In Between Lives, a Sam Mendes festival Catalogue by Harini Venkataraman

I N B E T W E E N L I V E S , A S A M M E N D E S F I L M F E S T I VA L

Foreword A mid-career crisis can happen to anyone. It can hit even those who objectively have the most fulfilling jobs. When it does, it inflicts pain on the individual suffering it and causes productivity losses for employers. Yet, the phenomenon remains stigmatized and under-researched, leaving crucial questions unanswered. What are the causes? Why does this malaise seem to strike in mid-life? And how can those who are stuck in its grips shake themselves loose? As we age, things often don’t turn out as nicely as we planned. We may not climb up the career ladder as quickly as we wished. Or we do, only to find that prestige and a high income are not as satisfying as we expected them to be. At the same time, high expectations about the future adjust downwards. Midlife essentially becomes a time of double misery, made up of disappointments and evaporating aspirations. Paradoxically, those who objectively have the least reason to complain (e.g. if they have a desirable job) often suffer most. They feel ungrateful and disappointed with themselves particularly because their discontent seems so unjustified—which creates a potentially vicious circle. While a mid-career crisis can be a painful time in life, it can also be an opportunity to reflect and to reevaluate personal strengths and weaknesses. Take heart if you find yourself in the depths of this U-shaped curve, because things can only look up from here.

HANNES SCHWANDT PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH (POST-DOCTORATE RESEARCH AT PRINCETON UNIVERSITY’S CENTER FOR HEALTH & WELL-BEING)

I N B E T W E E N L I V E S , A S A M M E N D E S F I L M F E S T I VA L

Table of 01// REFLECTIONS

A FESTIVAL OF CHANGE

A DIRECTOR OF VISION

02// METAMORPHOSIS

FILMS SHOWCASED

AMERICAN BEAUTY

20 4

Contents ROAD TO PERDITION

JARHEAD

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

AWAY WE GO

03// ENLIGHTENMENT

PRESIDIO

110

SIGHTSEEING

116

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

124

REFERENCES

126

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A Festival of Change The ideas that midlife marks the onset of decline, and that acceptance of growing limitations is the only mature way to deal with aging, are still generally accepted as good common sense. Common sense, however, may be overrated. Midlife is exciting because it is a time when people have the opportunity to reexamine even their most basic assumptions. By midlife, for many people, the pressures have lost much of their urgency. No longer riddled by the anxiety that they may not be good at anything, or by the need to prove that they are good at everything, they have the freedom that only self-knowledge can impart. They are also in less of a hurry. They have the time to listen to themselves, map their possibilities in the world, and create their new lives with care. The journey can take odd twists and turns before they end up in a satisfying place. A topic hardly comfortable to talk about can be brought to a reflective screen through a personal sabbatical that involves a drive-in movie theater, some drama, laughter, tears and a whole lot of introspection brought about by the questions underscored in all of Sam Mendesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; films in this film festival, In Between Lives.

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San Francisco is one of the oldest cities in the USA, giving it the mythical potential of the American dream that is the driving concept in most of Sam Mendes films. With it’s rich and complicated past, the city is a reflection of a beautiful life carved from the strife and struggle of endless dreams.

SIGHTSEEING

0 9:0 0 A M

12:0 0 NOON

08.01. 2017

Cable Car Tour from Powell St

Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39

08.0 2 . 2017

Golden Gate Bridge Viewpoint

Golden Gate Bridge Scenic Photowalk

08.0 3 . 2017

Alcatraz Island boat tour

Exploratorium: to fulfill your curiosity

08.0 4 . 2017

The Palace of Fine Arts Museum

Land’s End Park and Sutro Baths

08.05 . 2017

The Haight-Ashbury district tour

The Mission district: shop, dine and enjoy

MOVIES 0 3:0 0 PM

08:0 0 PM

Ghirardelli Square and North Beach

American Beauty

Bakerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Beach and National Reserve

Road to Perdition

The Curiosity Shop at the Exploratorium

Jarhead

High Tea at the Ocean Beach

Revolutionary Road

Alamo Square (Hayes Valley)

Away We Go

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A Director of Vision Born on August 1st, 1965, Samuel Alexander Mendes grew up a cricketer, a writer and a dedicated student of literature. Director Sam Mendes, therefore, had plenty of experience in theater before directing his first film. The skills he acquired from the stage, like his eye for performances, was evident even in his debut feature, which won him his first Oscar—among many. Mendes is the man who reinvented the musical Cabaret, making it a massive hit in London — he started out as a 24-year-old dynamo directing Judi Dench in the West End. He founded and ran the Donmar theatre for 10 years from 1990. He won five Oscars for “American Beauty” in 1999 when he was not even 35. Since then he’s shown both remarkable range and consistent quality, his eight titles including a gangster film (“Road to Perdition”), war film (“Jarhead”), a comedy (“Away We Go”) and a second American domestic drama, “Revolutionary Road,” which powerfully reunited Mendes’ then wife Kate Winslet with her “Titanic” co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.

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I don’t want to be known for one thing. I don’t want to have an adjective based around my name. ‘Lynchian’, I know — Sam Mendes

what that is; I know what ‘Kubrickian’ The Observer, 2008

is, and I know what ‘Bergmanesque’ means. But there isn’t going to be, and I don’t want there to be, a ‘Mendesian’.

While Mendes’ filmography is diverse, his characters and films are often defined by self-loathing or self-reflection. The protagonists he follows are generally at a crossroads, asking questions we all think about: “What’s the point of it all?” “Am I a good person?” “Am I like everyone else?” That last question, in particular, plays a major part in his films, leading the audience through a journey of self-discovery that connects in a very realistic and raw manner.

On stage, Mendes says, you might see similarities in the way a director handles a Shakespeare, a Chekhov and a restoration comedy, although nothing really links those plays. He observes: “I’ve always been drawn to directors that morph themselves according to the nature of the material. Ang Lee, to me, is a textbook example of a brilliant director who can apply himself very specifically to a martial arts movie, a suburban drama, an 18th-century English classic, or special FX movie. I never found myself to be an auteur in the sense that you could study the work of Kubrick and know who the director was just by watching three minutes of a film. He’s not someone who is disappearing into the material, but imposing himself on it. And it seems to me directors are basically divided into those two categories.”

Picking apart at the time he takes to direct each movie, and the careful methods by which he selects the scripts, Sam Mendes can be considered the purveyor of what he calls the ‘American mythology’— the stage of hopes, dreams and journeys. A Mendes film festival, therefore, is not a typical come-watch-and-go kind of a movie marathon. It is a vacation of sorts, a temporal space for adults to survey the reality (or lack therein) of their fairy-tales, and some well-deserved introspection.

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Showcase of Films

Three of his films—American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, and Revolutionary Road—have been made in the same very composed, austere, almost old-fashioned way. Jarhead, a grueling look at combat during the first Gulf War, was something else. Away We Go, on the other hand, enjoyed a half-balanced chaos that somehow echoed the calmness of American Beauty.

08.01.2017 08.00 PM

AMERICAN BEAUTY

08.02. 2017 08.00 PM

ROAD TO PERDITION

CO M E DY- D R A M A | 1 0 0 M I N U T E S

T H R I L L E R- M Y S T E R Y | 117 M I N U T E S

08.03. 2017 08.00 PM

JARHEAD

08.04 . 2017 08.00 PM

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

08.05. 2017 08.00 PM

AWAY WE GO

WA R- B I O P I C | 12 5 M I N U T E S

FA M I LY- D R A M A | 119 M I N U T E S

I N D I E CO M E DY |

98 MINUTES

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My name is Lester Burnham. This is my neighborhood; this is my street; this is my life.

“AMERICAN ROSE”, written by Alan Ball

I am 42 years old; in less than a year I will be dead.

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Remember those posters that said, “Today is the first Lester Burnham —

day of the rest of your life”? Well, that’s true of every day but one — the day you die. 22

R AT E D “ R ” for 18yrs+ only

American Beauty D AT E :

CO M E DY- D R A M A | 1 0 0 M I N U T E S

08.01.2017 TIME:

08.00 PM Lester and Carolyn Burnham are, on the outside, a perfect husband and wife in a perfect house in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his teenage daughter’s friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with an abusive father.

C A S T:

Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Allison Janney, Peter Gallagher, Wes Bentley, Chris Cooper

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AWA RDS WON:

AC A DEM Y AWA RDS USA (2000)

GOLDEN GLOBES USA (2000)

BBAAFFTTAA AAW WAARRDDSS UUKK ((22000000))

Best Picture Bruce Cohen , Dan Jinks

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Best BestFilm Film Bruce BruceCohen, Cohen,Dan DanJinks Jinks

Best Actor in a Leading Role Kevin Spacey

Sam Mendes

Best Director Sam Mendes Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Alan Ball Best Cinematography Conrad L. Hall

Best Director - Motion Picture

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture Alan Ball

Best BestPerformance Performanceby byan an Actress Actressin inaaLeading LeadingRole Role Annette AnnetteBening Bening Best BestPerformance Performanceby byan an Actor Actorin inaaLeading LeadingRole Role Kevin KevinSpacey Spacey Best BestCinematography Cinematography Conrad ConradL. L.Hall Hall Best BestEditing Editing Tariq TariqAnwar, Anwar,Christopher Christopher Greenbury Greenbury

SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWA RDS (2003)

AMERICAN SOCIET Y OF C I N E M AT O G R A P H E R S , USA (2000)

DIRECTORS GUILD OF AMERICA, USA (2000)

WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, USA (2000)

Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role Kevin Spacey

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases Conrad L. Hall

Outstanding Directorial

Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Alan Ball

Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Annette Bening Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Theatrical Motion Picture Annette Bening Wes Bentley Thora Birch Chris Cooper Peter Gallagher Allison Janney Kevin Spacey Mena Suvari

Achievement in Motion Pictures Sam Mendes Cristen Carr Strubbe (unit production manager) Tony Adler (first assistant director) Carey Dietrich (first assistant director) Rosemary C. Cremona (second assistant director) Stephanie Kime (second second assistant director)

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THE ONION INTERVIEWS AMERICAN BEAUTY’S STARS Joshua Klein Sep 29, 1999

First-time director Sam Mendes and first-time screenwriter Alan Ball are welcome additions to the film world, but much of the praise American Beauty has earned stems from its superlative cast, from the established talents of Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey to relative newcomers Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, and Mena Suvari. The Onion recently spoke with Birch, Bentley, Suvari, and Spacey about risky roles, American Beauty’s intelligent view of adolescence, and the film’s award-magnet buzz.

when their priorities began to change, on both sides. So, hopefully, [the results] would really be that much more heartbreaking. When something happens to him, he’s able to remember those feelings that have been long gone. I think that’s a journey anyone could identify with. I mean, who wouldn’t want to tell their boss off? Get the car they’ve always wanted.

The Onion: For most of the film, your character behaves very childishly, while the younger characters are tackling adult dilemmas.

