Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
If I had had a little more time to talk to the great director Taylor Hackford and go beyond just talking about his latest work, THE LOVE RANCH, I might have seriously considered tagging this interview for my too-long-dormant AICN Legends column (but fear not, I have a great new Legends column nearly ready to post). But that didn't stop me from having a truly inspiring talk with Mr. Hackford, the man I admire above many other simply because he's the lucky S.O.B. who got to marry Helen Mirren. Beyond that, however, Hackford has made some really great and memorable works over the years, including AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN, THE IDOLMAKER, AGAINST ALL ODDS, WHITE NIGHTS, EVERYBODY'S ALL AMERICAN, DOLORES CLAIBORNE, THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, PROOF OF LIFE, and RAY, for which he received a Best Director Oscar nomination. Hackford actually won an Oscar in 1978 for a Live Action Short Film called TEENAGE FATHER. True story.
Now in 2010, the 65-year-old director and producer has directed Mirren for the first time since 1985's WHITE NIGHTS (which is the film in which they met) in LOVE RANCH, the inspired-by-true-events story of Nevada brothel owners Grace and Charlie Bontempo (Mirren and Joe Pesci, returning to the screening after a long absence), a couple loosely based on the lives of Mustang Ranch owners Joe and Salley Conforte. Both the real and movie couples get involved with boxers.
In real life, the boxer was Oscar Bonavena from Argentina; in the movie, his name is Armando Bruza, played by Spanish newcomer (to the U.S.) Sergio Peris-Mencheta. Both boxers had an affair with the wife, and this leads to trouble. And whatever issues I may have had with the LOVE RANCH, I can't deny that seeing Mirren and Pesci on screen together is impossibly gripping. It doesn't hurt that the film is loaded with gorgeous hookers, played by the likes of Gina Gershon, Taryn Manning, Bai Ling, Elise Neal, and Scout Taylor-Compton. There is truly no business like ho business. Please enjoy my enlightening talk with Taylor Hackford. And consider yourself warned: there are some heavy-duty spoilers peppered liberally throughout this interview.
Taylor Hackford: Hey Capone, how are you?
Capone: Good. It’s good to talk to you. I actually just finished watching the movie this morning, because they just gave it to me yesterday. I’m curious, it says at the top of the film that it’s “based on true events”…
TH: It says, “Inspired by…”
Capone: What's the difference in your mind?
TH: Yeah, it says “Inspired by a true story” and the reason I say that is that it’s not a docudrama; we did take some dramatic license. There are a lot of historical precedent and a lot of truth in the story. Joe and Sally Conforte did found The Mustang Ranch and did get the first legalized brothel passed in the United States. Oscar Bonavena did train there, and he was murdered there. So these characters are the antecedents of Joe Pesci and Helen Mirren and Sergio Peris-Mencheta’s characters, but there are other things that I thought were interesting storywise that we could do. You don’t want to be tied so specifically to… Like I said, It's not a docudrama. It’s interesting to kind of create your stories so that yes it’s inspired by, but it’s also grows and deals with something a little bigger.
Capone: If you decide to be inspired by these events, but you also want to tailor them to a bigger message, what was it that you were trying to uncover about this lifestyle and these people?
TH: Well you know, for instance if you are… nobody was there. When Oscar Bonaveda was killed, somebody took the rap for it [It was Joe Conforte's boyguard]. I don’t, in my mind, have any doubt that Joe Conforte had him killed, but nobody ever proved it. I think if you are going to come down to the climax of this movie, I wanted to make it emotionally true to the characters that we had created.
The reality of Oscar Bonaveda and his world in Argentina, he didn’t go back there. He was a huge hero there. I don’t know why exactly he didn’t go back, but I think that we made certain choices for this character. In reality, there are little nuances that each of the characters…we took some liberties with and also you can do that by not calling them by their real names. It gives you the opportunity of saying “Hey, we are not going to call this person Joe Conforte or Sally Conforte or Oscar Bonaveda; we are going to call them Charlie and Grace Botempo and Armando Bruza,” and therefore the conversations that they have and the motivations and the things that we are doing here, yes, it is interesting that sometimes the real stories of life are larger than life, but it allows us to have a little bit of a creative license in dealing with the drama, and that was it.
It’s different with, say, Ray Charles. Portraying Ray Charles--it's Ray Charles! You aren't going to say that Ray Charles’ music is by anybody else. I’m tied to that being tied to the truth. In this instance, I felt it would be a better story told, and Mark Jacobson, who is the writer and who brought me the project, felt that it was better to take that bit of dramatic license.
Capone: The boxer character is an interesting guy to sort of throw into this mix, even if he was 100 percent fictional, because he’s this big aggressive guy, but he’s clearly the most sensitive person in the film, and that’s very different than we are used to seeing out of a boxer character in any movie I think, and he’s great. I’m not familiar with the actor who played him.
