Coming Attractions Trailer Night

Filmfest DC Award Winners

Top five Audience Award Winners
1. Music is My Life, Politics My Mistress (Oscar Brown, Jr.) (Donnie L. Betts)
2. Live and Become (Radu Mihaileanu)
3. Water (Deepa Mehta)
4. Maria Bethânia: Music is Perfume (Georges Gachot)
5. October 17 1961 (Alain Tasma)

Capital Focus Award:
October 17 1961 (Alain Tasma)

Special Jury Award:
Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont: An Interview with Screenwriter Ruth Sacks Caplin

By Leslie Weisman, DC Film Society Member

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont opened at Landmark's Bethesda Row on April 28.

Leslie Weisman: I’ve just seen Mrs. Palfrey, which has received accolades from reviewers and warm receptions from audiences across the country. What first attracted you to the book? What made you decide it would make a good movie?
Ruth Sacks Caplin: You know, that’s a hard question to ask, because it’s been in my life for so long, I’ve forgotten the first impulse. It had something to do with a combination of the time and the place. I was in England when I read the book, far away from my own home and my own activities and family. And I was reading the books on the racks in the hotel, the old Connaught in London, and this [“Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont,” Elizabeth Taylor, 1971] happened to be one of the books. I went to that store that has the great food halls, Harrods--in the book, the young man is actually looking for food there--he pretends he works there, he brings his pen and his paper, because he hopes to be a playwright or something wonderful; and he sits there and eats.

So that amazed me. I was in the scene myself, and I could see myself enjoying that role she had--that you could sort of set up housekeeping anywhere with someone that interested you. Because in one part of the book she talks about foraging for some more food, she gets a warm meat pie and she brings it to him--that’s not in the movie--so she is able to act out the role of a sort of a pseudo-housekeeper for a little while, a pseudo-mother, really, or aunt, or grandma, and that tickled me. And it was a time --we had lost a child, and so I was not really interested in current local things, theater and things like that; I was interested in life, and people.

LW: Since you’d had no previous experience as a screenwriter, what inspired you to want to adapt it for the screen?
RSC: I had written various things, but I never chose to write anything for the screen. But yet somehow I could see that--maybe it was because I was in England, which wasn’t my own setting, so it’s as though I was in a play at the time I was making it; there was nothing from home about it. And a movie seemed the right place for the story to be.

LW: How did you adapt the book to screenplay form?
RSC: Well, I bought a book on how to write a screenplay. (Laughs) I had written plays when I was in college a little bit, and I had directed children’s theater when we lived in Charlottesville and the children were in school, and there was a group of adults who wanted the children to have a theater experience. And so I directed children’s plays, I was comfortable doing it. I could think things in the third dimension, the possibilities of how they stood and how they looked, and so on. But I got this book on how to write a proper screenplay--and I followed the rules of how you do this and that, and the camera position and so forth. Actually, I still have the book up in my closet. I haven’t looked at it recently... I should. (Laughs)

LW: What were the most important changes you made in adapting the book, and what elements were you most anxious to keep?
RSC: The most important changes we made--for many of them I must give credit to the director; he’s of a different generation, different tastes and everything else. We eventually became terribly good friends, and when he would give me something that was a little bit too modern, I would say, “Uh-uh-uh-uh,” and he’d say, “Uh... we’re not making a granny picture.” In the book, there is much more given to the mean girl whom he [Ludovic (Ludo) Meyer, the young “busker” played by Rupert Friend, who befriends Mrs. Palfrey] had had briefly as a girlfriend. You know, the mean girl who appears in the park when he’s with Mrs. Palfrey and she says “I wondered what happened to you” and she’s sort of a nasty, snappy thing.

LW: She was so realistic, I was wondering if she was modeled on anyone.
RSC: No; well, she was modeled on the girl in the book, but the girl in the book brushed him off long before that. He has a sexual relationship with her, and in the book, there’s a very poignant scene where he goes to visit her on her job--she works at a sort of art gallery--and she won’t even talk to him: the attitude is “Get out of here, you can’t sit here. I don’t want to talk to you.” She fades out of the picture completely. So that was something that was minimized, that was completely taken away.

And then the other thing that was not included in the movie that’s in the book, is that there was much more about his mother’s biography: she is living with a disagreeable man who is about to leave her, and she is a disagreeable woman, and when he [Ludo] goes there, it’s a very depressing visit. And that was just too much; that’s a whole other story, and it was cut down to just the few words she says when he comes in. He doesn’t ever bring Mrs. Palfrey to her house, and [the director] wanted sort of a little connection, and I thought that was very good--and the fact that the mother just gets a chance to say a few nasty things.

