By Mike Reynolds
Photos by Phil Bray

Director Scott Hicks

That dark horse collected Oscar awards and nominations, along with countless other accolades and director Scott Hicks has since delivered another film, Snow Falling on Cedars.

His most recent film release is Hearts in Atlantis, a movie that came "at a time when I had two projects very dear to me in development with different studios." Hicks had been working on them for several years and felt both were "irredeemably bogged down. Just at the moment when I was looking at trying to breathe one of these into life, Hearts came to me. The screenplay arrived as they do, sort of out of the blue in the fairly regular flow of screenplays that make their way to me in Australia. My wife, Kerry Heysen, who is producer of the film, reads everything that comes in. 'This one,' she said, 'might intrigue you.' I read it and was captivated. It was one of those screenplays that drew me in in the first half dozen pages. It was an emotional experience to read."

Not only was it a story he liked, adapted from the Stephen King novel by William Goldman, it was with a studio wanting to make the film and Castle Rock's desire to get it before cameras, with Hicks at the helm, left him almost breathless. "I read it on a Tuesday, by Thursday I was talking to Castle Rock about Anthony Hopkins (as Ted Brautigan), by Sunday I was sitting in the Palisades with Martin Shaeffer and William Goldman and Rick Nicita calls with news about Hopkins, at which point Goldman explodes saying, 'It's got to be good news, you never call on a Sunday afternoon with bad news, you leave that till Tuesday morning.' And lo and behold, Tony was in Florence, he'd read the script and wanted to do the movie and so in the space of a week we were happening. Castle Rock was amazing to work with because they just let me go away and make the movie I wanted to make."

As much as Hicks loved the story, he had ideas for some changes but had heard from others that Goldman was "a strong and very opinionated character who can be somewhat formidable." Hicks also found him to have "an absolute heart of gold and he's also receptive to articulated ideas. That's the key to a relationship to me. I don't mind having to robustly defend and advocate my ideas, because if I can't do that then maybe they're not worth listening to. So if you're going to get into an argument with Bill Goldman over something, you'd better equip yourself with the right tools and be ready to do combat."

As Hicks found out, if you have good ideas, "there'll be that magical moment where he suddenly goes, 'You know what? That's not a bad idea,' and bang, now you've got him. What you want is his great skills, (and for him) to go away and write. So there was a lot of that. I drew up copious notes and on at least three occasions I met with Bill when I'd done more than 30 pages of dense script notes." The volume of notes prompted the exclamation from Goldman, 'Do you always work this hard?' I told him, 'I just feel I've got to put it down (on paper) so we can talk about it.' And we maintained a great relationship.

Hicks with Anton Yelchin

"I suppose there were significant elements which required a lot of knock on effect throughout the story. Notably when I read the screenplay the aliens, in Stephen King's story, the low men, were still aliens and Ted still had a supernatural element beyond the psychic power. It was much reduced from the novel but it was still there and I basically said to Bill, 'I think we've got to be aliens or we're not aliens. Let's not be 'kind of' aliens.' I wanted it taken out. I liked the human story. I felt, to be honest, a little cheated when I discovered Ted was an alien. I thought he'd fooled Bobby in a way. I didn't want that. I wanted genuine human relationships and so that was a major change. The other, probably most significant one, really came during the shooting.

"I became increasingly anxious about the end of the movie. I had already altered a great deal of how Goldman had done it, which had been done according to the novel, where Bobby and Carol meet up and it's years later. I became very uneasy with it, in light of what I saw developing on the screen. I felt that the core of the movie was in the relationship between Bobby and Ted, (while) Bobby and Carol was (just) a beautiful sidebar of this story. I came up with a fresh idea, which is the end of the movie now. Of course, I had to gird my loins to make that call to Bill. I wasn't willing to be gung ho and just do it. I wanted him engaged in the process. Yeah, we did battle over the phone! I said, 'Bill, let me just describe the scene.' He was very patient for about 90 seconds while I spun out the quick version of it and then he said, 'You're mad, you're crazy, you're going to ruin the film ... destroy the whole thing!' So, I let him blow off and then I came back and said, 'I'll tell you where it came from and I described an event that had happened to me and the right words came out at the right time.' He still ranted a bit and I came back, so it was back and forth and then came that glorious moment — the glint of sunlight through the crack in the door — and he said, 'Maybe it's not that bad! I'll see what I can do.' Then I knew he was hooked."

