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John Patrick Shanley Shares His Reasonable Doubt
Writer-director brings his Pulitzer Prize-winning play to the big screen with relative ease—and an all-star cast
John Patrick Shanley and Meryl Streep on the set of Doubt (2008).
“You know, I’m an odd duck,” John Patrick Shanley muses from across the table in New York City. “I always was an odd duck. The things that turn other people on don’t turn me on and the things that do turn me on are not necessarily what other people are attracted to.”
This is not an eyebrow-raising admission from the man whose last directorial venture involved a journey to the island of Waponi Woo, where natives proudly displayed their leis of Orange Crush cans and prepared their sacrifice of Tom Hanks in 1990’s Joe Versus the Volcano.
Eighteen years later, on the afternoon he prepares for the first preview of Romantic Poetry, the first musical he’s ever written and directed (Dreamgirls mastermind Henry Krieger is the composer) and which is advertised as a “crackpot musical romance,” Shanley confesses, “The entire time I’ve been doing this I’ve been reading Hitler’s Table Talk. Every day, when I’m not here, and that’s for balance. It’s like this is so good-hearted that I have to read the ravings of a beast just to keep my head on straight and be able to get through it.”
So it’s only natural that a self-actualized “odd duck,” balancing the giddiness of love with 800 pages of uncensored Hitler, is simultaneously readying for the December release of Doubt, the Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play he adapted for the screen and directed with a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.
Set in a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, it’s the story of a nun who confronts a priest she suspects of having improper relations with a student.
A writer adapting and directing his own play for the screen after a nearly two-decade absence from the director’s chair is a tricky endeavor, but Shanley’s concerns were more about the material itself. “This is a play with four people and I’ve got to turn it into a feature film and that’s a daunting prospect. No matter how I do this there are going to be extended dialogue scenes and those are extremely difficult to do in a feature film that’s supposed to reach a wide audience,” he explains. “It was about the microcosm of tiny things being big things and figuring out how to dramatize that and how to keep a scene in one room alive and vivacious.
“For me, the writing of a film is much more challenging than directing it,” continues Shanley. “People are used to seeing car crashes and naked people and guns going off and here are people who are heavily clothed, talking and there aren’t even any curse words. How do you do that?”
“For someone who’s been with something so long, he was open to it as if he’d written it yesterday and that’s really something,” says Philip Seymour Hoffman, who plays Father Flynn. The director rehearsed his actors prior to shooting—a luxury for some, a necessity for him. “You are hiring a very particular artist to bring themselves to the role,” explains Shanley. “The core of every person is rather mysterious and alive. It’s like a burning flame and you can’t control that. If you’re seeing that, then you know you’ve got something.”
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by John Luma on 12/28/08 at 9:08 am
I take my hat off to anyone who can write, direct, or produce a movie that gets mass distribution and gets noticed by press and public. So congrats to John Shanley. But he betrays many screenwriter’s prejudices and fears and condescensions about directing by his comments here. Yes, you do direct when you write a good script, but only on the page, not on film. To paraphrase his claim, just “stand there and agreeing to things and the film will get made,” might be his method of directing—but that is not how our best directors of great movies have succeeded bringing scripts to the screen. If it were really that easy to direct, writers would be directing all their own scripts with great success. Most who have tried either don’t have the skills or the stamina, and have failed. The passivity Shanley describes and obviously prefers is what a writer seeks, not what an effective director wants, ever.
- Comment by memphis drug crime attorney on 6/03/09 at 5:05 pm
How ever talented an actor is, to bring out the best in him a director needs to know his personality more than any thing else. This will ensure that the actor plays his role more naturally and to the best of his abilities.
- Comment by Alex on 11/18/10 at 9:49 am
Doubt is a fabulous film. Meryl Streep is as usual outstanding but the one that really caught my eye was Amy Adams, been following her work since then and she’s Soooo versatile. Loved her performance in Junebug too.
- Comment by pete mclintock on 12/26/10 at 3:16 pm
I will be directing"Doubt" Apr/2011. Will not see the movie as my vision is based on having seen Linda Lavin star in Wilm.NC years ago. The script is “in my wheelhose” as a mid 50’s Cath. with a 20yr. military background. I hope for a cast that can project this vision,simply put, if they “feel” this script the way I do, I really won’t have to direct.
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This story was published in the Fall 2008 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Gods and Monsters
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