Because later in the book, there’s a whole business about how the man who has been keeping the mother flies the coop, and she has no money to pay her rent. And the poor, poor young man has to ask Mrs. Palfrey for some money to pay his mother’s rent, and he’s humiliated, and she’s sad, and--it’s a complication, and we just didn’t need another complication like that. When you’re reading you have an extra hour, but in a movie you don’t. And it wouldn’t have served any purpose at all, except to show that she backed him up even when she thought it was nothing she had anything to do with, but she did it. And it’s also such an ugly bit she [his mother] has with the man she is living with, who is a bum, and it added nothing to the central story, so we just cut that out.

So the girlfriend with the short, nasty speech, and the mother, who only appeared briefly, were the two that were very much reduced. And of course the mother [Clare Higgins], if she could have been given a scene to herself, she would’ve been a lollapalooza, because at the time we were in London watching, she was in a production of “Hecuba”! And she was bringing the house down--she is a killer. But she would’ve been too strong--and I hadn’t discussed this with anybody, actually--I was very glad that they didn’t go into the whole thing of her life because it was so ugly and bitter, we didn’t need it. It took away from the central theme of how he finds a different modus vivendi.

LW: The book was published in 1971, but the story has been updated for the film--my favorite example being Mrs. Arbuthnot’s observation that “Sex and the City” makes her feel better, knowing she’s not going to be around much longer.
RSC: Well, I had my doubts about that. That was something the director brought in. He also would’ve spiced it up a little more than that, in some places that I won’t go into--you know, when Ludo does get a girlfriend, and so forth. But we agreed it would be nice for him to have a nice girlfriend in this picture. It was not in the book; he never does find the right girl--but he finds himself, which is equally important.

LW: I notice that in the film, Ludo, as an aspiring but indigent young writer, uses a manual typewriter, and of course today that’s not as common as it would’ve been in 1971.
RSC: The reason they put that in is because--this was a laughing matter--I have an ancient manual one which I use, which they thought was uproarious. And that’s an in-house joke.

LW: I thought so! But I had to ask.
RSC: I can’t use anything with a motor. It’s gonna roll away. (Laughter) You’re very perceptive.

LW: When Ludo apologizes to her for having colored the details of their dinner when he wrote about it, Mrs. P replies: “I don’t think accuracy should interfere with a good story.” Was this taken from the book? What are your feelings about it?
RSC: I don’t recall that. I don’t think it was important; I think that was just a little chit-chat that goes on as they were discovering one other’s strengths, tastes, weaknesses and so forth.

LW: The reason I was struck by it as a film person is that there’s always this discussion back and forth: How true to the book should the film be? How true to reality should it be, and can you color things, can you romanticize things...?
RSC: Well, that’s interesting. We were relieved completely--the author was someone I never met, and the author’s husband was someone I never met, and the rights had just been given to us--so I think the only thing I was true to, was my sense of the woman. And I did identify with her very much because she was the main female character; and I have three sons, so at that time, with the young man, and his ambitions and so on, it was very natural and easy to me. And because of the changes that we did make, I didn’t feel that absolute fidelity to the book had to exist. As I say, you know, we cut out the whole business about his mother’s love affair and so on, and what that did to him, which was a major thing in the book because it was part of what made his life so miserable. But we couldn’t take up all of those side issues--we would’ve had a five-hour movie.

You know, the scene where the women in the hotel get together--there’s nothing like that in the book. They were not that friendly with one another, and that chummy, singing and dancing. But they did that themselves. You know, when Joan Plowright took the lead role, and word went through the theatrical community that she was taking the lead role, the director told me that every actress over 50 was begging for a role in the film. You know, because it was obviously a generational something. I didn’t think of it that way. And they were all experienced actresses who don’t get that many jobs these days.

And when they were all together they put together the song-and-dance thing - “It’s never too late to fall in love”--they did that themselves. And it was terrific. That was not in the book. There were certain people, like Mrs. Arbuthnot and so on, who were necessary to the story. But there wasn’t a group of women that made that front-and-center. But all these good actresses came out of the woods and he turned them loose. You know, when they kidded around, he just put it together. And I thought it was marvelous.

LW: It IS wonderful, and as a matter of fact, that had been one of my questions, which you’ve answered without my having asked it. That these are obviously classic stage and film actors--Anna Massey, Marcia Warren...
RSC: Yes! Their bios and everything, you know, came flooding in, I don’t know who the agencies were--I was only there for a couple of days, and he would send me pictures of people: “What do you think of this one or that one?” You know, they’re all mimeographed sheets, and I didn’t really know the names from one another; getting the lead was the only one I was concerned with--and of course the lead couldn’t have been more marvelous. But these other women were experienced actors, and there aren’t that many jobs out there. But they did that wonderful “You’re never too old to fall in love” and every time that’s played, I silently take off my hat to the director, for letting them do it, for knowing when he had a good thing. That wasn’t in the script.

