Peter Weir delivers BAFTA's 2010 David Lean Lecture

Acclaimed Australian filmmaker Peter Weir recently returned to cinemas with the WWII epic The Way Back, and in December he was invited to deliver the 2010 David Lean lecture at BAFTA's headquarters in London. Weir - who is a three time BAFTA Award winner (Best Film - Dead Poet's Society, Best Director - The Truman Show, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) - offers his insight into his own filmmaking style and provides advice to aspiring directors looking to break into the industry.

BAFTA has recently uploaded a video of the full lecture to its website, along with a special Q&A hosted by British film critic Mark Kermode. The site also includes the lecture in podcast form (which is available to download through iTunes), along with an event brochure and clips from Weir's back catalogue exclusively introduced by the director himself. Check it out here.

The David Lean Lecture series seeks to bring expert insight from the world's leading film directors and serves to continue the legacy of legendary film-maker David Lean, one of the founding members of the British Film Academy. Past speakers include Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa), Robert Altman (The Player), Ken Loach (Kes), John Boorman (Deliverance), Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Oliver Stone (Platoon), David Lynch (Blue Velvet) and Atom Egoyan (Where the Truth Lies).

For more on Peter Weir, be sure to check out Trevor Hogg's extensive career retrospective, which includes reviews of Weir's complete body of work alongside conversations with cinematographer Russell Boyd and film editor Lee Smith.

Master & Commander: Peter Weir Returns with The Way Back

Concluding our Peter Weir Blogathon, Trevor Hogg explores the making of the acclaimed filmmaker's latest epic, The Way Back...

In my quest to learn more about The Way Back, a World War II prison escape and survival epic, I spoke to two cinematic artists who have an unwavering sense of loyalty and respect for their countryman and colleague Peter Weir. “About a year before it actually started shooting, Peter talked to me about the film and I read the script,” states two-time Academy Award-nominated film editor Lee Smith from an edit suite in London, England. “They had a couple of changes of people who were going to finance it…and then we slipped into a weather situation. Where they were going to shoot it was going to be too cold and they had to wait for the weather to be [more] advantageous.” Oscar-winning cinematographer Russell Boyd was happy to leave behind the confines of the Napoleonic British warship which played a pivotal role in his last teaming with the internationally acclaimed director. “It was nice to get out onto different locations,” states Russell from his home in Sydney, Australia. “We shot in Bulgaria for about three months then Morocco and finally India.”

The $30 million independently-funded production features Jim Sturgess (21), Colin Farrell (Minority Report), Ed Harris (Pollack), Alexandru Potocean (The Whistleblower), Gustaf Skarsgård (Trust Me), Dragoş Bucur (The Other Irene) and Sebastian Urzendowsky (The Counterfeiters) playing seven prisoners who escape a Siberian labour camp in 1940, and befriend a young Polish girl portrayed by Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones); it is loosely based on Slavomir Rawicz’s memoir The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom. “I read the book which the film is based upon,” says Lee Smith who was given the responsibility of assembling the footage as he did with the seafaring Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). “When I got to Bulgaria I read a couple of other smaller books on the life and times of people who had gone through those [Siberian prison] camps.” There has been controversy over the historical accuracy regarding Rawicz’s account of traveling 4,000 miles on foot to India. “I think that was in Peter’s mind as well,” remarks Russell Boyd when I inquire as to whether or not the accuracy debate influenced the project being given a name different from that of the memoir. “He wasn’t out to tell a factual story; he adapted it from the background of the book.”

What the director did want to achieve was an authentic atmosphere for the picture. “Peter did a lot of research on the gulags,” explained Russell Boyd, “and he came across [information] that they were lit by one single light, like a domestic household bulb in the middle of these long barracks; he wanted me to try to emulate that. I couldn’t completely or otherwise it would have fallen off into complete blackness…but I tried to keep it as natural as possible.” One of the locations with which Russell was intrigued was a cave which proved to be so treacherous that Peter Weir injured his knee. “It was fairly late in Bulgaria and then we had the three or four weeks in Morocco and then India, so he did find it pretty difficult to get around. It certainly didn’t stop his drive or his ability to direct the film.” One particular example of Weir’s resolve occurred while in Morocco. “The characters that are still part of the story encounter this big sand storm and special effects had setup some huge airplane engine-like fans that can blow either wind or sand towards you. The day we were scheduled to do it…a real sand storm blew in and Peter was saying, ‘We must shoot! We must shoot in it! We’ve got the real thing happening.’ But it overcame us totally and we laid down our tools for a half an hour to let it pass through; it went through as quickly as it came. Once it was gone we continued with special effects blowing sand at us.”

“The snow in The Way Back is real snow,” emphasizes Lee Smith. “I remember shooting on a stage in Bulgaria. It was colder on the stage than it was outside.” Upon being told the remark made by his colleague, Russell Boyd cannot help but chuckle. “The reason for building the forest set was that there were a lot of scenes in the forest after they escape,” states the native of Victoria, “all sorts of things ranging from mid-winter blizzards through to a few scenes shot in the spring. There were also scheduled a lot of night exteriors in the snow which can be extremely difficult to shoot, not only because they’re physically demanding but also just getting equipment out in the right spot. The decision was taken to build a forest set on stage. What that gave us was a light from above which we call a space light, great big balls of quartz lights with a silk surrounding. They give a lovely soft light and we hung sixty of those up in the lighting grid. As the trees went in and they switched them on for me, this is a month before he [Peter] does the shooting, I realized that the trees were stealing a lot of my light so we doubled…the space lights. Being able to shoot a lot of those scenes in day or night or in snow was very flexible for the scheduling, and for production to be able to manage things very carefully for us.”

“It was bearable but it was really hot,” remembers Russell Boyd when recalling the time spent conducting the principle photography in Morocco. “We were gone by the time high summer came along.” Russell adds, “I’d rather be hot than cold so I enjoyed it more than the snow.” A problematic situation for the cinematographer and his camera crew occurred during what was supposed to be a brief one day shoot in India. “It was a busy morning as I was shooting some atmospheric stuff, and then in the afternoon shooting the scene where the guys march into India to freedom. The following day we had a scheduled day off; it poured with rain to the extent that there were a lot of mudslides in Darjeeling and a number of people lost their lives. Also, at that time our entire unit base was washed out. The next day we started shooting and it rained by lunchtime and we had to go home. So we went back the following day to finish shooting, hopefully, and got rained out again and the third day we went on to complete it.”

