Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
I don't actually have a list of people in the film industry that I would like to interview before I move off this mortal coil, but I can't imagine that if I was was forced to compose such a list that Philip Seymour Hoffman wouldn't be on it, somewhere right near the top. Well, thanks to an exquisite little film he has directed and stars in called JACK GOES BOATING, I don't have to include him on such a list. There are few actors working today who can pretty much do it all and do so with a workman's conviction and craftsman's care. The idea of directing this film, adapted by Robert Glaudini (based on his play), wasn't even Hoffman's. The play was originally staged by the LAByrinth Theater Company in New York, of which Hoffman was, until recently, the artistic director.
JACK GOES BOATING was a four-person production as a stage play, and is essentially that as a film as well. Three of four original cast members reprise their roles in the film, with Amy Ryan stepping into the role of Jack's love interest Connie. The other two cast members of John Ortiz (a co-founder of LAByrinth and a familiar face in recent Michael Mann movies) and Daphne Rubin-Vega. When I first saw the film back in January, it touched me how this film managed to parallel the trajectory of two relationships--one going up (Jack and Connie) and one plummeting to earth (Clyde and Lucy). One serves as an example of what not to do, while the other offers hope that even the misfits of this world can find comfort and love with each other. It's a beautiful, funny, tragic work, and Hoffman does so much more than point the camera at the four actors; there's an actual vision happening here.
On his recent visit to Chicago, Hoffman brought along his partner in crime John Ortiz, and we had an absolute blast doing a Q&A the night before our interview. The audience Q&A turned into a master class in acting, directing for the stage, and just begin outright gracious and entertaining for the crowd. Before stepping into the theater, I had a chance to chat with Hoffman and Ortiz about such things as the silly rumor that Hoffman was playing The Penguin in the next Batman movie ("People love to cast their own movies," Hoffman joked). We also talked more seriously about his work THE MASTER, Paul Thomas Anderson's next film, which Hoffman says he has yet to see a script for. "Paul doesn't send me his scripts; he makes me come to his house and read them, which is fine with me because I don't want to be 'that guy' whose script leaks."
Hoffman has just finished shooting MONEYBALL (opposite Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill) for his CAPOTE director Bennett Miller from a script by Aaron Sorkin, and he's really hoping that the scheduling works out for him to star in George Clooney's next directing effort FARRAGUT NORTH. But when you really look at Hoffman filmography, it gives you a chill to think about how many great films in the last 20 years. Let me just bounce some titles off of you: HARD EIGHT, BOOGIE NIGHTS, MAGNOLIA, PUNCH DRUNK LOVE, TWISTER, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, ALMOST FAMOUS, STATE AND MAIN, 25TH HOUR, OWNING MAHOWNY, COLD MOUNTAIN, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD, CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR, THE SAVAGES, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III, SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, DOUBT, and THE INVENTION OF LYING. You could remove half of these titles, and still have an impressive track record.
Enough prologue. You know him, you love him, and the movie world would not be the same without him. Please enjoy Philip Seymour Hoffman with John Ortiz. I should mention that the beginning of this interview is essentially us waiting for Ortiz to arrive, so my question are a little scattered and small talky, but there's still some good information in there. Enjoy…
Capone: Hello, again. Good morning.
Philip Seymour Hoffman: I hesitate to say it, but the times I've seen [JACK GOES BOATING] when it’s been a packed house, there’s a real group experience while watching.
Capone: Yeah, I was watching the swimming pool scenes again last night, and you said a lot of people, in the stage version, said those were people’s favorite scenes. They are just so joyous, and I don’t even know exactly where they fit into the rest of what stories are being told, but they are just the happiest moments in the film. Maybe they are those scenes where the two guys don’t have to think about their lives and are just being friends.
PSH: Right. Well the movie is about three relationships, and that’s the third relationship.
Capone: The best one. The most comfortable.
PSH: It’s the one that goes through as big a change as the other ones, you know.
