Ben Ripley: Writing And Sacrifice

Source Code (Directed by Duncan Jones)

Ben Ripley wrote the script for the sci-fi thriller Source Code while doing studio re-writes on horror movies. His initial pitches to studio executives left them baffled by the complex storyline. Eventually he had to put it on the page to make his case. 

The film is skilfully directed by Duncan Jones whose feature debut was the excellent Moon. Source Code is a thrilling and satisfying science fiction action-adventure story with nods to the films of Christopher Nolan and Hitchcock.

Source code ranges over a wide range of conspiracies and altered states, playfully unlikely but done with cool conviction. There is a resemblance with Christopher Nolan's Inception, which also focuses on altered states of minds,  time and spatial disruptions.

The film revolves around U.S. Army helicopter pilot Colter Stevens (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), who has crash-landed in Afghanistan after running out of fuel. Upon regaining consciousness, he discovers himself onboard a busy commuter train in civilian clothing arriving in Chicago just in time for a beautiful summer day. Opposite sits Christina (Michelle Monaghan), who is seemingly unconcerned by their escalating flirtation but who grows increasingly disturbed as Colter becomes unstable and frantic. 

Once the 8-minute mark has passed, a cataclysmic event strikes, sending Colter back into a predicament that is at least as confusing. He is dressed in his military uniform, is hurt, and looks to be inside a damaged military aircraft. Is this the actual thing? Is it the train, or is it just our perception of it? He must now be able to speak with the lady who has replaced him as his commanding officer over a video display. Vera Farmiga's character, Goodwin, behaves in the same mysterious and unreadable manner that Kevin Spacey's android-like voice did with Sam Rockwell in Moon. 

Colter has been kidnapped and used against his will as a guinea pig in the application of future technology known as "source code" which forces him to replay the last eight minutes on a Chicago commuter train over and over again until he uncovers knowledge that can benefit society. Ripley and Jones, demonstrate how each metaphysically complex situation unlocks new information, with each resulting in Colter becoming more fond of Christina and making the possibility of losing her seem more painful. 

In a recent interview with Scriptshadow, Ben Ripley discussed his writing process:

‘Once I have an idea that I think works, my first step is to take pages and pages of notes, whatever comes into my head. Research is important. You need to steep yourself in whatever subculture you’re writing about, enough so that you develop a confidence to invent within it. Next I try to come up with some compelling central characters. This is always the hardest part for me to get right, but it’s a critical one. If your characters aren’t distinct, comprehensible and somewhat relatable, you’ll never hear the end of it from your readers. And it’s really about the hard work of understanding who these characters are and what makes them interesting.

‘I’m not much attracted to Everyman characters. I’m more intrigued with mysterious, unusual or even extraordinary characters. If you look at Stanley Kubrick’s films, most of his characters are compelling for who they are. They’re not ordinary people who depend on a movie situation to come alive in. The outline comes next, but I don’t get overly detailed with it. I like to leave some open spaces for discovery. Only when you get in there writing scenes, writing description and dialogue, will the best things about your script occur to you.

‘That said, I absolutely know what my three acts and midpoint are, even if they sometimes shift around during the writing. The more I write, the fewer pages per day I turn out. I wish I wrote faster, but I tend to consider pretty carefully each moment. I take my time with the language until it feels right. I never gloss over stuff. After that, I always go back and find material to remove. You can always say things with greater efficiency, always trim and tighten action. You look at any good film and you realize just how economical and propulsive the scenes are, especially in the first act as they work to set up the world. You can never get too good at that skill.

‘A midpoint is a plot turn that happens in the middle of a movie. The midpoint in Jaws is when Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss pile into the fishing boat and head out to the open ocean to hunt the shark. The midpoint of the original Star Wars is when the Millenium Falcon reaches the Death Star in order to rescue the princess. It’s the point to which the action of the first half of the story is ending and, as a result, sends the second half of the story in a new – or at least more focused – direction. A good midpoint turn will differentiate the action between the first and second half of the movie and keep things from seeming monotonous. The post-midpoint portion of the second act (pages 60-90) is often where you get much closer to the story’s real themes and you’re not as much focused on straightforward action.

‘The reason I’m a screenwriter today is that I believed in my talent and made the sustained sacrifices to become one. I eschewed other career paths. I worked day jobs to support myself. I wrote on weekends when maybe I would have had more fun at the beach. I started and finished scripts and then started new ones that were better. I kept at it. There are no shortcuts. The dues-paying process can be bewildering and lonely, but its job is to separate out the professionals from the merely curious, and when it’s over, you’re oddly thankful for having asked a lot of yourself…

‘I remember being so impatient for my difficult, outsiders life to stop and for my ’real’ life as a working writer to start. It’s easy for professional writers to be benignly nostalgic about their early days coming up, forgetting that those days often felt tedious, frustrating and unsustainable. But your life shouldn’t depend on getting an agent within the next month. If it does, there’s something wrong.

‘You should never let your life get to the point where you look at screenwriting as a lottery ticket that’s going to save you. What saves you is your belief in yourself and your commitment to getting better at your craft, regardless of when that craft is rewarded. And a decent script probably won’t get you an agent. If you’re still at the point where you’re writing “decent” scripts – as opposed to great scripts – you’re not ready for an agent. But the magic of Hollywood is that the appetite for great scripts far exceeds the supply of great scripts. So when and if you finally write that great script, word will get out. People will ask you to read it, not the other way around. Stay optimistic. Stay focused. Write well and the agents – and the success – will come.’

- Ben Ripley

Method Writing: Tarantino and Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard was born in New Orleans in 1925, moving to Detroit when he was six years old where he lived for the rest of his life. Following high-school graduation, Leonard served in the US Navy, then after graduating from the University of Detroit became a copywriter for an advertising agency. At the same time, Leonard was pursuing a burgeoning writing career, something he’d been interested in since childhood. His initial interest was in the Western genre. After the success of his novel Hombre, successfully filmed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman,  Leonard decided to quit his job to write full-time. As the Western genre became less fashionable, Leonard turned his attention to crime novels, and was immediately successful. He has since received multiple honours including the Edgar, National Book Award, and the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award. His novels Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Jackie Brown (based on the novel Rum Punch), Hombre, and 3:10 to Yuma have all been turned into major motion pictures. He is widely regarded as one of America’s greatest crime writers. Leonard died in 2013.

Initially published in the Jan/Feb 1998 issue of Creative Screenwriting the following interview with Quentin Tarantino was conducted shortly after the release of Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. Described as ‘a comic crime caper based on Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch,’ Jackie Brown was Tarantino’s first adaptation. Tarantino’s screenplay closely follows Leonard’s plot line, dropping some minor characters, developing others (most notably Ordell Robbie), while inserting some new scenes. Tarantino has openly acknowledged the impact of Leonard’s writing on his own writing style: ‘Leonard opened my eyes to the dramatic possibilities of everyday speech’, he claims. In Jackie Brown Tarantino successfully defers to Elmore Leonard’s low-life naturalism to produce arguably his most mature work. In discussing Leonard and his writing roots Tarantino sheds light into his world and his technique as a ‘method writer.’

CS: How exactly have Elmore Leonard’s books influenced your writing style?

