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Invitation to a Head Fracture
Straight Talk from Maverick Harvard Man James Toback
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| James Toback |
His latest work, Harvard Man, is based on the Harvard grad's own experience with LSD while he was a student in the 1960s. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joey Lauren Adams, Adrian Grenier and Ray Allen, Harvard Man continues in the Toback tradition of mixing newcomers with seasoned professionals, allowing actors the chance to infuse a bit of their own personalities into their characters.
Articulate and outspoken, Toback recently spoke with MM about the autobiographical nature of his work, the problems one faces by being fiercely independent and why you'll never find him behind the camera on Lethal Weapon 13.
Jennifer Wood (MM): What was the impetus for your latest film, Harvard Man?
James Toback (JT): I had this catastrophic. as soon as I start to use any word, its impotence overwhelms me. I mean, catastrophe, disaster, cataclysmic devastation-none of it even does vague justice to what the experience really was. It was, for eight days, the erasure of the self. The elimination of the self. Which is to say that the 'I'-which I, like most people functioning in the world, had assumed exists in some absolute way-is in fact a sham, an artificial construct.
All of a sudden the reading that I had been doing, the philosophers whom [the professor] Chesney is teaching in Harvard Man-Heidegger, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein-there's a whole tradition of the self as an imposed structure over a void that is the natural state of consciousness. It's one thing to understand that analytically and to be able to get an 'A' on a test in which one is writing about it, and it's another to be viscerally aware that that's the truth and not to have a self. You can't function in the so-called 'real world' and not have one. Maybe for an hour or two, certainly not for a day. As the line goes in the movie, 'there are some people who are in straight jackets and some who are chanting in the hills and the mountains of Nepal.' But I didn't want to do that; I wanted to continue to function in this mundane world and all of a sudden and I found I couldn't for eight days.
It remained an experience that I knew that if I ever found in art in which I was sufficiently skillful, it would have to be the subject of my work. And when it turned out to be film about seven or eight years later, it was what I was really writing about and making movies about all along: it's what's at the heart of The Gambler, and that last image of The Gambler I think conveys that. It's certainly all through Fingers and it's the image of Harvey Keitel at the end, haunted. It's the image of Nastassja Kinski's eyes, vacant at the end of Exposed. The Big Bag is a movie about that subject, literally. But I hadn't really done it about LSD itself. I had done it as the result of extreme behavior in other lives, in lives that were either invented or based on people I knew or read about. But I hadn't done it literally. So Harvard Man was finally a way of taking that experience, that LSD experience: the glorious, beautiful, richly colorful, hallucinatory ecstasy of it, and then the crack-up-the loss of self and the voices that haunt him and dramatize that.
I felt that Harvard Man had to be a contemporary film and I was sort of waiting for-I sound ghoulish-but I was waiting for acid to make the comeback I knew it would make (laughing).
MM: What are some of the biggest problems you encounter as far as financing goes, not just on Harvard Man but with all your work? People seem reluctant to admit that your portrayals of teen life and college life are, in fact, realistic.
JT: Absolutely! In fact I'm always amused more than anything else with the arrogance of people who have led sort of puny, shriveled lives telling me that what I am writing about couldn't happen and isn't real. When in fact, if anything, it's a shrunken version of the life I've led. The people who talk about college life now, as if they know something about it, are so divorced from it and outside it that they don't have a clue. I mean there isn't a single undergraduate among hundreds that I've talked to about this movie, whatever the response to the movie has been, who feels that the movie is not connected to the reality they're living or observing in some way.
MM: Do you have a specific audience in mind for your work? Your films are often about teenagers or younger adults, but do you think that the same people who are going to see American Pie are watching your movies, as well?
JT: Some yes, some no. I'll give you an example: Sarah Michelle Gellar, who sort of sought me out after seeing Black and White and Two Girls and a Guy, said 'Anything you want me to do, I'll do.' Which was fortunate for me because that's what got Harvard Man made. She told me that she had a screening of Black and White for her friends, and that they all went crazy for the movie. Well, I would say that a lot of her fans would have also. But on the other hand, I'm sure she has a lot of hardcore fans around her age who would not have liked it.
