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Lisa Cholodenko
Lisa Cholodenko is one writer/director who puts character before camera
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| Cholodenko directs Christian Bale and Natascha McElhone on the Laurel Canyon set. |
In the past 35 years, the American independent film scene has witnessed two important revolutions. The first, beginning with Arthur Penn’s Bonnie & Clyde in 1967, served to disband the long-held allegiance to the studio system hierarchy and introduce the idea of “auteurism” into popular film lexicon. It was this decade of New Hollywood moviemaking that brought directors like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and Robert Altman to the forefront of their craft. The second belle époque, whose players grew up watching these New Hollywood films, re-established the importance of the independent film scene in 1989 with such groundbreaking work as Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape, Michael Moore’s Roger & Me and Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Though it’s this first group of moviemakers that inspired many of the themes in writer/director Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon, it’s the latter generation that inspired her to put stories to celluloid in the first place.
Like the independent mavericks before her, Cholodenko notes that the notion of moviemaking as a career “was probably in the back of my mind in some weird, unformed way when I was young.” But unlike her admitted ‘film geek’ predecessors—who wear their hours logged at the local cineplex as a badge of accomplishment (Soderbergh admits to seeing Jaws 28 times in the theater)—it wasn’t until 1989 that she considered this path a real possibility.
“I first started thinking that I wanted to make films in the late ’80s, when I saw two films that were pretty seminal to me: Jane Campion’s Sweetie and Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy. It was probably the first time that I could sort of identify an author behind the work.”
Though wildly different films, Jane Campion’s feature film debut and the movie that brought Gus Van Sant to the public’s attention both set forth definite themes and sensibilities that have come to define Cholodenko’s work. Specifically, these films share a non-judgmental representation of flawed characters, a deep exploration of dysfunctional “family” life and an unrelenting honesty. For Christian Bale, who stars in Laurel Canyon, it was this sincerity that attracted him to Lisa’s script in the first place.
“The story seemed to be so highly personal to her. From working with Lisa, I know she has a great deal going on internally—always—even if she doesn’t think she’s communicating it. I found her face to be very easily readable, and I found myself kind of looking at her rather than listening to her. I would imagine that her real enjoyment comes through the writing of a film. I think she’s really more interested in the whole emotional side of it. You get some directors who fall in love with the whole technical side of it and the physical staging of things, but she is definitely someone whose first love is the whole emotional side of what’s happening.”
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| Lisa Cholodenko |
Though Cholodenko admits that she concerns herself with character before camera, what struck cinematographer Wally Pfister was her understanding of how to let the technical aspects move the storytelling forward. “Lisa is a sensitive filmmaker with a keen sense of visual style and a great respect for the camera’s role in storytelling. Together, we labored over finding the best place to put the camera, whether to move it or not and the mood of the environment that these characters were photographed in. I love working with writer/directors like Lisa. I find they are the most passionate about the characters and the story they’re telling. This helps drive me to do my best work photographically.”
Making its premiere at Cannes in 2002, Laurel Canyon went on to screen at such venerable fests as Toronto and Sundance before hitting theaters, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics, this spring. Shot on a budget of just under $7 million, the film explores the strained relationship between Jane (Frances McDormand) a carefree music producer trying to complete her latest project, and her straitlaced son, Sam (Christian Bale). Sam has moved back to Los Angeles with his equally prudish fiancée Alex (Kate Beckinsale) to begin his medical career. As Sam carpools to the hospital with an attractive coworker (Natascha McElhone), Alex is left at home to finish her dissertation. But she is slowly seduced by Jane’s world, which includes her much younger lover, Ian (Alessandro Nivola), the singer whose album she is producing.
Like High Art before it, Laurel Canyon tests the boundaries of love and fidelity, revealing its characters—in all their flawed glory—at their weakest. For Cholodenko, film is a medium of authenticity, better suited to revealing our primal fears and desires than our storybook dreams of love and romance. Laurel Canyon is her latest testament to the truth.
Jennifer Wood (MM): How did the idea for Laurel Canyon happen?
Lisa Cholodenko (LC): Well, the writing was sort of a long process, but the germ of the idea happened in the editing room when I was cutting High Art. My editor (she was an LA person; I had met her in LA) had brought in the Joni Mitchell record “Ladies of the Canyon.” I started looking at the cover of that record and spinning the yarn about the people that used to live up in Laurel Canyon—the Joni Mitchell types and the sort of bohemian world that was up there in the early ’70s. I said, that morning, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to set a film in that world?’ So that was the germ—that’s where it started.
| “She has a great deal going on internally,
even if she doesn’t think she’s communicating it.” –Christian Bale |
MM: How long was the writing process for this film?
LC: It took me probably three years. I wasn’t
writing it full-time.
I was working, directing episodic television, rewriting and doing
jobs for hire.
MM: The tone of Laurel Canyon is certainly lighter than High Art. Was this an intentional departure for you? Were you looking to do something completely different?
LC: The idea for the story was organic. But in the writing, I think it was important for me to try to turn the comic-tragic more toward the comic. I was more interested in trying to explore that part of myself. I didn’t really want to go back into that dark territory that I did with High Art. Plus, the film that Laurel Canyon was, there wasn’t really anything particularly tragic about it!
MM: Both of your films have been distinctly about “location.” How does place inform your writing and/or direction of a film?
LC: I guess in a certain way, when I start thinking about these things, I think simultaneously about place and person. There’s some sort of character in place. Laurel Canyon much more so, because the idea sort of spawned from looking at a picture—a watercolor—that Joni Mitchell painted of a Laurel Canyon hillside. So it really started with place, then went to character and then to situation.
