ALL THE VERMEERS IN NEW YORK


I lived in New York for a year before shooting this film, observing, nosing around, and researching. While much of the research is present in the film fortunately it is nearly invisible - the tulip proffered by Mark on meeting Anna at a café, the mere conjunction of choosing Vermeer as a topic in a city once called New Amsterdam, each carries a submerged bit of information utterly unnecessary for the viewer.

But the research was needed for me as a kind of invisible spine on which to place a totally improvised film, which from its formalistic appearance, and the seeming exactitude of its talk, its images and its structure, would seem to have been highly calculated. But there was never a word of dialog on paper, nor was there even a structural outline as I normally had had in previous improvised work. With the exception of a visually clear conception of the last shot of the film, to which everything needed to arrive somehow, it was all (carefully in a fashion) made up in front of the camera, sometimes the outfall of considerable work and thought on the part of the actors, as in Mark’s stockbroker talks, but as often as not the result of carefully orchestrated serendipity.

While in New York, to which I’d moved to for “romantic” reasons, I did very casually probe the business side of the film world, to be told that I had not a chance in the world there, and I should not even try. Jim Stark, whom I’d known a while - he was Jim Jarmusch’s first producer - told me I would be wasting my time to even ask of American Playhouse, which was one of the few viable options at the time. The advice was well-intended, and probably accurate as AP had a well-known record and in it was that it was rather literary and script-driven in its output.

I scarcely even tried. I did, though, write to Lindsay Law at AP, and after a rebuff or two, having made very clear that I was interested in improvising, had no script, and so on, I got an appointment. Lindsay and I talked for 30 minutes, had a beer, and agreed to meet again. We did, and another 30 minutes and another beer later, we had a deal - no script, just a vague “It’ll be about the stock market, the arts world, and New York, and Vermeer.” $240,000 which was their bottom of the barrel, lowest conceivable.

I chose to shoot in 35mm for the first time, feeling there was adequate enough money for the additional costs. I was immediately asked if I would, as I had before, do the 35mm cinematography myself - something I had not thought about at all. It seemed that 35mm was somehow very very different from 16mm and I would need “professionals”. In fact the only difference is in the size of the equipment and the optics, which offer less depth of field.

Once the money was secured, I asked Henry Rosenthal to do the production management, and, in deep error, said I would give him the “producer” credit, though he had nothing at all to do with raising the money - the normal definition of “producer.”

And I commenced to see actors, mostly those suggested by friends. There was in the normal sense, no casting call, though being a SAG production we were required to formally make an announcement. As there was no script, and outside the most generalized of ideas, there were no characters, my choice of actors was largely on the basis that (a) I liked them, personally and (b) thought they could act. The characters - with the exception of the stock-broker which was central to the idea, and then the opera-student (because I had originally thought to end the film with an aria being sung as Anna runs through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and this was mostly because I wanted an excuse to go back-stage at the other Met) - were basically determined by the people chosen to act in the film. More or less backwards to normal filmmaking.

My friend Jim Stark introduced me to Emmanuel Chaulet, and as we pondered her character basically landed on what her reality was: a young French actress in New York studying acting. Hence I had this character.

Jim also introduced me to Tom Noonan, who towered over Emmanuel. I liked Tom and figured he could play the stock-broker, never mind his other major role in Robocop 2 as a robotized killer. Tom and I worked a fair bit on what he would do, and also his wife (at the time) Karen Young was going to be in the film. But as the date to begin got closer, Karen suddenly pulled out, and Tom, who previously had agreed to my relaxed manner of working, suddenly became very Hollywood, saying I could have this day, and that afternoon. After a bit of this, I think to his surprise, I fired him - I was not working in such a manner. (From what I understand, perhaps both Tom and Karen, on seeing the end film, regretted their choices, though I didn’t.)

In haste I met, Steve Lack, who is a painter, but acts occasionally, having been in several Cronenberg films, and others of the 1970’s Montreal film scene (Steve is Canadian.) We got on well, and he slipped very readily into working in my manner.

The balance of the actors were similarly chosen - almost all via Stark, but some via other friends. In some cases they essentially played themselves: Gracie Mansion played herself, gallery owner; Katherine Bean played a young woman studying opera singing. I brought in Roger Ruffin, who had become “a regular” for me to play Grace Phillips wealthy father. A few other persons were involved but were dropped completely out of the final film.