QT: Well, when I was a kid and I first started reading his novels I got really caught up in his characters and the way they talked. As I started reading more and more of his novels it kind of gave me permission to go my way with characters talking around things as opposed to talking about them. He showed me that characters can go off on tangents and those tangents are just as valid as anything else. Like the way real people talk. I think his biggest influence on any of my things was True Romance. Actually, in True Romance, I was trying to do my version of an Elmore Leonard novel in script form. I didn’t rip it off, there’s nothing blatant about it, it’s just a feeling you know, and a style I was inspired by more than anything you could point your finger at.

CS: The strongest scene in True Romance is the confrontation between Cliff [played by Dennis Hopper] and Coccotti [played by Christopher Walken]. How did you approach crafting that scene?

QT: The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way. I had heard that whole speech about the Sicilians a long time ago, from a black guy living in my house. One day I was talking with a friend who was Sicilian and I just started telling that speech. And I thought, ‘Wow, that is a great scene, I gotta remember that.’ In True Romance the one thing I knew Cliff had to do was insult the guy enough that he’d kill him, because if he got tortured he’d end up telling him where Clarence was, and he didn’t want to do that. I knew how the scene had to end, but I don’t write dialogue in a strategic way. I didn’t really go about crafting the scene, I just put them in the room together. I knew Cliff was going to end up doing the Sicilian thing but I didn’t know what Coccotti was going to say. They just started talking and I jotted it down. I almost feel like a fraud for taking credit for writing dialogue, because it’s the characters that are doing it. To me it’s very connected to actors’ improv with me playing all the characters. One of the reasons I like to write with pen and paper is it helps that process, for me anyway.

True Romance (Directed by Tony Scott)

CS: What’s the relationship between your acting and your writing?


QT: I think they’re almost inseparably married. When I describe things in my writing I never use writing adjectives. I don’t know what a writing adjective is. I always use acting adjectives. To me writing’s almost the same thing because you’re acting like a character and that’s what acting is all about, the moment. You don’t want to be result oriented, you don’t want to say, ‘Okay, this is what’s going to happen.’ No, you start with your character and anything can happen, like life. You shouldn’t try to predestine where you’re gonna go and what you’re gonna see. You can hit the nail on the head, but you want the kind of freedom that allows for something you hadn’t even imagined to happen. I’m very much a man of the moment. I can think about an idea for a year, two years, even four years all right, but what ever is going on with me the moment I write is gonna work it’s way into the piece.


CS: Can you think of an example where your perspective at a certain moment really changed the way you approached something?


QT: Well anything that’s really personal I wouldn’t want to talk about because that’s not what the scene’s about, it’s just underneath it there. But like something more on the surface would be Vince’s whole thing in Pulp Fiction about Amsterdam. I was in Amsterdam for the very first time in my life when I was writing that script and it was kind of blowing my mind. And it was blowing Vince’s mind too, he’d just come back from there too. When I spent time in Amsterdam I was just going there to be by myself, but it worked its way in ‘cause that is what I was going through and that was gold.


CS: What adaptations of Elmore Leonard’s books do you admire?


QT: I liked Get Shorty a lot, I guess where he was funny and I really liked 52 Pick-Up. I think that’s the only other crime one that I’ve really liked.


CS: Did other adaptations suggest anything for your own approach?


QT: No, I’ve never really felt that anyone got [Leonard] in the prime zone.


CS: What about Scott Frank’s adaptation of Get Shorty?


QT: Well it’s funny because he came pretty damn close. I actually read his script and thought he did a really good job with it. But there was still something lost in the translation. I’ve always been kind of a perfectionist about the idea of adapting a Leonard novel because I just wanted to have the feeling of the novel, those long dialogue scenes where a character is slowly revealed. To me, that’s the fun of adapting it. I’m not dissing Frank at all. I think he did a great job with Get Shorty, but there’s another aspect of Leonard’s novels that I’m interested in.

True Romance (Directed by Tony Scott)

CS: You’ve voiced concern in the past that your own voice, your own dialogue might someday become old hat, that people might grow tired of it. Was that one of the reasons you decided to go with an adaptation rather than an original script for your next film?

QT: Well, that wasn’t the reason but it does very conveniently serve that purpose. It’s a nice way of kind of holding onto my dialogue, of holding onto my gift and whatever I’ve got to offer. I don’t want people to take me for granted. The things I have to offer I don’t want wasted. When you watch something David Mamet’s written you know you’ve listened to David Mamet dialogue. I want to try and avoid that if I can. I want to try to avoid that as a writer and I want to try to avoid it as a filmmaker. I want people to see my new movie not my next movie. Does that make sense? You’ve gotta remember, I’ve done two movies before this, so wait till I’ve done six movies to start pigeonholing me. I tend to do different types of things. Dogs, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, and my script for Natural Born Killers take place in kind of my own universe. But that doesn’t make them fantastical. Larry McMurtry writes with his own universe. J.D. Salinger writes with his own universe and it’s a very real universe and I think mine is too. But having said all that, this movie doesn’t take place in my universe.

CS: It doesn’t?

QT: This is in Elmore Leonard’s universe and it was interesting making a movie outside this little universe that I created. This was Dutch’s universe, and because of that, I wanted it to be ultra-realistic. I used a different cinematographer to kind of get a different look. It still looks great but just a little bit more down to earth, a little less like a movie movie, a little bit more like a '70s Straight Time. I actually like building sets. In Jackie Brown I didn’t do that. Every single solitary scene in the movie was shot on location. Some things were written for specific locations in the south [of LA] that I went out and found.

CS: I think one of your great strengths as a writer is that you have been able to define your own vision, your own universe, and set your stories within that. In looking at the difference between that and where you see Jackie Brown, what elements would you say define the Tarantino universe of film?

True Romance (Directed by Tony Scott)

QT: Well, that’s kind of a hard question to answer because a whole lot of this stuff is subliminal. It just comes out. One of the ways other writers have created their own universe is through overlapping characters, which I think is very interesting.

CS: I understand what you’re saying about it being kind of subliminal but you’re also a smart guy. I’m sure you get analytical about some of it too, especially as far as where you take your universe.

QT: To tell you the truth, I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I really try not to do that. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and, as I’ve said, go with the moment and go with my guts. It’s different than when you’re playing games or trying to be clever. To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you’re writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can’t lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves. And that’s something I don’t see in a lot of Hollywood movies. I see characters lying all the time. They can’t do this because it would affect the movie this way or that or this demographic might not like it. To me a character can’t do anything good or bad, they can only do something that’s true or not. Basically, my writing’s like a journey. I’ll know some of the stops ahead of time, and I’ll make some of those stops and some of them I won’t. Some will be a moot point by the time I get there. You know every script will have four to six basic scenes that you’re going to do. It’s all the scenes in the middle that you’ve got to—not struggle, it’s never a struggle—but you’ve got to write through—that’s where your characters really come from. That’s how you find them, that’s where they live. So I’ve got basic directions of how to get to where I’m going, but now I’m starting the journey. I can always refer to my directions if I get lost, but barring that, let’s see what we see. I think that is how novelists write. That’s how Elmore Leonard writes.

CS: Do you think that repetition of a phrase or word in dialogue enhances its power for an audience or detracts from it?

QT: Well I do that a lot. I like it. I think that in my dialogue there’s a bit of whatever you would call it, a music or poetry, and the repetition of certain words helps give it a beat or a rhythm. It just happens and I just go with it, looking for the rhythm of the scene.

CS: Some people have criticized your use of certain words such as ‘nigger,’ and you have always responded that no word should have that much power in our culture. I’m not sure I buy that. I’ve got to be frank. Aren’t you also using powerful words to electrify your dialogue, to make it more interesting?

