The movie was shot on the sly, right?
No one knew about it until it was done. We kept it a secret because we didn’t want to have any expectation on our shoulders because the weight of expectations can be heavy when things are announced in the trades. People wonder, ask questions, look forward to it, and I wanted to give us room to fail and to try out something crazy and weird without people analyzing it in advance. And making a movie in secret is kinda fun. It was a treat.
It can’t be easy to keep a movie secret with Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck in it though.
They’re names, but they don’t act like it and they maintain low or everyday-like profiles. They’re totally willing to fly to Irving, Texas and spend two weeks in a little house just under the radar.
We kind of expected the news to leak, but it was a pleasant surprise when it didn’t. Certainly, Casey and Rooney didn’t tell anyone. They didn’t even tell their agents, they wanted to keep it hush-hush and I think that was a relief and a nice change of pace for them to do something like this under the radar.
The movie contemplates some huge things, but death and loss are up there. Have you experienced a life-changing loss?
I hadn’t. but it’s something I think about constantly. I think about how my parents are getting older and they’re going to pass away. I think about my cats and I think I maybe have ten years left with them. I think about how loss will affect my life in the future all the time, but it’s always about me. It’s always about how much I will miss the people who have had an impact on my life and that’s an extension of my ego; I’m just thinking about myself in that situation and not about them. And that’s not uncommon human instinct to process all those feelings as they relate to yourself and not anyone else.
Maybe there will be an afterlife, maybe there won’t, and what’s left is us here on Earth, and my siblings and I will be trying to figure out how we define ourselves now that an intrinsic part of our lives is gone. So that idea of the ego playing such a big part in loss, grief, and bereavement is interesting to me. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but it’s worth recognizing: that you’re not really defining loss by the people that are lost, but the deprivation of their presence.
There’s grappling with legacy then too.
Woody Allen has always said if every copy of his movies was burned the day after he died he wouldn’t care because he’s not going to be around to be aware of it. So, it means nothing to him whatsoever. Posterity holds no value to him.
And I saw the value in that thinking, but at the same time, it was a very frightening concept, the idea of whatever I’m working on, whatever I’m putting my heart, soul and blood sweat and tears into doesn’t really matter. That was a really challenging thing for me to really wrap my head around that concept and to try and find a reason to persevere. It was a big existential crisis in my life; realizing that everything is pointless. So why should I do anything? So out of that came some soul searching and a lot of rationalization and I worked hard to define my set of values in the universe and this movie came out of that.
The film is told from that exact point of view—the ghost’s point of view of having lost everything. Usually, in movies, we see it from the grieving person’s perspective.
The whole movie’s about letting go of the things you’re hanging onto, so one of those things is the idea that he feels like he should be around for [Rooney Mara]. He wants to be there for her and yet she’s going to move on, she’s going to define herself on her own terms. Once she gets over her own sadness that he cannot help her with, she will move on and that’s a difficult thing to wrestle with.
On the flipside, the ghost must also grapple with the five stages of grief.
Exactly! Anger, denial, acceptance and then it’s over. I didn’t chart that in advance, but looking back on it, it’s like, “Oh, that’s exactly what is happening here.”
You’ve been working fast and your next movie, “Old Man With The Gun,” is already in post-production, right?
Yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to have movies that I’ve been able to jump into one after the other. So, “Old Man With The Gun” I started working on the same day that I started working on “Pete’s Dragon.” I met Robert Redford and I met with Disney on the same day and “Pete’s Dragon” just happened to happen first, but it’s a completely different movie from anything I’ve ever done. At the same time, I think it’ll fit right in. But it’s a definite left turn from “A Ghost Story,” so it’ll be weird talking about that movie a year from now because it’s such a departure from that movie in that it’s… not a comedy, but a real lighthearted movie that’s funny, I hope. It’s about a 70-year-old bank robber and Redford had seen “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and he’d been wanting to make this movie for a while. So, he asked me if I would take a crack at it. It’s shot, we’re editing it right now and I’m not sure if it’ll turn out, but right now I think it’s so weird because it’s hard for me to make something that’s funny and lighthearted. When we were on set every day, I would just encourage for everyone to make me laugh. Tom Waits is in it too, Sissy Spacek, and I wanted all of them to constantly delight me. That was my goal.
Do you like to constantly pivot styles from film to film?
It’s not my goal, but I do like challenging myself, I don’t like doing the same thing repeatedly. That said, I feel like a lot of my movies are the same and there’s a tonal through line and themes that I return to. But I do like to throw curveballs at myself and see if I can handle different movies. So, it’s a fun way to keep things fresh for myself and to explore and try out new ideas. But yes, I want to keep trying new things and modes of filmmaking because as a moviegoer I love all types of movies. And as someone who wants to contribute to the cinematic conversation, at least in a small way, I want to try them all out and see how I can contribute to each kind of those movies. It’s fun to be unpredictable in that regard.
“A Ghost Story” opens today in limited release.