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.