Capone: Yeah. So you wrapped up the film you made with Bennett Miller [MONEYBALL] you said. Do you have anything else lined up at this point? You mentioned a couple other films when we talked about yesterday, but they didn't sound like they were really ready to go yet.
PSH: It's not so much that. Things, I think, are ready to go. It’s more about scheduling, money, and things. There are a lot of things that go with that, and that's not really specific to Paul's film. It’s all dependent on a lot of variables, which is basically always the case. So nothing has been said about when they are supposed to start.
Capone: I supposed you’ve got to squeeze in whatever the next BATMAN movie is, which would probably bring you back to Chicago.
PSH: [laughs] Did they shoot the last one here?
Capone: They shot them both here.
PSH: Oh that’s great.
Capone: With the last one in particular, they really took over the city at night and on the weekends.
PSH: Ain’t It Cool News, is that based in Chicago?
Capone: No, it’s in Austin, Texas.
PSH: That’s right, of course. I knew that. But you are here?
Capone: I’m here. I’m going down there at the end of the month actually for a festival.
[John Ortiz arrives]
Capone: I like the way that there’s no sense of what Jack’s dating history and sexual history is in the film. Was that something you filled in on your own? How did you figure out his life before Connie?
PSH: I think that does matter. I think that’s part of Bob Glaudini, the writer’s creation. What he does a lot when he’s writing is… there’s this mystery to the people you are watching, and he keeps that alive. He doesn’t want to answer all of those questions for you, because it would kind of take out what’s going to keep you on the edge of your seat even though you are watching. I had to think about it. John had to think about it. Daphne and Amy had to as well. We talked about what that is, but in the film itself you want to hint at it. Do you know what I mean? If you fill in all of those blanks… People always say, “I wanted to know more about…” in movies, and I always ask, “Why did you want to know more? If you knew more, then that would be another movie.” You would be making a movie about Jack prior to meeting Connie, and I think that’s good, because you get people who project their own history onto the characters, which is a lot of what the film going experience is about. You are subconsciously personalizing the movie for yourself, and in this story I think it would leave that room for you to do it.
Capone: I wasn’t implying at all that I felt like something was missing. It was great that that’s actually…
PSH: No, no. But that is a question people have, and that’s just something I think Bob does purposely.
Capone: With Clyde, I think know almost too much about his married life, more than we would maybe want to know. So comparatively speaking, we know almost nothing about Jack.
PSH: You learn about Jack through learning about Clyde’s history. Jack is somebody who has known him for a long time, who has kind of been taken under their wing and led to believe, or does believe, rightfully so that this is a relationship that I think he kind of reveres. "If I had one, it would be like Clyde and Lucy." That’s the kind of disillusionment that happens, or is the thing you assume or that you hope or that you want to be true isn’t, and that that’s the nature of being in love and relationships, be it a man and a woman or a man and a man or a woman and woman--relationships in general. Or the risks of being in one is the risk of saying you will probably get heartbroken. That’s just kind of how things go. Up to that point, I think you do learn the history of Jack, Jack has his history in Clyde and Lucy, where he believes a certain thing about them and that they can do it, but he can’t.
Capone: I think you even mentioned it last night, where it does feel like we enter this story, to a certain degree, in the middle of something. And actually I noticed this more the second time I saw the film that you enter a scene a lot of times in the middle of the conversation. We don’t see how they got to the point where two people are talking in the street; they're just suddenly talking in the street, or they're suddenly in the pool. Was that something that you intentionally did give things a more immediate feel?
PSH: Well that’s Bob too. Bob, again is really trying to nurture this sense of keeping everybody a little off kilter and not knowing why they are off kilter, and one of the ways he does that technically is by starting something in the middle of something and also keeping that mystery alive about “What’s going on? How did they get there?”, and then as you are watching it, you just start to understand. That’s really the film, something so simple is happening, and these kind of big things are falling into their laps and falling into your lap, and it’s the surprise of that. And in editing we did help that a little bit sometimes. We definitely did want to go “Boom," right to her face.
Capone: Did either of you change something about the way you played your characters as you made that transition from the stage to film, and, if so, can you quantify those changes?