“The opening scene in the movie is very powerful,” marvels Russell Boyd of the late addition Peter Weir made to the script while on location filming. “It was one of the last things we did in Bulgaria, where he [Jim Sturgess] is being interrogated and forced to sign a piece of paper saying that the allegations against him are true and the allegations have come from his young wife who had been tortured.” The short scene which makes use of dramatic close-up shots also made an impression on Lee Smith. “As soon as you take a sequence seriously, you feel that you’re really there and this is really happening; you can only begin to try to imagine how incredibly difficult it would have been [to be] interned at that time,” observes Lee. “I think the combination of sound effects and music that subtly play in the background give you an idea of the horror it would have been in one of those prisons.” The concept of nature being the central antagonist, emphasized during the prison camp scene, fascinates the Sydney-born film editor. “One of my favourite moments is when they say, ‘It’s not our guns or wires that will keep you. It’s Russia itself.’ It’s where they are. It is such a remote place what is the point of escape? Where would they go? And if the locals don’t round them up for the bounty then surely they’ll perish through fatigue, starvation and cold. I thought that was a bit of a genius thing to play on.” Russell Boyd was impressed with an intelligently-used storytelling device that appears at the halfway point of the picture. “The introduction of Saorise Ronan in the film was a masterstroke I thought,” enthuses the cinematographer. “One of my favourite scenes in the movie is where she runs across this frozen river which you remember is in the trailer. To me it really put the picture on a different level…it pushed the story on much faster. It will give an audience a great feeling that this young girl is [able to] capture the affection of this [group of] harden ex-gulag prisoners.”

Not being able to crosscut between different storylines during the picture resulted in a major creative challenge for Lee Smith. “I think it was nice to stay with them,” believes Lee. “Once you’re walking, there is nowhere else to go and I think that adds to the vibe of the film. You’re as isolated as they are, and cutting back to the camp or back home to the loved ones, I think, would have broken that spell.” The film editor adds, “The great thing with films is that you can go on a journey with the people that you are interested in watching. You almost feel part of them. I certainly felt pretty parched as I got through that desert.” Working with a large principle cast of seven actors was creatively challenging. “Not everyone can have every line and every reaction to every moment,” acknowledges Lee Smith. “It definitely adds a layer of complexity when you have an ensemble cast for a fair chunk of the film.” To help him get a better assessment of the footage, Lee Smith delays incorporating a particular cinematic element. “We run without music the first time just to get an understanding of the film.” He goes on to explain, “My theory is that the longer you can resist putting music on a movie, the more you analyze and the more brutal you are on the images. Music is the great glue that can stick sequences together.”

“[The Way Back] is what I would call a fabulous piece of adult entertainment,” says Lee Smith. “It’s just a movie I would thoroughly enjoy watching. It’s not easily marketable because you can’t pin it to another movie.” When I ask if the unrelenting depressing nature of the story will hurt the picture at the box office, Lee tells me, “I’ve seen it with audiences who loved it and applauded at the end of it. I’ve been to a lot of test screenings in my time and you don’t often get that.” Upon assessing the commercial appeal of the epic tale, Russell Boyd remarks, “I rather believe that certain audiences will go to any film that a certain filmmaker might make. Peter Weir would have an inbuilt audience I would have thought for whatever sort of film he makes.” Lee Smith realizes that there are serious financial forces at work which may well deprive “accessible art” directors like Peter Weir of the opportunity to make films. “At the end of the day movies are expensive to produce and basically they do have to make money. It depends on how brave the people are who are funding the projects…We’re in an age of economic rationalism and I think it’s killed a lot of our thinking.” Despite the changing cinematic landscape, Russell Boyd has unwavering faith in his colleague of over thirty-six years. “One thing I don’t think Peter would ever do is deliberately take on a film that he doesn’t have a one hundred percent emotional attachment to.”

Visit the official site of The Way Back and read our review here.

Thanks to Russell Boyd for supplying the images for this article.

Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: The Way Back (2010)

The Way Back, 2010.



Directed by Peter Weir.

Starring Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong, Dragoş Bucur, Alexandru Potocean, Sebastian Urzendowsky and Gustaf Skarsgård.





SYNOPSIS:



A small group of multi-national prisoners escape from a Siberian gulag in 1940 and attempt an epic journey across five hostile countries.





Leaving behind the high seas adventures of Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), Australian filmmaker Peter Weir reemerges seven years later with a landlocked tale where the only path to freedom is a 4,000 mile trek through the worst conditions that Mother Nature has to offer. The Way Back takes inspiration from the memoir The Long Walk written by Slavomir Rawicz but has been augmented by other resource material, providing the film with an air of authenticity. Opening with an interrogation scene, a young Polish officer named Janusz (Jim Sturgess) is being betrayed by his tortured wife to the Soviet authorities; Weir serves notice that he is not going to shy away from cinematically depicting the injustices and brutality inflicted by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The camera mingles with the characters causing audience members to feel as claustrophobic and imprisoned as those serving time in the isolated Siberian gulag. As for Janusz, he finds himself having to navigate between a vicious knife-carrying thief (Colin Farrell), a grizzled American (Ed Harris), and an actor who may be either a friend or foe (Mark Strong).



Key to understanding the driving force behind the picture is the line uttered by the camp commandant when informing the new internees as to why there are no watchtowers or machine guns; he tells them, “Nature is your jailer, and she is without mercy.” These words are not rhetoric for even when the escape happens during a blinding blizzard, one gets the impression that Sturgess and his followers (Farrell, Harris, Alexandru Potocean, Gustaf Skarsgård, Dragoş Bucur and Sebastian Urzendowsky) are simply trading a prison defined by barbed wire for one without borders. It is a daring choice by Peter Weir not to follow the standard Hollywood convention of having the group pursued by the prison authorities or crippled by internal conflict; I believe this to be both the strength and the weakness of the film. The singular point of view fosters the sentiment of empathy within the viewer; however, over time it is as if the unrelenting struggle resembles a repetitious musical note. To his credit, Weir does try to rectify the situation by infusing lines of humour and having Saorise Ronan appear at the halfway point to awaken the paternal instincts of the emotionally-harden band of fugitives.