TH: It’s his first film in America. Listen, when you have Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci, who are consummate artists and mature artists who have attained numerous great performances, to me, the great danger of this piece is the fact that it is a three hander; it’s not just a duo, it’s a three hander. If we bring somebody in to play this character, and remember he is the catalyst, he is the catalyst that creates the triangle. He has to stand toe to toe with those titans and deliver. Otherwise the film is going to fail, and to find somebody like Sergio I felt so lucky, and also to find an actor who is truly dedicated, I mean he is a physical guy. He would be captain of the national rugby team in Spain when he was young, but he didn’t know how to box and he’s rather slim. He’s a big guy, he’s got a great rocky look and I don’t mean “Rocky” the character; I mean a rugged look. But he’s not anywhere near as bull like as he played. He gained 35 pounds. He went to Gleasons Gym in New York in Brooklyn. He trained with a really legendary trainer named Jimmy Glenn. He studied Oscar Bonaveda to the nth degree, and he created in his own physical presence this bull, this character.
While he was here, one of my designs was that he would also improve his English, and I think, you know, hopefully you understand every word he says in this film even though he’s got this accent. He’s not an American Latino who is putting on an accent; he’s the real deal. He even, on his own dime, when to Buenos Aires. He wanted to be able to get that little extra. He’s from Spain, and people from Buenos Aires speak a little differently. He’s that kind of conscientious really dedicated actor, and I gave him everything. My job as a director is to give people the tools. I can’t force them to pick them up. What you want is somebody who picks them up and takes it further than you would hope, and Sergio was that kind of guy. I think he’s got a real future and I think he could be a movie star.
Capone: Yeah, well he certainly has a great smile on top of everything else, even if he’s getting his teeth knocked out in the film. Just getting back to the world of the ranch itself, I did find if kind of fascinating that the big hurdle that that business has to overcome obviously is legalization. Once it becomes legal then you would think…
TH: …they got a license to print money. [laughs]
Capone: Right, but of course they continue to live on the edge of the law with the IRS and everything else. What do you think that drives them to not only get into this business, but also refuse to live fully above the law?
TH: Yeah, I think what happened in this instance, and again you can’t get too deep. There are answers to all of that for me and hopefully…
Capone: I’m talking about these specific characters.
TH: Hopefully it came through. These characters… and they allude to it. Joe says to Helen, “Don’t try to make it like you never broke the law, that you never stole anything.” The reality is they operated outside the law for years and years. They operated brothels in northern Nevada. In reality the antecedents for the characters…it was this famous thing where there was a place where four counties came together, and they had these trailers and they literally would stay in one county and then they’d move across the line and move across the line every single time the heat was there. So when you have been operating and bribing local officials, bribing law enforcement or the politicians, taking the money, not paying the IRS, you get a certain sense of proprietary control.
Then, and I think this is the joke here about Joe Pesci’s character, he was a talented man. He had the charm, he had the drive, and he had the dream to make it legal and he did. That’s breaking of 200 years of puritan morals in this country, which remember we were founded on. We are very uptight about sex and he did it, but then all you’ve got to do is settle back, pay your taxes, and you’ve got a gold mine. He couldn’t do it! Once you are there, you are like “Wait, I never had to pay them taxes before, why am I doing it now?” This is what really happened in the story. Joe Conforte is still living in Brazil.
Capone: I didn’t realize that.
TH: Oh he is. She’s dead now, but the fact is he’s still there, and so that whole process is the human condition. What I was interested in was not the success story. We could have started it with “Oh, these people are outlaws and they got it passed.” At the same time you get the American dream, the impossible American dream, “Can you live with it?” To me, what I was interested in are those people who struck it rich--they have a license to print money--and a guy who had experienced the height of the boxing game. Remember Bonaveda fought the best of the best in the '70s, which was the decade of the greatest heavyweight boxers. He fought Joe Frazier and knocked him down twice in the second round and almost knocked him out. Nobody had done that. And he fought Ali and took him to the limit, 15 rounds. So he had stood toe to toe with the best and on the other hand he was on the downhill slope.
Looking at those three characters, who are all cynical professionals, they don’t have any romantic illusions left. To take those three characters and put them in this kind of setting and then say “Is it possible, in the cynical world of selling sex, for people to actually lose control of their emotions? To fall?” All three of them do in their own way, and I thought that was the interesting thing. The film starts in one way, you know the film starts with a big celebration, and you think, “Oh, I’m watching "Cathouse" on HBO, except in period,” but it doesn’t go there. That’s not what it’s about. It takes you into a character study in a sense and to me, at the end of this film… Is it a happy ending? No, but it also says that, as her last line “We had something. We had love and truth together, and how many people can say that?” That’s all that it aspires to do, to take you there and then say, “Hey, life is complicated. Life is difficult.” At the same time, she found her family at the end.