LW: As I watched them, I was trying to think of what they reminded me of, and now I realize: These are British characters, almost out of a 17th-century Hogarth painting.
RSC: Yes! They all belong to a certain time and place, and the requirements of making a life at their age, and their resources and so on--but they all had spirit. Actually, in the book there was a big party, one of the women is moving to go live with her relatives, and she gives a big party, and everybody goes. And they tried to put that in, but Lee [Caplin, the producer who is also Ruth Sacks Caplin's son] said it just got too complicated, and said it didn’t add to the main story, and they just cut that whole section. And I didn’t miss it at all; I had just put it in faithfully because it was in the novel, but I didn’t miss it when it was taken out.

LW: Speaking about the British actors, there are several references to British cultural touchstones, like Mrs. Palfrey’s favorite film, Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945). I’m not sure how many people here would’ve seen that.
RSC: Brief Encounter was one that I loved. I remembered it very well; that was a very beautiful one that we liked for what it was, at the time we saw it.

LW: The themes of appearance vs. reality, and our inability to communicate, thread through the film. In writing to her daughter about her grandson’s failure to respond to her numerous phone calls, Mrs. P reflects that, “As at many times in her life, she questioned how her words would be interpreted.” Later, Ludo tells her that he and his mother “live on different planets. I sometimes visit hers, but she never visits mine.” When she introduces Ludo as her grandson, one of the residents comments that “The resemblance is uncanny.” Which of course is hilarious, because they’ve just met. At another point, Mrs. P notes how “remarkable” it is that “people see what they want to see.” Was this duality important to your vision of the film, and is it something you hope viewers will take back with them and think about?
RSC: That’s an awfully good question. No, I think it was just sort of in the book, just sort of a sad commentary that we’re on the same planet, and we just don’t always get to know one another well. But that wasn’t the effort of the author; I think this was a happy accident of something; and that isn’t it nice that this can be, if people just are what they are. And that if we can accept others where we find them, and if they appeal to us, who knows what could come out of it? You know, there’s a possibility in so many cases that people don’t follow up.
LW: Yes! Now, is there anything you’d like me to write--something I haven’t asked that you’d like our readers to know?
RSC: There were some little incidents that touched me. I liked the director very much; we became very, very fond of one another. And one of the things that he did was, when Mrs. Palfrey falls in front of Ludo’s apartment, that of course is not Plowright who falls. It’s a woman in a dark coat--a “second” who is doing the fall.

And when I saw her later and chatted with her, and she said she had been a dancer--and of course she can’t dance any more, but the director is nice and he gave her this job, because she’s able to fall gracefully. And after she did her day of the fall and the photographing and so forth the director sent her flowers. His appreciation of “you give what you have to give”--and she was an old-timer of great standing. And this is what she had left to give.

There’s another little part. At the very end of the movie there is a scene where Ludo is going out of the hospital and there’s a woman sitting in a wheelchair; he stops for a moment and just says hello. Some of the people who saw it said that we were making too much of a point, that he had now an understanding of elderly people, and so on and so on. They thought it was was kind of a set piece, and they didn’t know why; it was little, and it didn’t count much, but it was just an odd little set. But the fact was, that the woman in the wheelchair was the dancer who had fallen; and he wanted to have her face on camera. Because she had fallen and nobody knew she did the job. And this could be the last picture she might be making, and her face would show.

Well, I mean, it did nothing for the picture; and I didn’t know why he had it there either when I saw it. But when I realized who it was, this is his final--handing her a bouquet. But that was part of his texture, the director. And his understanding of what it is for someone who has been front and center and who is a dancer to be reduced to falling on the sidewalk. But he gave her flowers when she did her day of acting. There was a sort of a grand chivalry to him that I just loved. And you know, when Plowright was cast, every middle-aged actress in town showed up. It’s a sorority that I was never acquainted with, it has its own ties and its own vibrations.

