Interview with Patricia Clarkson
Journalists love Patricia Clarkson. She’s charming, smart and very funny. As an actress she switches effortlessly between big-budget films (The Maze Runner, Shutter Island) and indies (The Station Agent, Cairo Time, Good Night, and Good Luck). She’s also a hoot and had us laughing the moment she walked in the door. Here are highlights from a roundtable with the actress.
MM: What was your fascination with this script?
Patricia Clarkson (PC): I read this beautiful story in the New Yorker and I loved it. It resonated with me in so many ways. I was 46 at the time. I realize now I could never have done this movie at 46. I needed to be in my 50s. [Laughs] See, the movie gods stepped in and said, ‘No, no, no, Patty, we’re going to make you wait to make this film. Then you’ll be the right age to play Wendy. You’ll have lived and lost and had all the right elements to play this damned character,’’ so pardon my French.
MM: What were the biggest obstacles in getting this film made?
PC: There were so many elements in this film that worked against it, yet they were the essence and the beauty of the film. I wasn’t compromising on anything and neither was [producer] Dana Friedman. We loved the script. The script went through some rewrites. Certain little things changed here and there, but the core of the story is that of a hardcore New Yorker—a brilliant, intellectual woman—a Sikh and a car, and that was not going to change, ever. You can say you love the script but if you really love the script, these three elements cannot change.
So it was getting the right people to come together in the end. And everyone was like, “Well, Darwan should be young, it should be a kind of May to December thing.” They wanted to change the ethnicity of Darwan, so we could cast Viggo Mortensen or a famous man opposite me, or they wanted to take a lot of the scenes out of the car, and I said, “No, that’s the whole point of the film. That’s not really the story.” But I was willing, fleetingly, to entertain that. I entertained a lot of ideas. The tantric sex scene is close. That’s what I would say: “Look, tantric sex in the middle of this movie, c’mon! Isn’t it nice to see women of an age, naked on film? C’mon, we have to be naked on film. It’s nice. It’s good.”
Patricia Clarkson in New York. Photograph by Paula Schwartz
MM: Do you think there are more female directors and female-driven stories?
PC: Yes. It’s because independent film has become commercial. It sells tickets. We win awards. We are the best films of the year, these independent films. They’re films people want to see. They make money now. There’s a real market. The art house market has become so potent. It’s taken so long. These stories about women, middle-aged people, people go to them. Please!
I’m all for blockbusters… Look, I’m part of Maze Runner. I love that job. I love [her character] Ava Paige. And they pay me so well, hence my nice purse [points to her Alexander McQueen bag and laughs]. But the films that are labors of love, at the end of the day, are why I’m in this. I’m not in to win it. I’m in it for this. I’m in to make movies like this, and not give up for nine years.
Dana Friedman and I talked for almost nine years about getting this movie made, almost every day. We never gave up. We had great adversity. We had a lot of money once from Spain and then Spain fell off a cliff, financially. I mean, we’ve lost actors, money, directors, but again, you always seek the high water mark. At the end of the day, Isabel Coixet and Sir Ben Kingsley were gifts. They came together. They are warriors. He played this beautiful character, the Sikh; these men are indelible and maybe one of the most beautiful parts of shooting this film was getting to know the Sikh community and learning their life and their culture.
MM: What was it like shooting in New York City?
PC: That was the other thing: You couldn’t fake this city. They said, “Go to Toronto.” I said, “Yes, go to Toronto. Shoot me driving through Toronto. Nobody in New York will know the difference. That’s not going to work.” It’s an underlying truth that in this film, it’s real. Wherever I’m driving, I’m driving. Say I’m driving over the Queensborough Bridge—that damn Queensborough Bridge! It was one of the most frightening things I ever had to do in my whole life.
(L-R) Director Isabel Coixet, writer Sarah Kernochan and Clarkson on set. Photograph by Linda Kallerus
MM: How good a driver are you?
PC: My father taught me to drive. I was a very good driver. I had a beat up, ratty old Corolla that I drove to high school my senior year—I mean this car had, I think, three wheels. But I thought I died and had gone to heaven! So I was a driver, but I slowly became more “Wendy” as I moved into this New Yorker life. I’ve lived in New York for over 30 years, and I slowly lost my ability to drive. I dated a man for many, many years who lived in the country, and I would drive his Subaru down the country roads. But driving in New York City, driving on the Henry Hudson, any of those scary highways—never in a million years. Never. So I don’t drive anymore. I do have a driver’s license and it’s valid, but I don’t know how valid.
MM: Has making the movie inspired you to drive again?
PC: I said to my father, “Maybe the next time I come home, you could teach me to drive again.” He said [affects Southern drawl], “Oh, Patty, oh Patty, I don’t know if there’s enough red wine in the world.” I’d like to learn to drive again and this film reawakened my senses. I can drive; it’s just that I have fear. Who wouldn’t want to learn to drive from Sir Ben?
MM: The director tells us that Sir Ben’s a worse driver than you.
PC: Oh, the beauty of movie making! What can’t we convince people of? But you would believe Sir Ben could do anything wouldn’t you?
MM: How do you keep your mood upbeat when the financing goes up and down and it looks good and then it isn’t?
PC: You have to have tenacity, courage, patience and bourbon. MM
Grandma opened in theaters August 21, 2015, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classic. Learning to Drive opened in theaters August 21, 2015, courtesy of Broad Green Pictures.
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