Jackie Brown (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

QT: You know, if you didn’t know me, I could see where you’d come up with that. I mean, I am a writer, I deal in words. No, there is no word that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There is no word that is worse than another word. It’s all language, it’s all communication. And if I was doing what you’re saying, I’d be lying. I’d be throwing in a word to get an effect. And well, you do that all the time, you throw in a word to get a laugh, and you throw in this word to get an effect too, that happens, but it’s all organic. It’s never a situation where that’s not what they would say, but I’m going to have them say it because it’s gonna be shocking. You used the example of ‘nigger.’ In Pulp Ficiton, nigger is said a bunch of different times by a bunch of different people and it’s meant differently each time. It’s all about the context in which it’s used. George Carlin does a whole routine about that, you know. When Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy do their stand-up acts, and say nigger, you’re never offended because they’re niggers. You know what they’re fucking talking about. You know the context in which it’s coming from. The way Samuel Jackson says nigger in Pulp Fiction is not the way Eric Stoltz says it, is not the way Ving Rhames says it. They’re all coming from different places. That word means something different depending on who’s saying it.


CS: Ordell uses ‘nigga’ a lot in Jackie Brown. How is his use of the word different than that of the characters in Pulp Fiction?

QT: Actually Ordell probably doesn’t use it any different from Jules. Actually when Jules and Marcellus use it in Pulp Fiction they’re comin’ from the same place, but having it mean different things. Marcellus is very much like, ‘You my nigger now,’ and that was Ving Rhames who came up with that. But Ordell’s comin’ from the same place, he’s a black guy who throws the word around a lot, it’s just part of his dialect, the way he talks. And if you’re writing a black dialect, there’s certain words that you need to make it musical. Nigger’s one of them. If you’re writing about that kind of a guy, motherfucker’s another. Those are two of the key words that are appropriate for that guy. Sam Jackson uses nigger all of the time in his speech, that’s just who he is and where he comes from. That’s the way he talks, so that’s the way Ordell talks. Now what do you have to say to that?!

CS: That’s a good question! I think you have a valid point if that’s where you’re going with the character. Certainly the word nigger is part of the universe you’ve created. It’s one of the things that stands out about your writing.

QT: Also, I’m a white guy who’s not afraid of that word. You know most white guys are deathly afraid of that word.

CS: You’re right.

Jackie Brown (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

QT: I just don’t feel the whole white guilt and pussy-footing around race issues. I’m completely above all that. I’ve never worried about what anyone might think of me ‘cause I’ve always believed that the true of heart recognize the true of heart. If I’m doing what I’m doing and you’re comin from the same place, you’ll see it, no question about it. And if you’re comin with an axe to grind, with your own baggage and your own hate, then you might react strongly to where I’m comin from. Now what I just said there is that if you have a problem with my stuff you’re a racist. I practically said that. Well, I truly believe that.

CS: You always tend to write long, I mean 500 pages for Pulp Fiction, and then cut back. Do you think that’s a good process in bringing out the best in material?

QT: It works good for me, all right, but I don’t actually think about anything like that, for most of the script. I start getting responsible about length in the third act. You can do all kinds of shit at the beginning of the movie that you don’t have the fuckin’ patience for when it gets to the end. You want to see how it ends. I also tried to get away from 120 pages on Jackie Brown. I think in the screenplay there is too damn much importance given to the page count. It's structural thing. I mean, when it came to Jackie Brown, it was like you know what? I'm in a position now I can just say fuck the page count. I know the movie's gonna be about two-and-a-half hours long. All this page count stuff is for the production manager. It has nothing to do with me. So I'm not gonna dumb down my writing to keep the page count down. I end up still kind of pulling back towards the very end of the process because it was getting pretty excessive. But you know it used to be I would write all this description and everything and I would be all happy with it and I would be battling page count by the end, and it would just turn into Vincent and Jules walk into a room and start talking. On this one I'm not gonna even fucking worry about it. Also because now my scripts are getting published now, this is gonna be the fucking document. I'm not writing novels, these screenplays are my novels, so I'm gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it'd almost be okay because I did it. It's there on the page.

CS: How did the writing of Jackie Brown differ from Pulp Fiction?

QT: It was kind of funny because when I wrote Pulp Fiction I wrote that by myself. The middle story I adapted from a script that Roger Avery wrote, but you know it was me at page one and it was me at the end. It wasn't like we were doing it together or anything. I adapted it myself and I made all these changes I was gonna do. My name alone is on the script for Jackie Brown, I'm the guy that did it. But, I think Elmore Leonard almost deserves credit on the script. We never talked about anything but there was a real collaboration . . . actually I was the one doing all the collaborating. So much in fact, that I kept a lot of his dialogue exactly the way it was and I wrote a lot of my own and now as time has gone on, I don't really almost remember what was mine and what was his. I don't think his stuff stands out or my stuff stands out—I think it works like a really happy marriage.

Pulp Fiction (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

CS: You've optioned four of Leonard's books? Why did you make Rum Punch first?

QT: Again, it was extremely organic. I actually read Rum Punch before it was published. It turns out Elmore Leonard's agent is a really really good friend of Lawrence Bender, my producing partner. So they sent us the book and I loved it, but I didn’t want to do his books as big budget movies, because they are actually very modest stories and can’t bear a $50 million price tag. So we were getting ready to go into Pulp Fiction, and were talking about a deal where we could option it for very little money and shoot it for very little money. But his agent very rightfully said, ‘Now guys if we’re gonna do this, and he’s gonna pass up millions of dollars, you guys gotta commit to do this after Pulp Fiction.’ You can never really do that, all right, cause who knows who I'm gonna be after I get done with a movie. I couldn't really commit to it 100 per cent, so I let it go. And it so happened it became available again with these other three novels. I was going to give it to another director to do, so I read it again so I could talk about it. In reading it again I remembered exactly what it was I wanted to do when I read it a long time ago, it was like I saw the movie that I made in my head a long time ago, and let go of, that movie came right back. It came right right back. That’s what I'm gonna do. So that's how that one became the one. You know if you love something, set it free? Well I did, and it came back!

CS: Were there any techniques or any ideas you had, to bring the numerous ‘talking head’ scenes in Jackie Brown to life? To keep the interest of the audience?

QT: It was funny ‘cause I thought about that when I was writing the script. There were a whole lot of scenes with people talking to each other, right? But I thought about it and said, ‘That’s what it is. Don't be afraid of what it is.’ All right? And I made a pact with myself that there are two different styles going on here—the first half is about character and the second half is about action.

CS: Okay.

QT: I’m not necessarily going to try to show off to the world what a great filmmaker I am in the first half. ‘Cause the way you service that is you just get the best single performance you can from the actors and you edit it the right way so that their best work is showing and then you can have talk for ten fuckin’ minutes, twenty minutes or an hour, it doesn't fuckin’ matter. But in the second half we’re going to crank it up. It almost ties back to what you were saying about the editing really kicking in in the third act. There was a lot less flash there I mean, just boom, boom, boom, boom, as opposed to the longer character scenes up front. Yeah, definitely.

Pulp Fiction (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

CS: In reading your interviews you shield it a little bit, but I think you take a little pride in the way you presented Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction in non-linear formats. In Jackie Brown you moved to a linear format. Why did you decide that? Was it just the material?

