PLUME: What was the genesis of Gosford Park?
BALABAN: I called Robert Altman up three years ago, or two years ago – it wasn’t all that long ago – and said, “Let’s work together on a murder mystery.” Basically, that’s how it started. He said, “What do you mean?” And I said, “Well, I’ve been reading some Agatha Christie, and I think that it would really be interesting to place you in England in the ’30s, in some kind of murder mystery.” I actually was thinking of it as a television series, truth be told. Robert said, “No, I think it could be kind of a movie. I’ve never done that in a movie. Let’s forget about the television series aspect of it.” I flew to California and had lunch with him three or four times, and together roughed in the basic concept of the movie. Then Robert said, “Whom shall we hire to write this thing?” And I supplied the lovely Julian Fellowes, with whom I’d been working for years on a film version of an Anthony Trollope novel called The Eustace Diamonds with my frequent partner in producing, Ileen Maisel, who is an executive at Fine Line – very smart, produced Dangerous Liaisons, the fabulous John Malkovich movie, and many other great things. I knew Julian, so I immediately plugged him in – not plugged him in, I called him and he came and we met, and Robert loved him. He wrote 70 pages in about 4 weeks or something, and everybody decided – well, everybody was just me and Robert – let’s make that movie. Up to that movie, Robert and I financed everything – which was not enormous, but frightening anyway. So we paid for the screenplay we used, Julian had to fly here, “Well, you pay for the hotel, I’ll pay for the airfare.” We were partners. Once Robert decided to make the movie, I brought Robert my friend Mary Selway to be the casting director … the best casting director, probably, there is – or certainly up there with the best few of them. She was tremendously helpful, and then we got out on a huge limb, started hiring an art department, started getting offices, all that kind of stuff. Then all of our financing fell apart and we were stranded in that scary place of, “Do we go home and just fold up our tent …?” Then at the last minute, everything came together and we got to do the movie.
PLUME: It’s an amazing, amazing cast.
BALABAN: Well, Robert attracts great actors … It’s very hard to remember this, it’s like when you’re a beginning actor and you go into an audition, it doesn’t occur to you that they actually need you. They want you to come in there and be amazing and great, so they can cast this part already and do a good project. It doesn’t occur to you. I mean, the fact is, right when you become a great actor – it doesn’t occur to you necessarily if you’re a producer – if you have a really good script and you’re Robert Altman, everybody wants to be in the movie, basically. Certainly everybody in England wanted to be in the movie, and it was – you had to beat a few people away, because there weren’t enough parts for everybody.
PLUME: Was there anyone that you regretted having to beat away for that reason?
BALABAN: Not really. No, I think we ended up with just an ideal bunch of people, and also because of Mary Selway’s depth in her casting. The smallest part, and even some of the larger parts that were played by people that are not household words yet, that only a casting director would know about, everybody’s as strong as everybody else … And that’s, of course, Robert, because he sets up situations in which actors flourish and thrive. And actors spend a huge amount of time on movie sets, having a bad experience. When they sniff that there’s going to be an experience worth having, they want to come to the party – and it was like a party. It really was.
PLUME: Robert’s known for his loose style…
BALABAN: Well, he was loose, but to me, Gosford Park is the perfect example of the yin and yang of Robert Altman. His loose, anything may happen style combined with an absolute razor-like sharpness that he also has. I mean, it’s both of his qualities.
PLUME: How would you compare and contrast that with Christopher Guest’s style?
BALABAN: I would say that there’s no similarity. I would say that the similarity between the two directors is that they both respect actors – a lot. And they both understand a lot about actors, and besides that, they’re interested in different things. They have different senses of humor, and their style as moviemakers is 100% different… radically different.
PLUME: How difficult is it, as an actor, to be involved in a project where it’s being helmed by someone who doesn’t respect actors?
BALABAN: It’s not fun being in a movie that’s dysfunctional, and I’ve certainly been in them. To me, oddly enough, if I had to really be brutal about it – I’d say it’s more about the material. I mean, yes, if I have a choice I choose the director that I want to work with … but ultimately, my best experiences on a movie or anywhere have generally been because the writing was good and the thing that I was doing was able to be something because of the writing.
PLUME: Is there a particular project that sticks out in your mind as conforming to that – being material you really wanted to work on, so you made sacrifices as far as it being a difficult project to work on?
BALABAN: That’s a good question… I don’t know if I can analyze my life well enough to be able to say that. I know there is something, I just can’t think of what it would be right now.