Once the cast was gathered, and the time frame set, a camera package was rented for a month, and the actors were on call for that month. Places to shoot in had been lined up - from lofts, to the Metropolitan to the top of the WTC, Gracie’s gallery. The crew was myself, a camera assistant, a sound recordist and a general helper.

As, quite literally there was no “story,” not even an outline - though I had in mind many things I wished to convey, but in another manner - getting started proved a bit difficult. We had a stockbroker’s gorgeous Soho loft for a week, and we gathered there on a Monday, looking around, discussing the characters, and I left a blank for the three actresses, who fictionally shared this loft. I asked them, well, how do we start? We did not shoot on Monday. We tried again on Tuesday. We did not shoot then either. On Wednesday, confronted with the same tabula rasa, and confronted with the fact that Friday was our last agreed use of the loft, I intervened, and said that since we couldn’t figure out how to begin, we would begin with reality. And so the first words said in the film, said in the first shot, are, Anna to Nicole “Have you seen my lines?” Once this simple hurdle was surmounted, things snowballed very rapidly, and within the day we’d shot the first entire scene, and managed to finish with the loft in time - though if I remember correctly we went back for one last scene, once we knew, very much later, how the film concluded.

From that time on, things went more or less fluidly, one situation leading organically to the next, largely shot in the sequence in which you see them in the film. There were exceptions. For instance the two stock-market sequences were shot at the same time, in a “live” stock exchange. Steve had gone several days to observe, and had given me a minute or two of his spiel on the telephone. On getting to the place - which I’d seen earlier - I was allowed any monitor which was not being used, and chose one most visually interesting. We set up the jib arm quickly, and went through a kind of dry technical rehearsal with Steve, so he knew the mechanical constrictions of the shot. As it happens the broker in the next seat recognized Steve from Scanners, and was a “fan” so I asked if he’d like to be in the film so Steve would have someone to interact with directly. He said “yes” and we were off. The first shot was done with a wide-angle lens, and in this take Steve’s character, Mark, was having a good day. That finished - one take - I changed to a less wide lens to be a little tighter and claustrophobic, asked our “fan” if he’d mind exchanging shirts with Steve so his character would be wearing different clothes for a different day, and again, we shot, now with Mark having a “bad day” in which at the conclusion I directed Steve to become subdued and to hold his fingers to his temple as he would later on in his last scene.

In the course of shooting the characters were developed, by direction and by indirection. Deciding at once juncture, perhaps because I was unable to get an OK to go backstage at the Met, I decided not to have the aria a the conclusion of the film, and in consequence the opera singer character was thrown, fictionally and literally, out of the film: this provided for a scene in which Anna and her roommate conspire to force her out of the loft. Or, as the film went along, Grace Phillips for reasons best explained by her, became less and less amenable to the whole idea, and attempted to sabotage the film, at the conclusion of which she announced, quite directly, that she felt she had successfully destroyed it. How nice. (She went on to a successful career in the soaps in NY I am told.) In another case, of a character who never even got to the editing room floor, a so-called “French take” was used, as he acted out what he imagined to be a clever and witty piece which, even he conceded at the conclusion, was terrible. We went through all the motions - but there was no film in the camera. Or, on going up to the top of the WTC for a practice look and bit of scouting, it turned out the Steve Lack was in fact genuinely agoraphobic, which truth found itself clearly in the film as he gives his strange and disturbing spiel while overlooking the splendors of NYC.