When it comes to the acting, I found myself impressed by the contributions of the lesser known supporting talents of Potocean, Skarsgård, Bucur, and Urzendowsky who certainly hold their own among the Hollywood stars. The trouble with such a large principle cast is that the two-hour screen time cannot be equally distributed amongst them. Bucur is memorable for his quick wit while Farrell believably portrays a man who cannot bring himself to abandon the country which has forsaken him. Strong thankfully does not get stereotypically cast as the cartoon villain and Ronan who flickers out like an exhausted flame definitely has the talent to follow in the footsteps of Cate Blanchett and Kate Winslet. Sturgess fully embraces his role as the leader with a contagious sense of determination and optimism. Harris is at home being the handyman of the wilderness; so much so apparently that he created some of the makeshift survival contraptions used onscreen.



In an age where images fly by in two seconds or less, I enjoyed having the camera linger whether it be for a close-up of Ed Harris or an epic landscape shot; it is nice to have the time to study the nuances of the people and the environment which they cinematically encounter. A major relief, Peter Weir focuses on the idea that adversity can be the means of building camaraderie. It is a welcomed change from the exhausting bickering that has become so formulaic in movies nowadays; also, there are no distracting computer graphics to be found. One could say that The Way Back is a product of old-school filmmaking where practical effects ingenuity reigns supreme. The standout sequence occurs when Saorise Ronan crosses a precarious ice bridge to get to the other side of a riverbank; the sound of cracking ice combined with her fleet-footed running had me on the edge of my seat wondering if she was going to fall through at any moment. The Way Back has certainly been influenced by the previous works of Weir as the exploration of ethereal caves harkens back to Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) while the desert crossing echoes of Gallipoli (1981). The project has been described as “David Lean on a shoestring budget”; I agree with the remark for the $30 million picture is best seen on the big screen where one can fully appreciate its visual scope.



The Way Back trailer...

Peter Weir Blogathon



Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at his Academy Award-nominated twelfth feature...

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 2003.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, Billy Boyd, James D'Arcy, Edward Woodall, Chris Larkin and Max Pirkis.


SYNOPSIS:

An embattled British Naval Captain, Jack Aubrey, seeks revenge against an enemy French frigate during the Napoleonic Wars.


Half a decade after the release of The Truman Show, acclaimed filmmaker Peter Weir reemerged in 2003 inspired by the nautical adventure novels of author Patrick O’Brian. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World had the Australian collaborate with fellow countryman and acting juggernaut Russell Crowe. Constructed from several books in the Napoleonic Aubrey-Maturin series, the high-seas adventure featured Crowe as the vengeful British Naval Captain, Jack Aubrey, who commands the H.M.S. Surprise, and Paul Bettany as the introspective Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Stephen Maturin, who views the revengeful pursuit as being reckless.

There was one thing Peter Weir knew that he must do if he was going to capture the true spirit of the original novels. “My approach was very sparse,” he explained, “there was no subplot, no love story, and no scenes on land. A film set entirely at sea. This stemmed partly from my own predisposition to the books, I’d read them all, and loved them all, long before the film came about. It was also the result of studying films in this genre, in preparation for writing the screenplay…I was right in attempting to match the author’s authenticity, his attention to detail; I did the same thing with the film and I went to great lengths to get that detail right”.

The director was reluctant to use computer generated imagery until he saw what Peter Jackson had been able to accomplish with The Fellowship of the Ring. Weir then made a decision to divide the production of the film into three parts. First was the life-size and workable sea vessel placed on top of a hydraulic gimble situated in a large water tank which had been used for another ocean epic Titanic. Second was the construction of huge miniature versions of the ships (coined “bigiatures”) by Oscar winner Richard Taylor and his WETA workshop team. Third was the use of CGI artists to seamlessly blend the different elements together.

After witnessing the creative potential of computer generated special effects, the traditional storyteller became a convert to the technology. “During the process I found myself at a party,” began the Sydney native, “talking with a director of some renown, who shall remain nameless. He told me that he’d never used a CGI shot and I knew by the way he said it, he was proud of this. It was in some way as if using CGI was similar to an athlete using steroids or performance enhancing drugs. And I saw myself in him a couple of years back, and I tried to say to him ‘look, it’s just a tool, a marvellous tool’, but I could see that he was not convinced, but that’s how I feel. It’s just another set of wonderful tools, to be used sparingly, but they are there, and they are there to help tell a story, in this case a story that could not have been told without these particular tools”.

When he was down in Cape Horn good fortune visited Weir. “As luck had it,” the moviemaker recalled, “I saw the Endeavour, Captain Cook’s vessel, which was not dissimilar to the Surprise, though not a warship, and I took a number of trips with a cameraman, learning how the vessel worked. Then we heard that the Endeavour would be taking a trip around the Horn, so we got a cameraman on board, Paul Atkins, and that ship hit some heavy weather going around the Horn, as it's liable to do, and Paul shot some 20,000 feet of film. This weather became the water of the movie. I loved the fact that in the storm scenes there was actual water from the Horn. Who cares? Maybe, but for me I loved that fact“.

To better prepare himself, Peter Weir did some preproduction research. “I read all the books about making movies at sea, particularly informative was the book on the making of John Huston’s Moby Dick and Jaws by Stephen Spielberg; you come only to one conclusion, which was don’t film at sea.” Weir heeded the advice. “I made a critical decision, despite having this ship, fully rigged, ready to go to sea, that I would only risk her for second unit shots, and some main unit shooting, but we would replicate it and put it in the tank in Baja, in Mexico.”