QT: Yeah, I'm proud of what I did in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I’m not too proud of it, ‘cause I think that everyone should be able to do that, and it just seemed like the best way to present those stories. I don’t have any one way to tell a story, all right. I don’t have any rule book of how it’s supposed to be done, you know? But I’ve always said that if a story would be more emotionally involving told, beginning, middle, and end, I’ll tell it that way. I won’t jigsaw it, just to show what a clever boy I am. I don’t do anything in my script just to be clever. That’s the first thing that goes, it has to . . .

CS:. . . be true to itself?

QT: Yeah, emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It’s when a scene works emotionally and it’s cool and clever, then it's great. That’s what you want. In the case of Jackie Brown, this story is told better this way. And the sequence where the money is switched three times? That’s how I saw it when I read the book. It’s not in the book that way, but that’s how I saw it.

CS: That’s interesting on the screen.

QT: Yeah, I love it. I was just watching the movie in my mind as I was reading the book and thought, ‘That would be really cool.’ Before Jackie Brown, the most interesting character I ever wrote was Mia [in Pulp Fiction].

CS: Why is that?

QT: Because I have no idea where she came from. I have no idea whatsoever. She’s not from another movie, she’s not somebody I know, she’s not a fantasy girl, she’s not really a part of me, she’s not a side of me. I knew when I was writing that story, I knew nothing more about Mia than Vincent did. All I knew were the rumors. I didn’t know who she was at all, until they got to Jack Rabbit Slim’s and she opened her mouth. Then all of a sudden this character emerged with her own rhythm of speech. I don’t know where she came from and that's why I love her.

Natural Born Killers (Directed by Oliver Stone)

CS: When you’re developing a character, what do you do to get into their mind? Do you do a kind of back story on them? What do you do to get a character down?

QT: That’s a very interesting question. Maybe I should actually—I don’t. I do that as an actor though. That’s very interesting. Maybe I should start doing that in my original stuff or even on this stuff. No, in the case of Jackie Brown by the time I started writing the script I was pretty damn familiar with the material so I felt I knew these people. I don’t know, because part of that process is discovering them as I’m writing them. It’s different from acting. I won’t even think now about acting in a role where I didn’t do a back story for a character. Sit down with pen and paper and bring them up to this point. All right. But there’s a birthing process when you’re writing.

CS: In the past you’ve been real open about how you’ve cannibalized your own work in building new scripts. Is that a way of drawing stories into your own unique universe?

QT: Initially, when I first started doing stuff like that it was just so I didn’t have to write that part of it, it was a way to save time and pages. But it never quite works like a slam dunk anymore. By the time I get through with it I’ve usually rewritten it so much to make it work for whatever I’m doing that I might as well have written a new scene. I haven’t done that in a while actually.

CS: I didn’t notice any borrowing in Jackie Brown.

QT: Oh yeah, not at all. I think it was more like I save my writing and everything, and I never throw anything away. And I’ll just take something and read it, and get excited about it again. ‘That’s good, oh God, why did I stop doing that, that was really good.’ So it’s just an attempt to not let it go to waste. To find some way to fit it in.

Reservoir Dogs (Directed by Quentin Tarantino)

CS: The only script of yours that I haven’t read is Open Road.

QT: Yeah, no one has read that. I never finished it. That was like the first time I really wrote a script. Roger Avary had written a script called Pandemonium Reigns that was forty pages long and really funny. It’s like these two characters on the road and there’s this hitchhiker and it’s a surreal, wild comedy. Then they get to this kind of crazy, surreal town. Then he ended it in this way that I didn’t like at all. Because I had never finished a script, I had just written scenes, I asked him, ‘Could I take that? Like rewrite it, just do my own version of it?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ I don’t think he was going to do anything with it—I don’t think he liked his ending either. I started with getting the guy on the road, I wrote forever setting up the thing—now that you bring it up, I had forgotten, but there’s actually a really funny, like violent comedy scene in it that’s really good. I get really annoyed with people saying that I ripped off the Mexican stand-off stuff. Open Road was like way before I even knew who John Woo was. It had a Mexican stand-off scene, True Romance has a Mexican stand-off scene. I wrote that like in 1985 or 1986, way before I had seen A Better Tomorrow or anything. Way, way before. That Mexican stand-off scene is mine as much as it is his. That’s always been in my shit. So I really set-up this big fuckin’ deal to finally get him on the road. But I ultimately found out that I didn’t have a good ending for it either, I saw no way to end it.

CS: Did you incorporate any scenes from that script into your later scripts?

QT: I never really did because The Open Road was just so damn specific—well, I did you know, that's a big lie, cause actually I did do one thing, the character I was going to play—a guy named ‘F. Scarland’ was in my very first draft of Natural Born Killers that most people never read. I later did a complete rewrite on Natural Born Killers but in the first draft, F. Scarland was like the third lead in the piece...

- Method Writing by Erik Bauer. Portions of this interview were previously published in the January/February 1998 issue of Creative Screenwriting. To purchase this issue, visit creativescreenwriting.com

Takeshi Kitano: Flowers and Gunfire

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

Takeshi Kitano began his career as a comedian and television presenter in the 1970s as part of the popular Japanese comedy duo ‘The Two Beats’ with Kaneko Kiyoshi. Kitano went on to establish himself as one of Japan’s most important film directors starting with the 1989 police thriller Violent Cop, when the inexperienced Kitano assumed the film’s reins when the original director left the project.

Kitano spent the ’90s alternating between quiet, reflective works such as the surfing drama A Scene At The Sea (1991), the coming-of-age story Kids Return (1996), the road comedy Kikujiro (1999), and melancholy crime films like Boiling Point (1990), Sonatine (1993), and Hana-Bi (or Fireworks, 1997). Kitano’s reputation in the West rests largely on these latter two films, with their mix of deadpan comedy, graphic violence, austere visuals and pensive drama.

The story of a good cop with an explosive violent streak, Hana-Bi was Takeshi Kitano’s seventh film and transcends the structure of a crime thriller to explore questions of life and death. Set in Kitano’s familiar world of hard-boiled cops and ruthless yakuza, the film is a moving story of friendship, marriage and sacrifice. Detective Nishi (played by Kitano) is torn between his commitment to his job and his duty to his terminally ill wife. When Horibe, his partner, is gunned down while Nishi is visiting his wife in the hospital, he leaves the police force and embarks on a violent and tragicomic quest for justice and redemption. Throughout the film, beautiful, eerie paintings and drawings (also the work of this multi- talented filmmaker) mirror and foreshadow its powerful story. 

The Japanese word ‘hanabi’ translates into ‘fireworks’ in English. But Fireworks’ Japanese title is spelled with a hyphen: Hana-Bi, symbolizing the film’s themes. Hana (flower) is the symbol of life while Bi (fire) represents gunfire, and so death.

The following excerpts are from an interview with Takeshi Kitano by Makoto Shinozaki
 on the release of Hana-Bi and appeared in Studio Voice Magazine in November 1997:

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

Shinozaki: Many critics are already calling ‘Fireworks (Hana-Bi)’ a culmination of your six earlier films, but ‘Fireworks’ is clearly different in certain ways from your older films and I think this is reflected in the way you shot the film too. What do you think?