KS: I think that no matter who you are, the temptation is there to do that, so I try very hard not to be influenced by the stuff that happens on the outside. I still read scripts the way I read them in school: I don’t know which part they want me to play, generally. That’s actually fun, because then you can discover the story. And if you love the story—if it makes you go, “Wow, this is beautiful,” or funny, or, “I want to try this genre”—then the character is secondary to the story. If the story is great, the character probably will be. If the story’s not good, then I don’t care how much money they’re talking about, or who’s directing, or who’s in it: You should probably

Kevin Spacey: I think he manages to tap into a part of his life that must have been alive and well in college. [Laughs.] Actually, Annette and I spent a good deal of time in rehearsal talking about what they must have been like when they first met, how great their life was, how much they loved each other, and what it was like when they had Jane [their daughter, played by Thora Birch]. Then we wanted to figure out where it started to fall apart, and

O: As your profile rises, do you feel a temptation to just take the money and run?

Everybody’s naked in this film, both emotionally and physically not do it. [Laughs.] That’s kind of been my philosophy, and I’ve had really good luck in picking things that have challenged me and challenged audiences, and in some cases movies that actually might stick around for a while. Rather than churning them out year after year. O: There seems to be a concerted effort to market this movie young. KS: I know there are different ads. There’s an ad running on MTV that hasn’t been running on general TV that highlights the three young actors, Mena, Wes, and Thora. But in actuality, the campaign hasn’t started yet, which is why I’m so pleased that word-of-mouth has gotten out so much. The film is doing really well in

the 16 theaters it’s in so far. The funny thing is, I think they’re finding that it’s appealing to a lot of people, so they don’t really have... Usually, they have a big marketing plan—you know, “This is the audience we’re targeting”— and they seem to be recognizing that the film is going beyond that. They’re doing what they can to help out. You might even see me on MTV! [Laughs.] The Onion: Your official fan club [www.thora. org] seems to be concerned about American Beauty’s adult themes, and the fact that the film is rated R. Thora Birch: I know. I think they’re more upset about it than the fans are! I think that’s only because they deal with people who like a lot of my older films, and those are young kids. O: Everybody’s naked in this film, both emotionally and physically.

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TB: I know. We’re all going to go off and start a commune. We’re all going to be naked. O: Is that an issue when you look at a script? You’re young, but that stuff is still going to be out there when you’re old. You’ll have to deal with people posting it up on your fan club, or some alternate fan club. TB: [Laughs.] Right, right! No, actually, I was a lot less nervous about doing those scenes than I expected to be. I wasn’t nervous doing it, and I had no inhibitions from before—no serious inhibitions—because I always felt it was such a necessary step for the character. But if you watch the film, and you watch the events in the context of the film, I would hope that a certain realization and under-

That everything is

standing would come about, as it did for me. If someone wants to post it up on the Internet, go ahead. It’s America. O: There seems to be a new wave of films addressing troubled young people in the suburbs, films like American Beauty, Happiness, and Election. What do you think is inspiring the trend? TB: I think it comes from a place in reality. I have friends who live in the suburbs, and they’re some of the most unhappy people you’ll ever come across in your life. And this notion that everything is totally copacetic and blissful in Middle America, while everyone else is fucked-up in the city, is just a joke. I also don’t think the characters in this film are exclusively for the suburbs. I think they can be anywhere. It deals with issues that are much more universal than just Middle America. The Onion: Did you film this movie right before American Pie? Mena Suvari: No, after, and then they changed the name to American Pie. [Laughs.] Thanks.

totally copacetic and blissful in Middle America is just a joke. 30

O: They’re very different movies. I assume that when you see the material for American Pie, you get very different thoughts from when you see the material for American Beauty.

MS: Yeah. I mean, there were emotions I could identify with in both of them, and they were both true-to-life. But American Beauty is unbelievably different from American Pie. I’ve had people try to compare them, but it’s just... I just have to say, “I’m sorry, I don’t agree with you.” O: American Beauty treats its younger characters intelligently. Do you think it’s strange that that’s almost considered a risk these days? American Beauty respects its characters: They’re not just there to be slipped laxatives. MS: [Laughs.] I really hope that this broadens people’s views, and that they create more films around that kind of experience for teenagers. I’ve had a lot of people tell me, “You know, I didn’t do any of that in American Pie.” I think you’ve got a lot of movies that are just entertainment—sitting down and having a good laugh—but this film really makes you think. You can identify with it. The Onion: You get to stare a lot in the movie. Was it difficult to maintain that concentration? Wes Bentley: [Laughs.] That was the nature of the character. I was lucky to have a character like that. I did stare a lot. It’s more like spacing out. It’s not really acting, I guess. [Laughs.] O: One of my co-workers, after seeing The

Sixth Sense, said of the kid, “He whispers a lot.” WB: Well, I stare a lot. [Laughs.] O: The movie’s marketing line is, “Look closer.” If you look closer, what do you see? WB: Whatever you see. I don’t think it’s about looking at anything else; I think it’s about what you walk out with. You know, a lot of times, people have asked me to describe the film, and I have no way to describe it as a storyline. The only thing I can say is that you’ll go in and think you’re watching the movie, but then you forget you’re watching a movie because one little thing about yourself gets caught and then you get hooked on it. And instead of identifying with the character, you start battling between the movie and yourself, and then the movie is you, and when you walk out, you have looked closer. It’s cheesy, but I think it’s true. Looking closer is something that has to do with you, not with the movie at all. I think that’s what people will see. A lot of times, they come out “looking for it.” They’re like, “I think I get it, but I...” [Laughs.] Well, if you think you do, you probably did.

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T H E

M Y S T I C I S M

In 1999, American Beauty put every frustrated suburbanite’s darkest fantasy on display. Brought to the screen by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks, screenwriter Alan Ball’s black comedy told the story of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), a depressed family man who succumbs to the inevitable midlife crisis. He implodes his sham of a marriage to his cheating wife (Annette Bening), leaves his dead-end job, and becomes infatuated with his daughter’s (Thora Birch) best friend (Mena Suvari). Sam Mendes’s directorial debut was so resonant that, in 2000, it brought home five Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture statue. Nearly 20 years later, it’s still painfully relevant.

O F

R E A L I T Y The story of American Beauty proved polarizing even before the cameras rolled; some actors were as strongly drawn to the project as others were repelled. You can put Spacey in the first camp: “I read the screenplay and nearly fell out of bed. I thought I better meet him [Mendes] quick before someone else read it.” “American Beauty” is more than a biting satire on suburban life. This somewhat contrived story is meant to be an allegory. Alan Ball’s richly textured screenplay— which presents a cast of peculiar, almost cartoon-like characters — feels more like an assemblage of metaphors than a tale of real-life people we can personally relate to. “Look closer,” the film’s tag-line tells us. Look closer at the beautiful things we yearn for and spend our life chasing. The characters in “American Beauty” are yearning to fulfill a dream that they think will somehow get them out of their miserable life: For Lester Burnham, it is an overwhelming passion for a young girl.

AND OTHER RE VIE WS ABOUT THE FE ATURE FILM C ALLED “AMERIC AN BE AUT Y ”

For his wife, Carolyn, it is becoming the most successful real estate agent in her town. For their teenaged daughter Jane, it is changing her physical appearance. For their neighbor, Colonel Frank Fitts, it is the semblance of a happy, normal domestic all-American life. By the end of the film, most of the characters get a taste of their dreams and discover the underlying emptiness of their lives. Looking closer, they see the decay that has replaced genuine beauty and meaning. Their dreams are nothing but illusions. The late Roger Ebert once said this of the film: “All of these emotional threads come together during one dark and stormy night, when there is a series of misunderstandings so bizarre they belong in a screwball comedy. And at the end, somehow, improbably, the film snatches victory from the jaws of defeat for Lester, its hero. Not the kind of victory you’d get in a feel-good movie, but the kind where you prove something important, if only to yourself.”

It is easy to take this film for yet another Hollywood tale about the emptiness and meaninglessness of life stripped from all illusion and pretense. The only thing we have known throughout the film is Lester’s continuing dissatisfaction with the materialistic tendencies of ‘nineties America. This is what Ebert was alluding to in his critique of the film. The moments of authentic relationship and goodness comprise genuine American beauty that redeem a wasted life, and that make the consequences of losing one’s way so real and tragic. Instead of building upon what they had, Lester and his wife lose themselves and trash the beauty that could have been theirs. It is Ricky, the mysterious boy next door, who literally shows us a close-up picture of “beauty” captured on film—a discarded plastic bag dancing in the wind. For him, garbage is beauty. After all, Ricky can find beauty in just about anything— his first reaction upon discovering Lester Burnham shot dead is to watch with passionless fascination the blood slowly ooze from the fresh wound in his head. His version of American

Beauty is completely disconnected from the reality of the people and real life that surround him. As Lester dies, he snatches from life those few things that make you the happiest – or the most content. It was never about the couch, or the ass-kissing for him (‘it’s all just stuff’ he quips earlier in the film), no, for Lester it was about redefining yourself as something that matters, something visible but with a feeling so intangible. Just like the plastic bag floating through the wind in final shot, he is concerned with only existing, being whisked along on this thing called life – and he was there to enjoy the ride. Think of it like a Fight Club for the middle-class. Alan Ball and Sam Mendes had something truly important to say with American Beauty – it’s just amazing that they were able to do so with nothing more than such beautiful imagery.

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I saw then that my fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s only fear was that his son would follow the same road.

“ROAD TO PERDITION”, a graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner

And that was the last time I ever held a gun.

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When people ask me if Michael Sullivan Michael Sullivan, Jr.â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

was a good man, or if there was just no good in him at all, I always give the same answer. I just tell them... he was my father. 38

R AT E D “ R ” language, violence

Road to Perdition D AT E :

T H R I L L E R- M Y S T E R Y | 117 M I N U T E S

08.02.2017 TIME:

08.00 PM Mike Sullivan and Connor Rooney are two henchmen of elderly Chicago-based Irish-American mobster John Rooney, Connor’s father. Caught witnessing a shoot-out by Connor, Michael Jr. is sworn to secrecy about what he saw. Regardless, Connor, not wanting any loose ends, makes an attempt to kill Mike, his wife and their two sons — and he succeeds in killing half of Mike’s family. Forced to run away, Mike seeks revenge, but also those in his family that had no say in what he chose as a living to have some redemption for their eternal souls.

C A S T:

Tom Hanks, Tyler Hoechlin, Paul Newman, Daniel Craig, Jennifer Jason Leigh

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AWA RDS WON:

AC A DEM Y AWA RDS USA (2003)

B A F TA AWA R D S UK (2003)

Best Cinematography Conrad L. Hall Nomination and award were posthumous. His son Conrad W. Hall accepted the award on his behalf.

