In rehearsal for the scene at the end where Capote visits the men just as they’re about to be executed, he and Miller disagreed about how to play it.
“He said to me, ‘You want me to cry? I’m not crying, if I’m going to show up to see these guys, I’m not going to make this about myself, because that’s disgusting. My reason for going there is to help them.’ So I let that sit, and two months later we’re filming the scene, and he goes, ‘There’s nothing more to talk about. You want me to be emotional, I’m not going to get emotional.’ I didn’t say anything. He leaves the room and the guy who plays the warden says to me, ‘You’re going to have to stop him, he’s wrong…’ and I’m like ‘ehhh’ [calming, wait-and-see gesture]. The lights come up, we roll the camera, the door opens, he walks in the room and sees the two guys sitting there shackled about to be executed. And he can’t open his mouth, and you just see the vein in his forehead and his face turns red and his eyes fill with tears and you see him unraveling. It’s painful to look at. And he does it in one take and that’s it, it’s over.
“Phil couldn’t imitate. He couldn’t say ‘Oh I have to do this and hit that mark.’ He had to tell himself what Capote would have told himself, just to bring himself to where he would have been in that moment.”
Another film, another hair-raising race to another ultimately triumphant premiere.
“[‘Capote’] was finished the night before it premiered. I sat and watched the final print by myself and the color was finally right, but it was too late to ship it there, so I had to carry it myself. And to you youngsters in the crowd, film weighs a lot. So I pack a small bag and literally carried 5 reels of 35mm film, like 40 or 45lbs of film. And Telluride [where the film first played] is two planes away, a big plane, a small plane. I arrive, I do a little check, take a shower go to the theater and I don’t really have time to think that this is the world premiere.”
But then — an omen!
“When I was 15 already I’m thinking I want to make films, and I had this thought that ‘somebody my age is going to get to make films — and what do they know that I don’t?’ But I still didn’t know how you would get there. And then I had an English teacher who played a film by Nicolas Roeg called ‘Walkabout‘ — he got a 16mm print and played it in the class. And I thought it was the most beautiful, quiet, poetic, moving, stirring film. I couldn’t believe somebody made this film.But also, technically I could comprehend it. I could look at it and say there’s nothing about that that seems mysterious. Looking at it years later I realize how incredibly nuanced and difficult a film like that is, but at 15 years old I remember having The Moment, where I thought, ‘I can do this.’
“So now its Telluride and I’m 38 and I’m sitting at the premiere. And they’re giving recognition to the Criterion Collection first and showing some trailer of their titles, and all of a sudden that iconic image from ‘Walkabout’ comes up. I’m not a magical thinker — though I do think life is mysterious. But this was one of those moments, it felt like a bridge to the past, like one second ago I was thinking all this was possible but having no idea how it’s going to happen and now, here it is. It was a magical screening.”
The film had famous fans right from the start.
“No one had any expectation about it, but the reception was strong immediately. I remember walking out of the theater and there was a fella with a silk ascot and big glasses and he stopped me and he says, ‘You made a perfect film.’ And I said, ‘Oh, thank you sir,’ and Michael Barker from Sony Pictures Classics goes, ‘That was Peter Bogdanovich.'”
His next film, “Moneyball” was a notoriously troubled project even before he came aboard, and some of those issues linger even now.
“[Screenplay credit on ‘Moneyball’] is a very touchy subject, and because there’s cameras in the room I can only say so much. But three people were credited with writing the script [Steven Zaillian, Aaron Sorkin, Stan Chervin (story)] and then there’s the book [by Michael Lewis], and then there were the people who did uncredited drafts for different versions along the way. But by the time it came along to me, it was a wreckage, it had crashed. The studio had pulled the plug having spent many millions of dollars. And we went through the pieces and I was like …I’ll take this… and this… and this… So if you took a transcript of the film and compared it to all the different drafts, you’re not going to find anything like it. Even my versions, because there was so much improvisation and so much happened the night before.”
It is however, like all of his films, remarkably talky.
“I don’t think you need explosions and spectacular car chases to experience drama. The real intense stuff doesn’t happen like that. I am actually bored by too much action… So the style here is designed to kind of slow down your mental metabolism so you’re sensitized to the nuances of what’s happening.
“[A lot of the film] just looks like two people talking, but inside there are real stakes. [Talking about a clip we’ve watched where Pitt’s Billy Beane first confronts Jonah Hill‘s Peter Brand] That scene is a negotiation. The late Mike Nichols would say there’s only three kinds of scenes: there’s negotiation, fight or seduction. And if it’s not one of those things, its not a scene. Pretty simple. So if you’re writing a script and you’re having a problem with a scene if you don’t know if it’s a fight or a seduction or a negotiation, stop and figure it out.”
When asked to account for the long hiatuses between films, Miller’s reason is “exhaustion” at the effort of being someone slightly different for the duration.
“I don’t really have this drive to ‘make movies.’ Some people are very energized by making a film and some people are totally exhausted by it. I get totally exhausted. When it’s done, I’m like I’m never doing that again. I am an introverted person, I don’t think I’m an aggressive person, but to make a film, the amount of control you have to conjure to do it? For me it is exhausting. And you become a slightly different person.
“Sometimes in the edit, I’ll hear my voice off camera and I’ll cringe, like ‘Who is that person? Torturing those poor actors?’ As the director, you’re the guy on top, but I never feel like that, I feel like the servant to some kind of potential or some idea or vision or something. It’s hard enough to have that and then as well logistically to get it all together. It’s a very strange combination of qualities that a director has to have.
“Every film I’ve made the lead actor has had the same exact experience. A full meltdown, total distress — ‘Should we cancel the film?’ I’m not joking, everybody, Phil, Brad, everybody in ‘Foxcatcher.’ ‘Is this a disaster?’ ‘This is a total disaster!’ And I don’t like that but maybe it’s part of a process, that helps you, eventually, to find your way.”
But not just exhaustion: even after an Oscar nomination, people don’t automatically get on board, especially with original projects.
“After ‘Capote’ I found a story that would become ‘Foxcatcher’ and spent about four years developing it, doing scripts, working with different writers and I couldn’t get it made. And that was shocking. I thought after ‘Capote’ I could get anything made! But then I found yes, I can do anything, so long as it’s something that somebody else already wants to do. And that was quite a lesson.”
That all of his films have been based on true stories, Miller says “feels like coincidence.” But that doesn’t mean truthfulness is not the most important thing.
“After I did ‘Capote’ I got a 3-page letter from Harper Lee. And she said, ‘You must know that almost everything that happened didn’t play out the way it played out in the film.’ But she went on to say, ‘This is an example of a triumph of fiction to get to the truth.’ She said, ‘if you want a quote from me you can tell people that I said that the film told the truth about Truman.’
“So there’s going to be artifice no matter what. There’s just the question: is it truthful?”
Tune back in soon for coverage of Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Qumra 2018 Masterclass.