Capone: That archival footage at the end, is that from Oscar’s actual funeral?
TH: That’s really Oscar Bonaveda’s funeral. Could you believe that? His funeral, next to Evita’s was the biggest ever. It was huge. He was a giant symbol in Argentina. Also, there’s other things there, like Joe has that model he says he wants to build of bricks and mortar, right? That shot at the end is the real Mustang Ranch. It was closed, and then it’s been bought by the madam that consulted on the film, and so when you cut to it at the end, you know we couldn’t afford to build that, it’s there!
Capone: I have to admit I didn’t think you could. I thought it was some old folk’s home that you converted.
TH: [laughs] No, no that’s the real Mustang Ranch. It had been moved from its original location, but it’s functioning, and there it is. So anyway, there were a lot of things in this film that you kind of had to create, because we didn’t have the money, it wasn’t a big-budgeted film, but we wanted to give it production value. I love that footage at the end. And also, when was the last time you saw a movie that had the voiceover at the end? But I think it was an important thing to kind of understand that these things… You watch this whole process happen and then you realize “nothing just happens, everything has repercussions.” And to have that sense of the funeral, to have her, and then to find her at the end in her own place, I thought was an interesting coda.
Capone: Yeah, well you mentioned before that the catalyst is Bruza, but actually I would almost argue that at least the second catalyst is this cancer diagnosis, because it kind of informs a lot about what she does form that point forward and how when she goes into--well I don’t want to ruin it--but at the end, it clearly has inspired her to move forward in a very specific direction as well.
TH: Right, all the way through she’s got this fatalistic quotient. Would that love affair have ever happened otherwise? Probably not, but that’s life. The thing that to me is the great thing about performance is when you have an actor, in this instance an actress, who will allow you to make them not necessarily look the greatest. At the beginning of this film, Grace Botempo is tired. She’s shut off inside. She has no romantic illusions. It’s over for her. She’s working, and there’s that great moment in the film where she breaks up the catfight, and she’s tough and she knows that every eye in the room is on her. “Are they going to be able to follow the rules of the place or not?” And she will not stand for it. She’s plenty tough.
Then that young girl gets up, Scout that’s playing Christina, gets up and defiantly looks at her, you know she’s going to run right to Charlie and tell, and she gives that look to her like “I’ll look right through you.” Then she walks away and there’s a moment where Helen looks away, and you just see all of the exhaustion, all the look on her face, which to me is the key to great acting. After this bravura performance in front of everybody, she looks away and it’s like “Oh God, do I have to do this yet again?” And that’s the character, so tired and kind of fed up and also realizing that “I’m going to die,” and then over the course of the film you see her reinvigorate. You see this life come back into her and this spirit, and part of that is hair and makeup and costume, but most of it comes from the actor. She just came back alive.
Capone: Why was this the right time and the right film to work on again with Helen? It’s been a while, I think?
TH: It’s been too long. [laughs] I mean it’s been 25 years, believe me I tried to find good roles for her and I could never give her anything. I’m passionate about making certain films, and there’s either a role for Helen or there’s not. In RAY, there was no role. On DEVIL’S ADVOCATE there was no role. Even DOLORES CLAIBORNE-- Dolores Claiborne is a Kathy Bates film. There was nothing there. So you know you kind of find character roles and say “Maybe you could play this,” and she looks at me and you know when an actor is turned on by a great role. So part of this is that I was looking, and I finally said “Enough, time is passing and I want to make sure that we work together.” So developing this piece and then being able to get it made, and it was not easy getting it made. It was a short schedule, a low budget, which we stayed on schedule and on budget and I cut the film and then all of a sudden the company I made it for ran out of money, and literally the film sat unfinished for a year.
Unbelievably frustrating, but the fact is that they finally got it together. A lot of people helped. A lot of people I worked with in the past helped, because we didn’t have all of the money in the world and I finished the film. It has nice strong production values, which I always try to get in my films, and you know, you get there. It’s like “Why did this happen now?” One, because Mark Jacobson called me and said he had a story, and I said, “I think that might be good for Helen.” She responded, and here we are. They are never easy. RAY took be 13 years just to find the money and then another two years to make it. You can’t look at these and say they are efficient processes. They are kind of emotional bits of passion that you have that you decide you are going to make, and then you will them to happen.
[Both Laugh]
Capone: Do you enjoy doing more of these period films, where you can kind of immerse yourself in the cloths and the décor and the music? Those sort of things seem to inspire the actors as well.
