Coffee and Pie, Oh My! A chat with Rian Johnson on The Brothers Bloom, Brick and Looper.
After the cult success of Rian Johnson's debut feature, the stylish high-school noir, Brick, A-list stars and a much bigger budget were sure to follow. The Brothers Bloom was filmed in a variety European and North American locations and things look fabulously bright and breezy on the big screen. While I didn't capital "L" love the picture, there is indeed a lot of interesting things going on and the film is certainly building a following. Furthermore, there are simply too few grifter pictures (see recent ScreenAnarchy column on the subject) or classic on-the-road romances (think Charade or The African Queen) these days, even doing one is sort of retro in a way. The Brothers Bloom aims high for both. Back in April, I had the chance to sit down with Rian and it turned into a very enjoyable and casual chat that spanned a variety of topics from Ricky Jay to moleskin notebooks, from genre expectation to time travel. An abridged, transcribed version (minus Robert Blake impressions, booze and back injuries) of this conversation can be found after the jump.
RJ: So what do you want to talk about?
[pause]
RJ: Today is a big day because I just got a new Moleskin notebook, it feels good to get through a notebook. It is a sense of accomplishment to close the book on one.
KH: It is trying to get through one of them without having the pouch in the back explode with stuff.
RJ: With this one because I've been working on the script [ed note: LOOPER], it is actually in pretty good shape. I just started in January, so it's not too bad.
KH: January? I thought that Looper was not something that you started on so recently.
RJ: I wrote it as a short film that I wanted to do, six or seven years ago, and I liked the basic idea as a short, and was just going to do [pause]. Let me back up, there was a short film that I made before Brick, called The Psychology of Dream Analysis, a thing done with friends on the weekend, and it was such a creative and invigorating experience: Pick up a camera and do something creative with no thought towards how it would lead into something else. I had been so focused on Brick after college that I got to the point where every thought was, can we make a trailer for Brick, can we make a scene from Brick, can we make a short in the style of Brick, and then I just kind of snapped and said, lets just make a movie that we are going to enjoy making and getting out there. But it never happened. We never ended up shooting it. And the idea eventually morphed into something bigger, something I've been beating my head against the wall for the past few months, getting it onto paper.
KH: Do you watch a lot of stuff while you are writing.
RJ: I do, but mostly to procrastinate from writing as opposed to getting specific inspiration. I haven't been watching a lot of sci-fi at all or studying up on time travel movies. But I have been watching an obscene amount of films lately (I hope my producer doesn't read this) and my Netflix queue has been busy.
KH: You were curating for the New Beverly in LA.
RJ: Yea, that was a lot of fun.
KH: I read this fabulous letter that Dennis Cozzalio published on his Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule blog in regards to that series.
RJ: That was really a beautiful and touching thing to read after doing that festival. I sent him a response to that. It really made me happy to read about his experience at the festival. The new Beverly is kind of sacred ground. It's not like the film forum in New York or anything where they do 'deep, deep' revival programming. They are constantly doing double features of fantastic 'crunchy' old movies. It is a pretty special place. I felt pretty honored to go in there and show some stuff. A lot of fun.
KH: I see a few young directors, Edgar Wright is in Toronto right now....
RJ: Oh yea, he's shooting Scott Pilgrim.
KH: He did the Hot Fuzz-tival and now The Wright Stuff, I do like the idea that filmmakers bring stuff that connects to their own film (or personal favourites) as an evening or week of screenings and maybe show a little of their own material as a result.
RJ: The theatre screened The Brothers Bloom on the first night, and I was kind of relieved we got past the first night and I could start showing other peoples movies, because I did not have to be nervous any more. Those movies they were showing were such 'sacred cows' for me that it felt slightly uncomfortable showing my own film in the vicinity, in terms of con man films. But the Festival of Fakery turned out very well.
KH: Last time we spoke, this was just after the Toronto Film Festival and you said (at this point they had pushed the release of The Brothers Bloom date back to December) that you felt like a pregnant woman that goes to the delivery room and is asked to hold on for a few more months.
RJ: I wasn't really feeling that way until the push from December to May!
KH: Now it is coming out. Do you still feel that way?
RJ: It is, in a strange way, kind of nice having this period of time. Some of the edge has come off of the nerves. We've shown it in enough festivals at this point that I've gotten a good sense of the spectrum of the reactions to it. I am able to take just a 'Que Sera, Sera' type view to how it does when it comes out. Just pray that it gets out there. No matter what happens it will find an audience. It has been playing here and there and it has been very fun to see how people bounce off of it. Which was similar to the experience with Brick which I took to even more festivals than Bloom so maybe a feeling of Déjà vu, a little bit.
KH: Is there ever a sense to tinker with it? Or just be done with it.
RJ: Well there is always the old chestnut that films are never really finished, they are abandoned. And that holds true to some point. You just have to step away from it. I am particularly bad with that, I could have kept tinkering, kept cutting and cutting for another year if they had let me. But at the same time, and this is good for having such a long period before the release, I'm already well into writing this next script that I'm doing. By virtue of my inability to multi-task there is not much chance of me going back in and doing any damage to the film.