Those who have seen the film may experience a déjà vu moment from an earlier adaptation of a Stephen King story and Hicks is the first to "own up." It concerns young boys and train tracks and according to Hicks, "It was almost a cheeky kind of deliberate homage, because it's not in the script and I just thought let's go for it. Everybody's already going to say all those things, so I'm just going to go, well, what the hell! It's a glorious image of childhood. Why shouldn't I have it in my movie in a different tone? It was great! Invite the comparison. I don't care! It's a totally different movie, naturally same author of the source material — Stephen King — same studio — Castle Rock; those comparisons are going to be made. They don't bother me, because the stories are so different and the intentions are so different. I made one deliberate change to the screenplay on account of Stand by Me. The character of Bobby Garfield in the novel and original screenplay was a writer. I thought that's a little too much; we've already got the same framing device — Richard Dreyfuss was a writer in Stand by Me — I'm going to make Bobby a photographer. So that was another process of collaboration with Bill. I thought this story is about someone opening this boy's eyes to the adult world, ushering him through a threshold. So let's make it about perception, vision and sight — that's how he came to make his living and made him the successful person he clearly is today."

Anthony Hopkins with Anton Yelchin

Hicks elicited a promise from Castle Rock that if they couldn't find the right boy, "we don't do the movie." That was reassuring to hear but with Anthony Hopkins involved, "it would have been an interesting one to put to the test," offers Hicks. "But the fact they gave me that reassurance, gave me confidence to keep pushing forward with the search and not settle for something adequate. We needed more than adequate, we needed sensational and ultimately the right person presented himself at the right moment. Anton Yelchin was made to do this part and it just took awhile to find him."

The first time Yelchin and Hopkins read together, Hicks "saw a boy who could put a challenge to Anthony Hopkins across a table and it was great to see. It was fantastic!"

With one more problem solved Hicks faced another, a logistical one permitting only four hours a day before the camera for young Anton, meaning, "I was automatically limited to four hours a day with Anthony Hopkins in front of the camera, because they did everything together. Every scene Hopkins is in, almost without fail, is with Anton. But it comes down to the fundamentals I have long believed in, which is that casting is everything. If you get it right, then you're a long way down the road you want to be on and if you get it wrong, you'll never recover. So, you'd better spend the time and really agonize over the choice that will define things from there on in.

"For me the relationship with the actor is fundamental. Now, obviously, with somebody like Anthony Hopkins, you're not telling him what to do — you'd be a fool because you've cast him for the wonderful skill and charismatic qualities you know he can bring to this. Nonetheless, when I say 'Cut,' I want mine to be the first eyes he looks at. So I like to work next to the camera as much as I can. I don't like to get tied down to the monitor because, honestly, you don't read the details of the emotion on that screen. You see the broad brush of the composition and the details but not the eyes. I believe that someone, even as great as Hopkins, likes to know that somebody's paying careful attention to what they're doing and giving them feedback. It may be sort of a gentle nudging in one direction or another but that's the great joy, if that's all you have to do. The thing is, don't take it for granted and don't just presume, 'He knows what he's doing, so I'm just going to worry about the technical stuff.' There's no quicker way to alienate someone or make them feel neglected or abandoned. That can breed all sorts of resentment and behaviors that you just don't want.

"To me, it's developing a relationship of trust with each actor. You have to earn that trust. It doesn't come because your name is on the back of the director's chair and you have a viewfinder around your neck. You have to be able to demonstrate to people that you care about what they're doing, or you have respect for what they're doing and I have enormous respect for it because I can't do it. However simple someone like Hopkins can make it look, you have to treasure it and each actor has quite different needs and it takes a while to tune in to what those specific needs are. How much information do they want? How much feedback? With Anthony we developed a little ritual. I would go to his trailer every morning and we would just talk, seldom, if ever, about the script, the character, or anything to do with the film but we'd just have a conversation. It was part of the process, if you like, of human interaction. You have to be so careful that you don't focus so much on all the technical apparatus and visual elements that you just wheel in the human beings and yell, 'Action' and expect that they should be happy about that (while you) turn your back and stare at the monitor. Actors do have to battle with that a lot."

Anton Yelchin with Mika Boorem

In order to build upon that confidence with his actors, Hicks ensures an atmosphere of calm and quiet on set. "I won't tolerate open walkie-talkies, cell phones or raised voices. Everybody has to be on a headset and communicate quietly, because when the actors come into that space I want them to feel at ease and that they possess that space, that it belongs to them. I believe it gives them the environment to let them do the things you've cast them for. Allow them to relax really, not even to focus as much as just relax, because everybody does their best work in that mode. Anthony Hopkins said to me. 'It's not about concentration; it's about relaxing, so that it just flows. You don't have to be thinking great thoughts, you can be thinking about what you're going to have for lunch, as long as you can relax.' With Anton, the only days when I thought, 'Oh, this could be a little more tricky,' were the days that he was really concentrating. The great moments were those when he would do the remarkable things that he does and then be a kid afterward, just laughing and joking and showing some drawings he'd done, or some story he'd written, then you'd say, 'OK, action' and whoosh he'd be back to being Bobby again. You knew that he was relaxed and that's what you want."