Best Cinematography Conrad L. Hall Posthumously Best Production Design Dennis Gassner

ACADEMY OF SCIENCE FICTION, FA N TA S Y & HORROR FILMS, USA (2003)

Best Action/Adventure/ Thriller Film Best Performance by a Younger Actor Tyler Hoechlin

AMERICAN SOCIET Y OF C I N E M AT O G R A P H E R S , USA (2003)

GOLDEN GLOBES USA (2000)

YOUNG ARTIST AWA RDS ( 20 0 3)

PHOENIX FILM CRITICS SOCIET Y AWA RDS ( 20 0 3)

Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases Conrad L. Hall Posthumously

Best Motion Picture - Drama

Best Performance in a Feature Film - Leading Young Actor Tyler Hoechlin

Best Actor in a Supporting Role Paul Newman

Best Director - Motion Picture Sam Mendes Best Screenplay - Motion Picture Alan Ball

I N B E T W E E N L I V E S , A S A M M E N D E S F I L M F E S T I VA L

MOVIEWEB TALKS TO THE WRITER OF THE 2002 GRAPHIC NOVEL, “ROAD TO PERDITION” Brian Gallagher 2010

Back in the summer of 2002, I saw a film in my local Minnesota theater that I thought was a sure lock for several categories at the Oscars, including Best Picture. Sadly, Sam Mendes’ utterly gorgeous portrait of Depression-era gangster life, Road To Perdition, only picked up a handful of Oscar nominations, mostly in technical categories, with the only Oscar win going to the late Conrad L. Hall for his stunning cinematography. In my eyes, the film is one of the most tragically underrated films of the 21st Century. Road to Perdition is coming to Blu-ray

for the first time on August 3, 2010 and hopefully this new release will give the film the awareness needed to become the classic it surely deserves to be. I recently spoke with Max Allan Collins, who wrote the graphic novel this film was based on, about his experiences on the film, and here’s what he had to say. BG: I read that the graphic novel was influence by a manga Lone Wolf and Cub. Can you talk about your experience with that manga and how that lead into writing Road to Perdition?

The baby cart is loaded up with samurai swords and smoke bombs. 44

shogun and his people, his wife is killed and he goes on the road with his baby. The baby cart is loaded up with samurai swords and smoke bombs and he goes around trying to avenge his wife’s death, while being pursued by other samurai. It occurred to me that there were similarities between a shogun and a godfather and the shogun’s executioner and maybe the godfather’s top enforcer. So that was sort of the source, but there also was a literal, historical source, which is John Looney, he’s called Rooney in the picture, the character that Paul Newman plays. There was a real John Looney and a real Connor Looney and some of Road to Perdition has a strong, historical underpinning. Max Allan Collins: Yes. I had actually seen the films based off the manga before I had actually discovered the manga itself. The film is an overriding presence here, I guess. They were such really good movies made in Japan and there was an American movie called Shogun Assassin that sort of cobbled together two of them. That got into the American pop culture before the manga did and they were eventually reprinted and they’ve been reprinted a couple of times. Also, there was a John Woo movie, back before John Woo was famous, that drew upon the same source material and I was an early admirer of John Woo and knew that picture too. That’s a movie called Heroes Shed No Tears. The basic premise of Lone Wolf and Cub is the shogun’s top executioner is betrayed by the

BG: With your series’ on Dick Tracy and Elliot Ness, it seems that you have a real passion for this time period and this really does stand out as well. Can you talk about taking those initial elements and bringing it into this 20s and 30s gangster era? Max Allan Collins: Well, I always was fascinated with the gangsters and outlaws of the 20s and 30s. It probably began with my fascination with Dick Tracy. It sounds like a PR thing, but Dick Tracy really was my childhood obsession and it came to be the first major break of my career when I was in my early 20s and I got to write the script for 15 years. It sounds made up but it’s actually true. Dick Tracy began in 1931 and was, to some degree, based on Elliot Ness and Al

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Capone by its creator, Chester Gould. When The Untouchables came on TV when I was a little kid, I was very interesting in that. I live in the Midwest, fairly close to Chicago. I live in Iowa where we had a lot of famous outlaws come through here, John Dillinger, Bonnie & Clyde, Babyface Nelson, this was their territory. My dad told me stories from his childhood about the outlaws coming through his part of the world when he lived in a little Iowa town. That really sparked my interest and I think, too, I’ve always been interested in finding a reality behind any historical fiction. I still, to this day, if I read historical fiction or I see a historical movie... if I see The Tudors, I’ll go out and buy a book on The Tudors. That’s just how I’m wired, because I always find out that the reality is even more bizarre than any Hollywood version. I good example is Connor Looney and his father John Looney. Sam Mendes actually changed the name from Looney to Rooney because he thought it was so absurd that this guy would be called Looney, but, in real life, he was John Looney and his son Connor, who was a homicidal maniac, was nicknamed “Crazy” Connor. Now, you would think if your last name was Looney... but this guy was so out there, that they had to add “Crazy” to the Looney cocktail. You can’t make stuff up like that. BG: Exactly. I can see what they were doing too. People won’t believe you if it’s true anyway.

Max Allan Collins: Right, right. It’s where history is too on the nose. Now, the Tom Hanks character and the Tyler Hoechlin character, they’re my constructs. They have their roots in Lone Wolf and Cub, but there are some historical underpinnings there too, because there were several betrayed lieutenants of the Looney gang, who had a similar feud and, in fact, Connor Looney died in the street, during a rainstorm, not unlike the way his father dies in the movie. There’s

some history in there and, I have to say, I think I would be a huge fan of this movie, even if I had nothing to do with it. I just watched it again last night, my first chance to see it on Blu-ray. I probably hadn’t seen it in a couple of years and I just feel like I won the lottery, having a movie this good being made out of my work. BG: The film did well and it won an Oscar but, to me, it’s one of the most underrated

You would think if your last name was Looney... but this guy was so out there, that they had to add “Crazy” to the Looney cocktail. You can’t make stuff up like that.

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movies of, at least, this century. I was curious if that might have had something to do with the wholesome Tom Hanks playing a hitman character? Maybe audiences weren’t ready for something like that? Max Allan Collins: Well, with somebody like Tom, he gets the occasional backlash, and that’s just the nature of media. Also what happened in that particular year, Perdition appeared early in the year, I think it was in the beginning of the summer. At that time, there was huge Oscar buzz for it. It

was thought to be a slam dunk and it got many rave reviews. But what happened, as you know, stuff tends to get forgotten and all the last-minute entries get all the Oscar attention. In fact, the Scorsese film, Gangs of New York, came out and had more nominations than Perdition did. I think, in retrospect, Perdition is a much stronger picture and we have people, almost every day, mention the film to me. I think one of the aspects that have made it endure, and why I think it really is going to be a classic, is the father and son aspect of the story. I did an appearance, not too long ago, with Phil Alden Robinson, the director of Field of Dreams, another Iowa project, and he was talking about the fact that so many fathers and sons come to him and talk about the impact that film had. It absolutely resonated with me about the kind of feedback I’ve gotten. I give total props to Sam Mendes and (screenwriter) David Self because I think they did even more with the father and son aspect of the story than I did in the graphic novel. I don’t always like to admit that somebody else did my own work better than I did, but they really knocked the ball out of the park. BG: I was really stunned with the visual world that Sam Mendes and Conrad L. Hall created with the film. Can you talk about how the visual look of the film matched up with the visuals of the graphic novel?

Max Allan Collins: My artist, Richard Piers Rayner, on the graphic novel, he drew a lot upon the pulp and magazine illustrations of the day. That same kind of attention to the art of the period, both fine art and commercial art, I think permeated Conrad L. Hall’s approach. It’s a very somber, low-key movie. I know I heard on the Blu-ray, Sam talk about the fact that he didn’t want to do the very stereotypical pinstriped suits and campy 30s thing that we see so often. He wanted it to be this very somber, Depression-era world that you enter into and believe. The art direction on the picture is phenomenal as well. BG: Is there any thing you can tell us about the status of Road to Purgatory? We reported on it a few years ago that you were adapting your own graphic novel and were directing the film. Is there anything you can tell us about that? Max Allan Collins: Well, I can only tease, I’m afraid. We seem to be right on the brink, or maybe it’s the precipice, I don’t know (Laughs), of a deal being signed. Things have gotten very, very serious and I have, for years, held onto it as a project I would direct, because I have directed five independent films. Now it does look like, now, that I won’t be directing, but it is my script. That’s the most important thing to me, that the material be faithfully rendered. That isn’t to say that you have to do it absolutely faithfully. There certainly are differences

between my graphic novel and Road to Perdition, but the spirit of the story is there. Mendes really got it and understood it and, I think that, in some ways, enhanced it. BG: Can you tell us who will be directing this then? Max Allan Collins: I don’t know. We’ve been approached and the offer seems to be very, very serious. We have signed a round of paper but it is not nailed down yet and it looks to be pretty interesting. I will tell you that this will happen about 10 years after Perdition ends. Michael is 10 years older in Road to Purgatory. BG: Excellent. Thanks so much for your time. I was also going to tell you that I’m from Minnesota as well, so we kind of have the same roots. Max Allan Collins: Everybody in California is from Minnesota or Iowa. BG: That’s what it seems like, yes. Max Allan Collins: (Laughs) It was great talking to you. Thank you, sir.

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A F A T H E R S

A N D

Early in ‘’Road to Perdition,’’ a period gangster film that achieves the grandeur of a classic Hollywood western, John Rooney (Paul Newman), the crusty old Irish mob boss in a town somewhere outside Chicago, growls a lament that echoes through the movie like a subterranean rumble: ‘’Sons are put on the earth to trouble their fathers.’’Rooney is decrying the trigger-happy behavior of his corrupt, hot-headed son, Connor (Daniel Craig), who in a fit of paranoid rage impulsively murdered one of Rooney’s loyal lieutenants. An orphan whom Rooney brought up as a surrogate son and who has married and fathered two boys, Sullivan is in some ways more beloved to Rooney than his own flesh and blood. He is certainly more trustworthy.

H E L L

F O R

S O N S But as the film shows, Rooney’s bitter observation about fathers and sons also works in reverse: fathers are eternal mysteries put on the earth to trouble their sons as well as teach them. The story is narrated by the older of Sullivan’s two boys, 12-year-old Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), who in a prologue establishes the movie’s tone and setting (most of the events take place over six weeks in the winter of 1931) and invites us to decide, once his tale has been told, whether his father was ‘’a decent man’’ or ‘’no good at all.’’ ‘’Road to Perdition,’’ which opens today nationwide, is the second feature film directed by Sam Mendes, the British theatrical maestro who landed at the top of Hollywood’s A-list with his cinematic debut, ‘’American Beauty.’’ The new movie re-teams him with Conrad L. Hall, the brilliant cinematographer responsible for that film’s surreal classicist shimmer. With ‘’Road to Perdition’’ they have created a truly majestic visual tone poem, one that is so much more stylized than its forerunner that it inspires a continuing and deeply satisfying awareness of the best movies as monumental ‘’picture shows.’’

Because Sullivan is played by Mr. Hanks, an actor who invariably exudes conscientiousness and decency, his son’s question lends the fable a profound moral ambiguity. But far from a self-pitying boor lumbering around a suburban basement in his undershirt, Mr. Hanks’s antihero is a stern, taciturn killer who projects a tortured nobility. Acutely aware of his sins, Sullivan is determined that his son, who takes after him temperamentally, not follow in his murderous footsteps. Yet when driven to the brink, Sullivan gives his son a gun with instructions to use it, if necessary, and enlists him to drive his getaway car.