Kitano: Making a film is a collaborative effort. It’s not just the story or the acting, but it’s also the performance of the crew around you. Like who is your assistant director, who does camera for you. Until now, my cameraman was Mr. Yanagijima, but this time he was studying in England, so I asked the assistant cameraman to shoot it. Of course, he was very excited and was all geared up. But when I thought about this cameraman, I realized it would be rude to ask him to shoot it exactly the way Yanagijima did. So I told him we were going to move the camera a lot this time. He was practicing in the back. In the scene where there’s all that shooting in the Mercedes in the snow, I told him to shoot it from above. He was on a crane shooting from all angles. Normally, I wouldn’t have the camera do such complicated movements. I was thinking that this way, by asking him to do something a little bit more challenging, he would really feel like he was being asked to do it his way and not his old boss’s. The film turned out great because of the dedication and the teamwork of the crew.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

In your previous films, it seems you shot the characters straight on and the mise-en-scene was also very bare with the least amount of distractions. In ‘Fireworks’, you use the vertical space very imaginatively, placing the actors in the back of the shot, moving the camera around a lot. For example, the scene when Nishi and Miyuki’s doctor are talking, they are set up in the back of the shot and in the front, you put the fuzzy head of the nurse.

I put the head of the nurse where it bothered the viewer the most. That shot was not going to hold your attention long enough for the conversation between Nishi and the doctor to end, even though the tree outside the window with the green leaves blowing in the wind was a nice touch. When I put the nurse in the front of the shot, she was really in the way. But when I shot her out of focus, it had a different effect. My staff had a fit. According to the rules of filmmaking, it’s the last thing you’re supposed to do. But when I did it, it kind of worked. Film theory is always evolving and the audience is evolving with it. I think we can afford to turn things around a little, and the audience will follow. That shot is weird, but I figured I could get away with it. That's something I realized while shooting Sonatine. There was a shot in the film where the camera was supposed to pan and follow a passing car. The cameraman panicked during the pan and lost the car from the shot, having to move the camera around to find it again. He was mortified, but I okayed the shot. He protested that when shots like that are used, it gives him a bad reputation, but I wanted to use it. When Sonatine was shown in England, they commented on that very shot, claiming that the shaking of the camera foreshadows what is to come in the film. They asked if I had instructed the camera to do that, so I lied and said I did. It made me laugh. I thought to myself, ‘Hey a mistake can be a good thing too.’ When things are too perfect, it’s no fun. There are parts that need to be shot precisely, but a certain looseness is nice too. I thought about those things while shooting Fireworks.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

You go back and forth in time a lot too in this film.

I re-edited the film 14 times, I think. I called in the editor so many times. I’d tell him ‘We’re going to change the whole thing.’ And he’d say ‘Again?’ So we’d do it all over and I would proclaim it done, only to have him tell me that this was exactly the same as the first cut. So we’d recut again. I really didn’t want to use a flashback, but if you don’t some people won't understand the story. So I did it in a way that was most informative without becoming tedious.

I felt that in ‘Fireworks’, you were actively inserting certain elements into each shot. So I think it’s unfair just to call this film a survey of all your other films. Those who say that are not watching the film carefully enough. I think the filmmaking style has a different air. Like in the shot where Nishi is visiting his wife at the hospital, you give the shot an edge by using the nurse's movement through the vertical space of the shot. Also when Nishi is walking away from the lakeside toward the camera, it cranes down slowly to reveal the backs of the two yakuzas in the foreground. These shots actively utilize the vertical space, which was not the case in your other films.

That sort of vertical movement started in A Scene at the Sea ... In this film I really thought about being creative in the way I shot things, especially in the action sequences. I experimented with a lot of styles. Sometimes it worked and other times I had to settle for shooting it in a conventional way. I thought of doing a whole shoot out with just the sound of the bullets. But seeing this Mercedes in the distance and hearing the gun shots is a boring way to end the film. And I’ve done that in Sonatine. The shot where I use a knife worked well, I think, using the shadow.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

In that shot with the knife, I felt the audience catch their breath. Hollywood films these days are so sloppy. You see the explosions coming a mile away. They’re so predictable. What I miss most in movies today are those moments that they catch you by surprise and shock you.

Hollywood films used to be able to shock you with the explosions themselves. Those were the times. The audience loved it back then. But then it became bigger and bigger, and we got used to the most amazing explosions. None of it shocks us anymore. It’s like a fireworks show. It gets old fast to be told that they’re going up and then seeing them explode. If you don’t expect it, a little firecracker can scare you. I think that’s the way to do it.

I think another thing that is different in this film is the way you capture landscapes. Until now, when you shot the beach, it was any old beach and your shots of the city were often run-down factories or places of exposed concrete – drab, dreary settings. But this time, you’ve got Mount Fuji, a cherry blossom in full bloom ... you seem to be seeking to capture a traditionally Japanese landscape.

How shall I put this ... If it were two men standing in front of Mount Fuji, there would be nothing more absurd. But in this film it’s a couple. I figured it was all right if it was a woman standing next to you. If it’s a couple going to a typical tourist spot, it works all right, especially if the characters are loaded with dark pasts. Like a terminal illness. That makes the scene suddenly very tragic. If I had a very happy healthy couple go to Mount Fuji it would be kind of lame, but since the guy is volatile and dangerous, I figure I could have him stand anywhere. So I might as well choose a picturesque place that I haven’t used before. I had not shot Mount Fuji before.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

The shot where Horibe, Nishi’s ex-partner, played by Ren Osugi, is sitting in his wheelchair underneath the cherry blossoms made a real impression on me.

People see that shot and ask me if I’m a fan of Seijun Suzuki. I figured I could get away with having Mr. Osugi under the cherry tree even if it’s a little cheesy because the character is a painter. Also, it’s not that he just went out to see the blossoms because he didn’t have anything else to do – he just attempted suicide, and finally decided to start painting. To have him under the cherry blossoms with all that history makes the scene much more significant.

I really liked the fact that we don’t get this very emotional close up of Mr. Osugi’s face looking up at the tree. Instead we have a long shot of this lone figure of a man in a wheelchair underneath this blossoming tree. Not to say that there is any influence or connection, but this scene for some odd reason reminded me of Nagisa Oshima’s ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence’. That film is set entirely in the jungle with no landscapes resembling Japan and you certainly don’t see any cherry blossoms. There is one moment in the film, however, where the character played by Ryuichi Sakamoto tells Mr. Lawrence that if he could, he would like to invite every single prisoner to see a cherry tree in full bloom. Mr. Lawrence replies that what he remembers of Japan is the frozen tree in the midst of a landscape covered in snow. As a film, the two have nothing in common, but somehow after I saw the movie, I thought of Mr. Oshima.

Yes, it’s not an influence in the style of shooting or anything like that, but we share a certain mind set. There are other moments in the film where I feel we share a certain state of mind. So I guess I was influenced by him, or something of my experience with him stayed with me.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

I believe that a director is the greatest critic of his own films. I get the feeling that you are constantly rejecting your previous films with your new film ...

I think that’s right. For example, others consider their bad films failures. I pick up on the faults of the film and I criticize myself, but I would not call the film a failure. If there are three things about the film that are good, those are the three souvenirs the film left me and I don’t need anything else. Then in the next film I collect a couple more and they add up. I made Fireworks with all the good things that I’ve collected over the years from different films, and in that sense, it is a survey of the past. It’s a film born of all the good parts of all my past films. If they want to call it a survey of my past works, I guess it’s a survey ...

But even if it is a survey, it’s not that you just abbreviate and combine your past films, nor is it that you just refine your past films. The other thing that’s different about this film that I wanted to ask you about is the color. You seem to be actively involving all sorts of bright colors. One thing is, you have included your own paintings in this film which must have something to do with it. If ‘Sonatine’ was based on the color blue and it was your blue period, ‘Fireworks’ is ...