At the commencement of the project, Russell Crowe had misgivings about the script but his director reminded him that the tale would be constantly changing. “In the 60s and 70s in Australia there were very few good writers,” Peter Weir explained, “we didn’t know how to write for screen, and there were very few great actors who could deliver those lines, so constantly you were cutting lines out of the script and telling the story through the camera. And for me that continues, I’m always cutting lines and letting the faces and the camera tell the story”.

Situated in 1805, the movie opens with the sighting of a ghostly ship which turns out to be the very real Acheron. The French privateer vessel attacks and cripples the H.M.S. Surprise. Using the prevailing fog as a cover Aubrey leads his men to safety. A debate breaks out amongst the ship’s officers about whether their assailant is too out of their class to capture. Aubrey overrules the discussion and commands that the warship be refitted at sea rather than be returned to port. They are ambushed once again but are saved by a decoy which enables them to escape into the night. The accidental shooting of Maturin causes Aubrey to halt his obsessive mission of revenge. However, an unexpected sighting of the elusive Acheron during the doctor’s convalescence sets up a final confrontation which results in a British victory.

In regard to his attitudes toward producing a blockbuster, Weir stated: “I am not usually sent them. And if I am, I’m just not drawn to them. Sometimes you sweat it out,” This attitude has resulted in large time gaps between his theatrical endeavors, however, the filmmaker remains steadfast to his creative ideals. “I have to be patient to find that particular kind of project. Occasionally, I’ll write one myself if I can summon up the energy.”

Despite not generating enough box office success to warrant a sequel (though rumours of the contrary continue to persist), Master and Commander had a dominating presence at the Oscars with ten nominations which included Best Picture and Best Director. Not entirely shutout, the high seas adventure was awarded Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing.


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

The Weir Way: Russell Boyd and Lee Smith Talk About Peter Weir

Continuing our Peter Weir Blogathon, Trevor Hogg chats to film editor Lee Smith and cinematographer Russell Boyd about their experiences working with the acclaimed director...

Although he had not made a film since the seafaring Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), internationally acclaimed director Peter Weir had no trouble recruiting willing collaborators for his latest effort The Way Back (2010). “Since 1975 I have shot more than thirty movies,” states Oscar-winning Australian cinematographer Russell Boyd from his home in Sydney. “I enjoy the work and I enjoy making films but I would have to say having done six films with Peter he does spoil you a little bit more than other projects [do].” The feeling of admiration felt by Russell is mutually expressed when I talk to two-time Academy Award-nominated film editor Lee Smith who is currently working on a project in London, England. When I bring up the subject of The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) and the casting of Linda Hunt as the dwarf cameraman Billy Kwan, I get a glimpse of the youthful enthusiasm he would have displayed three decades ago as a twenty-year old movie industry rookie. “Genius piece of casting,” declares Lee without hesitation. “I was a first year editor on that one also did the sound, working in the Philippines on location. I was a young guy and it spurred me to work with him as many times as I could. It was a fantastic experience.”

Russell Boyd agrees with Lee’s assessment of the daring decision made by Peter Weir to cast Linda Hunt who received an Oscar for her performance. “It was an extraordinary bit of casting by Peter. He actually had somebody else picked out for the role but for some reason he didn’t think it was going to work out. It was quite a last minute thing. He disappeared and flew to Hollywood. We were about four or five weeks out of shooting which is a very intense time… A few days later they had recast that role and Linda was going to play it; a woman playing a man but it certainly worked out well.” The political thriller which stars Mel Gibson as an ambitious Australian journalist in 1960s Jakarta, Indonesia, and Sigourney Weaver as a British intelligent agent left a lasting impression on the film’s leading lady. “I worked with Sigourney on a small film in New York called Company Man [2000]; she said to me, ‘Peter was the reason I continued acting.’ She felt in such good directorial hands with him...I thought that was a great mark of respect she paid Peter.” Explaining Weaver’s comment further to me, Russell says, “I think when actors work with Peter they respond to the fact they are working with somebody really great who can steer their characters.” The cinematographer goes on to give an example of the subtle and crafty approach employed by the director. “Peter will often leave his video village and come over to an actor and just say, ‘Look try this. Just think that. Just put that little thing in there or do something or the other.’ He just speaks gently to the actors and they respond. He is probably one of the great masters of getting a good performance from an actor… There is a great ambience on the set and Peter exploits it; he talks to his actors as one professional to another.”

The two pictures of which Russell Boyd is really proud are Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) and Gallipoli (1981) for they put early Australia on the cinematic map. The strange period tale about a group of schoolgirls who vanish upon entering a mysterious rock formation served as the first collaboration between the director and the cinematographer. “Peter has always liked to experiment, using different lenses and heights in getting a shot, and with the speed of the camera,” remarks Russell. “He likes [to use] slow motion a lot just to heighten one little mannerism or a little movement. In Picnic at Hanging Rock when the girls were crossing the river we shot in thirty-two frames which gives it that slight motion effect.” Gallipoli is a World War I drama which stars Mel Gibson and Mark Lee as two friends who tragically end up on a Turkish battlefield. “I don’t think Peter set out to make a war film but of course it is about war. He was very clever in the way where the characters told the story instead of it being a big battle epic… Essentially, it was also a story about Australia coming of age, which it did. A lot of the young guys went off to wars in some of those early scenes thinking it is going to be a picnic, it is going to be a great time over there but of course the way it was they were getting fired upon with real bullets and a lot of them lost their lives. I think it woke Australia up from a slumber from the Victorian-era life and that is certainly part of Peter’s story as well.” A particular sequence that stands out to the both of us is when the stranded Gibson and Lee have to cross alien landscape of the Outback. “That was Lake Torrens in South Australia which is a salt lake and it hadn’t rain out there for years and years; it is one of my favourite scenes in that film. Those scenes really set Peter up as a masterful storyteller. Just the way he used that eerie, odd, strange location – got some great visuals to enhance the story of the two guys crossing the desert.” As for the dramatic concluding shot, the native of Victoria, Australia informs me, “Peter may have been inspired by [war photographer] Robert Capa but we didn’t actually talk about it. I know he wanted to finish the film with that freeze frame and it is a great ending.”