In surveying the world through Michael Jr.’s eyes, the movie captures, like no film I’ve seen, the fear-tinged awe with which young boys regard their fathers and the degree to which that awe continues to reverberate into adult life. Viewed through his son’s eyes, Sullivan, whose face is half-shadowed much of the time by the brim of his fedora, is a largely silent deity, the benign but fearsome source of all knowledge and wisdom. An unsmiling Mr. Hanks does a powerful job of conveying the conflicting emotions roiling beneath Sullivan’s grimly purposeful exterior as he tries to save his son and himself from mob execution. It’s all done with facial muscles.

Yet Sullivan is also beholden to his own surrogate father, who has nurtured and protected him since childhood. Mr. Newman’s Rooney, with his ferocious hawklike glare, sepulchral rasp and thunderous temper, has the ultimate power to bestow praise and shame, to bless and to curse. The role, for which the 77-year-old actor adopts a softened Irish brogue, is one of Mr. Newman’s most farsighted, anguished performances. What triggers the movie’s tragic chain of events is Michael Jr.’s worshipful curiosity about his father. Desperate to see what his

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dad actually does for a living, he hides in the back of the car that Sullivan drives to the fatal meeting at which Connor goes haywire. After the boy is caught spying, Connor, who hates and envies Sullivan, decides without consulting Rooney that the boy can’t be trusted to keep silent and must die. As Sullivan’s world shatters, all we hear is a far-off strangled cry of grief and horror. Minutes later he is frantically packing Michael Jr. into a car, and the two become fugitives, making one deadly stop before heading toward Chicago where Sullivan hopes to work for Frank Nitti (Stanley Tucci), Al Capone’s right-hand man. For the rest of the movie, Sullivan plots his revenge on Connor, who remains secreted in a Chicago hotel room, protected by Rooney. Sullivan’s plan involves a Robin Hood-style scheme of robbing banks but stealing only mob money. The film, adapted from a comic-book novel by Max Allan Collins with illustrations by Richard Piers Rayner, portrays the conf licts as a sort of contemporary Bible story with associations to Abraham and Isaac, and Cain and Abel. The very word perdition, a fancy term for hell, is meant to weigh heavily, and it does.

True to the austere moral code of classic westerns, the film believes in heaven and hell and in the possibility of redemption. When the characters speak in David Self ’s screenplay, their pronouncements often have the gravity of epigraphs carved into stone. A scary wild card slithering and hissing like a coiled snake through the second half of the film is Maguire (Jude Law), a ghoulish hit man and photojournalist with a fanatical devotion to taking pictures of dead bodies. When he opens fire, his cold saucer-eyed leer and bottled-up volatility explode into frenzied seizures that suggest a demonically dancing puppet. And just when you have almost forgotten the character, he reappears like an avenging fury. The look of the film maintains a scrupulous balance between the pop illustration of a graphic novel and Depression-era paintings, especially the bare, desolate canvases of Edward Hopper. The camera moves with serene, stealthy deliberation (nothing is rushed or jagged), while the lighting sustains a wintry atmosphere of funereal gloom. In the f lashiest of many visually indelible moments, a cluster of gangsters silhouetted in a heavy rain are systemically mowed

down on a Chicago street in a volley of machine-gun f lashes that seem to erupt out of nowhere from an unseen assassin. But no shots or voices are heard. The eerie silence is filled by the solemn swell of Mr. Newman’s score. It is one of many scenes of violence in which the camera maintains a discreet aesthetic distance from the carnage. Although ‘’Road to Perdition’’ is not without gore, it chooses its bloodier moments with exquisite care. The aftermath of another cold-blooded murder is seen only for an instant in the swing of a mirrored bathroom door. Another is shown as a ref lection on a window overlooking an idyllic beach on which a boy frisks with a dog. Here the overlapping images evoke more than any words the characters’ tragic apprehension of having to choose between two simultaneous, colliding worlds. One is a heaven on earth, the other hell.

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Every war is different,

“JARHEAD”, memoirs of Anthony Swofford, Jr.

Every war is the same.

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He will always Anthony Swofford â&#x20AC;&#x201D;

remain a jarhead. And all the jarheads killing and dying, they will always be me. We are still in the desert. 56

R AT E D “ R ” language, violence

Jarhead D AT E :

WA R- B I O P I C | 12 5 M I N U T E S

08.03.2017 TIME:

08.00 PM Anthony “Swoff ” Swofford, a Camus-reading kid from Sacramento, enlists in the Marines in the late 1980s. The Gulf War breaks out, and his unit goes to Saudi Arabia for Desert Shield. After 175 days of boredom, adrenaline, heat, worry about his girlfriend finding someone else, losing it and nearly killing a mate, demotion, latrine cleaning, faulty gas masks, and desert football, Desert Storm begins. In less than five days, it’s over, but not before Swoff sees burned bodies, f laming oil derricks, an oil-drenched horse, and maybe a chance at killing.

C A S T:

Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Saarsgard, Jamie Foxx, Scott MacDonald, Ming Lo, Lucas Black,

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AWA RDS WON:

GCOALD DEEM N YS A CH A WM AO RE DS AS WAA (R2D0S0 0( 2) 0 0 5 ) U

H LYE W I LSM GOLD N OGOLDO BF E A UW S AA R ( 2D0S0 (02) 0 0 5 )

Best Picture Trailer of the Year Best Bruce Cohen , Dan Jinks

Breakthrough Actor - Drama Best Motion Picture Jake Gyllenhaal

Best Actor in a Leading Role Kevin Spacey Best Director Sam Mendes

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture Producer Alan Ball of the Year Lucy Fisher Douglas Wick

Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen Alan Ball

Editor of the Year Walter Murch

Best Cinematography Conrad L. Hall

Best Director - Motion Picture Director of the Year Sam Mendes Sam Mendes

N O M I N AT I O N S :

ART DIRECTORS GUILD (2006)

S AT E L L I T E AWA R D S (2005)

POLITICAL FILM S O C I E T Y, U S A (2006)

Contemporary Film

Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture, Drama Jake Gyllenhaal

PFS Award for Peace

Dennis Gassner (production designer) Stefan Dechant (supervising art director) Christina Wilson (art director) Marco Niro (art director Mexico) A. Todd Holland (assistant art director) Christopher Tandon (assistant art director)

Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role, Drama Peter Sarsgaard Outstanding Screenplay, Adapted William Broyles Jr. Outstanding Film Editing Walter Murch

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The new film Jarhead tells the story of a marine sniper in the first Gulf War, who never fires a shot. A soldier goes to war and returns home never the same. That might be the one common experience of all wars, and yet, like fingerprints, each soldier’s war is uniquely his or her own. In the film “Jarhead,” a new Marine recruit takes us on a torturous inner path through a mine field of his own that begins as he sets down in a burning oil field in Saudi Arabia. Andrew Graham-Dixon talks with director Sam Mendes about why he chose to make the movie, which is based on Anthony Swofford’s memoir with the same title.

Andrew Graham-Dixon: Jarhead’s a very unusual war film in the sense that it’s almost about people wanting to go to war but never being able to find the war. In a way, it’s a perverse approach to the war movie. What drew you to the story to the subject? Sam Mendes: War movie is slightly a misnomer. Really, it’s a movie about soldiers. Part of the misunderstanding of the film is if you go expecting a combat film, then inevitably it will frustrate you. But, to me, Tony Swofford’s book, on which the movie’s based, was a kind of meditation on why men want to go to war and what makes them continue to want to go even in times like these when clearly the war is not successful. That struck me as something that was very, very interesting. And it is odd to play the game with an audience of, well, they’re going to war, the war’s going to be big, it’s going to be huge, and then you train the men to go to war... and take the war away. What happens? They create their own war, they create their own

THE TELEGRAPH AND THE BRITISH DIRECTOR ABOUT WARS AND JARHEADS Jacki Lyden Nov 05, 2005

mini-wars within that situation. and there’s a sort of sense in which the middle part of the film is just waiting. That’s what attracted me to it. It wasn’t a conventional war story. AGD: It’s full of scenes of frustrated living-out of the war that they want to fight but can’t, so they have endless fights and terrible things happen. Or they have these sort of fake wars in the form of football games that they play out. This terrible sense of the sort of unfulfilled blood-lust running through the movie. Mendes: Well, I think that’s something that is planted in the movie with the men very, very early on. The irony of having them watch war movies, which in their time are very anti-war movies, for example, Apocalypse Now, and using them as a kind of collective hard-on inducer, if you like, and promising a kind of war that they expect and the kind of thrill, catharsis the war is going to deliver. But that’s also a trick, in a sense, played on the audience which is expecting the bangs and the crashes of a war movie and then constantly frustrated. As I said before, it’s a dangerous game to play. But yes, they create their own. They create their own wars within the war.

You train the men to go to war... and take the war away. What happens? They create their own war

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The irony is that in not fighting, somehow he remains intact — in not getting his kill, he somehow has his own life saved. AGD: It seems to be about a certain kind of alienation in the sense that people often talk about war now as something that’s for us at home a strange spectator sport that we see unfolding on television. But here you’ve made a film about a war where it’s almost like that for the soldiers, that they seem at times to be like kind of television tourists, seeing things through a screen, seeing things unfold at a distance. They’re marines, they can never catch up with this war that’s essentially being won from the air. Mendes: Yes. That’s absolutely right. You said it perfectly. The sense in which they bear witness to this war is another thing that fascinated me about the source material.