John Ortiz: Well that was one of Phil’s biggest… That is where he helped me a lot, with letting go of the play and… When we had those two weeks of rehearsals to treat it like it’s new and to discover new things and let go of the stage performances, at the very least on the surface when it came to rhythms and dialogue, because a lot of dialogue was actually the same. So that was very tricky, and a lot of times it was done in the moment when the cameras were rolling and in between takes. The diner scene, the limo scene, was the biggest example about that for me, because that’s Clyde’s big moment, and it was even more of a thing with Clyde. It was pretty much a monologue. It’s a huge scene, but meat of the reveal was like two or three pages long.
So that was tough not only as a performer and challenging as a performer to keep it fresh and keep it in the world of the film, but I think also just, structurally, I would imagine when it came to the adaptation to make that scene include film dialogue--more realistic dialogue. There seemed to be a need there in that chunk for that, and I think it helped a lot in terms of the overall storytelling, but also the relationship was more of a give and take in the film. It was more checking in with each other. It was more about each other than just Clyde’s “I’ve got to let this out of my system.” I guess it was more even in terms of the dynamic between the two, so that was just one example of the switch, but I think also just the sheer act of letting go was a really important lesson. Even if it wasn’t a play before, that’s always a thing that I’m conscious of and a lot of times it’s hard to do that, just let go of even the work that you are doing in your preconceived ideas and what you want to look like or how you want to behave. That act of just really trusting the work and your fellow actor and your director is tricky.
Capone: Being so familiar with the play, did that help? Or was that something you had to overcome to get this film done?
PSH: A little of both you know. I think there was something that I was trying to do with the film that I think that the film was heading toward an ending that was different from the play, which was this couple, Clyde and Lucy, we actually understand that they do separate, where in the play that wasn’t the case. So that was part of what happened in the limo scene, part of what happened in the mapping out of Clyde and Lucy was that reveal that comes at the end where you see Lucie get so nasty to him. That had to be built up, meaning that cap had to really explode off, so the cap had to be tight on up to that pointm where in the play it’s allowed to come out.
That was something I wanted to explore just how tightly wound that thing was, so that when it [Makes a “pop” noise] that it would just be so awful. So that Jack and Connie are watching this thing implode and burn right in front of them, which is their last lesson that this couple is giving them without knowing it, which is “This is what might happen. Are you still willing to do it?” And yes, that is the thing that all people who end up committing themselves to a relationship do have to kind of ask themselves “Am I willing to risk that this is a possible outcome?” That was part of it, part of what John was saying, you do have to let go of maybe all of these things you have done before and trust that you will find new things. Jack is the same thing, and Amy was new, so she was starting fresh, so she just created it.
JO: The swimming scenes also, they were very stylized as you can imagine doing them on stage without water.
Capone: Yeah, you talked about that last night and did a wonderful reenactment, I might add.
JO: [laughs] But also in the scenes where he’s actually coaching him after the first one, it was all monologues and it was very choreographed, and I actually did it all. It’s interesting, because in the play it becomes very stylized, and I actually kind of got off on that. It’s like a dance, you know, and I thought I was going to do the same thing in the movie even though he was in the scene, but it didn’t work. It goes back to your question, like “What is it that we have to change?” That was definitely one thing, and luckily I had stored information with actual swimming lessons and then I was able to come up with other stuff and I wasn’t like “Oh shit, I don’t know what to do, because I can’t do my stylized dance anymore on film,” and it was in the moment and it was part of the fabric of filmmaking you know?
Capone: I love what you talked about last night about the rehearsal process, and how you thought that might help things. Can you talk just a little bit about that, about borrowing that process from Sidney Lumet when you made BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE DEAD?