And finally, there was the director, myself, who knowing well from past experience that reality tends to invade the open spaces of improvisation, had his own reality which in truth was what the entire film came to reflect. In the months before the film was made, I had had a profoundly affecting love affair, with a Portuguese singer whose name appears at the end of the film. We’d each gone off in September to do our “professional” work - she to record an album in Lisbon, and me to make my film. Somewhere perhaps a month after we parted, I began to read clearly her distancing from me, and in the midst of shooting, it became inescapably clear that our brief affair (the summer) was finished. I had been from the start of the film operating on a kind of auto-pilot mode, psychologically, in a way unable to cope with this shift. I had been deeply in love, and now…. And finally, one day in the middle of our month of shooting, it hit me - I don’t remember if triggered by a letter or phone call, or just the accumulated evidence. That day my crew arrived at our loft-working space to find me curled in fetal position, weeping on the floor, utterly shattered. Fortunately that morning the only shooting was a technical matter, something I could do like a robot - the tracking shot on the marble flooring of the atrium space next to the WTC. That afternoon the café sequence was in line, and I went, having never seen the place before. The actors were due a half hour after I arrived, and I quickly determined the basic shot, and noted early winter sun light glinting in off of a high-rise residence on a park opposite where we were - this light made a lovely reflective presence, and as soon as the actors arrived I hustled them as quickly as possible to get the shot while the light, shifting fast as the sun dropped The scene had been thought out, separately by the two girls, Emmanuel and Grace, with my collaboration, in which they would pretend on this “first meeting” with Mark that Anna spoke no English. I liked this idea, but said it would have much better effect if at some point, the trick was revealed to Mark, and I asked him to think of a “trigger” line, something to provoke a rupture of the game of not speaking English. At the same time, Grace had come to loath Steve (as did everyone, actors and crew, except me) and she was unable to conceal this from him, or the camera. Standing with me a moment after the ladies had arrived, Steve asked me, “Do these girls hate me as much as it seems?” I answered, as it turned out wisely, “Yes, in fact they kind of despise you.” Minutes later we were shooting, and while Grace - given the fictional chronology had no grounds to like or dislike a complete stranger, she oozes contempt for Steve/Mark throughout the scene. But, Steve, I think goaded by this transparent hatred, seems himself charming and gracious, no matter how dubious the treatment he is getting. In the scene he easily walks away the winner, having charmed the audience, and made a space for himself vis a vis Anna.

For this scene we did a rushed dry-run rehearsal, not acting it out or letting the trigger-line out of the bag, just so they would know how long they had (10 minute limit of film in the camera) and the signals I would give them to finish it up. We did it in one take, with me hurrying things very fast so as to use the light bouncing in from across the park. It is I think one of the best scenes I have ever shot, on one of the worst days I ever lived. One thing I know is that such a scene could never be obtained by writing, rehearsing - it is an all or nothing roll of the dice, and in this case, the actors and I won. In others they went directly to the trash bin or weren’t even processed.

Vermeers had a shooting ratio of about 4 to 1, in the film world a rather low one, to say the least. Almost none of the material left on the editing room floor was a repeat take, but rather completely other material which was excised after the fact.

On completion of shooting, I was frankly unsure that I had a film - the “story” was so gentle and un-literary in its form that initial looks at editing confirmed that it was peculiarly beautiful, and that the performances by and large were lively and convincing, yet it was not clear this could be formed into a compelling and coherent unity. The reason for this uncertainty was that there were large sections which had been shot - knowingly, purposefully - which were to function as movements as in music, and in this case with music. And so the film was edited, largely to completion, absent this major component. I then began working with Jon A. English, who had done the music for me in a number of previous films, though nothing so ambitious. In this case we were able to afford an 18 piece jazz orchestra with whom Jon worked, and the time and care to compose very carefully for the film. And then, via the strange circumstances of the film world and a few connections, for a garage studio rate, we were able to record the music at the SkyWalker ranch facilities to the north of San Francisco: one of the world’s best (and biggest) recording facilities, state of the art, with a space to accommodate - Star Wars scale - two full symphony orchestras. Our ensemble was dwarfed by the space, but the acoustics were adjustable, and we had the pleasure of the best for the musicians and Jon. The results were well worth it, and once the music, done in close collaboration, was slipped in to accompany the images, everything came firmly together, clean, precise and as visually calculated as a Vermeer.

The one shot which I rather dislike in the film is one which most directly apes a Vermeer painting, in which Anna stands by a window and reads a letter. Stupid.

On completion of the film it went to the wrong first festival, courtesy of its newly minted fake producer Mr. Rosenthal, and found a small distributor, Strand. It opened in 7 cities, including Los Angeles, on the first day of the Watts riots: all good reviews in the LA press, and closed cinemas for the next week. In New York it opened, against my wishes and advice, in a former porn house in the Village. It bombed there. Thanks to my directly contacting them, Siskel and Ebert reviewed it on national TV, two thumbs up, and it ran in Chicago and San Francisco for some months, making a very modest bit of money which absurdly placed it on the Variety top 50 grossing films for several months. It made no money.

American Playhouse, finding this modest and discreet film too “arty” for its audience buried it on an August screening. It was sold to a number of European televisions and did modestly well in Italy where it was a first: a subtitled rather than dubbed release. There is more about this film to be found on the Rosenthal pages.