LW: Wow. And you know, that did attract my attention, because in just that brief moment she’s on screen, you can tell that there is something special about her: that she is an actor, and not just an extra. As a matter of fact, Robert Lang, who plays Mrs. Palfrey’s aspiring love interest, Mr. Osborne...
RSC: Yes, wasn’t he marvelous?
LW: The film is dedicated in part to him. He passed away...?
RSC: Yes. That’s the director, too. I didn’t know the man; I didn’t see him when he was acting. I was only there for about three days, and I didn’t see him do his work. I thought he was marvelous in it. But Dan Ireland is a very, very warm-hearted, affectionate man with great sensitivity and feeling for everybody that he’s involved with, and I love that. So he dedicated it to him. And then, I was talking about mothers and grandmothers and this and that, and he said over dinner one night, “Well, maybe we ought to dedicate the film to mothers and grandmothers everywhere,” and I just laughed or something. And lo and behold, when I saw the credits the other night--it was being shown at the Canadian Embassy for a charity--there was a dedication, “To all the mothers and grandmothers.” (Laughs) That’s Dan Ireland. He just added so much to it, and we had a wonderful rapport with one another. And when I saw it on the big screen, I was aware of so many physical things that he put in, which are not my forte; the words, what people say to one another, are what I go on. But all of the gestures, the proximity of one to another...
LW: And of course all of these older actors, who may have started in silent pictures, would know that actions speak louder than words, especially for them; and would have been trained to use their bodies.
RSC: Yes, indeed. Is there anything else you’d like to ask about?
LW: Nothing that I have written down here, but if there’s anything else you think we should know...
RSC: So much has been written lately, and it’s all been so very kind. I had been prepared, I was braced, you know, because reviews are not all of a kind. And I just told myself I would have to not pay too much attention if they didn’t like this or that. But actually, everything has been so very kind and so positive, I’ve just been kind of astonished at the warmth of the response everywhere. And I think that the young man--my eye wasn’t on the young man particularly; it was always on Joan Plowright--I loved him. But as I’ve seen it now three times on the large screen--the young man I think is absolutely delightful--I think he has an enormous future in front of him. And it’s a type of sweetness that you don’t often get--you know, just a real good-heartedness and niceness without an undertone of pseudo-sophistication or wiseguy, or any of the other loathsome (laugh) habits of the young heroes in movies now. I thought he was just so lovely. And his grace ... his grace, and his manners. You know, perfect.

LW: I recall being impressed with him in one of last year’s films whose title escapes me at the moment; it was a period film...

RSC: I heard he was in Pride & Prejudice. But I heard he played a bad man, and I said there’s no way he played a bad man; he’s a good man. He just oozes sweetness. But it was the group of old ladies who pitched in who were so marvelous. They haven’t gotten as much notice. People enjoy them, but they don’t realize how they put themselves together.

LW: Again, it’s just an absolutely delightful film, and it’s no wonder it’s getting all the raves it’s getting. And I hope you do another screenplay very soon.
RSC: Well, there are a lot of others in the closet, too, but whether they’ll come to anything or not...

LW: Well, we’ll all be hoping they do! Thank you so much.
RSC: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure talking with you.

Adam's Rib Asks If We Are Ready For 9/11 on Film

The Devil and Daniel Johnston: An Interview with Director Jeff Feuerzeig

By Larry Hart, DC Film Society Member

The relationship of art and madness has often been a subject of fascination for writers and the psychiatric world. UCLA’s Dr. Barry Panter, who directed an annual conference on the subject in the 1980s, was quoted by the New York Times as saying, “The material artists use for their art comes from the primitive levels of their inner lives. As we mature and are civilized, these feelings (of aggression and sexual fantasy) are suppressed, but the artist stays in touch with and struggles to understand that primitive self. This puts (the artist) in the fine line between sanity and madness.”

In The Devil and Daniel Johnston, filmmaker Jeff Feuerzeig documents the life of cult singer/songwriter/artist Daniel Johnston, whose manic depression with violent tendencies led him to be institutionalized. Placed on drugs that controlled his illness, Johnston becomes a drugged out space cadet who loses his creative ability. Remarkably, with the help of new drugs that can be fine tuned, he has made a comeback as a sketch artist and sometime singer with a following that includes “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening and singer/songwriter Tom Waits.

Add Feuerzeig to that group. Storyboard caught up with him following his appearance at the DC Film Society screening of his film. Feurzeig said he was willing to spend over four years making the film because it was a labor of love.

“It was my life’s dream to tell the Daniel Johnston story,” Feuerzeig said. “I’ve been thinking about the film since 1990. “I’ve been obsessed with him since ’85. You write a novel or make a film because you believe you have a great story. I believe that Daniel Johnston’s life is incredibly cinematic and he had an incredible story to tell and he led an extraordinary life that shows truth is stranger than fiction. I couldn’t have made this up.”

A remarkable feature of this well-edited film is the availability of Johnston’s life on tape, as it were. Recording everything from his fights with his fundamentalist Christian family in rural Virginia to experimental songs he would give away to anyone who would take them, there is a filmmaker’s treasure trove of material to tell Johnston’s life story.

