The Legend and The Prodigy
By Antony Teofilo
New Kid On The Block
By the unheard of age of 24, Cambridge educated Sam Mendes had begun taking London's West End by storm. He would go on, at a tender age, to give several established stage productions [OLIVER!, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, CABARET] a swift kick in the pants, revolutionizing the presentation of many a mature show.
So acclaimed was this theatrical wunderkind, none other than Steven Spielberg tapped Mendes to direct a challenging film called AMERICAN BEAUTY, a movie that went on to win 5 Academy Awards. Not bad for a first effort from anyone else; for Mendes, whose list of accomplishments was already considerable, the Oscars seemed almost anti-climactic.
Dispossessed of any air of superiority to which such laurels might entitle him, Mendes is an affable chap who loves to play cricket, and has been known to bowl snowballs made of marble, paper, and ice, at considerable speeds, in the direction of small children (if co-stars Liam Aiken and Tyler Hoechlin are to be believed).
PRESS: How did you pick ROAD TO PERDITION as your second project [the first being American Beauty]?
MENDES: It took me about six months to make up my mind, and it was a tense six months because you freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all. Once I had decided to do it, I found I relaxed completely and I got immersed in the movie, probably because it was a period film. There was so much to do: research, casting, location scouting. You then forget the objective view of the film and you just make it.
PRESS: How often did the term 'sophomore jinx' come up?
MENDES: Every day. Tom Hanks kept saying 'sophomore movie! It's going to be terrible!' [I heard it] in my head all the time. You can over-think it. You've just got to go and trust your instincts. I wanted to find a movie that was completely different from the first one. Although, thematically at its core, it's not all that different; it's still about family. But the world: the canvas, the colors, the casting, everything was different. I wanted to keep exploring. I could have chosen something that was much more similar. I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film. I wanted to try to push off in a different direction. [ROAD TO PERDITION] is attempt to begin that process.
PRESS: AMERICAN BEAUTY had sex and teenagers and a modern sensibility and a certain black humor that were all entertaining. This movie has a different tone and is very quiet. Are you concerned about sustaining an audience's interest in this kind of a movie?
MENDES: Of course you're concerned sustaining an audience's interest. You're a storyteller and you want people to be interested. On the other hand, I think a lot of what dominates movie-making sometimes is panic that an audience won't take the time or doesn't have the intelligence or the integrity to understand a story that's told at a different pace from the conventional means of storytelling which is very, very fast. Story and cutting patterns are sometimes muddled in an audience's mind. This is a lot of story in less than two hours. Because it's not cut fast doesn't mean there's not a lot of story going on. Sometimes there's an impression of a lot happening in a movie, and nothing is actually happening. I wanted a lot to happen here, but the camera doesn't always tell you that that's the case. You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.
PRESS: Can you comment about the 'silent movie' feel of ROAD TO PERDITION?
MENDES: The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words. ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, strange art-house pulp movies like PAT GARRETT and BILLY THE KID and Kurosawa films that are not dialogue based. This is a story carried by the images. I took out dialogue in places. There was much more dialogue in the movie when we shot it and I took it out later. It was something that developed over time.
PRESS: Many of Jennifer Jason Leigh's scenes were cut...
PLOT SPOILER:
MENDES: Jennifer's a friend. Actors get used to scenes being cut. It was always a small part anyway. She did it as a favor to me. I didn't want to tip the audience off that this was an expendable character. This character was going to disappear. If a major actress plays it, you're genuinely shocked when suddenly [that character] is not there any more. The story just took too long to get going. These are all scenes that in and of themselves are wonderful. In this case, they'll almost certainly appear on the DVD.
PRESS: Was this movie originally going to be a Christmas release?
MENDES: The movie wasn't finished until April of this year. There's no way I could have gotten it ready for the end of the year. I work very slowly. Some people are able to get through post-production in ten weeks. Ridley Scott is like 'Bam, there it is.' It's like 'Wow, how did he get it done that fast?' He started shooting after me and it was out after Christmas. That's incredible speed. It took me six months to work on the score. We finished [ROAD TO PERDITION] sometime in late March.