KH: Well, it's nice to meet someone else who CANNOT multitask!
RJ: C'mon, I picture you playing Tetris as we speak right now!
KH: OK, lets talk some grifter flicks. The first thing that struck me with watching the Brothers Bloom that brings a big smile to my face is the voice over from Ricky Jay.
RJ: Are you a Ricky Jay fan?
KH: A ridiculous Ricky Jay fan.
RJ: I had been a fan of Ricky for years and years. It must have been around 1999-2000, when I was producing promos at The Disney Channel when a buddy of mine passed me a VHS copy of Ricky's 52 Assistants show. And I re-watched this until I wore the tape thin. I became semi obsessed with his style, but it is also his substance. There is a very big divide in the world of magic between Ricky and 98% of what is out there. And the fact that he has so much respect and presents with so much class and style, it becomes an intoxicating thing. Then another friend of mine from college was actually his assistant for a number of years. So there was this weird situation where he knew I was a big fan and I knew he worked for him, so we never mentioned it at all when we hung out together. It was uncomfortable quiet about the subject. But then eventually, bit by bit, I did end up meeting Ricky through him, and went to see a couple of Ricky's shows live and got to know him a little bit. It ended up happing fairly naturally. The original idea was to get Bob Dylan to do it. That was the first idea, but for many reasons I decided that was not feasible. Have you heard Dylan's XML radio shows? Oh, my god. Wow! It is one of the best things in popular culture right now. It is basically him just playing all these incredible songs from the past century and talking in between them.
KH: Ha! This is the same thing I was talking about above. By one artist playing another it is a peek into what they love.
RJ: Right. Once I got past the notion of being in a room trying to direct Bob Dylan, the next natural thing was Ricky. I had a bit of a hesitation because of Magnolia, and his voice over for beginning of that that movie. But they are very different things and the place that I came from to arrive at Ricky to do this was nowhere near, 'Oh, you did Magnolia, so why not do this.' It was organic and seemed like Magnolia was a silly reason not to do this. And it puts his thumbprint on this movie.
KH: In The Spanish Prisoner, Jay has one line (my favourite Thoreau quote), "Beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes") and when I'm thinking Ricky doing the voice-over, and your two films which take classic genres and re-dress them up.
RJ: Beware. Beware!
KH: It is an interesting connection. It is a tightrope you walk with Brick and with Bloom. Of setting a film that is balancing character and plot but in a familiar by fantastical sort of world. It is delicate.
RJ: You don't plan for this - it just happens naturally. I would be a lot more terrified of it in regards to a tightrope walk (and the potential for failure) if I did plan it out and think about it that way. It comes from the other direction. It comes from the story requires. It comes from a desire to make this story work and have its heartbeat and feel real and to make the world as real as possible in a weird way. And it leads to these crazy style choices that may seem in and of themselves to be ridiculous. The motivation at the base of it all is to be as sincere and real as possible. I guess it could be seen as putting a new suit on a genre, but I definitely would not approach it that way and cannot imagine spending years of my life and the energy on a movie that way. For me (to extend the metaphor to its breaking point), I don't start as a tailor, I'm interested in the body inside the suit. Both of these don't start out as ideas of how to twist a genre it started out as much more primal things, that made sense to me. It is hard to express without sounding like an ass. The most articulate thing to say is that it hard to be articulate about it. It starts as a feeling or a notion. The starting point is the world or a specific emotion attached to that world. For brick, it was memories of highschool. My emotional memories. The way highschool felt to me as opposed to how it actually was. It kind of built from there. I feel that that is why some people who saw brick connected to it. If it was just some sort of genre stunt many would not have felt that when it was up on screen. For me it did some have some real ... it was coming from a place of resonance for me. Did that make any sense?
KH: Forming a narrative out of how you feel. How you parse the world around you.
RJ: Yes!
KH: I heard at one point that The Brothers Bloom was called Penelope. Did you change it because of the Christina Ricci, Mark Polanski movie?
RJ: Yes. I still like the title Penelope, but I think The Brothers Bloom is about as good of a title.
KH: Did change in title in any way affect changes in the movie?
RJ: No, not at all. I held onto the hope of the title as long as I possibly could, but no, I didn't affect the actual movie. The title was always a bit of misdirection in a bit of a way.
KH: Well it is and it isn't. I thought at one point that the individual characters started with Penelope, maybe it is because Rachel Weisz can steal scenes like crazy. She isn't the main character by a long shot, but when watching the movie, she is the beating heart.
RJ: She is what the movie is about. She is the turning point. Me saying that it was misdirection is itself a bit of misdirection.
KH: Now I know the way you think. Either way, you want to take that character and hug and squeeze her.
