MM: Ewan, what did directing American Pastoral teach you?
EM: It taught me a great deal about how I would go about it the next time. That’s a sort of glib answer, I suppose. It’s true though. The first few weeks of directing this, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I would turn up to Lakeshore and sit in an office with my script. It’s probably the most frightening part of the process, because there’s nobody there yet. Obviously, there are producers from Lakeshore, but I didn’t have department heads yet. I was left alone. Now I know—this is when to spend as much time as you can in the script and in your imagination, dreaming the film. At that point, you feel a little rudderless, and it’s not until you start having people to talk with that you start explaining what it is you’re after. How you see it, and how it should feel. I would know a lot of things not to worry about. I would allow myself the luxury of just being still and thinking about it and reading and dreaming it and coming up with how you feel it should be—and accepting that it’s an important part of the process.
MM: Jennifer, how was it working with Ewan as a first-time director?
JC: He was bold. I remember one scene he said, “I feel really confident that I want to shoot this in a one-two shot”, and that doesn’t feel like a first-time director to me. That feels like someone who is making very clear choices. He has a lot of experience being on film sets and seemed very much at home. I really enjoyed working with him, the atmosphere he created and collaborating with him.
Swede Levov (Ewan McGregor) and Vicky (Uzo Aduba) in American Pastoral. Photograph by Richard Foreman
MM: Ewan, after having directed yourself, do you have different empathy for directors?
EM: Yes, for first time directors. I’ve worked with a lot of first time directors and I quite like it, because it’s usually quite an exciting place to be, but it can also be a frustrating place to be because a lot of people on the set are more experienced. It just depends on the character of the director. There’s a thing that a lot of first-timers suffer from which is the need to look like you’re in charge of everything. Of course, sometimes when you’re directing, you have to go, “Oh fuck, I don’t know. What do you think?,” because you’re surrounded by really talented people that you’ve chosen. I recognize some of the fear that drives people to behave that way. It’s a very unique and quite lonely place to be on set. I’ve been on film sets for a long time, and I’ve seen some of the world’s greatest directors, and I’ve learned what worked for me and what didn’t work for me. I tried to direct the way I like to direct. I think I would recognize that fear in a first-time director and maybe be gentler with that. I very much like collaboration. I believe in it. In acting, it’s very important to be in it with another person. I don’t do my stuff and let them do their stuff, it’s very much about what’s happening together. That leads to the best work.
MM: How do you feel about the finished product?
EM: I love it very much, I really do. I feel differently about it every time I see it. I watched it at Toronto (TIFF) at its world premiere, and I could see every cut and every sound cue I heard. I wasn’t at all inside it, but when I’m inside it, when I’m taken by the film, I really feel it was the film I wanted to make. The last thing that we did was the sound mix. That was my last days work on this movie was in May on a Friday. On the Thursday, we had a full run-through, because you work reel by reel through the sound cues, and we would review each reel as we finished it. By the end of it I had a big smile on my face, and I felt that’s the film I wanted to make. Of course there are going to be moments that you wish could have been slightly different, but I think it was quite rare. I’ve heard a lot of directors have not had that kind of experience, and I felt I was never compromised, I was never forced to cut a scene I liked or steer a scene in a direction that I didn’t agree with. What you see was absolutely my intention. MM
American Pastoral opened in select theaters October 21, 2016, courtesy of Lionsgate.
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