PRESS: Is Hanks' character good or bad?
MENDES: I think he's morally ambivalent. There's good and bad in [Sullivan], and there's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil twenty years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it. [Sullivan] is humanized by the process when his child gets access to this world before [the child] is ready for it.
PRESS: Why was Tom Hanks the right person for this role?
MENDES: [Hanks] was the person who I saw in the character. I've always felt there's a kind of latent darkness in Tom that's underestimated. I'm thinking of parts [he's played] in PHILADELPHIA and PUNCHLINE. There's a lot of rage in what he's done in the past. People forget that because of the softer characters he's played. I wanted someone who could carry that weight of regret and guilt in silence. Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie. I wanted a sense that these guys had lived their lifetime together. I wanted that to be something that was visible in the performances. You need great actors to do that.
There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work. [That] was the case with Kevin Spacey in American Beauty. I think that's a wonderful thing when there's somebody at the top of their game but they still want to test themselves. In a sense, all three of the central performances are cast against type: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, and Jude Law. I love that. An actor has to understand the spirit and soul of a character. The physicality sometimes stands in the way of that. It's nice to be able break the mold.
PRESS: Was it difficult to recreate Chicago in the 1930's?
MENDES: It's very hard doing a period movie. You have to do everything, from the streetlamps to covering up the road markings. Every bystander has to be in period costume. You have to plan very carefully. In every other respect, most of the buildings are still there. If you look hard enough that world is still alive and available to you. Many of the warehouses and factories and hotels [of that period]l are going to [be demolished] soon. They're going to last another five or ten years. I really felt that audiences are becoming more sophisticated about when something is computer generated. I did not want to draw this movie. I wanted to shoot this movie. I wanted to see them walk in and out of buildings. I didn't want to see them walking out of buildings on a backlot with a skyline painted in post [-production]. In a way it was kind of a safety mechanism for someone [like me] who's used to building things that you can see on stage. I was really pleased to hear that Scorsese built the whole of New York in 1840 for GANGS OF NEW YORK.
PRESS: You're going back to direct on the stage. Why?
MENDES: I love doing it. I'm from the theater. I love directing theater. I think movies are a Director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.
ANTONY: The prevailing feel in many of today's movies is a fairly optimistic notion of the brighter half of the American ideal. ROAD TO PERDITION tells a story about the darker side of the American dream. Can you talk about the importance of telling this kind of story in today's world?
MENDES: [America] is a country in which you can tell universal stories. It's a country in which you can express these things freely. It's very important to remember that. We can sit here and watch a film that says many things, that has a morally ambivalent [protagonist], in which there is no obvious hero. There's right or wrong, but there are shades of gray in between. [As a viewer], you're always bombarded with black and white choices. [ROAD TO PERDITION] is not about black and white. It's more complicated than that. Thematically, it's very layered. I feel that it's important tell these stories that make the audience think, and for which there are no easy answers.
PRESS: Anthony LaPaglia was cut from the movie. Who did he play?
MENDES: He played Al Capone. There's one two-minute scene that I took out because I felt in the end Capone was a more sinister and frightening presence in the film if he never appeared. It has nothing to do with Anthony who was brilliant in the role. [The scene] wasn't necessary to the film. The film ultimately is about a particular father and son. You can't spend that long away from [the Sullivans] in the course of the film.
PRESS: Did you tell him?
MENDES: I called him up about three or four months ago and said, 'I'm really, really, really sorry...' It's a call you dread to make. I had to make the same call to Jennifer [Jason Leigh] and say, 'I cut two of your best scenes.'
PRESS: Do the actors ever get angry?
MENDES: They say, 'Thank you for [calling]. You'd be amazed how few people [call] to tell you.' I think they've all been through experiences where they've turned up for the premiere, and found that they're not in [the movie]. Characters disappear.
PRESS: What do you like to do outside of work?