“As a filmmaker, I have been trying to find a project to utilize an internal monologue in a new and innovative way,” Feuerzeig said. “This became a reality when I discovered what was available. At my disposal were childhood arguments with his mother, audio verite of his high school hallways, surreptitious recordings of his crushed college romance. The greatest find was a virtual audio diary contained in a back and forth with his best friend. This allowed me to display Daniel’s essence in all his naked glory. The fact is you couldn’t make a film like this one about Van Gogh or even John Lennon because the material just isn’t there.”

The footage shows a gangly youth with artistic tendencies that are sharply out of place in New Cumberland, Virginia and causes great anxiety for his parents. It is also when Johnston becomes infatuated with Laurie, a college classmate with whom he had a brief relationship. This unrequited love and Laurie’s later marriage to a local undertaker, becomes the subject of many Johnston songs.

After running away and joining a carnival (yes, people really did do such things) he lands broke and alone in Austin, Texas. This being the early 80s, Johnston finds himself smack dab in the middle of one of the most creative music scenes in America. The cassette giveaways lead to a break and an appearance on MTV which jump-starts his singing career. It’s here where his illness takes hold and leads to an assault on his manager, Jeff Tartakov and his commitment to a mental hospital in West Virginia.

This did not stop Johnston, however and a radio broadcast on WFMU, New York, while in the hospital led Feuerzeig to Johnston. As Feuerzeig describes it:

“Daniel prepared this elaborate one hour special on two cassette decks. Here is Daniel's full mania in all his glory, doing comedy skits, playing all the parts himself and even interviewing himself. It was hilarious. There was already “underground” word of this crazy kid in West Virginia who wrote hundreds of songs of unrequited love about a girl named Laurie who married an undertaker and recorded all of his albums on a cassette recorder in his basement, so Feuerzeig listened in.

“During the call-in segment, I called and asked him if his song “Funeral Home” was taken from Springsteen’s “Cadillac Ranch” and he admitted that it was, so even then I was trying to decipher his art.”

Feurzeig said he formulated the idea of the film from the broadcast: “I believed that if I could visually make a story of Daniel’s life as innovative as the radio show, I would have a movie that would show the beauty and innocence of his life and music. Johnston’s work had deeply and profoundly affected me and and I became determined to do whatever it took to make the film.”

It took many years to become a reality.

The overweight, graying Johnston of today (in his 40s but looking much older) bears little resemblance to the young Johnston we see early in the film and Johnston’s songs are an acquired taste. But the devotion of fans like Feuerzeig and Johnston’s determination to overcome mental illness and the drugs he has to take to continue make you root for him. His sketch artistry has given him a successful side career as well.

What could have been a tragic life has turned out better than anyone could have hoped. Johnston now lives with his parents (in Waller, Texas) and his 80-something father is now his manager and we even get to see Laurie, the almost mythical love of Johnston’s life.

As for Feuerzeig, his next project concerns the small time boxer who was the inspiration for Sylvester Stallone’s “Rocky” character.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston opened in the DC area on April 28.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston: Audience Q&A

At a preview screening of The Devil and Daniel Johnston on March 16 at Regal Gallery Place, DCFS members also got to ask Jeff Feuerzeig questions about his film.

Question: What was your initial inspiration?
Jeff Feuerzeig: I discovered Daniel Johnston in 1986. I was doing college radio in New Jersey and writing for fanzines. I found out about his tape, "Hi How Are You;" its unrequited love touched me. It was unique. I thought Laurie was a character he made up. He wrote hundreds of songs about her; they are raw and direct. Due to his manic depression there are no filters and that is why he is unique. I bought all his tapes and started following his life, which was covered in the papers. It was tragic. I thought his life was cinematic.

Q: Did Daniel see the film?
JF: He saw it at Sundance and liked the colors.

Q: It seems similar to Chasing the Friedmans with all the tapes.
JF: The Daniel Johnston archive isd unprecedented. I had no idea he had taped his whole life. I transcribed all the tapes; it took 4-1/2 years. He recorded audio cassettes, letters, secret telephone conversations with his family, family arguments... He never stopped recording himself.

Q: Was he more creative on the medication or off?
JF: Off. I've read books about artists throughout history and they all have suffered from manic depression. During their highs they create their art, during the lows they self-medicate. Of course, back then they had opium, absinthe, etc. Daniel is heavily medicated now and is still creating.

Q: How easy was it to get access to the tapes?
JF: Easy. He wanted fame and had the confidence to push it on people. He has been happy to give me access. He was so open and didn't keep any secrets.

