Rebecca Miller's THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is, like its titular character, something of an enigma. Based on Miller's 2008 novel, it's a tragicomic chronicle of a free spirit who settled down before she had a chance to grow up. And now that she's just skidded past middle-age, Pippa (Robin Wright Penn) suddenly finds herself getting knocked around by the memories of her itinerant, and largely unpleasant childhood - which included struggling with a bipolar mother (Maria Bello), soft-core exploitation at the hands of her aunt's live-in lover (a stealth bit of brilliance from Julianne Moore), and a May-December marriage to a wealthy publisher (Alan Arkin).
Most filmmakers would smother this type of film in seriousness, but Miller, who comes from good writin' stock (her poppa was that Arthur Miller fella), lightens the persistent sorrow of Pippa's life with a quirky sense of humor. This is no woe-is-me wallow, nor is it a blandly empowering tale of liberation; mostly, it's a surprisingly light and whimsical tale of a lost soul who finds herself at the moment when most people fall apart. Like everyone else who's passed through her life, we're not sure who Pippa is at the start of this journey - and neither, frankly, is she. But as Miller deftly skips from past to present (via clever scene transitions that often make it feel like one era is transpiring under the same roof as another), we slowly get a sense of Pippa, and come to view her eccentricities and acting out as anything but a sign of madness.
Miller established herself as a fine director of actors with her 2002 Sundance sensation, PERSONAL VELOCITY, and this talent proved undiminished with her critically-acclaimed follow-up, THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE. So it should come as no surprise that there are so many sensational performances in THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE - from Wright Penn to Arkin to Bello to young Blake Lively, who's finally been given something to do besides look stunning. But Miller's also taken a significant step forward as a director here. This is easily her best film yet.
And that's why I was eager to sit down and chat with her last week as she ran the junket gauntlet in support of her fourth feature. In the below interview, we discuss the challenge of adapting one's own novel, the stabilizing influence of humor, and the casual brilliance of Alan Arkin.
Mr. Beaks: In writing a novel, you've the ability to create rich inner lives for your characters. But when you adapt it to film, you have to lose a good deal of that nuance. How do you compensate for that loss?
Rebecca Miller: My motto is "By whatever means necessary." (Laughs) If you need voiceover, if you need montage, if you need someone to look in the camera, if you need flashback... you do whatever it takes. In this case, it was very important that you get a sense of the inner life of Pippa, but you're right that you can't go about it in the same way. So you need to find largely visual means of going in that direction.
But I know what you mean. I think movies that are adapted from books often wind up being like filmed plays; they're not very cinematic. And the thing about cinema is that it's very freeing if you use it with its full potential. It can be anything, really. Obviously, you have to keep it to two hours or less, and you kind of have to have a narrative if you want it to be shown in theaters. (Laughs) But at the same time, there's a lot of freedom - and the audience is very educated. Because of television, because of commercials, because of music videos, people are actually really open.
Beaks: Your transitions are very elegant in PIPPA LEE - particularly in the way the camera glides through the wall as a means of bridging the different eras of Pippa's life. That's something you can only pull off in film. Were you thinking about those transitions as you wrote the script?
Miller: That was one thing that was very planned. The sets were planned; we even had little models of the sets. I'm so glad I did this. To do it either in post or as cuts... first of all, if we'd tried to do it in post, we would never have been able to afford it - with my kind of films, you're always running out of money by the time you're in postproduction. (Laughs) And to do it just through cutting would lose some of the magic, because the whole point is that the past is in the room with here; it's there. I think that's the way life is, really. We have memory. We drift into memory and we drift out again, all in one piece. Our memory is in constant dialogue with us; we are in constant dialogue with our past. So that was sort of the metaphor for the whole film, was in how it was made. That was a really important part of writing the film.
Beaks: Is Pippa based on one specific person, or is she something of a composite?
Miller: She's definitely a composite. There was a woman I met up with that got me thinking about a character like Pippa. I hadn't seen her in years. She had been a wild young woman in New York City, and then I met her again years later, and she was rather placid. She was still the same person, but she had changed the trappings of her life so much: she was a mother with a couple of kids, a husband, and she wasn't really working so much at that time. And I just thought, "Gosh, how does that happen?" And then I started thinking about other people who had changed their lives, people you wouldn't expect. And I thought, "Maybe there's a lot of people out there like that." And there was another person I had known as a young girl that I had kind of idolized. She was a sort of Pippa prototype; she had that graciousness and elegance and... goodness in a way that I think of as Pippa.
Beaks: Pippa is someone who's moved through people's lives and left this indelible impression, and, even though they wind up regarding her as an enigma, she's still incredibly genuine.
Miller: Oh, absolutely. I mean, she makes a huge impression, it's true. And she has a lot of power as a person. When Alan [Arkin] tells her, while they're lying on the couch, that she's his "true wife", she says, "You don't want to marry me. I make people sad." It's not like she's trying to grab attention or anything; there's just something about her that people are drawn to. People are fascinated by her. You can see that in the party scene with Sam and Herb, the writer and the publisher, interviewing her like she's from some strange tribe.