The critics at Venice still thought the film was ‘Kitano blue.’ I didn't get it, but they told me that the blue I use in my films is called Kitano blue. I thought that was nice. I do use blue as my base color, but I try to use it adventurously. I really can’t shoot the city, though. I hate shooting Chinatown at night or something. Too many colors. But I figure now is the time to practice so that one day I can shoot those kind of colors too. As part of the practice, I included all those bright paintings. A painting is not a landscape, so I thought I could deal with it. I could be bold with the paintings, but the city is still shot in very subdued colors because I don’t think I have the technique or the confidence to use bright color for that. So the landscapes are still blue. I made my splash of color with the paintings and the blossom tree, but my base is still blue.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

Even in the shot at the hospital, there is a bunch of brightly colored flowers by the door. Was that something you put there for the shoot?

No, it happened to be there. I told them, if you see flowers during the shoot, film them. When we went to the beach, these fish happened to be jumping so we shot it. There is no significance to those shots. You could have a man and a woman on a beach, and a third person and that person would mean nothing to the couple. Even if you share the same shot and space, there is no relationship. It’s like that in real life – things that are completely unrelated exist side by side. It’s the same with the flowers. You see flowers there and you don’t know why they’re there, but they just are. I’m not shooting the flowers with some heavy significance but I’m introducing them as bits of color. The red of a flower in the blue. It paves the way to all the primary colors in the paintings. The reason why I had the film start with my paintings is to familiarize the audience with my paintings. You have to introduce them slowly because otherwise, if they’re hit over the head with it, the film could potentially end before they get over it and understand the film.

Regarding color, when I interviewed you a while back, you told me that after the accident, you began to experience color much more vividly. Thinking about that, my very favorite scene in this film, the scene that moves me greatly and at the same time upsets me, is the scene where Horibe first encounters color at the florist. I imagine that this cop had lived completely indifferent to colors until that very moment and right then he realizes for the first time that he was surrounded by all this color. Did you have a moment after the accident when you experienced this?

It was flowers for me too. Until then, I was stepping on flowers, and I scoffed and mocked the idea of sending flowers to women. Then I had the bike accident and my head hit the pavement and I was destroyed ... I was walking around with my bandaged eye, because I had nothing better to do, and I came to a florist where I began staring at the flowers. Then I realized that they were each so different from the other and I was really struck by it. I thought maybe I should paint them. I bought the paint and the supplies. I looked at some stuff van Gogh did, and realized I could never paint like that. But I couldn’t shake the notion of painting the flowers. I wondered how I could do it, when the idea of arranging them into something else came to mind. Looking at a sunflower I thought it looked like a lion. This idea made me so happy. So I painted the lion with the sunflower head. I had that painting way before I started shooting the film. And then one looked like a deer, another leaf looked like a penguin. They would keep coming to me. It was really instantaneous. In this film, I wanted to show that this guy Horibe doesn’t know where he’s heading but is somehow drawn to the florist and ends up there. He suddenly wants to paint so badly and he is so happy to have discovered this new thing, he buys a bunch of flowers and the images keep coming to him ...

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

I got the feeling that it wasn’t that he was trying to create images from the flowers, rather that the images kept seeping out of him.

Yeah, like there is this voice inside of him saying ‘Do it, do it.’ It’s as if the flowers are telling him who he is and what he should do while he himself is just sitting in front of the store consumed.

I like Mr. Osugi’s expression there because it’s very natural.

I told him to continue staring at the flowers. He couldn’t take it anymore and tears started running down his face. I continued rolling, and the minute I said cut, he apologized for crying. Before the next shot, he asked me if I wanted tears, and I told him it wasn’t necessary. I didn’t want him to be staring all teary eyed.

But when the woman comes out and asks him she can help him and we cut back to Horibe, he’s no longer crying. 

The make up person was bothered by that. They said I was just being lazy. It doesn’t take much to do this, just a few eye drops. But I just didn’t want it.

I thought that you probably didn’t want that scene to be sappy. Even the actual moment that Horibe begins to cry looking at the flowers is cut out. One of the paintings is inserted in that spot and when you come back his cheeks are already wet. Normally, that’s the part you want to keep in as a tearjerker. Instead the colors tell it all and that made it very moving.

I like that scene very much myself. I was really geared up to shoot that scene. The opening scene in the parking lot and this scene were the two that I knew I was going to have in the film while I was shooting.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

That opening is very cinematic even just reading the script. When I read it, the image just came to me. The way the parking lot would be shot, the shot where the blue sky is reflected on the hood of the car ...

Like the apartment by the sea where Horibe lives. The reason why I chose that place is because the roof of the crappy house behind it is blue. All blue. I set my heart on that house. ‘Well if we shoot here, where exactly does Horibe live?’ asked a crew member. I told him I didn’t know. I figure if we shoot him coming home this way, the audience will just assume he lives somewhere over there. The crew complained that they had to build a door. I told them it’s not the morning soap opera, I’m not going to have shots of him going in and out of his apartment. All I needed was the inside of the apartment. I liked the blue of the roof, I wanted to shoot there. If the roof was of a different color it wouldn’t be half as interesting. And it was by the sea ... I really was fanatically picky about the blue. That also meant that whenever any other color was introduced, I was doubly cautious as well.

That’s why the colors that you introduce in your paintings, like the yellow of the gingko leaf, are that much more vivid.

When you have a dark blue next to a light blue, it doesn’t stand out in any way. To make a color pop out you have to bring a completely opposite color next to it. That’s why I wanted the base color to be blue and then use other colors to punctuate the look of the film – give the film an edge.

The placement of color was important to you.

I really thought about Kayoko Kishimoto’s costume too. Not just in terms of color, but I didn’t want her to look too domestic. I wanted this couple to have many dynamics – like sometimes the wife could be the mother and the husband is the son or vice versa. I didn’t want them to have a very man/woman relationship. The reason why I didn’t have them talk too much to each other is because in my mind, a conversation between a man and a woman often leads to sex. I wanted to get rid of any sexual tension by doing away with the talking, and I thought I could show their relationship better by just portraying the moments they shared together. Just because his wife is ill, I was not going to have the guy ask her if she’s all right every place they went. I hate that.

Hana-Bi (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

You don’t need that because you really get the feeling that he cares for her deeply without all those words. Now I’ve spent a lot of time talking to you about the technical aspects of filmmaking, but I really find the charm of your film to be more in the way your own life experiences are reflected in your films ... Of course, it doesn’t necessarily mean the character is the director. Filmmaking isn’t that simple ... But after watching this film, the thought crossed my mind was that perhaps in ‘Fireworks’, you consider the various possibilities of what might have happened to you after the accident and project them onto the two characters, Nishi and Horibe.