Moving from Shine and an Australian crew to Hollywood for his next film Snow Falling on Cedars, Hicks decided, "I wanted to develop new relationships and I saw this enormous pool of talent, brilliant people I wanted to learn from as well. So I thought, I'm just going to open myself up to new possibilities here. I definitely need an American production designer as I'm making a very specific story set in a very specific part of America. I'm an Australian. I need a cultural guide. I need somebody who can educate me on what an American courthouse should be like. So that was essential and in the area of cinematography, Bob Richardson (who won an Oscar for his work on Snow) is a legend and we developed the most incredible rapport. It was like discovering a brother, it was incredible, a really powerful friendship and we shared a language of imagery which was beautiful to experience."

Hicks directs Hopkins

Once filming began Hicks faced a situation likely to prompt panic among the sturdiest of directors. "We started shooting in this tremendously difficult location, in this ravine. We had this gigantic amount of light and equipment, a techno crane and all sorts of things, including some very slippery and dangerous rocks and three kids on a log. By day two we were already a day behind. The production was very anxious, saying, 'You've got to be out of this ravine by Thursday, otherwise we'll be two days behind.' I said, 'Listen, we will finish shooting in this ravine when we finish shooting in this ravine, not a minute before. Everybody's doing the best they can and we just have to continue.' A schedule is a living, breathing, animal really and we had 70 days ahead of us where there was plenty of time to pick up slack and, indeed, we did and ended up on schedule. You can't force a pace if circumstances are physically difficult, because it's dangerous."

Hicks is tremendously involved in setting up shots, choosing the angles and lenses. "I'm a still photographer and have a deep understanding of lenses and focuses, all sorts of things which are useful and important. I can also read light; I understand the impact of light and shade values that I'm seeing in front of me. I don't know how to make it, that's the domain of the cinematographer to create that light but I certainly interpret it and communicate to him my response to it. I'm certainly very involved in that part of the process, because so much of the drama is indicated through the shapes and values in the frame.

"I like to have an approach to a scene. I used to storyboard things very closely when I was making low-budget films, simply because of logistics and time. The pace of things is so much faster but I also found sometimes I got trapped in that, by overlooking what was happening in front of me and sometimes you miss a glorious element that presents itself to you, or it becomes evident too late for you to incorporate into the plan you've embarked on. I have become much looser in my approach. I like to block the action and see how the shots fall. I think that goes back to the documentary experience of trying to extract the drama out of a situation unfolding in front of you, over which you have no control."

As with Shine and Snow Falling on Cedars, Hearts in Atlantis relies on straightforward storytelling and strength in characters. Going through the script Hicks noticed "the screenplay called for Ted's eyes to dilate and behave very strangely when he went into his trances. In my process I started doing a lot of digital tests on Hopkins' eyes (with footage) from other movies. Of course, in the digital world you can do absolutely anything. We had some wonderful things happening, all very exciting but it gradually dawned on me, something was making me uneasy about it. I just realized this didn't belong in my movie. I felt it would take people out of the magic. I said to the studio, we have the best special effect in the world; it's called Anthony Hopkins. If we can just trust the power of the actor, all these mechanical devices will be unnecessary. It started to inform my approach to a lot of elements of the drama in the story."

Music is such an enormous part of the emotion or mood of any given scene and Hicks was pleased to learn that composer James Newton Howard, whom he'd worked with on Snow, was on board. "We had lots of conversations about how it was going to go. It was only in the cutting process that James had to withdraw for scheduling reasons. Suddenly, I was casting about looking for a composer at the very time I needed to be hearing first drafts and ideas, putting them together with the cut scenes. That was scary and led me a merry dance, which fortunately ended up with Mychael Dana. He was able to pull this one out of his inner resources. It was ironic, because James was the first person who came on board and the only person from Snow and it just wasn't to be. Ideally, I will get the script to a composer as soon as possible to discuss ideas on instruments to explore, the tones you feel apply to the film. Really what you're doing is starting to construct the grammar of the language you will be speaking with each other later."

Director Scott Hicks

With release of Hearts, Hicks returned to Adelaide to prepare for his next feature. "I need to live elsewhere. I love being here (Los Angeles) for a purpose and while Adelaide is about as far away from the business as you can get, I can still make calls," he says.

Mike Reynolds is a freelance writer who frequently contributes to DGA Magazine.

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