MENDES: I play a lot of cricket.
PRESS: We heard you've got quite an arm when you throw a snowball...
MENDES: [Laughs] Ah yes, I like throwing snowballs at small children.
PRESS: So we heard. Tyler [Hoechlin] and Liam [Aiken] ratted you out.
MENDES: Did they? [Laughs]
ANTONY: That wasn't real snow though, was it?
MENDES: It was a mess of foam and ice and marble and all sorts of rubbish.
PRESS: What's Paul Newman like behind the scenes?
MENDES: He's the sauciest guy I've ever heard. He tells a lot of dirty jokes. He's very fun, but of course he's very private. He's very contained away from the set. He's not at all jaded about the film making process. I saw an older woman in a small town [where we shot]. She just thought, 'It's Paul Newman', and she just didn't know what to do with herself. All the blood drained from her face and she fainted.
A Living Legend
Conrad Hall picked his profession out of a hat. He and two friends from film school had just raised financing for their first feature, but there was a problem: they all wanted direct. They put three pieces of paper in a hat, each labeled in turn director, producer, and cinematographer. Hall drew cinematographer.
Five plus decades later, there aren't many like him, a true craftsman of cinema's golden age. In Hall's work you won't find extravagant visual effects or use of the new palette of digital tools available to today's production process. What you will find is a gift for illuminating the extraordinary visual details of a mundane world, and stories that gracefully explore the trials of what it is to be human: COOL HAND LUKE, BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, TEQUILA SUNRISE, AMERICAN BEAUTY, and now ROAD TO PERDITION.
Possessed of the rumpled amble and weathered countenance one might observe in an old sea dog who's gone to seed, Hall might look more at home dragging lobster traps off the back of a trawler somewhere in New England than behind a camera. His voice is brittle in tone, his gaze is razor sharp, his gestures enthusiastic and excitable when talking about his chosen craft and the benefits that cinema can offer us all.
PRESS: Do you make use of any digital technology?
HALL: No, God no. I'm partly Tahitian, so between these ears, it's solid coconut. [Laughs] Computers confound me. I know that it's the future of film. I like the prospect [of computers] because there's more control. Chemicals are so fickle. You've got time and temperature that govern how [film] come out. A color that you want to be one color ends up being too magenta, too yellow, too green, too blue. You've got more control in the digital [world].
PRESS: How do you feel about the colorist's role in post-production?
HALL: I shoot for the big screen. I don't do television any more, not because I don't honor it as a global medium. To me a story deserves a [huge screen], something big to look at. It's the same story, but I get a different emotion from [the big screen]. I don't want the colorist to be doing it, because he's got his own ideas about how [the movie] should be. They're not the person who made the original film.
PRESS: Looking back, are you glad you became a cinematographer?
HALL: I gave up ten years of doing what I do to write. I only did that not because I'm a writer, but because I wanted to direct. I thought that if I'd written something myself and somebody liked it and wanted to make it, [that] would give me the opportunity to be a director. This was in the '70's. I formed a company with Haskell and Wexler and shot commercials to make a living. I could make my nut in three months, and then I'd take nine months to write stories that I hoped to direct some day.
It was very fortunate that was I was part of a film school that the work was part of an artistic medium, and not a business medium. They taught us that what we crafted, we crafted as artists, not as businessmen. I consider myself an artist in an extraordinary collaborative art form.
PRESS: Can you tell us about the sources that inspire you?
HALL: There are filmmakers who inspired me. Kurosawa. When I got out of school and saw Rashomon, that [film] made a huge impression on me. I am the son of a novelist. I tried to find out if I was a writer, and learned that the academic language was not for me. I started to study cinema, which was a brand new art form, barely 50 years old when I started, and I thought, 'Wow, the ground floor.' And you get to tell stories, like my Dad did. [Hall's father James Norman Hall was a contributor to the book MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY].
PRESS: What were your visual inspirations for ROAD TO PERDITION?