Well, I feel like I’m found out. It puts me in a slightly defensive position. Horibe is obviously definitely an image of myself after the accident. You know, I was the king of prime time. Then the motorbike accident happened and some people left me. It made me realize that some people obviously didn’t really care about me. So I thought ‘Maybe I’ll take up painting.’ On the other hand, there was also that incident where we raided the publishing company. I thought that was the end of me. But I did it for a woman, you know. I really thought I was done for in society. I was lucky to have been able to come back to television after that. I felt I did what I had to do to prove my love for her. I felt I had to go. That was reflected in Nishi. The friendship and strong bond between Nishi and Horibe is a reflection of my relationship with my troupe. I single-handedly pulled my whole crew into that raid and we could have all become convicts. One of my guys still recounts with tears in his eyes how I told them I would take care of them, even if that meant I had to be a construction worker. I asked them to forgive me. I guess little bits of my essence end up in the films and in the characters. So I don’t want to say it too loud, but I think it’s inevitable. That’s why I hate people who are only interested in film. I think people should be many things. It’s all right if you get into a fight. There will be a moment when that experience will come in handy. A director has to study the techniques of filmmaking, but more importantly, it’s about what you have of your own to put into the film. I think good things and bad things can be 50/50 in life. So I dislike it when something good happens. I mean this film was a good thing, right? The reason why I can keep going, is because I never let myself be as happy as others expect me to. I feel like I’m going to die if I’m too happy because they’ll just say, ‘Hey, you’ve had enough fun, you’re done’. I think that’s why I’ve succeeded in so many areas. It’s not to be pompous. It’s just that I feel if I let myself be completely satisfied, I couldn’t move onto the next thing.

Sonatine (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

We talked about your crew, and though they’re not major characters in this movie, a number of them have smaller roles supporting you from afar. Like the doctor who gives Nishi a new shirt at the hospital, and the junkyard owner ...

How they support Nishi is important. Like the junkyard owner played by Tetsu Watanabe. When he first appears he is beating somebody up violently. How do you make a guy like that warm to you? Nishi goes to buy a scrapped police light from the junkyard and when he asks the owner about it, he takes off his sunglasses. It’s courtesy. If some punk came to him with his shades and said ‘Sell this to me,’ he would tell him to get lost. It’s a small thing, but it’s the way it works in certain neighborhoods. There is a feeling that what you give is what you get – whether it’s respect or it’s attitude. It’s the way some men bring each other’s guard down. I wanted him to play the character that way.

There is an instant bond between the two characters.

The chemistry between two guys is often decided instantaneously. It’s the same with communication between men and women too. But I feel it’s not all the things that are said between them, rather it’s all in the small things you do for each other.

It’s not that you decide whether you like the other person or not depending on what he does or says before, but rather that it’s decided instantaneously the moment you meet.

I really have a habit of doing that. Even if it’s a guy I’ve never met, I pretty much know the moment I see him. When friends introduce me to their friends I know instantly if it works or not.

Sonatine (Directed by Takeshi Kitano)

Now that you’ve made seven films, does the fact that you’ve succeeded in film give you more freedom?

Sonatine was a turning point for me. I could have gone towards making a sonata from there or gone pop. With Fireworks, I feel I went closer to a sonata. I don’t want to use any guns in my next film. If you make the same sort of film again, even if you make it more intense, it doesn’t really make an impression. If you make a film from a completely different perspective it will be more shocking. Everyone around me says since Fireworks was such a success, do another one, but that’s the same as Tora-san series. I don’t like that. Though with Getting Any? I failed by doing something different. That’s why this time, I want to do something different and succeed. I want my next film to be the kind of film where the audience starts dancing as the end credits start rolling. I think this comes from my background in live stand up comedy. The audience used to get into it so much they were still laughing at us through the next act. In the same token, if I could make a movie where the audience was dancing at the end, that would be a great service. I think films should be capable of doing that. Even at film festivals, the audience gives standing ovations while the director stands outside the theater. It’s the audience’s way of thanking the director and congratulating him. I think the director should get them going even more – not just clapping. We can make a film where people are hugging and crying throughout it. We should move the audience more.

Last question. I asked you this after you wrapped ‘Sonatine’ also, but now that you’ve completed seven films: what is film to you?

I thought at first that film was the pus created when Japan became infected by the disease called Westernization. But now I feel that pus has transformed itself into a good tissue. Inside of me that is. From a young age, I’ve experienced and absorbed many things. When I wondered which culture it came from, I realized it was the one that sneaked in – the American culture. I’m just an old timer infected by this culture creating a paper theater, but I’d like to keep creating better paper theater.

– Excerpts from an interview with Takeshi Kitano by Makoto Shinozaki
. ‘Studio Voice Magazine’, November 1997.

   

Francesco Rosi: History and Realism

Illustrious Corpses (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

For over half a century the celebrated Italian filmmaker Francesco Rosi practised a highly-charged, politically-engaged cinema which earned him the title of Italy’s cinematic ‘poet of civic courage’. 

After working as an assistant director to Luchino Visconti, Rosi directed his first feature film in 1957, La sfida (The Challenge), the story of a young Neapolitan hood who challenges a local Camorra boss for supremacy. In 1961 Rosi established his international reputation with Salvatore Giuliano – based on the true account of a small-time Sicilian black marketeer who rose to become a legendary outlaw and was killed in mysterious circumstances.

Rosi’s film set out to investigate the mystery and to question the official version of events. Salvatore Giuliano became the first of Rosi’s ‘cine-inchieste’ (film investigations), what he characterised as not ‘documentary’ but documented films. These were, in Millicent Marcus’s words, ‘cinematic investigations into cases involving power relationships between charismatic individuals, corporations, criminal organisations and the state.’

Rosi would make several more films in the 1960s including Il momento della verità (The Moment of Truth, 1964). It was to be the 1970s, however—the decade that in Italy would be recalled as ‘the years of lead’, characterised by social instability, political discord and terrorism – which would provide Rosi with the opportunity to make what are regarded as his finest films.

Il Caso Mattei (The Mattei Affair, 1972), Lucky Luciano (1973) and Cadaveri Eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses, 1976) in varied ways harked back to the investigative cinematic style that Rosi had developed in Salvatore Giuliano.

In the following extract from an interview with Cineaste Magazine Francesco Rosi discusses his working methods, his cinematic style and his commitment to social justice.

Salvatore Giuliano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: Your films are political, it seems to me, as much because of the way they are structured as because of your subject matter.

Francesco Rosi: Yes, many of my films – such as Salvatore Giuliano, Hands Over the City, Lucky Luciano and The Mattei Affair – are structured as investigations into the relationship between causes and effects. When I devised this method in Salvatore Giuliano, this search for the truth became the narrative line of the film. I wanted to pose questions to the audience, questions I either didn’t know the answers to or did not wish to give answers to. My films are not policiers, or thrillers, but instead aim to provoke, to insinuate doubts, to challenge the official statements and certainties from the powers that be which hide real interests and the truth.

As the narrator, the storyteller, I communicate my impressions to the audience, whom I consider a traveling companion in my investigation into human feelings and into facts that cannot always be accepted for what they appear to be. These facts, these events, need to be interpreted, and this interpretation is what gives rise to ambiguity.

In some of the Italian mysteries that my films have dealt with, a single truth doesn’t exist, so I don’t want to offer a simple answer. The films are interested in the search for truth and in encouraging reflection. To be effective, the questions the films ask must continue to live in the viewer even after the film is over. After my first few films, in fact, I stopped putting the words ‘The End’ at the conclusion because I think films should not end but should continue to grow inside us. Ideally, they should grow inside us over the years, the same way that our historical memory grows inside of us – and films are our most vital historical documentation. This power of suggestion is what defines the greatness of a film, and what I would even say is its function.

Salvatore Giuliano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: What sort of political influence does the cinema, vis-a-vis television or the press, have in Italy today?