I think the people themselves who would be part of my movies or want to be go for it. It's almost as if there are two cultures; there's a real split there. And when I watch MTV I'm very much aware of that. I think some of these people would go really crazy over my work and some of these people would just say 'What the fuck is that supposed to be?' And I'm not consciously aiming at anybody. The truth is I have a non-marketers mind, which puts me out of step with the center of culture today-all of which is marketing. I really am thinking 'What's this movie about? What are the characters like? How are they, in their behavior and language, expressing both their essence and reality and the world that they're a part of and the themes I'm interested in?' Then I let the behavior take its own course.
MM: Being both the writer and director of work, do you welcome improvisation? Do you want people to stick to your exact lines?
JT: In every movie except Black and White, [the scripts] were written out at some point. With Black and White I was not about to write dialogue for Wu-Tang Clan and tell them to say it. But in the others I have, and I always want to get at least a take or two in which the scene that is written is there. But I always also want to get whatever it is that the actors want to do. And I would say that at least 25 percent of the time what they come up with in a given scene is at least partially more interesting than the scene as written.
I often rewrite during takes because when you watch two or three takes you'll sometimes see things in the actor at that moment that will play better. And I think that if you're working with people who get excited by that methodology, which is what I try to do, they'll give you more than they'll give when they're just being obedient servants of the dialogue. Finally, to say 'Here's what you say. Go out there and say it.' is something so fundamentally insulting to the intelligence of the person you're saying it to that it's almost embarrassing to say 'Let me hire you so you can be my slave.' As opposed to 'Let me hire you so you can shock me, surprise me, enlighten me and take what I've done and improve it.' If you don't feel that way about someone, then why are you using them?
MM: Do you write with specific people in mind or do you like people to approach you, like Sarah Michelle Gellar. You have a tendency to put a lot of non-actors into your films, and to cast against type, with people like Brooke Shields or Claudia Schiffer in Black and White. Is this something you do intentionally?
JT: I think it is, yeah. I've always been interested in iconographic figures. I have a kind of 'Carlyleian' view of history, which isn't in vogue now but I kind of like it, where there are certain sort of iconographic figures to whom one is drawn. All the people you mentioned are people that affected me in that way at one time or another. I like the idea of using them as a version of who they are rather than what they've been playing in their life as a profession, starting with Jim Brown in Fingers, where the Jim Brown in Fingers is the real Jim Brown. Jim as a character is a fascinating and complex guy. With Wu-Tang Clan, Claudia Schiffer, Mike Tyson and Brooke Shields-they're all people who are not accidentally famous. There's something about them that sort of pops into the center of culture. To get the texture of their daily lives and what they're really like, and create a character for them in which they can speak and move like they really do, to me is kind of exciting and it gives the film another dimension as opposed to again just saying 'Here's the script, play it out, act it, shoot it, release it'-the packaging notion of movies.
So part of what I do is that I know who I'm going to use in a given part, or think I do; part of it is I'm hoping I'll meet people along the way who will inspire me. Sometimes I'll meet people I want to write for for whatever reason, actors and non-actors, and then I always feel that these things should be mutual; that there's a kind of artistic symbiosis. When I'm solicited is when I really know things are clicking. For instance, Sarah calling me, or Ben Stiller seeing Two Girls and a Guy and making it known that he wanted to work with me. With Brooke it was the same thing, a kind of 'I'm available. What do you want me to do?' It's not just that it's flattering, it's that it suggests that there's some sort of connection, that my work has reached them, that they're inspired in some way.
The idea of being a john-which is what most directors put themselves in the position of being, which is to bid high enough to buy or rent somebody for two months-is so self-defeating in some fundamental way. What kind of relationship do you have with somebody who in effect has said 'Okay for $20 million I will do this; for $12 million I wouldn't. For $15 million we'll never know, because we never got to that stage. Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn't. $20 million? You got me!' And now you're supposed to get something interesting from that person?