“Peter likes to do a lot of research and loves to share it with the necessary people so usually six to eight months before, we start on the prep,” says Russell Boyd. “In fact with Master and Commander because it took so long to get going, I think I was talking to him for eighteen months before it started.” The Napoleonic war epic provided film editor Lee Smith with the opportunity to take over the reins from his mentor William Anderson for the first time. “In Master and Commander we always stayed on The Surprise,” remarks Lee. “We never ever jumped to the French boat until we actually boarded [the vessel]. I thought that was really cool. A different film, for example, would have had you suddenly in a scene in the French boat with the French captain getting the news about spotting The Surprise on the horizon in subtitles, and they would have all run up and looked through their telescopes but Peter said he wanted to stay with the guys on the boat.” In comparing the film with Peter Weir’s latest effort which takes place out in the Siberian wilderness, Lee observes, “I would say The Way Back was somewhat more challenging because… there are only so many glorious vistas you can cut into a movie and you need to make sure you can keep the audience with you as you’re going through that journey. Whereas Master and Commander was probably more dialogue driven, and held in the confines of the ship, which is still a very interesting visual place to be.” The Sydney-born film editor adds, “Each film has its own unique way of coming together… With Peter’s they are always a visual feast.”

“If I’m involved I can throw in my ten cents worth as to why shoot morning or night in that location or maybe not use that location but another one for another reason,” says Russell Boyd. “It’s not a collaboration, it’s probably a gentlemen’s agreement when we settle on something. But Peter always has great ideas about why a particular location is going to be useful for his stories. I would have to have a damn good reason to get him to change it but he’ll certainly listen if I pipe up well enough.” Weir is not adverse to the idea of seeking advice from those around him. “Peter does like to get some feedback because he doesn’t feel that he’s the auteur filmmaker, he’s not doing it on his own.” Russell amends his comment by saying, “Nevertheless, I for one and I think most of the people who work with him, trust his judgment so completely that nobody would ever argue with him and say, ‘No, no, no! We can’t do it that way! This is the way we have to do it.’ You just wouldn’t do it to Peter.”

“Peter is always incredibly conscious of his story and he does change it frequently,” reveals Russell Boyd. “One of his approaches when shooting a scene is not to do many takes but to do more different setups which gives him a lot more flexibility in the cutting room.” Lee Smith generally finds himself left alone in the edit suite while the principle photography is taking place. “Mainly Peter would only watch sequences if I had any concerns about them,” states Lee. “On The Way Back he did watch a couple of chunks of the film but sometimes that’s just if time permits. Generally speaking he concentrates on keeping focused on what is coming and what he is going to do next.” Weir’s tendency to experiment with a movie soundtrack by incorporating noises such as earthquake tremors and submarine sonar pings appeals to the film editor who is also a sound designer. “He has a lot of ideas and is very interested in creating moods through sounds which makes him a very exciting director to work with.”

“I think a director owes it to his audience to entertain them but also to observe the honesty of the story,” believes Russell Boyd. “He can’t treat the audience with disdain. He has to respect them all the time. One thing I know about Peter is he does think a lot about the audience and how they might react to a particular scene, which has helped me in my approach to cinematography.” Boyd goes on to make a startling revelation, “For a short time he thought The Way Back may not have gotten a big theatrical release… We were going through the laboratory looking at a print and he said it may go straight to DVD. I was horrified. Fortunately, it has gathered a lot more interest since then. I think the [world premiere at the] Telluride Festival gave it a boost.” The cinematographer recognizes, however, that the climate in the movie industry has changed. “There is now a huge sway to ultra visual effects films with spaceships and aliens from different planets; all sorts of visual trickery which will get eighteen to twenty-four year olds into the cinema. I think what he feels, I don’t know if he is right or wrong, is that the studios are banking on those types of films more and more… There is always a market for very small market films – five to ten million dollars… The Way Back is not really a huge audience film therefore it was hard for him to get $30 million out of somebody to make it.” Russell Boyd is very quick to point out, “Peter is not in it for the glory… He would never take a film if he is not convinced that it is something he should do.”

Many thanks to both Russell Boyd and Lee Smith for taking time out of their busy schedules for these interviews. Read more here...

Picture Perfect: A conversation with cinematographer Russell Boyd
Cutting Edge: A conversation with film editor Lee Smith

Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: The Truman Show (1998)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at the director's eleventh feature...

The Truman Show, 1998.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Jim Carrey, Laura Linney, Ed Harris, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Brian Delate, Holland Taylor and Paul Giamatti.


SYNOPSIS:

Truman Burbank’s perfect world is thrown into turmoil when he unwittingly discovers that his life is being staged by a global television network.


Around the world critics and audience members embraced the cinematic satire. The cautionary tale about the media’s ability to shape an individual’s existence provided Australian director Peter Weir with a few challenges. To solve one of them he turned to a much-loved movie classic. “I think probably the single film that occurred to me was Dr. Strangelove, in terms of tone – humour mixed with major drama. Kubrick pulled it off. He walked the line.” Then there was also an unconventional issue that had to be addressed. “In normal films we’re suppose to forget that there’s a camera,” stated the Sydney native, “but in this case I had to be very conscious of where the camera was. I had to imagine where [the show’s producers] placed it – in a duct, in a button, up his nose or whatever. I turned my head inside out sometimes.”

All the creative problem-solving caused Weir’s imagination to run wild. “I even had a crazy idea at one time which was impossible technically,” he reminisced, “I would have loved to have had a video camera installed in every theatre in which the film was to be seen. At one point, the projectionist would cut the power and could cut to the viewers in the cinema and then back to the movie.”

Interestingly, it was not all the technical issues which made the internationally respected filmmaker reluctant to take on the project. “What held me back in saying yes to the producer was that I wasn’t sure who could play Truman.” He confessed. “It wasn’t just a matter of getting an actor who was a good actor. Then the producer said, ‘Do you know Jim Carrey?’ And I thought, ‘My God, what an interesting idea!” When approached about the role, celebrity tabloid favourite Jim Carrey was immediately receptive. Carrey said to him, “I can draw off the feelings I have. I’m a prisoner.” Weir went on to add with a chuckle. ”Not that he looks for anyone to be sympathetic, nor would he trade places with you.”