Q: Did you want to get perspectives from other musicians?
JF: No. I intentionally did not interview anyone outside his one degree of separation.

Q: The best recordings are in the last part of the film.
JF: The film is assembled chronologically and evolved chronologically. So his more produced music is at the end. I find his early work refreshing. When I hear over-produced music I don't like it. Open your ears. Check out the website.

Q: He sounded more folksy toward the end.
JF: Daniel Johnston subverted everything music was supposed to sound like or art was supposed to look like. No one ever thought he would be at the Whitney Biennial. His art and music touched many people.

Q: Has Laurie seen the movie?
JF: We found Laurie in Ohio and I sent her a plane ticket. She knew about him, but didn't know her effect. She didn't actually do much--she only rejected him. They had a reunion which we recorded for the DVD. She had saved all his stuff that he had sent her. She saved it because she knew he was special. He proposed marriage three times at the meeting. Daniel hugged me and said it was the best day of his life.

Q: Is he financially stable now?
JF: Yes, because of the film. His drawings used to sell for $125, now they are $2,000-$3,000 each. Like the R. Crumb effect. Daniel just did a two man show with Crumb in Paris and Daniel was a hit at the Whitney. All the art sold out and they had to get more pieces in. And the film isn't even out yet.

Q: He was obsessive from a young age. But when did the shift happen? When did he flip? Was it the acid? Or do you think he would have gone down that road anyway?
JF: It was dark and continued for years. He believed he was a Christian warrior. He was trying to save his dad from the devil. It went dark for him. Many people feel that the acid was the turning point. He wanted a girl friend like many other high school boys--sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Q: His parents are remarkable and stuck by him. What is next for them?
JF: They wanted to share the story: "Tell the truth, don't leave anything out," i.e. the drugs. They try to help. All the stories were in the newspapers; it wasn't a secret. They are in their late 80s. Mabel had one of the best lines but it isn't in the movie. Someone told her that her son should be locked up. She said if that was your boy I would do the same but this is my boy. His other brothers and sisters are bright people. But they didn't understand him. They take care of him. His parents study manic depression, learn about new drugs and read Brian Wilson's biography. They are incredible people.

Crazy Like a Fox: An Interview with Director Richard Squires

Free Zone: Interview with Director Amos Gitai

From the press notes

Question: Does the free zone in the film actually exist?
Amos Gitai: Yes, in eastern Jordan, an area has been set up as an economic free zone. There are no customs and no taxes. People from neighboring countries like Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Israel come here to sell and buy cars. I'm interested in these pockets of freedom in the Middle East where people of different origins can mingle and find things they can do in common. I'm interested in observing how people of the region are connecting to other people through everyday activities, and not only through political gestures. At this point we have been deceived continuously by the big politicians. It's necessary to start with the little details and maybe through these details we can transform our situation. Buying a car, fixing it, crossing the borders, sharing a story, a meal together... I'm interested in free zones where things like this can happen.

Q: And peace exists in this free zone?
AG: Yes. Complete peace. You can even see Israeli buses being sold to Saudis or Syrians. These countries normally don't even have diplomatic relations since they are officially in a state of war. But in the free zone, commerce gives people a kind of pragmatic attitude. I think such a less charged nationalistic attitude could lead to moving beyond the actual situation. I'm interested in exploring every vector that can create a meeting point. Trade is creating a common ground. People are opening their borders to cooperate and have common projects with economic value.

Q: Borders play an important role in the film...
AG: In the Middle East, borders are a real issue. It's always physical borders, political borders, which lead to mental borders. I've become very interested in borders--how they are crossed, who and what crosses them. My previous film, Promised Land, was about the trafficking of women across the Egyptian border into Israel. In Free Zone, it's about the voluntary transfer of a car across the Israeli-Jordanian border.

Q: You chose an innovative way of setting up the story...
AG: The film starts in Jerusalem in front of the Wailing Wall, the remnant of the sacred shrine of the ancient temple destroyed by the Romans. A young woman, Rebecca (Natalie Portman), is in a car driven by Hanna (Hanna Laszlo). We don't know who they are or where they're going yet, but the journey starts there. To show their memories and also the context in which these women are together, I use a series of layers of images - sometimes 8 layers simultaneously. I was interested in exploring how to integrate into the narrative fragments of desynchronized memories. We see Rebecca and Hanna continuing to drive to the Free Zone and at the same time we have this voyage being interrupted and charged with memories and references to how they came to be in this moving envelope called a car.