I'm all for everybody getting as much money as he or she can, but somehow I feel a lot more at peace with the methodology of filmmaking if I'm working with people who are either working for scale or for a much lower fee. It's not that I'm trying to get them down. If the movie had more to offer in the budget then I'd be thrilled to pay it. But the idea is do they really want to do it because they want to do it? Then they're going to do things they're never going to do when they think you're just some idiot who won them at an auction.
MM: How does your method of directing change between working with seasoned professionals and non-actors?
JT: I've never understood the generalizations about how you direct actors because it's like saying 'How do you deal with people?' You deal with people totally differently-each one is different. There are some people who need a text to rely on religiously and who get thrown whenever anything is changed or whenever there is a surprise that they weren't prepared for sufficiently. For them I would be a disastrous director. [I'm better] for actors who are looking to be collaborators and think of a part as a work in progress, to which they are going to contribute because of the fact that they are playing the part as opposed to somebody else. Because finally, any role should be different played by one person than by another. At least I think so. To ossify a role into a preordained linguistic niche, and to say 'If you're going to play this part, this is what you're going to say and this is how you're going to do it,' then you're into robot virtual acting. The great pleasure and excitement for everybody-including, eventually, the audience-is to feel that something was invented. that some inspirational jolt took place, and there it is right before your eyes.
MM: You've had an ongoing struggle with the ratings board ever since your first film, Fingers. Do you think that you're treated differently because you're an independent moviemaker?
JT: I definitely think that's always been a part of it. To suggest that the ratings board is some pristine, religiously pure body which doesn't pay any attention to the size of the budget, the personality behind the movie, the studio or the distribution company is to engage in a fantasy life that nobody above the age of nine would take seriously. I would say that, in particular, I've had a rough time with the current head, Richard Mosk. I don't know that he still is; I sort of heard a rumor he isn't, which would be wonderful.
I didn't have the time, luxury or moral inclination to play the game that shrewder and smarter directors play, which is to submit a cut which they know is unacceptable and then bargain down to a cut that they actually want. I haven't done that. I think they sort of expect you to do that. And when you give them a movie and say 'This is it,' they don't believe it. They think 'Well he's got to be ready to cut this, this and this.' But I haven't done that and as a result we've bumped heads. Also, you get a reputation and people I think are sometimes seeing things they're not really seeing. If you look at Two Girls and a Guy and then you compare it to Boogie Nights, which they'd rated two or three weeks earlier. I mean the idea that I got I think 12 NC-17s before I got an R with that movie and Boogie Nights got an R?
MM: What is the most number of edits you've ever had to do to get down to an R rating?
JT: I think I did about 14 or 15 on Two Girls and a Guy. I did about 13 on Fingers.
MM: Has it become easier for you to figure out what will get an R rating and what will garner an NC-17?
JT: It has but I refuse to allow myself to think that way because then you start censoring yourself, which is exactly what they want you to do and something they've been very successful in doing. It's been subtle but the NC-17 rating is now an illegitimate rating; the X didn't used to be. Midnight Cowboy was an X, Carnal Knowledge was an X, Last Tango in Paris was an X. It was perfectly legitimate to go with an X and studios would distribute movies with an X-happily!
MM: They'd win Oscars with an X!
JT: That's right. And now, NC-17 is a phony rating. They know you can't do it. you can't show it in theaters; the malls won't show it. And everybody blames somebody else. The studios say 'Well the owners of the theaters in the malls won't do it.' And the directors say 'Well the studio won't do it.'
It used to be in the '70s that writers and directors were creating the movies; in the '80s and '90s, agents were creating movies; now studios are creating movies. And they're getting desperately ambitious, endlessly greedy writers and directors to say 'Just tell us what you want and we'll do it.' And actors as well. And listen, it's seductive; it's the way the game is played. And to say I'm going to play on my channel is an invitation to a head fracture from banging your head against the wall year after year, but to me there's not really a hell of a lot of choice. Because you can't, at least I can't, do what I don't believe in. It's hard to convince oneself that there is an adherent virtue in doing Batman 5 or Lethal Weapon 13.
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