After dealing with the comic frenzy of Robin Williams on and off the set for Dead Poets Society, the Australian moviemaker encountered a very different situation with the zany Carrey. “Jim would just go off to his trailer and prepare for the next scene,” recalled Peter Weir. “He was very involved in this project. We could chat, he’s easy going but pretty occupied. He wasn’t a comedian on the set. And he’s a perfectionist, with a capital P. His preparation was intensely thorough, and he didn’t want to be too much a part of the chat on the set because we were often [in character] taking about the show.”

In preparation for the film, the director decided to create a back story to go along with Andrew Niccol’s original screenplay. “I wrote a thing for myself called ‘A Short History of the Truman Show’ about how it all came to be and who Christof [the program’s obsessive creator and producer] was. I wrote it as if it was a press release from the show. Then I found some of the cast and crew asked for it, so I passed it around. We would ab lib together, and I would often play the part of the mid-day shift director on the show who was trying to get ahead. [We decided] there were six shifts per day, and like a radio station, some were more highly valued than others. Obviously midnight to 4 a.m. was pretty much your learner’s position. The directors who did the weekend stuff were very experienced, because of that the time Truman might do something unpredictable.” The role playing was so well embraced Peter Weir decided to take things a step further. “I rang Paramount and said, ‘Listen, let’s put together a little documentary unit and shoot this.’” He told them, “We could use it as a promotional item.” The major film studio agreed with him. “So we shot that and I sort of cannibalized it.” Weir used the mock interview footage of the “cast members” in the T.V. show so to establish scenes in the movie.

For the protagonist to gain the sympathy of the audience he needs a formidable and believable adversary. With The Truman Show this crucial responsibility was given to the godlike figure of Christof. “I think Christof is such an interesting character,” Weir stated in reference to the role played by Ed Harris. “He is kind of an artist. He sees himself as a great teacher, doing something very worthwhile. There was a decision early on in talking to Ed that he would not be crazy, insane – in the legal definition. He is certainly a fanatic, but, on the other hand, while making billions of dollars he was doing something that he thought was beneficial to the world and was demonstrating a way to live. That’s what makes him truly sinister.”

In the movie, Truman Burbank’s idealized world unravels when a falling spotlight nearly hits him. Afterwards his car radio inadvertently picks up a conversation detailing his drive to work. These strange events prick his curiosity so much so he becomes oddly aware on how the whole town of Seaside seems to revolve around him. The insurance salesman’s suspicions are confirmed upon discovering a hidden camera in his house. Truman decides to take control of his life; however, he faces a major obstacle. Christof will do anything short of killing his star to ensure the survival of the show. When an orchestrated sea storm nearly drowns Truman, the program’s creator relents and allows him to enter into the real world.

When asked what The Truman Show is about, Peter Weir answered, “To me, the real centre of the film is the loss of reality. I think now [in the media] there’s so much acting and reenacting, and dramatized news broadcasts and cops with cameras, and society viewing it all second hand. As Bill Gates recently said, ‘We may soon never need to leave our armchairs,’ as if that were a good thing! And that’s what I liked and what I tried to apply to the audience [in the film]. They applaud, they laugh, they cry.”

Weir strongly believes in the dramatic power of implying things. “It can get harder these days because films are so didactic, and they so present everything to the viewer.” Weir explained. “All [the audience] has to do is sit and eat popcorn and keep their eyes open. Whereas I like a film, and like to make films in which, at least emotionally, you are joining in and completing the picture with me.”

With three Oscar nominations for Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Ed Harris), Peter Weir went on to the BAFTAS where the British film industry handed him the David Lean Award for Direction.

The Truman Show trailer...


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: Fearless (1993)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at the director's tenth feature...

Fearless, 1993.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Jeff Bridges, Isabella Rossellini, Rosie Perez, Tom Hulce, Benicio del Toro, John Turturro and Deirdre O'Connell.


SYNOPSIS:

Two airplane crash survivors react very differently to the traumatic event. Carla Rodrigo is catatonic over the lost of her baby, while Max Klein continuously pushes the boundaries between life and death. Through each other they are able to reconnect with the world.


Australian filmmaker Peter Weir brought Rafeal Yglesias’ novel Fearless to the big screen in 1993. To ensure a realistic reenactment of the tragedy, Weir went to Sioux City, Iowa to interview six people who survived the actual plane crash depicted in the film. Their first hand knowledge proved to be indispensable to him. “They told me about the feeling of living 45 minutes with the knowledge that the plane might crash and that they could die, then the experience of the crash itself. As a result of those conversations I completely reshaped the crash and the scenes on the plane, dropped all exterior shots, and took very much the passengers' point of view.”

After a test screening of Fearless, a chuckling Weir recalled a comment by his lead actor. “Jeff leaned over to me and said, ‘It’s like you put acid in the popcorn, man.” In regards to Jeff Bridges’ performance as Max, the acclaimed director had nothing but praise for the veteran thespian. “Jeff was just incredible. He went places that were well beyond the realm of conventional acting.”

“I was looking for a script,” stated Weir, “and I couldn’t believe that what I was reading was A-list, so I came over to meet with a couple of writers I’d thought were interesting, and to meet with studio heads – and no one in-between – to find out what was wrong. The only producer who got by the requirement was Mark Rosenberg, and I gave him the same speech I gave the studio heads, which was ‘Give me things that are unusual or difficult,’ what are called broken scripts. Mark and Paula Weinstein gave me the script that Rafeal Yglesias had adapted, on spec, from his own novel that was waiting to be published. I was delighted it hadn’t had the usual input where they round the corners and put in all the things that are in books about scriptwriting.”

A couple of things made Fearless a “broken script”, revealed the Sydney native. “It was good writing,” he explained, “daring writing. But I thought it was two movies. The first 25 pages were a film about how you’d cope with the knowledge that you were going to die, taking the point of view of a man who knew about aircraft and knew that the hydraulics were gone and so there was no steering and no braking even if the plane got on the ground. Then there was the second film, which was about how you live once you survive. I couldn’t see a way to do it as one film.”

