels right.

In the script, Bitterbuck asks Paul: ‘You think if a man sincerely repents on what he’s done wrong, he might go back to that time that was happiest for him, and live there forever? Could that be what heaven is like?’ And then at the end of the story, when we find out the fate that Paul has been given, it seems to be almost the antithesis, that Paul won’t reach heaven, that his earthly existence from that point on, all that he’s learned, has given him an E-ticket to a bad place, at least temporarily. Is there any connection between those two aspects?

I’ve never considered it, but there might be. It’s a provocative question. If Steve King were here, I’d ask him [laughs]. Because the words you quote are virtually verbatim King, and a very interesting notion to me. I don’t know. How’s that for a lousy answer? [laughs]



‘The Green Mile’ plays with the idea of the denouement where the hero rides off into the sunset. That doesn’t happen for Paul and that’s a little disturbing for an audience member.

Paul is in an unfortunate position. He is an honorable man, yet if he were any less honorable, he wouldn’t have gotten himself in the position of being the one to pick up the karmic baggage of events, whether it’s fair or not. What I find fascinating about the character is that he’s one of the few people involved in the situation who had the strength of character to shoulder that burden. If you’d given him a choice in the matter perhaps he wouldn’t have, but there he is. Again, it’s a wonderful storytelling irony, to me.

Ironic if not necessarily pleasant.

In the context of the fantasy that’s occurring, it is a very realistic thing, a very melancholy thing. Not that it’s complete hell; you can still see his light shining. He hasn’t been beaten down by what’s occurred to him, completely, as many people would.

‘Green Mile’ comparisons to ‘Shawshank’ are, unfortunately, inescapable. While ‘Shawshank’ is about hope, ‘Green Mile’ seems to be – well, the easy pitch is the anti-‘Shawshank’. It’s not, but it is a very grim story.


I don’t agree because everybody’s humanity rises to the surface. That’s the measure of a great story. There’s a very haunting and melancholy quality to this story. Save for those who don’t know any better (i.e., the villains of the piece) the people in it are all very human and they’re trying very much to do the best they know how. They’re trying to do right by the situation they find themselves in. And they’re wrestling with issues of compassion and morality, all the things I love to see in a story.

They’re trying to make things work for themselves.

And for one another, as well. There’s a lovely sense of camaraderie among these characters, that I particularly relish, which came out in the ensemble that I was lucky enough to put together. The actors in this are the top grade. They’re an amazing group.


The interesting thing about the script – as in the novel – is that you don’t give any background as to what these inmates have done to deserve death row. They’re portrayed as average people; we’re not tainted by knowledge of their crimes. Was that a conscious decision?

It was, for a number of reasons. Number one, that kind of conversation tends to be expository: the ‘Gee, what are you in for?’ dialogue. I like it that, tonally and conceptually, you’re meeting these guys for the first time, objectively and in this place, and you’re seeing how they behave and how they react, and not being loaded down with baggage about what they did to get there. The same thing was true in Shawshank. The only thing that you ever know about anybody, why they’re there, is the Morgan Freeman character. Interestingly enough, he’s one of those characters we were talking about before, a man who is guilty, and who has found a peace and a redemption in his incarceration. He goes from darkness to light. He’s the only one who cops to what he did. And it was important there for us to know that about him. I didn’t go into any specifics or particulars or detail, he just said, ‘I’m in for murder, and yes, I’m guilty.’

‘I’m the only guilty man in this prison.’

Exactly. And I love that about him. He’s obviously been in that place long enough that he’s cut through the bull and is perfectly willing to admit his responsibility for things. I think when Red first got to Shawshank he was like everybody else: ‘I’m innocent, I’m innocent.’ So that was very important. It was important that Red be guilty of his crime and that he cop to it. The real power at the end of the movie is the final parole scene, where – in a manner that doesn’t beg sympathy – he basically unloads his soul on the parole board. Here’s who I am, take it or leave it. That’s his walk, that’s his trajectory, that’s his arc as a person. And boy, how lucky am I that Morgan Freeman was the actor to say that speech [laughs].


You worked for years writing genre films, dealing with creatures and monsters. And then you become known as the ‘Shawshank’ guy, the warm-hearted guy who makes us glow when we walk out of the theater.


I loved it when Shawshank came out. There were a number of reviewers who pondered, ‘Where the hell did this guy come from? He did Nightmare 3, he did The Blob, he did The Fly II. Where the hell did this come from?’ That was funny. Most recently, there was some mention of me in the trades: ‘Darabont, known for star-driven drama...’ I thought, ‘Wow! Off of one movie!’ Very funny how the perception of people changes as time goes by. You’re remembered for your last movie more than anything in this town.

Why did you use the framing device of old Paul?