Q: Three women: one American, one Israeli, one Palestinian. How would you describe these characters?
AG: Hanna, the Israeli, is strong, charismatic, matter-of-fact. A bit of a bully, but also charming. All those characteristics at the same time which is a bit like an Israeli, in general. That's how I see us. Overbearing, but sincere. Not always respectful, but refreshing in a way. That's everything I like and resent about Israelis. I guess it's also a portrait of myself. I'm not different from my people... I always allow myself to be more critical with my people than with others. Leila (Hiam Abbas), the Palestinian, is more reserved, more respectful of others' personal space. She is shocked by Hanna's immediate informal attitude. Rebecca is a young woman trying to interpret the world for herself, to make up her identity. She's an American with an Israeli father and a non-Jewish mother. According to Jewish law, she is not Jewish. But Rebecca herself feels Jewish, even Israeli.

Q: Did you write the role of Rebecca for Natalie Portman?
AG: The screenplay went through a lot of transformations. The original version was written about men and at one point I decided to make it the story of three women. When Natalie Portman came to the project, we had a couple of early conversations and I decided to integrate some of her biographical elements into the story. I thought it would be interesting to have somebody from outside, kind of having her own point of view about what she sees and how she understands it, how she interprets it. Unlike Rebecca in the film, both of Natalie's parents are Jewish. But like the character she plays, I think she's researching who she is, what the world is about. I think she's using cinema in a good way as a means to exploring and understanding the world, which is something I try to do myself.

Q: In a similar way, you also integrated into the film the real stories behind the locations...
AG: Sometimes I like very much when a film location has a kind of an echo into the narrative. The oasis in Free Zone is actually a place where a Palestinian man, Mussa Alami, founded a farm orphanage for Palestinian refugee children after 1948. It's a place I remember reading about when I was 16 or 17. During its history, two attempts were made to burn it down, once by Palestinians, once by Israelis. I used the true story behind this farm to enrich the narrative of the film.

Q: Free Zone appears more peaceful than some of your previous films...
AG: More and more, I stress humanizing characters, to find ways to express their complexities and contradictions. The characters shown are accessible. Each one with its purposes, its rhythm, potential for anger, disagreement, love, affection. In a way, the film loves all its characters. This represents an understanding of relativity. By establishing relativity, the characters are softened. Not every film should be about rage.

Q: Are you optimistic about eventual peace in the Middle East?
AG: The Europeans, 50 years after they burned the entire continent and killed tens of millions of people, came to the simple conclusion that they are allowed to have conflicts, but they just don't need to kill for it. I think that relatively in the Middle East we did not kill so many people and we have not created such outrageous things as have happened in Europe. But it's definitely time for us to understand that we are entitled not to agree and even to have conflicts, we just don't need to have wars each time we disagree. We have to find other ways to negotiate our differences. We are not obliged to create a uniform society, a uniform Middle East. We can still hold on to our different cultures, our languages. We can continue to disagree. Even if there will be peace, there will remain conflicts. Maturity is about disagreeing without using force. This is true for personal relations and entire nations.

Q: Why did you choose to make a film with only women as the leading characters?
AG: Men are the generals, the military guys. They're usually the heads of states in the Middle East, with the exception of Golda Meir. We see the great achievements of men as keeping this area in constant war. It might be interesting to allow women to take over. Maybe they would apply a more down to earth and humanistic vision to our conflict. At the same time, I don't want to idealize women too much. Women are also capable of being killers. I consider myself non-racist and non-sexist, so I think we all have the potential of being angelic but also monstrous. I think that today, because women are still subject to sexist attitudes, they are agents of change in a positive way. Not because of some sort of DNA composition, but because of the social circumstances. They haven't yet been allowed to achieve their maximum liberty. Maybe the condition of not always being in the most powerful positions has given them a good critical way of looking at things. Women can be good agents of change, but they will have to assume this. It won't be given. It can't be taken for granted.

Q: For the first time, you shot a film in Jordan...
AG: Not only a first for me, It’s the first Israeli film shot in Jordan in cooperation with the Jordanian Royal Film Commission. There are no cinema treaties between the two countries, but the Jordanians helped make the film shoot possible. They were really cooperative and open, even when I explained that I preferred to shoot a common gas station or the barren free zone instead of tourist’s sites like Petra. There was no intervention in the content and they just went along with what the film needed. Initially, of course, there was a kind of resistance between the Israeli and Jordanian crews, but this melted down after only a few hours and relations became very warm. I think that just the shooting of the film is a good example of how political borders can be crossed. It was really a great experience.

Free Zone Opens at Landmarks E Street Cinema May 5.

Dead Man's Shoes: A Mini-Review

By James McCaskill, DC Film Society Member

God will forgive them. God will forgive them and he will let them into heaven. I can't live with that.