“I was just driving around listening to music,” he said remembering when the revelation came to him on how to fix the script, “and I realized I could do anything I liked, as long as the story remained about life and death, or rather, love and fear, which was more to the point – you can’t say anything about death because you don’t know about death. You could certainly talk about fear. I used parts of the crash as flashbacks to show what the characters were still working out, the way one does after any trauma.”

Filming a movie featuring a plane crash presented a certain pratfall that Peter Weir wanted to avoid. “My true challenge was to not make a film about the perils of flying. That was just a metaphor,” he stated. “One day your number will be up. I do think that in our modern life, when you’re in a plane it’s the one time you think you might die. Most people, regardless of what they’ve learned in school, don’t have any idea how anything so heavy stays up in the air. One of the studio executives said, ‘I love the movie but I won’t let my wife see it. She hates to fly.’ But I would think this film might be a cure for that.”

Fearless opens in a cornfield where Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) walks away from a plane crash unscathed while Carla Rodrigo (Rosie Perez) desperately searches for her lost son as an explosion erupts from the fallen aircraft. Max becomes so psychologically disassociated from his family that he moves away. To help him confront his depression an aircraft psychiatrist recommends Max befriend the emotionally withdrawn Carla. As he escalates his death-defying activities, Max jolts Carla back to reality. After experiencing another near fatal experience Max is slowly able to begin his own recovery.

“When I started this film it occurred to me how interesting it would be to attempt to ‘photograph souls’. You know, with the barrier between the subject and the camera removed.” To accomplish this effect Weir improvised. “The great discovery of the cinema, this new art form, is the close-up. No one has yet come up with anything more extraordinary. With a great screen 30 feet across, to see a face, every line, every movement of every muscle, and wonder who is inside that face? That’s what I was getting into in Fearless, thinking ah, this is the frontier.”

The casting of Rosie Perez was not an obvious one to Peter Weir. “Rosie’s character in the book was Italian-American, but that just doesn’t have the same right in San Francisco, where I set the film.” He explained. “I decided she should be Latina and Rosie was on a very short list of actresses for the part. I’d seen her in Do The Right Thing. But I didn’t recall her. Then I watched White Men Can’t Jump, but that didn’t tell me very much, so it was a case of a screen test and a meeting which went very well, though she didn’t think so. She was looking for a change. She’s extremely intelligent and she wants to be, you know, a proper actress.” Perez made the best of the opportunity and received the sole Oscar nomination for Fearless.

“Fearless is an unusual arrangement of familiar events,” Weir stated. “I chose it because the screenplay just struck me.” The director went on to clarify his attraction to the movie further. “And the great challenge for a filmmaker is to take that initial moment of being struck – it really is like a light bulb to me – and transmit that feeling to an anonymous group of people in any city in the Western World. The important thing is how close you got to the original inspiration. In this case, it’s extremely close.”

Fearless trailer...


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: Green Card (1990)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at the director's ninth feature...

Green Card, 1990.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Gérard Depardieu, Andie MacDowell, Bebe Neuwirth, Gregg Edelman, Robert Prosky and Lois Smith.


SYNOPSIS:

A Frenchman in need of a green card and a single woman, who desperately wants an apartment for married couples only, embark on a marriage of convenience that transforms their relationship into one of mutual love.


From the well of creativity sprung an Oscar-nominated script which internationally acclaimed filmmaker Peter Weir wrote and directed in 1990. Green Card was inspired by Weir’s desire to work with a French acting legend. “It’s an original screenplay by me for Gerard Depardieu. A number of the character details are actually taken from his life. I admire him, and it seems an awful loss that he is largely unknown to English speaking audiences, apart from real filmgoers. Most people just don’t go to foreign films,” said Weir.

To compose his tribute role for Depardieu, Peter Weir clipped a photograph from a local Australian newspaper of the renowned actor and hung it over his typewriter. In the early stages of writing the script Weir believed he was seriously restricting himself. “Even if he said no, it would have gotten me back to writing.” The cinematic storyteller explained. “It was the means to get me started.” However, part way through the writing Weir discovered he had a problem. “I had painted myself into a corner,” the director confessed. With Depardieu’s schedule filled with back-to-back projects, the filmmaker would have to delay filming for a year. “It was a tremendous disappointment,” Weir remarked, “because we had met, ideas were flowing, and I sensed that it would be a very good collaboration. But of course I was quite happy to wait. I mean what else could I do?”

In the movie, Andy MacDowell plays Bronte Parrish a single horticulturalist who covets a Manhattan apartment with a greenhouse, however, the building will only rent to married couples. The solution to Bronte’s problem arrives with French composer George Faure (Depardieu) who desperately wants a green card, which will enable him to stay in America. A marriage of convenience is arranged and they live their separate lives until a suspicious immigration officer arrives to interview them. The newlyweds have to quickly devise a history for their relationship, and in the process of carrying out their charade, fall in love.

What drew Depardieu to Green Card was not the desire to become a Hollywood star but the script itself. “When Peter gave me the first script,” He stated. “I saw one thing for me – the story of a man and a woman who have to invent in 48 hours a life. For me, this is a great situation, because you can make a comedy with that, but you can also make the truth.”

In describing working with Depardieu, Weir had nothing admiration for him. “He’s this unique collaborator,” the director remarked, “in that he really draws your creation out of you and inspires you to go further with it. In a sense, he becomes you. I think that probably only happens when something is written for him, as Blier and Pialat have done. He sort of burrows his way into your character’s life.”

Green Card was purposely funded without the involvement of a major studio, revealed Peter Weir. “It seemed very logical this time, given it’s my screenplay and a very low budget film. I have more control working outside the studio system.” He went on to add. “Green Card is a test case. It’s an auteur film, made overseas by an Australian director, with the involvement of French components.”