Because without it, there was no beginning and no end to the movie; there was no context for the movie to exist in. The Green Mile has now proved to be the world’s longest Twilight Zone episode. But without the character of Paul Edgecomb as an old man in the retirement home, there’s no story to tell. There’s a lot of narrative, but it needs context; it needs the point that it’s making. In the same way that I couldn’t see an alternative to using Morgan’s voice-over narration in Shawshank, because that was the narrative voice of the story that King told – I couldn’t imagine the story any other way but hearing it from Morgan’s perspective, with his observations and his point of view. The same thing with The Green Mile. I took the framing device from Steve’s framing devices. He had that framing device operating in every volume of The Green Mile. I pulled that out and focused on the most straightforward narrative version that I possibly could, so that the movie itself would have a framing device; in other words, a beginning and an end. Steve went back in [on every book in the series] and had a lot more to say about the old man. But then he also was functioning in a serialized form, as Dickens did. So the old man in the nursing home device was a handy literary way for Steve to bring the reader into each new volume, re-introduce the world to the reader, especially if somebody came to a later volume without having read the first ones. Steve could ease them into the story. It was a very clever device for him, but certainly not something that the screenplay required. [In the film adaptation] we set up a question at the beginning and we answer it at the end, using that device. And that was the enormous value of it. Plus we found an actor to play old Tom Hanks who kicks ass. Man, Dabbs Greer is great. Wait’ll you see it. He’s awesome. I shouldn’t admit that. We should try to convince everybody it’s Tom Hanks in old age make-up.


What other changes occurred from page to screen?

Brad Dolan [the vicious orderly in old Paul’s nursing home] is history. Brad wound up being a burr in my side in that script. It took me a while, but before we shot the bookends I removed him from the script. And indeed, I believe when we publish the screenplay, I probably will not include him in the published screenplay. I’m pretty much a believer in publishing the script you went to the set with, even if stuff changes. But it’s such a fundamental change, and I’m so happy to have him gone [that I’ll probably omit his appearance in the published screenplay]. Steve needed to go back to this old folks’ home at least six times, and Brad was a very clever invention in order to do that. Otherwise all you’re left with is old Paul reminiscing. Steve needed a device to keep the reader in that old folks’ home. In my loyalty toward the original author, Brad Dolan was an unnecessary hangover from the book. The end of the movie in my first draft was very much like the end of the books, where Brad Dolan shows up at the end in the shack when Paul is explaining everything to Elaine. And, man, he felt like a bump in the carpet to me.

Brad was beside the point. He has an interesting echo of Percy Whetmore. The interesting thematic point that King made is that there’s always going to be a Percy, somebody in some position of power, even minimal power, who lacks the reason and compassion to be a person. But the bookends for the film didn’t need Brad. When it came time to shoot the bookends, I thought, I have got to get rid of this guy [laughs]. ’Cause if I don’t I’m going to be in the editing room trying to cut him out. Brad Dolan was a red herring in a bad way, something that never paid off for the movie.


When it came down to translating ‘The Green Mile’ into a screenplay, how did you put it together? Did you work with paradigms, three-act structures, reverse structures?

I don’t think I’d know a paradigm if it came up and bit me. I don’t think in terms of three-act structures. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen in the third act, ‘cause I ain’t there yet. For me, writing is a much more organic process. You sit down from page one and you try to experience the story as you go, and you try to make the most of the dramatic potential of the story. I generally have an idea where a story begins and I generally have an idea where a story ends. Believe me, there are plenty of screenplays I never wrote because I could never figure out where the damn thing was going. Why bother starting then? I tend to know certain signposts along the way, and I start working toward the first signpost. And once I’m there I know that off in the distance is the next signpost, and I have to get to that. All the structural elements flow from walking down that path, and from what the characters are telling me. That’s not to say the more organized method is wrong. Whatever works for the writer is what the writer ought to do. Left to my own devices, it’s an organic process.

In adaptation you have a leg up, because if the material is good at least you know what those signposts are. The method with which I approached The Green Mile was to go through all six books and type out a list of scenes. I had a page for each book: ‘Number one, here’s what happens in the first scene in King’s book. Number two, here’s what happens in the second scene.’ And so on. And that gave me, at a glance, the structure of the whole damn thing. Beyond that I jumped in, and I would obviously refer to the book for the content of the scenes. That was the first time that I ever typed out the structure that way. But I needed to, because the thing was so sprawling. It was a real pleasure to go down that list and say, ‘Well, I won’t need this scene and I won’t need that scene,’ and cross them off. What you’re left with is what winds up being molded into the screenplay. So that’s my lazy method. Well, I’m not sure if it’s lazy or not, but that’s my method. It’s only paper and time. If you go down a blind alley you can always backtrack...

– Extracted from ‘Frank Darabont Interviewed By Daniel Argent & Erik Bauer’ Creative Screenwriting, Volume 4, #2 (Summer 1997) & Volume 6, #6 (November/December 1999)

For Part One of this Interview (on The Shawshank Redemption) click on the link here