RJ: That is a tricky character to pull off. When you are on the tightrope of doing a character like that the abyss beneath your feet is particularly awful, because if you fall off into it is just empty quirk and the most annoying thing ever. And that Rachel just breathed life into that character and made it anything but that. I'm in awe of that. I don't know how she did it. It's magical to me.
KH: Brick had the style, but the sets and setting was pretty grounded. With The Brothers Bloom, the 'retro-grift' style, the European trip within the movie, all the different locations. How was it for keeping the characters grounded in a much bigger world.
RJ: It wasn't an obstacle, because in its conception, the idea, the broader scope wasn't there just for broader scope, it was part and parcel for what makes the characters tick. And what drove them. But specifically from scene to scene, part of the joy of Penelope's character and what Rachel was able to grab onto and bring to life was seeing this girl react to this huge glamourous, ridiculous world exploding around here. This was a tremendously bigger budget than Brick, but still under half of a typical Hollywood film. But we did almost everything on location, went to these places, so the actors themselves were globe trotting like the characters. But to answer your question, it was designed to help bring the characters to the forefront by being a textural thing that they react to.
KH: My favourite part of the film, (for me the The Brothers Bloom peaked early), was the opening sequence, one for the narration, but also the not so innocent sequence with the children.
RJ: That was something I wrote first, I wanted to start out with fairy-book type beginning, with the archest form of narrative possible. So not only do we have a narrator, but a narrator speaking in rhyming verse, and it is shot like a little play. A byte sized story that pays of in exactly the way you'd hope that a con man movie would pay off. A little zinger. That is intentional as one side of the pendulum swing, of the bigger arc as a picture as a whole. It is attached to this bigger story, but it was actually the first thing I wrote. I like the idea of a self-sustaining short that also sets up a little road map to where the story is going to go. I like to economy of it. I grew up making movies using all my little cousins as actors. Every time there was a family vacation we ended up with a little movie. So working the Max and Zachary was easy and fun for me. It was the last thing we shot, so it was like a little vacation at the end of the movie.
KH: Have you seen the Where the Wild Things Are trailer? It also has Max Record [Ed: who plays young Steven Bloom]
RJ: Yea. It is a beautiful, beautiful trailer. I can't wait for that movie to come out. There was all this nonsense on the internet about the studio and whatnot for that one. And Max is not like a child actor at all, he is a genuine wonderful emotionally open little kid and from seeing the trailer I can see how he is going to be great. I can't wait for that.
KH: He pays off big in the opening sequence of Bloom..
RJ: Yea, I was very happy with that section. In terms of starting with that sequence and calling the movie a con-man movie, I'm always a little bit nervous of audience expectations and in terms where the movie ends up going. Because the movie breaks that down. That is what makes it interesting for me.
KH: It makes it a two headed beast. It is established as a fairytale on one hand but goes into darker places. But I can't think of another grifter movie that has that tone, regardless.
RJ: I hope it is also established that the fairytale aspect is - in describing it is going to sound more meta than it was intended to be - something being created as a sense of suspended animation. Breaking it down in the end was always essential to me. To start as one movie and finish as another.
KH: in the editing room is there a lot of argument about tone? This is too dark, this is too quirky, this is not quirky enough, etc.
RJ: Well we were not financed by a studio so we didn't get a lot of that.
KH: No, I don't mean from someone interfering...
RJ: Oh. Yea, in terms creative, of myself interfering, absolutely. The real struggle in the editing room is finding what the thing wants to be. It really is a process of letting go of your ego and letting go of what you thought you were making. You put the first cut together and it is awful and unwatchable and you think 'O my God' and then you start working with it and trying to go through the process of listening to it, rather than force the material into what you had pre-conceived. That is what is what makes editing a fun process, it is a process of discovery. It is more sculpting out marble than beating iron into a sword. Chipping away and discovering than bending to your will. It is for me, anyway.
KH: I think the Coen Brothers once described it as taking their first cut which is something they hate, and turning it into something they can at least live with.
RJ: [laughs] Yea. That is how you feel at the end of the day. I like that. Shockingly, I don't think I can put it better than the Coens do.
KH: How far are you into the Looper process?
RJ: It is still very much in the writing process. I write in notebooks and every few days I type that into the computer. I'm up to page about 90 maybe closer to 100. There is that line in 8½ where Guido says, " When I started out I thought I had something so simple to say" and that is how you inevitably feel when you are dealing with time travel. Lots of editing and cleaning up. What to say about it. It is science fiction, but I have the same kind of creeping fear of calling it science fiction and disappointing expectations or what people expect from a science fiction movie. It actually takes places on a farm, set in Kansas, and it is not high-tech science fiction at all. It is character based. Not the sort of thing you expect to find in the sci-fi video shelf. It has time travel, but time travel as the premise rather than an active premise. It is part of the set up. The characters deal with the situation rather than zapping back and forth. That makes it a little simpler.
KH: I'm glad you took the time to sit down and chat.
RJ: Absolutely! Take Care.