Rosi: Some films have anticipated what is currently going on in Italy. One example is my film, Hands Over the City, not because of any particular prophetic qualities or talents, but because films are a testimony to the reality in which we live and to a filmmaker’s desire to understand, to his or her ability to know how to see. Sometimes a filmmaker can see things before they’ve become clear to everyone else. Some things are just sitting there waiting to be seen by eyes that know how to see or by the political will to show these things to other people.

The political function of a film is to provoke and sometimes films produce results. I don’t think films can change politics or history, but sometimes they can influence events. For example, thanks to the public showings of Salvatore Giuliano in 1962, two Italian politicians – Girolamo Li Causi of the Italian Communist Party and Simone Gatto of the Italian Socialist Party – called for the establishment of the first Anti-mafia Commission. A few months after the first screenings of the film, Parliament agreed to establish the commission because, in the face of a film like this – which documented the cooperation between the Mafia, government institutions, and the various police forces in Italy – it could no longer deny to the public the existence of such activities.

Cineaste: Do you prefer to have your films shown in theaters or would you be more interested in having them shown on TV so as to reach a larger audience?

Rosi: I prefer theaters because the true destination of a film is movie theaters. The showing of a film on TV can naturally reach a large public, but it’s not the same thing. Films shown on TV tend to be seen in a very distracted manner because of all the interruptions that occur at home – the telephone ringing, talking to friends, going to the bathroom, whatever – whereas seeing a film in a theater requires concentration. The movie-going ritual is part of the mysterious power that films have. When I go to a movie theater, and sit down in the dark amidst hundreds of people I don’t know, I can feel their response to the film, and it becomes a social event.

Salvatore Giuliano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: One of the characteristics of classic neorealism that one sees continuing in your work is the prominent use of non-professional actors. Would you explain your reasons for that?

Rosi: Well, a film like Salvatore Giuliano was made almost entirely without professional actors because I wanted to make it, in a very real sense, as a psychodrama. That is, I wanted to shoot in the places where Giuliano had lived, in the town where he was from, under the eyes of his mother and family, in the courtyard where his body was found, and, above all, with the participation of many of the people who ten years earlier had known Salvatore Giuliano and who had lived with him.

I wanted to involve these people in my film because I was sure their participation would convey elements of their suffering. In the scene shot in Montelepre, for example, where the women rush from their homes to the town square to protest the army’s arrest of their husbands and sons, these women had been involved in the actual events. I knew that involving them in the film would provoke a huge emotional response, a remembrance of what had happened to them.

There were also only two or three professional actors in Hands Over the City. Carlo Fermariello, who played De Vita, the opposition councilman, and who became the lead actor in the film along with Rod Steiger, was not a professional actor. The guy who played the outgoing mayor in the film was a Neapolitan who had previously been a car salesman in Detroit before returning home. And the lawyer who was on the committee of inquiry was a real Neapolitan lawyer. I knew that their participation, because of their personal experience and sensitivity, would add a great deal to the film. When I chose Charles Siragusa to play himself in Lucky Luciano, I knew that by not using a professional actor for the part I would lose something in terms of the ability of an actor, but I was also sure I would gain something because of Siragusa’s involvement in the actual prosecution of Luciano.

The Mattei Affair (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: One sees a real continuity among the key technicians you work with from film to film.

Rosi: I always prefer working with the same collaborators because we know each other and our working methods well. Gianni Di Venanzo was the director of photography on my first five films, and, following his death in 1966, all my other films have been made with Pasqualino De Santis. But even on the films with Di Venanzo, Pasqualino was the camera operator on three of them, so we had already begun to develop an intimate working relationship. Pasqualino is a great cameraman. We were able to take shots with a hand-held camera for The Mattei Affair and Chronicle of a Death Foretold. De Santis is an extremely sensitive director of photography, but one who always likes to take risks, to try different ways of lighting a scene. He lights with very minimal means, with few artificial lights. He’s also a great connoisseur of film stocks and is always willing to try new things.

Cineaste: Who makes decisions regarding camera placement and movement?

Rosi: These are decisions the director makes and then with the cameraman you translate these decisions technically.

Cineaste: Do you do this in advance or on the set? Do you do much storyboarding?

Rosi: I decide the day before how I’m going to shoot a scene. The last thing I do in the evening, before closing up the set for the night, is to explain what I’m going to do the next day. I think this sort of work has to be prepared in advance, but obviously this can’t be a set rule, and many times I decide on the camera position when I’m on location. There are many circumstances in which you may have to change everything at the last minute.

Sometimes, for some sequences, I prepare a little storyboard, as in Illustrious Corpses or Chronicle of a Death Foretold, but I don’t use the American system of preparing a storyboard for the entire film before it’s shot. I do like to prepare the work in advance so I can explain it first to my cameraman and director of photography to assure that it will be done in the best possible way from a technical point of view.

Lucky Luciano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: How do you work with your editor?

Rosi: First of all, I only begin to edit a film after I’ve finished shooting. I never let the editor edit the film on his own. I sit at the moviola with the editor and we work together because I’ve thought about the editing while I’m shooting, so I already have the montage in mind. Nevertheless, while working at the moviola I might decide to change many things. With The Mattei Affair, for example, many changes were made right at the moviola. This is something you can tell because of all the different kinds of material I used in that film. I don’t often shoot a lot of coverage but many times I shoot with two cameras, not to have more choices but to have different perspectives on the same scene.

Cineaste: In many of your films, the Mafia is portrayed as a very powerful element of society, and so thoroughly entrenched as to perhaps be ineradicable.

Rosi: The Mafia has great power but it is not invincible. This has been proved in Italy over the last few years. For example, a so-called maxi-trial was instigated by a group of magistrates in Palermo – including Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsalino – which showed that a lot can be accomplished in the war against the Mafia. This trial marked a turning point and recently the state has been hitting the Mafia very hard. This doesn’t mean that in a short period of time you’re going to achieve significant results against such a complex phenomenon as the Mafia, but it does signal a major change in public opinion. We must also recognize a fundamental change in the Mafia culture itself. The Mafia and the Camorra – the Neapolitan version of the Mafia – are not just criminal societies, they’re also cultures, certain mentalities.

When I made Salvatore Giuliano, they didn’t even say the word ‘Mafia’ in Sicily. But in Sicily today young people organize protest marches against the Mafia and civic society has responded very strongly to such protests. People are aware of the sacrifice on the part of many judges, policemen, journalists, and even politicians who have paid with their lives in this struggle, and so there is a growing public awareness that we can and must achieve results against the Mafia.

Lucky Luciano (Directed by Francesco Rosi)

Cineaste: How do you evaluate the overall political situation in Italy today?

Rosi: Everything’s in movement in Italy today. On the part of Italian civic society, there’s a huge demand for change, a very strong protest against a system of political and economic corruption, in connection with organized crime. We can’t really say there are definite efforts today that will lead to conclusions, but I and many others believe that there is a movement of sorts that will lead to a second risorgimento, a second rising up, like the first risorgimento for Italian independence in the nineteenth century.

Cineaste: What political party is going to be able to take the lead here? Are we looking for a new Garibaldi?

Rosi: No, there is no new Garibaldi for now. But what is important is that there is all this movement, a very strong demand for change, and a rejection of a system of corruption that has tarnished, more or less, every political party.

– From Rosi’s interview with Gary Crowdus and Dan Georgakas reprinted in Dan Georgakas and Lenny Rubenstein (eds.), Art, Politics, Cinema: The Cineaste Interviews, London, Pluto Press, 1985.