They’re trained and they wait six months and they build themselves up into a frenzy of expectation and then they’re always three steps behind where the war is because the war is being fought in the air. And they bear witness to the highway of death which, of course, is the destruction wrought upon those exiting Kuwait City on the main highway out of Kuwait City in 1991 by the US Air Force. And they bear witness to the destruction of the natural world and the burning of the oil fires, but they never partake in the war. And there’s a key shot for me, which is of Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Swoff, which is based on Tony Swofford observing the wholesale destruction of an airfield towards the end of the movie, through a window, and the look on his face always seems to me, whenever I watch it, to say: “I’m never going to be a part of this

war, I’m always going to be an observer.” But the irony is that in not fighting, somehow he remains intact — in not getting his kill, in not having blood on his hands when he returns home, he somehow has his own life saved. So there is some kind of redemption. AGD: There’s this terrible moment of sort of sexual frustration almost, that’s what it feels like, followed by a terrible moment of sort of displaced voyeurism where he sees the airplanes come in, and the whole place is blown up, not just the one person he was going to kill. Mendes: Exactly! That’s very well put. I think that, you know, there’s a sense in which you are training the audience, you’re willing them to want him to kill someone, and then taking that away and asking the audience, “What is it that you just wanted?” Are you so desperate for him to achieve the kill that you’re now disappointed that somehow he

hasn’t, even though you and most of the audience won’t want him to be shooting a random person who’s standing in an air control tower? That’s again something that attracted me very much. It wasn’t a story, of course, that Tony Swofford invented. This is what happened to him, so there wasn’t a sense in which I had any decision here. I wasn’t like “No, let’s have him kill him.” This is what happened. For me, it is cut from the same cloth as a movie like That Obscure Object of Desire. It’s cut from the same cloth as Beckett and Sartre. It’s an existential piece in a way. It’s a movie that, in large part, takes place in an empty space in which the enemy is always invisible, never fully imagined, always just out of reach. AGD: There’s a very strong sense of paradox in the film, I found. On the one hand you’ve got these men who are trained not to be individuals, they’re trained to be almost just bodies, incredibly well-honed bodies. And yet the film is also about the irrelevance of the mere human body, the mere walking soldier, to technological warfare, that they’re always walking and never catching up. That they’re almost like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or something. They’re endlessly travelling through this landscape and never getting anywhere. Mendes: Yes. I think that it’s deep in the psychology in the Marine Corps that every man looks the same, basically. You have to

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look very hard to find any kind of insignia on their uniforms. Haircuts the same, uniforms the same and so there’s a sort of selflessness, a sense in which they’re serving something bigger than themselves. And that does take away individuality. I watched it happen to the actors. We cut their hair off, they became different people. And I think the irony of making a movie about it is that you’ll find that all of those things, the selflessness and the wanting to be part of something larger than yourself, are things that actors don’t want. You know, actors want to be individuals, actors want to stand out from the crowd, actors want to have their own distinctive haircut and car and clothes. And so to strip everything away from those actors was fascinating because you watched it happen to the actors in the same way as it happens to the marines. AGD: One relationship that they are encouraged to have is the relationship they have with their gun. And there’s this scene where they have to repeat this mantra about the importance of the gun and how they can’t do anything without the gun and the gun can’t do anything without them. So that’s the one relationship. And that strikes me as something that goes quite strongly to the core of the American sense of identity, this relationship with a gun. And yet that itself is also frustrated because the gun never gets used. Mendes: No, exactly. He says right at the end: “I never fired my rifle.”

AGD: In the air. Mendes: Well, exactly. And then he says, “We’ll do it now.” And then they just randomly let off steam by unloading thousands of rounds of ammunition into the air. AGD: The way things have turned out, I think it’s hard not to think by implication, watching your film, about the difference between wars of conquest and wars of occupation. It’s the difference between Napoleon invading Spain and conquering Spain, and then Napoleon trying to actually control Spain, which results in the awful guerrilla warfare that Goya records in The Disasters of War which is such a messier thing. And what we’ve got now is just so much messier and so much more difficult, and almost impossible to resolve compared with the very clean war in a sense, clean war - that you’re describing.

Mendes: Well, there was clean war up until the point when it officially was over but they left behind them the destruction of the deserts. AGD: And they never pursued it. Mendes: For 18 months, and of course they didn’t finish it. They didn’t finish Saddam. They left, some would say, too early. AGD: Given the way in which you’ve constructed the film, it’s difficult for you to go into as much detail of the central character’s past life, Swofford’s past life. You glance at it at the beginning, you say: “I actually won’t talk about my relationship with my father, I won’t talk about my relationship with my mother.” But what comes across quite strongly in the book, and I think glancingly in the film, is the sense that he’s looking in the Army for that relationship with his father that he never had, he’s finding in the

Army this sort of strange, dysfunctional family of his Army comrades, branding each other and fighting. But they’re kind of like a family, a family that maybe, it’s suggested, that he never had. Mendes: Well, he says in the book very brilliantly, I think: “It is my dysfunctional family and the ways and means of dysfunction are the ways and means of survival.” And I think that it takes a child from a dysfunctional family to realise how much stronger it makes you and I mean how much better it makes you in that scenario. But I felt like there was something generic about boy wants to follow his father into Army in order to prove himself to father - that I felt wasn’t as specific and interesting and particular as the experiences that Swofford had when he was in the Gulf, in the desert, and you have to make those decisions early on, where you think the centre of the film is. And very early on I thought the first third of the book which

Something that goes quite strongly to the core of the American sense of identity, this relationship with a gun.

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is his family effectively. And the last part, which was him coming home and trying to re-acclimatise, were things that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t at the heart of the story and also somehow would have felt generic and not as special as some of what he experienced in the desert, which felt very, very unusual and very memorable. AGD: How do you see the film as relating to the other films that youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made? What was it that attracted you to, so to speak, the Swofford point of view, the point of view of the Marine foot soldier? Why was that of more interest to you than, say, following the war through the eyes of someone fighting in one of the air battalions?

Mendes: Well, I think that I experienced the war like most people did at the time through those rather surreal press briefings by Norman Schwarzkopf with his little baton pointing at these little perfect toy towns, watching these little smart bombs, little puffs of smoke, as he reassured us that no civilians had been killed and that was an arms store. And when I read the book, I had no idea that those guys, the foot soldiers, the grunts, had been on the ground in the desert for six months, seven months, before the war began, or that the largest number of troops gathered on a border, in peacetime in the history of US combat - 600,000 by the time the war started - and now in the world 145,000, just gives you

The films that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve made have been fundamentally about lonely and detached men who were struggling to try and wrestle with these grey moral areas. 68

an idea of how seriously or not they may have been taking it. And I think that, for me, this book afforded you, for the first time in my opinion, a view of this war seen through the eyes of a grunt which was a totally, totally different war and a different experience. AGD: So the worm’s eye perspective? Mendes: Absolutely. And it really is. AGD: Schwarzkopf briefing bird’s eye perspective. Mendes: Exactly. And also the first time, in a way, that these troops had cut into this part of the world and sat down and began an occupation which to some degree is still going on. AGD: And to what extent would you see a connection between this film and your other films? It seems to me that if one approaches it as a war movie, then you’d think, “Why? This is miles away from Iraq.” But if you approach it as the story of another sort of dysfunctional American family, if you like, another version of American alienation, then perhaps there is a connection. Mendes: I think there’s truth in both of those things. I think that the externals of the story attracted me because it was totally different from anything I’d ever done and I think that to some degree, my movie career has not been unlike my theatre career in the

sense that the further away from home I go almost the more comfortable I feel because it allows me the freedom to enter new worlds and to try out things that aren’t particularly personal. This has opened a door to a universe that I never would have dreamt of entering and that is a huge gift given to any film director. And I also made the decision here. You have a choice, particularly when you’re afforded a lot of success with your first movie. But the core of the story — all three of the films that I’ve made have been fundamentally about lonely and detached men who were struggling to try and find some meaning, and to try and wrestle with these grey moral areas. Lester Burnham in American Beauty is trying to work out what his life means as he enters his 40s and how to handle this resurgent desire that seems to have kind of come upon him. Tom Hanks’s character, Michael Sullivan, in Road to Perdition is again struggling to try and keep his son away from the life that he has led and so he doesn’t become himself. And, here, Swoff played by Jake Gyllenhaal, is really struggling to find some kind of direction in his life and to find out who he is, challenge himself, and see whether he’s a man or not, and whether he’s still a boy, whether this is the life that he wants to lead. When I read it I thought, Well, I’m never someone who’s ever in a million years

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dreamt of going into the Armed Forces, but if I had, this is the sort of way in which I probably would have treated it. And the same level of confusion and the same level of rage and disbelief and amusement at times, too, because I thought the book was very, very funny. AGD: When it comes to approaching the visual design of the film, what you were going to make it look like, did you start off with certain images in your mind that you knew you wanted to re-create on film, or did the look of the film emerge very much from the book and from the scripts that you developed out of it? Mendes: The look of the film came almost entirely from photo research — before movies. The two movies that I’ve done were influenced mostly by photography and by painting. This was totally different. The style wasn’t at all painterly, which it absolutely was in the first two films. I decided to work almost totally with hand-held cameras, often two cameras shooting at once — did a lot of improvisation in front of the camera, rehearsed a while, but didn’t set anything in stone. So this one emerged out of the locations and the material, the raw material. But on the other hand it’s very difficult to compose shots when you have nothing, you have no structures around you to compose with and to plan. It was a much more enjoyable film to shoot than the last two

because it was much more organic, and the thing moved much faster and was much more exhilarating. AGD: I felt that the scene where he says that they were just tourists — in a sense that justified it. Mendes: Well, I’m glad. The whole point of that sequence would have been lost if he hadn’t said “Where else can you... where else can you see shit like this?” is actually what he says. To me that whole structure, that whole section of the film is kind of the circles of hell. You go through friendly fire where your own side attacks you; you walk the highway of death; you sit in a circle of charred bodies; you go into a sort of vision of hell, which is the sort of flame-lit desert, and it goes to night. And in this desert there are people attacking corpses and what have you. And then you have someone sitting in the stillness, right in the centre of that, justifying all of it and saying that all of this is fine. And that, to me, is by far the most frightening thing, is the person sitting in the middle of those concentric circles and saying “Isn’t this great?” AGD: Well I came away thinking, ‘’This is a film that doesn’t go anywhere, but that’s the point.” Mendes: Exactly! It’s a war that doesn’t go anywhere. And do any wars go anywhere? That’s the point.

AGD: Well, it’s a story. It’s not an epic. It doesn’t kind of - Bang! It’s the end. They’ve won! They’ve lost! Mendes: Absolutely! AGD: And you feel almost they’ve travelled this journey and then they’ve ended up almost where they began. Mendes: Precisely. And the last line of the movie is we’re still in the desert. And in that respect he’s saying, “We’re still there, and we still haven’t found the answer, and we’re still searching.” It offers no catharsis. It offers no moment of revelation, no sense of ending, and I think that that’s again one of the things that I love about it, the material I’ve always loved about it, and that sense in which you come out talking about that aspect of the film is something I hope [for]. And, for me, whether you love it or you hate it, whether you think it’s right or wrong in the way that it’s been tackled, to me the only important thing at the moment is just get involved in the argument and get involved in the debate. And I think any movie is trying to... Zeitgeist maybe like this in a sense, which is dealing with a war in a part of the world where we’re still at war, is designed to stimulate debate. And that, to me, means that it’s successful. AGD: When are you going to do a big British/ European theme? When are we going to get you back? Scatological, dark sense of humour — is that something that appeals to

you? You’ve made, I suppose, an American trilogy, taking the gangster movie, the war movie, the alienated suburban American life movie, and... the genre of painting more than movie-making — a film that came out of things like Hopper more perhaps than out of the American movie tradition. But you’ve made these three rather bleak films about American experience. Are you thinking of turning away from America in terms of your subject matter and maybe making a film about British or European life? Mendes: Absolutely, yes. I don’t know quite why I’ve ended up doing these three films. To call them a trilogy would be inaccurate because I’ve never planned it as such. AGD: Would you like to write it yourself, or would you be looking for...? Mendes: I wish I could write. I’m not a very good writer. I always work closely with the screenwriter, but I think I’m not quite good enough or patient enough to come up with my own material. But what I would like is to try and find something that has the same scale. It doesn’t necessarily mean a period film, but I think I’d like to have something that makes demands of me as a film-maker. AGD: Well, good luck. Cheers.

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And you know whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so good about the truth?

“REVOLUTIONARY ROAD”, written by Richard Yates

Everyone knows what it is, no matter how long they’ve lived without it.