TH: Whatever the story is, I think it works for me, but I must say that in this instance the '70s is such a wealth of visual material. My costume designer did a great job. The production designer did a great job and all of the cars and all of the buildings and all of that stuff, but in reality you can’t as a filmmaker just get down and wallow in that and make it an exercise in style and say “Let’s make this whole film about the '70s.” I wanted to make it about the people. It’s authentic. I’m pleased with the look of the film and it is fun to do It’s not that long ago, a few decades ago, but you are in a very definite different time and place, and the style helps that, and it’s pleasing to look at it in the movie, because you get to see all of that visually provocative stuff. I thought in this instance the great juxtaposition of the high desert, austere monochromatic with the totally artificial interior, never knowing whether it was day or night as all of the lighting was artificial inside. It’s great stylistic stuff to deal with.
But yeah I like that. RAY was the '50s, and it gives you an opportunity to do your cinematic style, but not ever to me at the expense of trying to present reality and vibrancy on the screen. I don’t like movies that you are looking at the past through gauze, and everybody is kind of walking like they are in a shadowbox. You know, when you see RAY and you see those dancers on the floor, they are out there to have… These are black people on a Saturday night that are working people, and they are going to go out and they are going to get down. It’s not a kind of formal thing, looking at the past. I want people to go “Shit, that’s hot man. Nobody dances like that as good even now,” and the same thing with this. Yeah, it takes place in the past, but they don’t know it’s the past. They think they are the hippest thing going. It’s the '70s. It’s '76. That’s my own philosophy.
Capone: It’s so exciting to see Joe Pesci back in a role this big. I feel like I haven’t seen him for years.
TH: It is great. You haven’t seen him for 10 years. He did a little tiny cameo for De Niro in THE GOOD SHEPHERD.
Capone: I remember that.
TH: He hasn’t worked in 10 years, and it was not easy to coax him out. I think he finds acting painful. It’s not easy for him, and I spent a long time seducing him out and I’m really happy I did, because nobody could have played this role the same way.
Capone: Yeah, he’s terrific, and I had forgotten how much I missed the guy until I started watching this movie and him in those weird Johnny Cash black shirts.
TH: His style. By the way, his sense of keeping his New Jersey origins at the same time as he went out there and completely embraced the west, completely. He made himself his own kind of stylistic quotient, and that was Joe. That was Joe making a choice. That’s the thing, you sign somebody on like that and they go for it.
Capone: I love the sort of half-assed cowboy accent that he puts on. I remember thinking “I hope that’s not there for the whole movie.” And of course Helen Helen comments on his terrible accent.
TH: He’s living his own fantasy. He’s made all of the money. It’s like a self-made man “I’ll talk the way I want to talk.” But then again he never lost his Jersey twang, so he’s taking the figures of speech of the West and saying “I’m a man of the west. I came out here like everybody else in America did and I pioneered it and I succeeded, why can’t I do just exactly what I want?”
Capone: Speaking of hot dancing, I have a friend of mine who is a big ballet fan and years and years ago, I remember when WHITE NIGHTS came out, he really wanted to see it, and he didn’t know who Helen Mirren was from anybody. And afterward he saw it, he asked me “Who was that Russian actress in that movie?” He was convinced that the accent was authentic. I didn’t know how to break his heart.
TH: [laugh] Well, you know, she is half Russian.
Capone: I remember reading that when THE LAST STATION came out.
TH: Although she doesn’t have an accent in that film, she’s good at it.
Capone: She is. Taylor, those are all of the questions I came armed with, and I think I’m way over the time limit they gave me.
TH: No problem. I really appreciate the interest. You know it’s funny, with Ain’t It Cool News, it’s like when I had RAY. Let me just tell you this very funny story, you know I always believe in screening a picture for an audience. I really like to know if what I am trying to do gets there. So we went to Kansas City and said, “Where can we go that we aren’t going to get reviewed before the film is ready?” And we go to Kansas City and we get there, we have two screenings, really great screenings, and I’m like “Oh, we've made it.” Driving back into Los Angeles from the airport, we were reviewed on Ain’t It Cool News. “Son of a bitch!” But anyways, it is always interesting.
Capone: I have been privy to telling some directors I read some good reviews of their movies and their faces just go white, and they are like “What are you talking about?”
[Both Laugh]
TH: What can you do? Anyway, I really appreciate talking.
Capone: Absolutely. I had a terrific time watching the movie. It was fun seeing all of those cool actresses playing the prostitutes too.
TH: They are. Taryn Manning and Gina [Gershon] and Elise Neal. You know, I always take a lot of care in that, and again Helen is responsible. She spent a lot of time with those girls, and the camaraderie that they created is what great actors do.
Capone: Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Well thank you very much for spending so much time with me.
TH: Thank you, I appreciate it.
Capone: Good luck.
TH: Bye.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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