The DGA's Independent Directors Committee (IDC) recently held the latest installment of its "Under the Influence" series. Speaking to a packed house, IDC member Michael Apted reiterated that the series features innovative films of independent spirit which have inspired contemporary directors.
"We try to remind ourselves of why we're in film in the first place by bringing films that we all think were important," Apted said. "Not necessarily films that were widely seen, but films that we think are seminal, and filmmakers who we think embody the division of the director." So it was fitting that the evening's selection was Peter Weir and his 1982 film, The Year of Living Dangerously.
Based on C.J. Koch's award-winning novel, the film tells the story of an Australian journalist's reckless pursuit of a career-breaking story during the 1965 attempted overthrow of the Sukarno dictatorship in Indonesia. Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson), a naïve Australian reporter, finds himself at the center of the fray. Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), a part-Chinese, part-Australian dwarf photographer, tries to guide Hamilton, facilitating access to coveted stories and, more importantly, introducing him to love interest Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver). Ultimately, Guy Hamilton commits the gravest sin by becoming involved in the politics, and the film confirms the perils of compromising professionalism for newsprint glory. The Year of Living Dangerously is set in a very specific time and place yet seems timeless. In the midst of today's political climate, it resonates deeply.
After the screening, Apted led a spirited discussion with Weir, full of laughter and heart. The two filmmakers shared a delightful repartee — it was almost as though we were sitting with them at the dinner table for a moment in time — and their intimate conversation proved to be as magical as the film that was screened.
Apted asked Weir what attracted him to the material. "I was handed the book and was absolutely absorbed by the atmosphere. I loved the line in the book, 'You become like a child again when you first go to Asia.' It's that sense of wonder that everything is new, everything is unknown — there's a kind of mystery in everything."
Surprisingly, Weir wasn't very interested in the politics of the Sukarno coup. The heart of it, for him, was in the love story. "I think it was a very unusual love story. It was a story about love. And the Billy Kwan character was the great creation of the novelist. Being half-Asian, half-Caucasian, he had a kind of understanding of both worlds yet belonged to neither."
Apted said he thought the choice of Linda Hunt (a woman) in the role of Billy Kwan (a man) was a "phenomenal piece of casting." He asked Weir to explain how that "epiphany" came about. Weir humbly confessed it was far from a stroke of genius.
"It was desperation," he said. "I had cast a fellow. We began rehearsing, and the rehearsals were disastrous. There was friction between the two actors. Clearly this thing wasn't working. I was desperate. I made a phone call to Los Angeles to tell the studio that I couldn't proceed."
Weir let the actor go and, in search of a replacement, got on a plane that took him from Sydney to Los Angeles to New York, back to Los Angeles and then to Manila. When he got off the plane in Manila, Weir had to have a new Billy Kwan and make the movie.
"It was like Cinderella's slipper," Weir said. "All kinds of people put it on. I even had an actor come in walking through the door on his knees with a pair of shoes stuck on them. Finally the casting director said, 'I think I've got it. But, (ha, ha) it's a woman.' And I said, 'Well, maybe we should see her, we're that desperate.'
"So Linda Hunt came in and I said, 'Linda, I'm sorry it's a kind of bad joke.' And Linda (who is 4'9") replied, 'You know, it's one thing to be a short woman, but I'm sure it's quite another to be a short man. So I have great sympathy for this character.' Long story short, we hired a makeup person and did the test."
Incredulous, Apted asked how Weir got the studio to agree to let a woman play the part of a man. "I just didn't tell them it was a woman! Freddie Fields saw the tests and I said, 'What do you think?' And he said, 'Well, I kind of like that guy in the middle.' And I said, 'He's my favorite, but, funnily enough, he's a she.'"
"Nobody's perfect," joked Apted recalling the closing line from Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot.
"Exactly," Weir laughed. "So the contract was made up that she was to be known as L. Phipps Hunt so as not to reveal her identity to the press."
Apted addressed the widely known rumor that Weir doesn't rehearse. Turns out, the gossip is true. "I don't like rehearsals, frankly. It doesn't feel real without all the props and costumes and I couldn't bear the thought of drawing lines on a floor. I get more out of a dinner with an actor, chatting about nothing in particular, absorbing more through the pores of the skin. If I can set the atmosphere in the right way, it will be natural to be the character. That is, if they're rightly cast. Casting, as they say, after the script, is the most significant thing a director can do."