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Our whole existence here is based on this April Wheeler —

great premise that we’re special. But we are not. We’re just like everyone else. We’ve bought into the same, ridiculous delusion. 76

R AT E D “ R ” language, violence

Revolutionary Road D AT E :

FA M I LY- D R A M A | 119 M I N U T E S

08.04 .2017 TIME:

08.00 PM It’s 1955. Frank and April Wheeler, in the seventh year of their marriage, have fallen into a life that appears to most as being perfect. They live in the Connecticut suburbs with two young children. Frank commutes to New York City where he works in an office job while April stays at home as a housewife. But they’re not happy. April has forgone her dream of becoming an actress, and Frank hates his job, although he has never figured out what his passion in life is. When circumstances change around the Wheelers, April decides she will do whatever she has to to get herself out of her unhappy existence.

C A S T:

Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kathy Bates, Michael Shannon, Kathryn Hahn

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AWA RDS WON:

GOLDEN GLOBES, USA (2009)

ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS (2008)

AWA RDS CIRCUIT COMMUNIT Y AWA RDS ( 20 0 8)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture Drama Kate Winslet

Best Actress Kate Winslet Tied with Sally Hawkins for Happy-Go-Lucky (2008).

Best Actress in a Leading Role Kate Winslet

CINEUPHORI A AWA RDS (2010)

I TA L I A N O N L I N E M O V I E AWA RDS (IOM A ) ( 20 0 9)

PA L M SPR ING S I N T E R N AT I O N A L F I L M F E S T I VA L ( 2 0 0 9)

S AT E L L I T E AWA RDS ( 20 0 8)

Best Actress - International Competition Kate Winslet

Best Actress (Miglior attrice protagonista) Kate Winslet

Best Actor in a Supporting Role Michael Shannon

Top Ten of the Year International Competition Sam Mendes

Best Adapted Screenplay (Miglior sceneggiatura non originale) Justin Haythe

Ensemble Cast Award Leonardo DiCaprio Kate Winslet Michael Shannon Kathryn Hahn David Harbour Kathy Bates Dylan Baker Zoe Kazan

Best Actress - Audience Award Kate Winslet Best Supporting Actor Audience Award Michael Shannon Top Ten of the Year Audience Award Sam Mendes

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BBC SITS LEONARDO DICAPRIO FOR A VERY BRITISH INTERVIEW Stella Papamichael Jan 28, 2009

American novelist Richard Yates made his debut in 1961 with Revolutionary Road, the story of a young suburban couple struggling to find their place in the world. Although the book was received with much acclaim at the time, it has taken almost fifty years to arrive on our cinema screens. Revolutionary Road — the film, was eventually developed in the UK, championed by Kate Winslet who took the script to husband Sam Mendes, the Oscar-winning director of American Beauty (1999). Thankfully he shared her enthusiasm and after so many false starts, their involvement was enough to convince BBC Films to help bankroll the project. For Winslet, it’s been great news on many levels. She stars in award-winning form opposite her old cohort Leonardo DiCaprio, more than a decade after they sailed to box office wonderland in Titanic (1997). Here, DiCaprio takes time out to reflect on the bumpy journey to Revolutionary Road and why working with the Brits was such a rewarding experience. Stella: It’s taken almost fifty years for Richard Yates’ book to be adapted to film despite numerous attempts. Did that surprise you?

Leo: It’s tough material to translate into a film format so it didn’t surprise me that it hadn’t been made already. I’d heard of the book, my father knew of it, but I’d never read the novel. As soon as I did read it I understood why so many people had attached themselves to the book through the years; because it really lends itself to actors and the film format because of what Yates was able to capture- that voice of doubt that we all have as we are projecting an air of confidence... It was a very post-modern novel, way ahead of its time. And it really captured, certainly, Post-Industrial Revolution America where a lot of the American value systems were being formed; that iconic imagery of a man’s role in a household and a woman’s role in the household. Here are two people trying desperately to break free of that and hold on to some individualism in that very contained world. Stella: You’ve played a lot of dreamers in your career and it almost always ends badly for them. That seems very ‘un-American’ for an actor of your status - not to win in the end... Leo: That is what was great about Yates’ novel - there is no clear-cut hero in this film. If there is a heroic character, then it’s Kate’s character because she is the one who is willing to risk everything to lead the life that she wants to live. My character is entirely un-heroic. He’s unable to break free of his environment. What was compelling about doing this movie is that these are very real, everyday problems and

if a studio were to make this film nowadays and start the project from scratch, this couple would have to win the lottery or there’d have to be dead bodies in the basement. There couldn’t be just this...there’s rarely a movie these days that’s just about people and their normal struggles to find happiness in their lives. Stella: Is that why you think it took British money to get this film off the ground in the end? Leo: Possibly. Possibly so! I very much doubt that it-- certainly, like I said, if this had been thought up for a modern environment then it would be different. There are very few films

That voice of doubt that we all have as we are projecting an air of confidence...

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To live a microcosm of that character’s life, starting at the beginning and ending at the end; I wish every movie could be done that way. with this simple subject matter; well, it’s not simple, it’s very complex subject matter but there are no sort of catastrophic events that occur in the film. Stella: You have your own production company as well, so you must know the struggles of trying to get these sorts of character-driven projects off the ground? Leo: That’s the biggest struggle. And when you are given choice it’s about finding good material; it’s really difficult. It’s really difficult! I wouldn’t say it’s gotten worse, or maybe it’s gotten slightly worse. Maybe, you know, projects like this or specific types of films are few and far between. Maybe studios are

working more nowadays, more than they were a few years ago, to churn out successful ‘patterns’ and formulas that they know will succeed at the box office. But you know having a production company and being a part of the development process on a lot of movies and adaptations; it is so hard to come up with an end product that is worth shooting. It really is so difficult to come up with a good script. Stella: Did working with an experienced theatre director mean that you had more time to explore these characters and rehearse? Leo: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a testament to Sam Mendes and Sam’s great theatre background and his ability to work on an amazing level with actors. He really knows how to ask fundamental, very penetrating questions about you and your character. And what we were able to do on this film was

shoot it in sequential order, which rarely happens in a movie, and that was really because Sam insisted on doing that. So much of making movies, about you as an actor, is the understanding of the specificity of your character’s intent. When you’re able to spend weeks before production and iron out all the insecurities you may have, or questions you may have about who your character is and discuss it or argue it at great length, that’s really beneficial. Then, on top of that, to live out a microcosm of that character’s life for four months, starting at the beginning and ending at the end; I wish every movie could be done that way. Stella: How did you find the experience of being caught between the director and his wife, Kate Winslet, who was of course playing your wife? Leo: You know, to tell you the truth Sam was really on the backburner while making this movie-- I don’t mean in that respect. I mean as far as the dynamic between the three of us went, he really let us have our own relationship on set. He realised that we needed to be Frank and April Wheeler when we were on set at the Wheeler’s house and his wife was his wife when she went home. He kept separate from us and did that very purposefully and that really helped us. Oftentimes it would just be Kate and I talking about our roles inbetween takes and what we should do and then Sam would be there only when he

needed to be there. He was very conscious of that. People always want to create this idea, maybe that there must’ve been some sort of weirdness in that dynamic, but to me - although there were weird moments of course - it was beyond comfortable. There was a family atmosphere, it was like a little theatre group of people. It was like I was at their little bed-and-breakfast making a movie. Stella: It’s been over ten years since you and Kate worked together on Titanic, a much bigger movie in many ways. Was there a different dynamic that you noticed this time around? Leo: I should speak for Kate-- I’ll speak about her is what I’m saying. Kate has always had an intense work ethic and a real intense desire, ever since I first met her when we were in our late-teens, early twenties, she just wanted to do great work. And that’s been a part of her DNA ever since she got into this industry. She was extremely professional, even back then... What’s changed about her, on a professional level now, I guess by having done so many movies, is that she no longer looks up to producers or directors as parental figures, or sources of guidance. She now walks on the set and feels an equal with everybody else. We’ve been very close for a number of years and we’d been actively looking for something to do together and thank God this came along.

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T W O

F A C E S

Frank and April — Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the film — are crippled by their own acute self-consciousness and their sense that they are superior to the excruciating banality they have fallen into. Fantasies about what Frank calls his “own exceptional merit” haunt the couple, a delusion they cling to like a lifeline and that registers as mutual neurosis and a symptom of some vague, larger social ill. They don’t have much sympathy for each other, and Yates has next to none, though by the time his sad, sad book reaches its terrible, jolting climax, the emotion you will probably feel most acutely is pity, for the Wheelers and perhaps even for the man who has brought them to such merciless life.

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C R O W D ,

There is a lot of jittery cigarette smoking and sloshed-down booze in “Revolutionary Road,” a waxworks edition of the corrosive, furiously unsentimental novel by Richard Yates about an unhappy marriage. Set in the lonely-crowd milieu of 1955, though published in 1961, the novel tracks the unraveling of Frank and April Wheeler, a handsome young couple who have been trying and failing to keep disappointment at bay by pretending that, despite their suburban address — despite a life calibrated to the commuter rail schedule, their two small children, well-stocked bar and picture window that looks over a front lawn as manicured as a cemetery — they are not like everyone else. Nothing much happens in the story, just two ordinary lives coming apart at the seams. Like the novel, the film begins with a disastrous community theater production of “The Petrified Forest” in which April has the lead female role as the greasy-spoon waitress who dreams of going to France. The play is a flop, but instead of shrugging it off with a laugh as do their next-door neighbors Milly and Shep (Kathryn Hahn and David

By Manohla Dargis for the New York Times, Dec 2008

R A G I N G

A G A I N S T

Harbour), the Wheelers embrace the failure. They drink it in deeply and let it fill them up and then, fortified by it, start hurtling insults at each other, turning the modest public embarrassment of a local play gone wrong into an affirmation of their mutual contempt and loathing. Things continue to fall apart as Frank shuff les between the traps of office and home, and brief ly into the arms of another woman (Zoe Kazan). There’s a short, sweet reprieve when, out of the blue, April decides that the only escape for her and Frank is to pack up the kids and move to Paris, where, she insists, he will at long last be able to find himself and become the man she desperately wants him to be. Paris will be their way out of suburbia and the ticky-tacky little box on a hillside on that cruelly named street, Revolutionary Road. But it’s also clear from the deadening claustrophobia of Sam Mendes’s visual style and the pounding monotony of Thomas Newman’s score that their exit is blocked. In “Revolutionary Road” Leonardo DiCaprio portrays a man haunted by ideas

T H E

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about his “own exceptional merit.” Credit FrançOis Duhamel/Dreamworks and Paramount Vantage “Revolutionary Road” is the kind of great novel that Hollywood tends to botch, because much of it takes place inside the heads of its characters, and because the Wheelers aren’t especially likeable and because pessimism without obvious redemption is a tough sell. It’s hard to think of many directors who could do it justice: Nicholas Ray, who in films like “On Dangerous Ground” and “In a Lonely Place” conveys an intimate acquaintance with twinned despair and self-loathing, might have made it work, and perhaps Paul Thomas Anderson. Mr. Mendes, a British theater director and occasional dabbler in the movies — “American Beauty,” “Road to Perdition,” “Jarhead” — seems like a bad choice to take on “Revolutionary Road,” though not because of a lack of talent. Certainly there’s no shortage of talent in the movie, which displays all the fastidious attention to detail — the sack suits that seem to be swallowing Frank whole, the

