May 25, 2012

"But What I Really Didn't Want To Do Was Direct..."

Director Margaret Whitton on Arthur Penn, the power of wine, happy accidents and A Bird of the Air

by Margaret Whitton | Published September 21, 2011

Some directors are born (but need a shove). Some have directing thrust upon them (by a nice Sancerre). And sometimes you become a director because there is no other alternative.

Even after obsessing, developing and raising (and, after 2008, re-raising) the dough for A Bird of the Air, I had never thought of directing it. I discovered and became enchanted by Joe Coomer’s novel The Loop in 1994. I couldn’t seem to shake it. But the rights were taken. Oh, firmly taken. Just waiting out Oprah to get them felt like a triumph. The development process, while not without its gratifications, wasn’t easy, principally because of the writers strike. Roger Towne, the screenwriter, was patience itself. We kept slogging away.

Finally, we had the script, the dough, a director, a budget, a tentative location and shoot dates. After 15 years of chasing this story, it was finally going to happen. Until, very suddenly, it wasn’t. We lost our director and were in danger of losing a big chunk of the budget if we didn’t shoot by the end of the year.

My producing partner Steven Tabakin and I did what any smart producers would do: We opened a bottle of wine. I’m not clear on exactly how it happened—I’m a cheap drunk, two glasses and I’m dancing on tabletops… but this time, it seems, he convinced me to direct the film. (Did we flip a coin?) And quit isn’t really in my vocabulary.

Even back in the day, when I was an actor, I didn’t want to direct. It took working with Arthur Penn to be shoved into directing theater. Arthur anointed me one night after a performance by saying “You’re an amazing actor, but what you really are is a director.”

To my everlasting discredit, I blurted out “Oh no, Arthur, I don’t have the ego to be a director.”

Arthur, one of the more mentally-healthy members of our business, laughed. “Oh, I think you’ll find that’s not what it’s about,” he said. “So here’s my theater, here’s the budget and the schedule. Now go find a play.”

When an American master dares you to step up, you step up. He was correct in his assessment—I loved directing theater. But this was film! I had acted in films, worked with amazing directors and enjoyed the collaborations and the micro-focus I could bring to the job. I had also seen how massively involved it was to direct. What is this need we have to tell stories? A brain disease? A primal itch?

And this eccentric, magical, multi-layered, complex, seemingly simple story needed telling.

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