HALL: Sam and I didn't have a clear idea. What we didn't want it to look like was a 'GODFATHER'-like a rat-a-tat-tat Mafia movie...what are some of the others?
PRESS: GOODFELLAS...
HALL: No, no, I'd love it if it looked like GOODFELLAS. I thought GOODFELLAS was a great looking Mafia film. But Mafia movies are almost a cliche'd genre. We talked about realism, naturalism. We talked about the times being this heavy weight on the populace...the industrial revolution coming apart, factories closing down, people out of work. We wanted to create a natural bleakness for the times. We certainly didn't want a happy film. When I got to actually doing something, I made it dark for the most part.
PRESS: There's a scene where a small boy hides in a dark car, and there's so little light in which to see him. Did that shot take all day to set up?
HALL: No, it didn't take all day. It took very little light, though. I had to do that with Paul Newman in COOL HAND LUKE when he was in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons. You have to eliminate something, so I chose to have no light.
PRESS: You've worked with Paul Newman before, can you talk about working with him now?
HALL: I did HARPER with him first. That was my first colored film. I'd been working in black and white until that time. Working with color was very scary. I haven't seen that film for 25 or 30 years. I find that [Newman] is a totally inventive kind of actor. He stands out as a movie star but not because of anything I do for him, or anybody does for him. There's a quality that he brings to the scene that allows him to be truly great in portraying a character. He's gotten better and better. Like many of us in the craft, he understands more than just acting. He's directed, I'm sure he's written so that he has this understanding of the collaboration involved.
PRESS: When an actor is uniquely attractive like Paul Newman, is it easier to make them look good?
HALL: It's not about looking good. We are who we are. I think Jude Law is a very attractive person, but this movie is not about making him look good.
PRESS: Do you find male movie stars are more vain?
HALL: Vanity comes in equal amounts in both sexes, I would say.
PRESS: Who was really tough to work with?
HALL: I can tell you who was really tough...Hawaii Five-0. Jack Lord. Because of his ego, and his insecurity. He didn't trust anybody. He tried to get me fired on STONEY BURKE. This was just after a few episodes. Lesley Stevens said, 'You want to fire Conrad? Tell you what, why don't we just stop shooting this series and forget all about it. If you fire him, I'm shutting down.' That straightened [Lord] out in a hurry.
PRESS: Who do you miss the most?
HALL: The great character actors like Struther Martin. He could do everything. Those wonderful character actors I miss desperately.
PRESS: Would you like to go back to shooting black and white film?
HALL: Oh, I'd love to shoot more black and white film. I love what Roger Deakins did with THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE. What a brilliant job. He had to double think it [the movie was shot in color, for black and white]. Did he ever double think it! A beautiful movie...
ANTONY: Congratulations Mr. Hall, on your Kodak Residency position at UCLA...
HALL: They wouldn't let my son in to USC film school. He joined up at UCLA, so I became the Kodak resident, and gave workshops in lighting and cinematography. I loved my film school, and I love all film schools. I wonder how everyone's going to find a job. I had an intern from Columbia College in Chicago. They have fifteen hundred students in their film program. Can you imagine? Every college in the world has film schools. Maybe we're going to have an artistic renaissance of some kind.
ANTONY: Taking into account the internet and digital technology and all the opportunities they make available to young film makers, would you recommend beginning their artistic process with film and going through the chemical process, or making use of the less expensive digital technology?
HALL: I would recommend what I consider is important for me. That's knowing all the jobs, all the crafts, well. Understanding them, at least. When I studied film, we all thought about directing, but we studied art direction and editing and cinematography and all of that kind of thing.
Understand drama. You're a storyteller, you're a communicator. It's not a job, you're telling a story. For me to tell a story well, I've got to be connected to that story. I've got to believe story. If I don't it's a job. It's about communicating. [Students] don't want to do something and put it in the closet. They want to do something so somebody can look at it, and change their life by it. It's got to have something stronger. To be a dramatist is the important thing, whether you use digital or film.
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