These unsettling words uttered by Richard (Paddy Considine) in the opening scene of Shane Meadows' film, Dead Man's Shoes, set the stage for the action to come.

The 2004 Edinburgh International Film Festival must have been better than I thought, what with films such as The Motorcycle Diaries, Duck Season, The Machinist, Yasmin, Heroes and My Summer of Love which also stared Considine as the religious fanatic brother and were screened there. And Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes had its World Premier there.

Richard (superbly played by Considine who also wrote the script) has just left the military and returns to his Midlands home seeking vengeance against a gang of small time drug dealers who have been bullying his younger less than able brother (played by Stephen Kebbell in a performance that never descends to cliché). The film never loses its small scale. The hoods are ones we can identify with. No pyrotechnics, no blue screen special effects.

One can only wonder why this film had to wait two years for US distribution. Vengeance films are all the rage, such as Chan-wook Park's Oldboy and Lady Vengeance and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence, all newer films which have been released already.

Considine never loses perspective and scale with his character. It never goes into overdrive, only a methodical attack on the small town drug dealers who have made his little brother's life miserable and intimidated everyone in this small town. I can still recall his steely eyes in the stare down contest with one of the thugs; cold, unblinking, full of warning of horrors to come.

The anger shown in his work surpasses everything you might have seen in his previous work. Considine continues his acting career with another horror film (Basque Summer) scheduled for release next Fall. Only this time he plays a far cooler character.

If you only remember Meadows' failed film Once Upon A Time in the Midlands, he also did not like it as the financiers made cuts and changes he did not like but was unable to prevent. At Edinburgh he called that film "A piece of shyte."

I won't give away all Richard's methods in getting revenge but will warn you not take a cup of tea from him.

Dead Man's Shoes is due to open May 12.

American Dreamz: Audience Q&A with Director Paul Weitz

American Dreamz opened April 21. This Q&A took place on April 3.

Question: Where do you look for material?
Paul Weitz: I look for an idea that I can expound on for an hour and a half. In this case it was self observation. I would wake up, read the paper, and be stressed out about terrorism. At night I would stress out about who would get kicked out of American Idol.

Q: Is it typical that it got made so soon after you had the idea?
PW: It only seems like it was done quickly because it is so topical.

Q: Did you have anyone in mind when writing?
PW: Hugh Grant was the only person I had in mind. It is based on Hugh Grant.

Q: How much thought went into the portrayal of the terrorists?
PW: First was appropriateness. I felt that the image of terrorists is like the shark in Jaws with people afraid to get into the bathtub. There is an atmosphere of fear, people can't think straight. That aspect was a pressure relief. Laugh about it--demystify it. On the second day of shooting the London bombings happened. The Brits quickly turned to gallows humor. That wouldn't have happened here. Second, is it offensive? I had no idea if people would walk out of the movie during the Al Qaeda training video scenes. But people would sit and laugh. We wonder how many takes they have to make when doing the training videos. For the Middle Eastern family, I wanted them to be bitchy and dysfunctional.

Q: Was it filmed in DC?
PW: No, the budget was too small to do much.

Q: This is the only movie I've seen about a U.S. president with no Oval Office.
PW: I wanted the President to have a nervous breakdown. I wanted him to be in bed in his pajamas like a little kid. But I wasn't able to do the Oval Office because of the budget.

Q: With such a low budget, how did you get such a good cast?
PW: They cut their fees. They all liked the script. Hugh Grant was in, like his tenth retirement.

Q: Why the dark ending?
PW: I thought it would be a cop-out if I didn't have it end that way. In the theater, a loaded gun has to go off. The movie is about the good and bad of everyone who has a dream. Hugh Grant is addicted to his fame. Mandy's boyfriend is obsessed with her. Maybe I should have had her depressed at the end. She is the epitome of the worst aspect of American Idol.

Q: What will George Bush say when he sees it?
PW: I'm expecting to be invited for the White House screening! He should feel honored to be portrayed by Dennis Quaid.

Q: How do you get peformances from your actors?
PW: Hugh Grant writes notes on the script. Dennis Quaid likes to be more spontaneous. It's interesting to have unknowns like Sam (Omar) in scenes with the professionals. I don't condescend and hope the actor knows his character better than I do.

Q: Was there any improvisation?
PW: A little. The President wandering off stage was Quaid's idea.

Q: Do you prefer working in film or theater? [Weitz's play "Show People" had just opened in New York].
PW: Film is better. I like the multidisciplinary aspects of film--working with the music, etc.

Q: What are you working on now?
PW: I'm adapting Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, a weird father-son story. Another project I'm looking into is about whether religious and non-religious people can communicate.

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