Apted agreed about casting ("if you get that wrong you may as well go home, mayn't you?") but he felt differently about rehearsals. "I like to rehearse because I like to kind of sort things out. Otherwise, how do you know if there's trouble ahead?"
Weir conceded, saying he will rehearse only if actors insist on it. "Jeff Bridges really wanted me to rehearse on
Fearless. And I said, 'Well, let's rehearse but not with the scenes in the film.' So we made up scenes that are not in the film — in between the scenes. We got laughing a hell of a lot, and that's what it's all about.
"But tension is the thing that I know I can't rehearse. Tension — whether comedy or drama — is the glue that's holding things together. What's going to happen next? How will it work out? You're creating a feeling with the audience, they're not entirely sure where we're going to go. It's the magic of film, isn't it?"
On the subject of writing, Weir said it's essential for a director, but it doesn't come naturally to him. "I find writing terribly difficult, it's my weaker ability. But it's wonderful for a director to have had some writing experience and be facile with it. I think the more you do, the easier it comes on the shoot."
The adaptation of The Year of Living Dangerously, a script that was worked on by many writers (including Weir), was particularly difficult. "We had trouble with both our respect for the novel and with this Kwan character. It's always a very sensitive thing for a book you admire. I think the reason they say it's hard to make a good film of a good book is because you admire it and you're reluctant to change things. But, when you're not dealing with an iconic sort of book, it's better to really pull the things apart and find a film structure."
Weir said he doesn't have a set way of choosing material, at least not one he could define. For instance, he was drawn to Gallipoli not so much because of the battle or the war. "What interested me finally was, what would it be like to be young and have to give your life up? And to know you had to give it up?' It's one thing to do a story about someone suffering from cancer. But imagine to be young and in the fullness of your health and vigor and to have only a few minutes to prepare to go to your end. That's what the film's really about. It just happened to be that particular battle."
But Weir chose to make Witness for a different reason. "On the fly I took Witness. I'd had enough of working at home. I just wanted to get out. Like a painter who had painted everything he wanted to paint. And the story had this interesting Amish element, like a country within a country. So I thought I would come and make this picture in the United States because, although I'm a foreigner, this is a world within a world. In as much as the character Harrison Ford played goes into that community — that was, to some degree, me coming into America."
Apted asked Weir whether there was a time when he thought he could do a "real American subject." Weir replied, "I really am at that point. I think creatively there are no countries. Or, as Hitchcock said, 'Film is its own country.' It's a world you enter, but the emotions are fundamentally understandable when translated effectively. A young director in any country has a fresh perspective on his or her own country. But if they go on making films and have a long career, this becomes less relevant, and they become that country. The person develops a way of seeing the world that we become familiar with and we visit their country. So ultimately, you go to see, say, an Altman film, or an Apted film."
When asked where he wants to go next, Weir responded with a 'back-to-basics' philosophy. "Simplicity. Don't you admire someone like Matisse? He had these very complete three periods. I really like the early period and the latter period. Not so much the middle. In the end he was synthesizing all he knew. So the nude [painting] that was more evocative and voluptuous when he painted as the young man became a kind of blue line, a couple of blue lines, in that latter period. And yet it has a more profound effect on me. I'd like to reach that point where I could do things with tremendous simplicity."
Finally, Weir was asked whether the spirituality inherent in his films stems from a particular faith. He reflected for a moment before answering. "Well, I think I have my own personal continuing investigation of what I think about God, I suppose, more than spirituality. I just find it difficult to be materialistic, basically. So I'm always sort of interested. But I don't like to talk too much about it because it's unfortunately been devalued by the New Age marketing machine. I think there is a hunger in the world. There is a hunger for more meaning in our Western world, there's no question. And so it's a ripe field for a filmmaker and for a creative type, and that happens to be my kind of interest from time to time. But I tend to like to think that I just tell stories. I think that's enough to occupy you for your life."
[Peter Weir is currently shooting The Far Side of the World, based on the novel by Patrick O'Brien.]