G R A S S

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touches of Danish modern in the Wheeler living room — you expect from this kind of prestige production. Mr. Mendes himself is a prestige number, of course, as are the two appealing stars, who shed a great deal of sweat and tears trying to put across their characters. They enter the story with their fists in the air, and it isn’t long before they’re slugging away at each other, absorbing low blows and landing brutal hits, which they continue to do to the bitter end, in between angry, accusatory speeches about the lousiness of their lives. If those blows don’t resonate, it’s largely because Mr. Mendes’s investment in this story feels professional, diagnostic. Part of what makes the novel so powerful, beyond its familiar American theme of self-discovery, is its unwavering fury and how each intimate and acid word feels personal, as if Yates had dredged them up from some place deep inside his own being. No one gets off the hook in “Revolutionary Road,” least of all its author, whose insistence on stripping his characters down to the marrow is so relentless it can’t help but feel like an act of self-f lagellation. As a film director, at least,

Mr. Mendes comes across as too coolly diffident for that kind of blazing heat. He keeps his distance. Mr. DiCaprio closes that distance in a few scenes in which you see Frank’s fear — of failure and of success too — mixing in with his vanity: with his wide, uncertain, panicked face he shows you what a dreamer without a dream looks like. Ms. Winslet, who’s married to Mr. Mendes, has a tougher time with April, who comes across as something of a noble sufferer when, as a minor character (a memorable Michael Shannon) cannily intuits, she has always played an active part in the Wheeler Family Tragedy. Mr. Mendes stages this tragedy grandly, symbolically — in one scene he places April and Frank in front of their car headlights to emphasize that they’re playing a role — forgetting that this isn’t just theater, but also something like life.

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Babies like to breathe, and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re good at hiding it. I put a pillow over a baby.

“AWAY WE GO”, written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida.

I thought she wasn’t breathing, but she was. She was sneaky, but I’ ll try again.

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What if I’m walking by a construction site and something falls, and then my frontal lobe gets chopped off and my Burt Farlander —

personality’s altered and then I’m not a good dad? What happens then? 94

R AT E D “ R ” language

Away We Go D AT E :

I N D I E CO M E DY | 9 8 M I N U T E S

08.05.2017 TIME:

08.00 PM Burt Farlander and Verona De Tessant are a couple steeped in eccentricity and irregularity but are very much in love. So when they find out that Verona is pregnant they seem to be taking it in their stride. Being mobile people, Burt and Verona decide to move. They decide to embark on a search for the right place for them to raise their daughter. They go to every place they can think of, meeting family and friends along the way, with laughter and sadness, this is a road trip the couple will never forget.

C A S T:

John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O’Hara, Allison Janney

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AWA RDS WON:

CINEUPHORI A AWA RDS (2011)

U TA H F I L M C R I T I C S A S S O C I AT I O N AWA R D S (2009)

Best Supporting Actress International Competition Allison Janney

Best Actress Maya Rudolph

Best Supporting Actress International Competition Melanie Lynskey Best Supporting Actor International Competition Chris Messina

N O M I N AT I O N S :

CHICAGO FILM CRITICS A S S O C I AT I O N AWA R D S (2009)

BLACK REEL AWA RDS ( 2010)

Best Actress Maya Rudolph

Best Screenplay, Original Dave Eggers Vendela Vida

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COLLIDER WEB AND THE WRITERS OF “AWAY WE GO” HAVE A CHAT Steve “Frosty” Weintraub June 4, 2009

Currently playing in limited release is director Sam Mendes “Away We Go”. The movie stars John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph and it’s unlike anything Sam Mendes has ever done as the film is part road trip/part trying to figure out who you are. In the film, John and Maya play a couple that discovers they’re going to have a baby. After deciding to live in an area close to John’s parents so they can help take care of the child, they’re all of a sudden told his parents are moving away and their only reason for staying is gone. After processing the news, they decide to go on an ambitious trip to visit friends and family to try and decide where they want to raise their child. Along the way, they meet some very eccentric characters who each have their own ideas about where they should live and how they should raise a family. While I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, “Away We Go” has everything going for it – including a great and original script by novelists Dave Eggers & Vendela Vida. So to help promote the film, I was able to talk with the two writers and our conversation

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is after the jump. They talked about where they got their inspiration, how much were the characters based on real people, their writing process and a lot more. So I guess the first thing we should start off is every time I do a phoner with anybody—have you guys ever seen the movie “Shaun of the Dead”? EGGERS: Oh of course. VIDA: Yeah. Have you seen the DVD and some of the extras that they did? EGGERS: I think so. There’s an extra where the 3 of them are basically in underwear sort of making fun of each other as they’re doing phone interviews. EGGERS: (laughter) That’s great. I mean, is that real footage? It’s totally real. It might have been “Hot Fuzz” but it’s just the point that after they’ve been doing phoners for so many hours it’s like

they’re losing their minds. EGGERS: Yeah. You know I’ve got to see that. I haven’t seen that. I’ll watch every extra on any DVD, so I must have just…I mean I saw the movie in the theatre so I guess I haven’t seen the DVD. Well, every time I do a phoner I just imagine the people I’m talking with are just acting crazy. EGGERS: It’s a little too early for us. We haven’t gotten that slap-happy yet but I’m sure it’ll happen. So I might as well jump in onto why we’re actually talking on the phone. So congratulations on the movie. I really loved it and I especially loved your guys’ script. I see a lot of movies and right from the beginning that opening scene I’m like “Yeah, I’m in. This is great.” EGGERS: We were too, you know? Like when we saw the movie kind of as you did because we hadn’t been involved in the production so much. I mean we weren’t on location and so when we saw it… VIDA: We have 2 small kids. We couldn’t go around locations with the film crew. We also were really happy just to trust Sam with the script and let him do what he wanted to do and that resulted in actually really pleasurable experience for us and we got to see it, I think

last October, much the way you recently saw it just as an audience and getting to see it for the first time and see what the actors and Sam and everyone brought to the film. EGGERS: Well, we didn’t know the music even that he was going to use and then Alex Murdoch’s music starts while they’re driving and we were just like…I think you could hear us both gasp like “Oh my God! This is so much more beautiful than what we could have even imagined,” because Sam sort of made a tone poem out of what, you know, you could have taken that script a different direction, but he made something so much more real and beautiful out of it with Ellen Kuras and Jess Gonchor and I don’t know. Yeah, we had the same experience where we thought “Okay, we’re in,” and we sort of watched it as kind of as almost detached like we were just film-goers because he had sort of taken it so far and made something wholly new and better out of it. VIDA: What I love about the first scene was just John Krasinski’s mismatched socks.

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He’s wearing white and one sock has a blue stripe and the other has a green stripe. And then also the small detail, there’s like a shawl or a scarf that’s been draped over the bedside lamp and I really loved that. I thought “Wow, they really got this so realistic,” and you could just see this couple’s life and they’re in a sad house and all that was a surprise to us. EGGERS: We wanted it to be real and we had talked about Hal Ashby a lot, and that he was kind of our inspiration. And then at the same time we thought of like “Sideways” and how Alexander Payne sort of picked up that mantle a little bit and the homes there were real homes that real people lived in and the hotels weren’t so…people weren’t all living in Pottery Barn-homes and hotels. And then when we saw that house that Sam found and filmed in Verona we knew that they were living in…we wanted them to live in a regular place and sort of maybe a little bit ramshackled but they turned it up a notch and then it’s like “Wow, that is a real kind of humble dwelling,” you might say. We were so happy that they went so far. So you’re trying to say the production designer and the director actually do something? EGGERS: (laughs) Well, yeah. VIDA: I think the way they dress and live like grad students and they take that very

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literally, yeah. EGGERS: That’s our first experience with sort of having incredible professionals just listen to…you know you write a couple words and a stage direction or in a description and then all these dozens of people go shopping for sea horses and…I don’t know all of these different things that we…and they all go filming at a dog track in Arizona. I mean, when we wrote that we figured “Well, they’re obviously going to film the dog track in Southern California somewhere and it’ll match for Arizona,” and the next thing we know like Sam and the producer, Ed Saxon, were sending us Polaroids from a dog track in Arizona. We thought “Man, these guys are serious!” Like they were very serious about realism and it was just a continual series of pleasurable surprises for us-the whole production. John and Maya’s characters meet some very colorful people along the way. So how much of those people are inf luenced by real friends and how much are just made up? EGGERS: Thank God we don’t know anyone like those guys, not so much. I mean, usually, it was like how we typically write characters in fiction. You take just a tiny piece of fabric that you might find and you weave that into a full person. I don’t know…if you’re making a person out of fabric-that sounds weird doesn’t it?

You take just a tiny piece of fabric that you might find and you weave that into a full person. No. I get what you’re saying though. EGGERS: Yeah, so you might say well, what if there’s some…like the LN character; how can you take sort of….we live in the Bay Area so there’s some people that LN shares a little bit of DNA with out here for sure that are maybe seemingly-liberal and informed but also kind of horrible and judgmental. VIDA: And very happy to give advice about anything. EGGERS: Yeah. VIDA: Especially parenting-related. EGGERS: I was just going to say we had to

take great pains to make sure that it wasn’t seemingly-based on anyone we know because we knew all of our friends and family would see it. So we actually had to afterward like think “Okay, is anyone we know going to think that they’re LN? Does anyone we know think they’re going to be Roderick?” and make any adjustments because I think given we’re a couple and its about a couple and babies involved and everything, people would make parallels so we sort of had to go very far a field. VIDA: We wanted to make sure they were realistic. We didn’t want to make them charactertures so much. We wanted them to be well-rounded people who maybe are little bit on the eccentric side. I’m definitely going to come back to that but I definitely have to ask: where did LN come from?