Beaks: They want to get to the bottom of the mystery of who she is. It's cute at first, but it's also very condescending.
Miller: It's banter and flirtation. She's fascinating to them. She's got a lot of charisma. Also, they're watching her as she's kissing one guy, then another guy. She's free. And I think it's her freedom that intrigues them and makes them both want to have her. Whenever people see a free human being, they want to immediately make them their own. (Laughs)
Beaks: They want to possess them, and therefore extinguish that life force that makes them so special. Perhaps that's what induces the madness Pippa believes she is falling into.
Miller: Exactly.
Beaks: So many films try to depict madness, and they keep falling back on these cinematic cliches of mental illness. This is one of the first films I've seen in a while that convincingly catches someone on the precipice of that descent, where they realize, "Oh, my god, I'm beginning to lose my mind." And how frightening that must be. Where did you go to dredge up that emotion.
Miller: Well, I've known people who are seriously bipolar, and it's a very subtle thing. I mean, it can be subtle, and then incredibly unsubtle - and it can make everyone around them mad. People don't get sick alone; they get sick in clusters. Families in which somebody is sick... even if the reaction is denial, like the scene at the dinner table where everyone is not reacting, that in itself is its own kind of illness.
Beaks: Do you leave room for actors to improvise?
Miller: I very often leave a couple of little gaps in a film. Not a lot. But a couple where I know what is written is just a blueprint, and then I pull it all in.
Beaks: What about someone like Alan Arkin? Does he go in for much improvisation?
Miller: Oh, he's fantastic! The truth is... there wasn't very much improvisation in the film. I'm not a big fan of improvisation in my own films. But beforehand, he was really great at suggesting these little changes. He just has a wonderful comic ear for what sounds right and what sounds funnier.
Beaks: He's a master of line delivery. He can make the plainest dialogue uproariously funny. There's a line early in your film that's a classic Arkin moment. All he says is, "I love that cheese," and suddenly I'm on the floor.
Miller: (Laughs) Oh, I'm glad you loved that! "I love that cheese!"
Beaks: It's great. And it's just one of those moments where you say to yourself, "God, I really love Alan Arkin."
Miller: He really sold that moment. There are certain lines where an actor can really be hung out to dry, but... god, yes, "I love that cheese." It's just one of those married moments about cheese. That's what being in a family is like. "Do you need anything else other than the apricot spread?" It's just so inane.
Beaks: And then you cut to this moment at dinner where he's just listening to a conversation, and... I mean, he can even think funny.
Miller: You know, I rarely said anything to poor Alan because he's so good. I just didn't want to disturb him. I mean, if it's not broke, don't fix it. It's like trying to direct a cat: you don't tell a cat how to be a cat; you don't say, "Would you mind curling up more?" Alan was like that. He was so real with [Robin]. He was so completely believable. I remember a couple of moments where I said, "Let's try this." There was one particular moment, after he's discovered with Winona [Ryder], and he's saying, "I care for you enormously." I said to Alan, "Let's try it once where you think you can get her back." So he did it like that, and that's what we used. It's like this slight opening; you can see him starting to get his hopes up again.
Beaks: It's a really intriguing dynamic between someone like Alan, who makes you want to laugh all the time, and Robin, who, for whatever reason, possesses such tragic depth as an actor. You created such a strange dynamic by putting those two together, and it really kept me on my toes.
Miller: One of the things I find so surprising and interesting about Robin's performance is the lightness of it later in the film. "Killing yourself with a disposable razor..." Or when she goes to the convenience store and bumps into Chris, Keanu Reeves's character. She plays it that she's attracted to him, but also appalled at herself for buying cigarettes. And there's a moment where you can see that she's surprised with herself. Robin's a really subtle comic actress, I think - and that's very surprising to me. I can't say that I necessarily knew it was there; I sort of gambled that she had it.
Beaks: Actually, you're right. She really is deft in the way she handles what should be the bottoming out part of her life. That's not a side of Robin that we often get to see.
Miller: Yes. Because Pippa... one thing I love about her so much is that she doesn't feel sorry for herself. She could definitely think of herself as a victim, but she doesn't think of herself that way at all. Even when the worst things happen to her toward the end of the film, she's bemused by her own reactions - and she doesn't necessarily understand her own reactions. I think that's quite realistic. I don't think we always fall apart on cue; it's usually a month later or the next day. It takes a while for things to work through us. And I feel like that scene with Chris in the truck, where she does kind of have an emotional opening up or breakdown, that's sort of for everything that she's been holding in.
Beaks: And I think that's why Pippa will survive. She's able to make peace with her own eccentricities, as well as allow herself to fall apart a little bit.
Miller: And to always look on the bright side. That's another line of Alan's I love, especially the way he says it: "Must you always look on the bright side." (Laughs)
Beaks: (Laughing) Cheerfulness. It's such an annoyance to him.
Miller: "Can't I just be depressed?"