PLUME: What’s been your worst experience on a film?
BALABAN: Oh, my worst experience – I’ve had several worst experiences on a film. It’s much more devastating if you’re directing something and it’s a disaster. I mean, I had a horrible experience directing a movie, and I had a horrible experience directing a play. I would say that nothing compares to having a bad experience as a director. Certainly as an actor, nothing has ever been as devastating as having a bad experience as a director. I would say that’s very true. On the other hand, rarely is it as joyful, you know, when I’m having a great experience as a director, as I did in my movie The Last Good Time with Armin Mueller-Stahl and Lionel Stander and Maureen Stapleton and Olivia d’Abo. Or, as I frequently did – and continue to have – in my play that I’m doing right now. Or a play I did off-Broadway two years ago, or whatever. Occasionally I have this experience while directing in television. There’s something to me that’s more exciting and amazing when I’m directing something and having a great experience – because it lasts longer, and you feel more responsible for it, and… I don’t know. It’s just using different muscles, and I really, really like it.
PLUME: When the experience goes bad, does it tend to become a runaway train?
BALABAN: Sometimes, yes. I had that with a play in New York three years ago. I won’t identify it, but it was a play I had directed previously. It was in a world premiere somewhere in regional theater that was mammothly well-received, and the New York Times hailed it as the best new thing in the world – and we came to New York and had a dismal production. But the hard part about it was it was so brutal. My constant trying to pull it together and make something happen that literally could not happen, because of all the circumstances. It was just different. It was a different cast, it was a different set, it was a different theater, we had a different mandate – everything about it. I also, then, had in my head how great it could be and how great it had been, so I couldn’t blame it on the material. I had to blame myself, basically, and that was very, very painful.
PLUME: Is there a lesson to be learned on something like that?
BALABAN: Yes – try to learn when to quit.
PLUME: Are you the type that will walk away before it becomes overwhelmingly painful, or try and stick with it until the ship goes down?
BALABAN: I don’t remember ever walking away from anything. I suppose to my credit, as well as to my foolishment … I’m assuming that it’s going to get better. I’m assuming it’s just this week. You know, next week, all this pushing and pounding – if I’m smart enough, I can figure out a way to make this thing work. I mean, we’re always having trouble. There’s always a point, usually, when you’re doing something where you go, “Oh my God, it’s going to be terrible.” It’s the first screening, and then you go, “No, we just have to trim 10 minutes,” and suddenly it’s beautiful. I mean, I must say if I learned anything from Robert Altman – and you can’t learn this, you just sort of have to have it – he doesn’t really have, as far as I can see, demons in some of the areas that my demons thrive and flourish. He could look at a rough cut of his movie and see the beauty that lies beneath. You know, that will be there in another two weeks when he has time to do the trims, or whatever. I can only look at something that I’m involved with when it’s not going well and utterly despair. It doesn’t stop me – I keep going. But I waste a lot of energy on despairing, and usually, most of the times, I’ve been very lucky and it comes together really, really nicely.
PLUME: At what time does persistence in the face of adversity become detrimental?
BALABAN: Oh, when you’re re-cutting your movie for the seventeenth time and trying to put off the opening, or something. And it would have been the same movie last year, you know? You never know, though. You’re always trying to figure out is it worth going for take 17, or were we okay on take 2? I’m not a person in movies who likes to do a tremendous amount of takes, but I’ve been with directors who did 30 takes of things. Again, please grant me the wisdom to know when I should keep going and when I should stop and it was okay, or it wouldn’t be any different if you kept going.
PLUME: Do you think the take issue is something that potentially leads you down the wrong path – coming at directing from being an actor, and knowing when the magic starts to fade, or the energy starts to wane?
BALABAN: As an actor, it’s all about the acting. When you’re directing, it’s because you didn’t hit your light, or it’s because the camera bobbled, or it’s because the pan at the end didn’t frame the door properly. That’s a lot of the reasons we do these things 100 times. It’s not only because the acting wasn’t great. Also, there is a mystery, which is – sometimes when you’re on the set, the thing that seemed like the best take in dailies is not the best take. It’s very mysterious. Or you’ll sit in dailies and be laughing hysterically at something, and then when you cut that scene into the course of the movie, it’s just dull and terrible. You have to sort of be prepared for, you sort of have to simply accept the fact that the movie will have a life of its own, and you’re going to have to listen to it and pay attention to it, because you can’t usually just tell it what to do …
Continued below…
Comments: None
Leave a Reply |