PSH: I realize that a rehearsal for a film is as much as, if not more for the director and the DP than it is for the actors, which I realized was going to benefit me a lot the first time I was a film director. I wanted to have as much time working on the scenes with [W. Mott Hupfel III], the DP, with me, and so we would both be going through the actor’s process together, because they are the director. The director of photography is also directing the film, it’s a very real title, and so those two heads are trying to oversee how they are going to bring this thing to fruition. So it was very helpful to work through these scenes and rehearse these scenes in the place and Mott would be there, and he would be walking around the room looking while we were rehearsing and working, and then we would finish and we would give notes, so Mott would raise his hand and be like “What about…”
That just started a certain dialogue and it also, the more important thing, was it really does do something to a group of people when they are involved in that part of the process. They really do feel like it’s theirs, like they are a part of it in a very personal way and that carries through the shoot that everyone feels like they have a stake at what John and Daphne are doing in a scene in way. They are not just thinking about the light in the scene, there’s a stake in all of it. They feel like they are a part of what’s going to happen there and that’s probably the most beneficial thing at the end of the day, it does create a good group effort.
Capone: When you started telling the story about Lumet and taping out the rooms for rehearsal, I had actually interviewed Ethan Hawke for that film too, and he told me the same thing, which I'd forgotten until you brought it up last night. Lumet came out of directing a lot of plays for live television. Do you think that process comes from that?
PSH: Yeah, and it probably also comes from the fact that he was a child actor. That’s the thing, and I was actually telling somebody else about this. They were like, “So what about the actors turned directors?” and I was like “There really isn’t such a thing. There are directors who act and some people who do both” and I said, “A perfect example is no one ever thinks of Sidney Lumet as an actor.” Actually, when you meet him still to this day, he still has the actor’s spirit, so there is also that. The idea of getting in the room, rehearsing, saying, “Let’s work on it. Let’s talk about it.” You sit around the table and read through it for a few days. You do the whole nine yards and you get a lot done. I think that’s what’s smart about it, you just get a lot done in those two weeks, and when we start shooting there’s a real short hand happening. That’s what John meant, like we would be in the middle of takes, and the camera would still be rolling and I would just be saying stuff driving them crazy. We were now in it and we had done a lot of work, and now I could just kind of not spend a lot of time going “Let’s take 10 and talk about it for a second.”
JO: You don’t have to worry about boundaries and stuff too. It’s amazing that people don’t do it more. I think people are just afraid of rehearsal. They kind of romanticize what it is to do a film and think that it’s not… It’s like some mystery and it’s ego driven. This is like the complete opposite. It’s like those boundaries are down, everyone is trying to do their best to put their ego aside and just fucking feed the work, and so that enables a shorthand to happen in the moment and not waste our time pulling a diva fit and going to him, “I need Phil to talk to me privately, damn it!”
[Everyone Laughs]
PSH: It’s also the thing of there’s something that I think is really true about the creative process, which is that if you do it once or twice or a bunch of times… If you are rehearsing it and you actually rehearse, so you get to the point where the actors are actually doing it, and then they don’t do it for a couple of weeks. When they come back to do it again, it’s amazing what the mind does over those two weeks while you are sleeping and thinking and eating and stuff. It settles into a deeper place, and so you are at a very fertile place at that time, and that’s also something. But if you don’t actually do it then you’ve actually never done it, so your brain and mind aren’t actually given the benefit of having the settled and nurtured self. It’s still in a place where it’s all up here and a lot of rehearsal on film is a lot of people pretending to do it or talking about it, that kind of thing.
Capone: All right, well guys thank you so much. It was really great to meet you.
PSH: My pleasure.
Capone: It was really fun last night too.
JO: It was really nice to meet you.
Capone: Hopefully if you work with Michael Mann again, he might bring you back to Chicago.
JO: I’m trying to convince him to do a Chicago movie.
Capone: Yeah?
JO: That crosses like generations and centuries.
Capone: Really?
JO: I was just riffing with him one day and I forget how it started, but I was like, “You should just fucking do it, man. You are actually the guy to do it.” Because this city is amazing in terms of history and where it’s at now and just so much here, man. And all of his films touch on that, and that’s actually what it was that made me think of it. I was like “just combine all of that and make it.”
Capone: That would be incredible. Anyway, thanks guys.
JO: It was a pleasure man, take care.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcool.com
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