MM: How do your dual roles of writer and director inform each other when you’re working? When you’re writing a script with the intention of directing it, are you thinking about how you’re going to pull something off on-screen, or do you separate the two roles?
LC: When I’m writing, I feel like I do a lot of the preparatory work for directing. By the time the cast finally gets on the set, I kind of feel like I’ve already imagined it all—a little bit like a play in my imagination—so it makes the directing more pleasurable, really.
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| Cholodenko with Kate Beckinsale and Bale on the set of Laurel Canyon. |
MM: Do you think even in terms of budget when you’re writing, like ‘Well, I could do this shot, but that means I’ll have to do things A, B and C as well, so I’ll just write it differently.’
LC: Yeah. I thought that way much more with High Art, because we were basically doing it with a dime and I didn’t have that much latitude to blowout my imagination. But because I tend to focus on character, I don’t really have any extravagant things I want to do. It’s more important to me to be able to spend the time getting the character part of the story down. I think I’m more willing than the next guy to lose things that are visually interesting but expensive; those aren’t the things that are most important to me.
MM: When you’re writing, do you have specific people in mind? I guess I’m thinking of Frances McDormand in particular, who really seemed so perfect for the role of Jane.
LC: No, I didn’t have her in mind at all. It was just one of those beautiful sort of meant-to-be moments.
MM: Is there something that you think specific actors—or the actors that you’ve worked with—have been able to bring to a role that wasn’t on paper? With Frances McDormand, again, for example. Was there something that she brought to the screen that wasn’t there in the script but fit in well? Or was it just sort of a perfect match of actor and material?
LC: I think it’s both things. What strikes me in the question is that I felt about Frances very similar to the way I felt about Patricia Clarkson in High Art. I think what they both brought to their roles was humor. There was a sort of acerbic subtext to these characters, but when I was interviewing people or talking to them about those roles, the actors prior to Patty Clarkson and Fran McDormand didn’t really capture that, which was unfortunate for me. What made those characters wonderful in the end was that those actors brought this kind of wry, acerbic humor to them, and I think it makes both of those characters not only more interesting and dynamic, but more loveable… [Frances] is completely alive and present—and funny and irreverent. She’s wonderful.
MM: The other thing that struck me about Laurel Canyon—being that this is so specifically an “American” story—is that two of your lead actors, Christian Bale and Kate Beckinsale, are British.
LC: Yes, it was completely random. There was really no sort of hidden agenda there; I wasn’t showing off or anything. [laughs] It was the same in High Art—Rhada Mitchell is Australian. You know, you write the thing and then you find the best person.
MM: I spoke with Wally Pfister, your DP, a couple of weeks ago. He talked about your initial discussions regarding Laurel Canyon, and how you had wanted to make it reminiscent of the New Hollywood films of the ’70s. Was there one specific film that you were looking at? It seemed very much influenced by The Graduate.
| "When I was writing the script, I kept
thinking of The Graduate, because it seemed to have parallels. And I liked that there were these funny sort of nods to that film and inversions into the plot and plot lines.” —Cholodenko |
LC: I think that, more than anything, The Graduate is just a really beloved film by me—and one of the films that really inspired me to be a filmmaker along the way. But I don’t think I saw it at the same time that I saw [Drugstore Cowboy or Sweetie]. When I was writing the script, I kept thinking of The Graduate, because it seemed to have parallels. And I liked that there were these funny sort of nods to that film and inversions into the plot and plot lines.
I was very mindful of that in the years that I was writing it and then, with Wally, I started talking about movies that we could look at that had inspired my sensibility. We looked at The Graduate, but just sort of scanned through it. Then, as we sort of started, we thought ‘Let’s just lock the door and sit here and really watch this movie.’ I believe that movie succeeds on every level.
MM: What were some of the aspects of that film—and of the films that came out of that period—that you were interested in bringing into 2003? The obvious nods are the sort of ambiguous ending; the affluent, California setting; the unconventional families and relationships.
LC: Yeah, I think those things were sort of particular to The Graduate. Another film we watched is Five Easy Pieces and [Robert] Altman’s films. I think Wally was a big fan of Shampoo and Hal Ashby’s other movies. It’s really kind of just what you’re saying: those films were both formal, in that they moved forward—there wasn’t heavy plot per se, but there was a definite story—and a kind of economy in the narrative expression. It wasn’t a John Cassavetes film or a Wim Wenders film; they were movie movies. But they did have these open endings and they did take characters and follow them on these sort of existential journeys, and that appealed to me.
MM: The end of the film is left open. As author of the film, do you draw your own conclusions, or can you see a few different things happening?
LC: Both. I can envision a few different things
happening. What I’ve said about the way that this film ends is that
what was more interesting to me—and kind of weirdly conclusive—is
that Christian Bale’s character is forced to consider this part
of himself that, prior to this point, has been repressed. It’s the
part that has to be open to chance and fate and things going off
on a course that wasn’t planned or anticipated. So, in that way,
he sort of has to face the truth that he’s probably more like his
mom than he had realized. And that was more interesting to me than
‘Does he run off with the first or second woman?’ Or ‘What’s he
going to do?’ Even though, in a plot way, that’s probably more the
question on people’s minds. MM
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This story was published in the Spring 2003 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
A Sense of Place and Purpose / Lisa Cholodenko is one writer/director who puts character before camera
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