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EGGERS: (laughter) Vendela you wrote that. VIDA: I think I wrote that. I’ve always been fascinated with the way that people start changing the spellings of their names. Like I think we might know someone named Susie who spelled her name in an elaborate way or we might know someone who…either people just [inaudible] spellings and name changes I find really intriguing and I think we just thought what if her name is Ellen but she spells it differently. I don’t know. EGGERS: I mean, we’re all for changing the spelling if that seems right for you but we just thought the Ellen to change it to LN just seemed sort of aggressive and over-thought in a funny way that was just a nice touch. And then once we started writing LN, we just kept on kind of making her more and more horrible in a way. She was probably the most fun to write because you think “What could the most”…I don’t know…passive/ aggressive sort of we wanted her and Burt to have kind of a history in some vague way and that she just finds ways to…you know there’s just people that find ways to needle you no matter what they’re talking about and that she just wanted to have all these back-handed compliments at Burt and Verona and then Maggie Gyllenhaal took our skeletal character and just killed it. I mean she was incredible. I think people… we’ve seen people clapping at the credits when her name comes up, you know? I think people just think….and we weren’t there but the crew

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apparently gave her a standing ovation in her last scene. It was kind of incredible. Oh yeah, she made the most out of that character. EGGERS: Yeah. It’s a new aspect of Maggie that I don’t think people have seen that she’s just…it’s so real and she’s so three-dimensional but also just so wicked in a way and funny and I think people will be really surprised to see that new aspect of her. I definitely have to ask what other possible scripts might you guys want to work on or are you working on other scripts because I would imagine after this process and writing “Where the Wild Things Are” maybe you’ve possibly been touched by Hollywood. EGGERS: You know what’s funny is that it’s not like people have been calling, for sure. I don’t think we would ever be good at taking any kind of assignment, but we had to go back to our day jobs and our life’s work, which is books, and that’s always going to be the main thing we do, but Sam and Focus and everybody involved made this so easy and painless and pleasurable that we’d be open to it if it was exactly like this again. Right, Vendela? VIDA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the scale of this project was just so perfect for us too. It just felt like it wasn’t a big production. There was obviously a lot more people involved than

when you write a book but it didn’t feel like too many people. It just felt the scale was really important to us and people who try to do things on a small scale with magazines and with my books. I try to use economy in scale with everything and I felt it was a very good match for us. I was going to say the other thing of course and I have to ask about is “Where the Wild Things Are” which is a film I’m so anxiously awaiting. EGGERS: Yeah, you and me and everybody. Spike’s in the middle of mixing sound and they’re finishing some digital effects, but you know it’s cruising along and I was able to see a few scenes the other day and it looks phenomenal. I’m like you. I’m not deeply involved in the process right now, but it’s going to be fantastic. So it’s the same thing where it’s really fun and incredibly rewarding to work with people that you know are going to take whatever skeletal ideas you have and just flesh them out and make them ten times better and that’s certainly the case with Sam and with Spike.

A very long time ago before the film got delayed. My friend saw it there. They did one test-screening and he loved it and this was before any of the final work had been put in, just like the very raw film.

Well, I hope that later this year when that movie is in the promotional swing that you’re able to go…I’m able to talk to you again about that project.

EGGERS: Oh it was raw for sure, yeah. Oh that’s great. And it hasn’t changed elementally since then. I mean the spirit is the same but it’ll be more polished in every way.

EGGERS: Oh absolutely, yeah.

Totally.

And just to let you know I have a friend who

EGGERS: Tell him thanks.

saw that famous test-screening in Pasadena for “Where the Wild Things Are”. EGGERS: Oh, you know I didn’t even know about it. That’s how out of the loop I am. There was a screening there?

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Parades and Picnics The film festival will be held outdoors, in one of the oldest corners of San Francisco, at the Main Parade Grounds, El Presidio, Lincoln Boulevard, Montgomery St, San Francisco, CA 94129.

The Presidio is where San Francisco began. This inspiring setting at the mouth of an iconic bay was home to native peoples for more than a thousand years. Later it became a cultural crossroads for three nations laying claim to its strategic position. In 1776, the Presidio was established as Spainâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s northernmost outpost in the Americas. It then served as a Mexican fort from 1822 until 1846, when it became a premier U.S. Army post. Generations of soldiers passed through its gates, serving our nation around the world. The Army departed in 1994, when the Presidio began the transformation to its next public purpose. Today, the Presidio is a new kind of national park offering authentic experiences of nature, history and community. It is yours to discover.

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oday’s Presidio is home to the T spectacular vistas, nature, and programs that you would expect in a great national park, plus much more. Hundreds of former military buildings are now animated by more than 3,000 residents and 200 companies— including high tech start-ups, innovative non-profits and others that offer a surprising mix of visitor experiences. The park is home to museums and food trucks, art and archaeological sites, San Francisco’s newest recreation facilities and its most historic building—Fort Mason. On any given day at the Presidio, organizations are pursuing new ideas, scientists are conducting research, and people of all ages are learning, playing and exploring.

This old place, with the timeless tradition of picnics and movies in the night can bring a new breath of fresh air into the impending august of a stressful, monotonous life.

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The Sights of San Francisco San Francisco, in northern California, is a city on the tip of a peninsula surrounded by the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay. It’s known for its hilly landscape, year-round fog, iconic Golden Gate Bridge, cable cars and colorful Victorian houses. The Financial District’s Transamerica Pyramid is its most distinctive skyscraper. In the bay sits Alcatraz Island, site of the notorious former prison. In the ’60s, San Francisco was synonymous with the hippie counterculture; in the ’90s, it was the dot-com boom (and eventual bust, in the early 2000s). Now it’s home to such new-establishment icons of the digital economy as Airbnb, Uber and Twitter. San Francisco is more than just the physical headquarters of our virtual world. There are some things that have never changed, and by themselves, are reason enough to visit: the mind-boggling views along that glorious waterfront; the Mission’s feisty, freaky, welcome-all-comers character; the meandering natural pleasures of Golden Gate Park. You may be here for a film festival or for a vacation, but with all that this city has to offer, you’re really here for an experience, not an expedition.

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CABLE CAR TOUR Historic Transport The San Francisco cable car system is the world’s last manually operated cable car system. An icon of San Francisco, the cable car system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway. A ride on San Francisco’s cable cars may be the most iconic and memorable of your entire trip to California.

FISHERMAN’S WHARF Socio-Geographic Point of Interest Fisherman’s Wharf is San Francisco’s most popular destination, for more reasons than one. San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf is a world famous tourist attraction and a thriving and vibrant local neighborhood and commercial area. Specialty shops and restaurants line the Wharf—including the PIER 39 and Anchorage Square shopping complexes. The world famous Ghirardelli Square has been converted to an open-air center filled with fun shops and restaurants.

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G O L D E N G AT E B R I D G E Architectural Landmark Once called “the bridge that couldn’t be built,” today it is one the seven wonders of the modern world. This magnificent span, perhaps San Francisco’s most famous landmark, opened in 1937 after a four-year struggle against relentless winds, fog, rock and treacherous tides. More than 10 years in planning due to formidable opposition, but only four years in actual construction, the Golden Gate Bridge brought the communities of San Francisco and Marin counties closer together.

I S L E O F A L C AT R A Z Former Prison The Alcatraz Island offers a close-up look at the site of the first lighthouse and US built fort on the West Coast, the infamous federal penitentiary long off-limits to the public, and the history making 18 month occupation by Indians of All Tribes. Rich in history, there is also a natural side to the Rock—gardens, tide pools, bird colonies, and bay views beyond compare.

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AL AMO SQUARE TV Spot of Fame The historic Alamo Square offers quintessential scenes of the City, including the famous ‘Painted Ladies’ of Postcard Row. This photogenic hilltop has appeared in numerous TV and film productions, such as the sitcom ‘Full House.’ Look for the unusual Shoe Garden, where castoff high heels and ski boots are repurposed as landscape art. Full tennis court, walking trails and picnic area.

L AND’S END TR AIL S Historic Scenery At the northwestern corner of San Francisco, there is a series of stunning views at every turn in this wild and windy trail. Hillsides of cypress and wildflowers, views of shipwrecks and access to the ruins of Sutro baths, a San Francisco specials memory. The history of Lands End, located at the city’s edge, tells the story of San Francisco’s urban development and the pressures and opportunities to provide city dwellers with outdoor recreational fun.

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BE ACHE S OF SAN FR ANCISCO Geographical Mini-vacation Spots They may not be the sandy, sun-drenched variety Southern California is known for, but San Francisco has no shortage of beaches. If you’re looking for a beautiful outdoor excursion, San Francisco’s beaches offer breathtaking views as well as plenty of hiking, kite-flying, surfing, relaxing and more. There are over 4 beaches in this small county, each of them scenic: Ocean Beach, South Beach, China Beach, North Beach, Land’s End.

THE NEIGHBORHOODS For Residential Research Though San Francisco is a world-class city, for locals it can feel more like a loose affiliation of small towns strewn over the hills, threaded together with gravity-straining streets, an astounding 220 public parks, and dozens of hidden staircases. For a city that’s roughly just 49 square miles, it seems crazy that you can walk not five minutes and seemingly pass through four totally different neighborhoods. Wikipedia lists a whopping 119 ‘hoods (some of which seem a bit fishy to us) in San Francisco proper.

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The original Spanish name for San Francisco was Yerba Buena, meaning “good herb” or”good grass”.

A crimson bridge, cable cars, a sparkling bay, and streets lined with many elegant Victorian homes—San Francisco is undeniably one of the world’s great cities. Located along the Northern California at the state’s distinctive bend in the coast, the region has an alluring magic that stretches beyond the bay to diverse cities with nightlife and trend-setting cuisine. This is a city where the weather changes on a whim and microclimates create varying weather patterns across the hilly terrain. Locals know to pack a few extra layers (a scarf and a light jacket should do the trick) before heading out. It might be sunny in the morning, but you never know when the town mascot, Karl the Fog, will crash the party.

It may be just 5 days, filled with sights and movies. But it can very well fill that empty gap between the two disconnected halves of your past and your future with meaning.

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Acknowledgements This Film Festival, In Between Lives, was more of a glorified group project than a simpletonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s whim of mind. The festival itself would not have been possible without the films directed by the British director Sam Mendes, who had the foresight and empathy to make modern fairytales about the American Dream. The project, however, is the brainchild of GR 612: Integrated Communications and artistically curated under the supervision of Hunter L. Wimmer and conceptually honed to precision with the literary genius of Susan Paisley, both of the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. The designer of the festival, Harini Venkataraman, is a graduate student enrolled at the same, currently working on her thesis to complete her MFA in Graphic Design. Some hard-to-be-noticed collaborators of this project include the wonderful services of FLAX, Artist and Craftsman Supply, Blick, Epson, Inkpress, Red River Paper, Canson, Fabric Outlet, Amazon, The Container Store and other retail service providers without whom this project would have been stuck to a digital realm. Also to be thanked are Youtube, Hover and Squarespace for keeping us alive and kicking on the worldwide web. Other acknowledgements belong to Google, Dreamstime and Shutterstock for their visual contributions to replicating the visions of Sam Mendes and portraying a mystical dream-like America.

HARINI VENKATARAMAN STUDENT OF MFA GRAPHIC DESIGN, ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY, SAN FRANCISCO

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References http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169547/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0257044/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418763/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0959337/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1176740/?ref_=nv_sr_1 http://www.history.com/topics/san-francisco http://personaltao.com/teachings/midlife-crisis/ http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-deal-with-a-midlife-crisis-2015-4 http://www.southalabama.edu/coe/bset/dempsey/isd613/ Earlypdf/ZINCGM.PDF

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Course name GR 612 Integrated Communications

Instructor Hunter Wimmer

ESL Support Susan Paisley

Student Harini Venkataraman

Typefaces Used

Print Specs

Adobe Minion Pro Kepler Std Din Alternate Gotham Narrow ITC Cushing Std

Red River Paper 32lb inkjet matte double-sided Epson 3880 Vivid Pro