Upon reviewing the movie Time Out London wrote: “Weir’s first romantic comedy boasts a central relationship which is tentative and hopeful, a mood beautifully realized by Depardieu (venturing into new territory with a major English-speaking role). Complimented by the refined MacDowell, his gracious, generous performance is never dominating, and their exchanges offer unexpected pleasures. In terms of the genre’s conventions, Weir likens this film to ‘a light meal.’ It’s one to savor.”

However, esteemed film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was far less glowing in his appraisal of a film which he believed to be “not blindingly brilliant, and is not an example of the very best work of the director who made The Year of Living Dangerously or the actor who starred in Cyrano de Bergerac. But it is a sound, entertaining work of craftsmanship, a love story between two people whose meet is not as cute as it might have been.”

Despite the mixed response from critics and audiences, the Academy Awards honoured Green Card’s writer and director Peter Weir with an Oscar nomination for his original screenplay.

Green Card trailer...


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: Dead Poets Society (1989)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at the director's Academy Award-nominated eighth feature...

Dead Poets Society, 1989.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Kurtwood Smith, Gale Hansen, Josh Charles, Dylan Kussman, Allelon Ruggiero, James Waterston and Norman Lloyd.


SYNOPSIS:

English Literature teacher John Keating runs afoul of conservative-minded administrators and parents at a prestigious New England prep school when he encourages his pupils to “Seize the day!”.


The major problem with inspirational teacher and sports movies is that most are hokey and sentimental. With the skilled direction of renowned Australian film-maker Peter Weir, an intelligent original screenplay by Tom Schulman, and a bitter sweet dramatic performance by Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society rises above the mediocrity of The Empire Club and Mona Lisa Smile to obtain the gold standard set by the likes of Goodbye, Mr. Chips and To Sir, With Love.

As he would do later with The Truman Show and Jim Carrey, Peter Weir was able to channel the frantic comic energy of Robin Williams into an Oscar nominated performance. To guide the actor, Weir coined the name “Robin Keating” for he wanted the scripted character to be “shaded with 15 percent of Williams own off-the-cuff dialogue”. So to realistically depict the developing relationship between the seven students who reestablish Keating’s clandestine poetry-reading club, Peter Weir filmed scenes in chronological order and had the young thespians room together.

In 1959 Vermont, the Welton Academy is a straight-laced and upper crust prep school. The opening ceremony which features students carrying banners decreeing the principles of Tradition, Honour, Discipline, and Excellence serves two major purposes: it introduces the main characters and establishes the rigid environment which they are about to enter.

New arrival Todd Anderson finds himself walking uncomfortably in the footsteps of a brother who gained legendary status at the academy. His roommate is the lively Neil Perry whose career path has been mapped out by a domineering father. Neil is the leader of a study group involving playboy Charlie Dalton, Judas-in-the-making Richard Cameron, gentle giant Steven Meeks, and the girl-crazy but romantically-challenged Knox Overstreet.

When the boys gather for their first English Literature class a strange thing occurs. The new teacher, Welton alumnus John Keating, informs them that they may call him “Oh, Captain! My Captain!” (a Walt Witman poem). He circles the room and then promptly leaves; the students are dumbfounded. Who is this strange man who has unexpectedly strolled into their lives? Academic life at Welton has suddenly become anything but routine.

John Keating literally takes his students out of the classroom and reintroduces them to the world through the power of poetry and self-discovery. Driven to learn more about their unconventional educator, Neil and his buddies find out Keating was at one time part of a secret literary fraternity known as the Dead Poets Society. Their late night gatherings involved assembling in a candle-lit cave where members would entertain one another by reading aloud favourite literary passages.

The opportunity of embracing a new found freedom proves to be too much to refuse; the Dead Poets Society is revived. Suddenly things begin to change for the boys. Neil gathers the nerve to pursue his true vocation – acting and Knox gathers the courage to romance the girl of his dreams. The world is their oyster until Charlie writes and publishes a profane article demanding that the school become a co-ed institution.

Not surprisingly, the school administration does not take kindly to the blatant and unsolicited attack on their much reveled academic tradition. Charlie is summoned before an inquiry and declares he acted alone. Matters worsen when Neil’s father learns of his son’s unsanctioned theatrical performance and demands that he withdraw from the play. Neil defies him and despite his stellar performance, the infuriated elder Perry makes arrangements for his son to attend a military college. Devastated by his future prospects Neil loses all sense of hope.

Neil’s suicide is a fine example of Weir’s ability to blend music and imagery in a manner which implies the presence of a fatally troubled young mind. “You never see him shoot himself; I didn’t even want to hear the shot.” The director informed Premiere Magazine during an onset interview back in 1988. “But I had to see the preparations and then find the body. It was one of those sequences I loved”.

Spontaneous improvisation was not confined to Robin Williams. When the day arrived for filming Todd’s reaction to Neil’s suicide, a blizzard blanketed the shooting location. Actor Ethan Hawke was to suppose to run into a dormitory bathroom and throw up, however, this all changed when Peter Weir recognized that Mother Nature had provided him with a serendipitous gift. He incited the shivering Hawke to run out into the bleak white surroundings dressed only in his pajamas. The magnitude of the tragedy is further heightened when the six actors playing his traumatized classmates chase after their distraught friend.

With Welton rocked to its academic foundations by Neil’s suicide and with expulsions looming on the horizon, Richard hands Keating on a silver platter to the school administers. There is nothing left but for the Dead Poets to sign a petition declaring Keating’s negligence in their friend’s death. Later in class Todd finally breaks from his quiet shell, stands upon his desk and addresses Keating as he collects his belongings for the last time. The dramatic effect of Todd’s spontaneous action is nothing short of heartbreaking and inspirational as other students join in the impromptu salute to their beloved teacher and friend.

John Keating’s rallying cry: “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” was voted as the 95th most popular movie line by the American Film Institute. And in a way, Dead Poets Society did “Seize the day.” as the film went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay as well as awards for Best Picture and Best Original Score at the BAFTAS.

Dead Poets Society trailer...


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Cutting Edge: A conversation with film editor Lee Smith

Continuing our Peter Weir Blogathon, Trevor Hogg chats to Academy Award-nominated film editor Lee Smith...

Lee Smith began his career in the movie industry as a sound designer for internationally respected directors such as Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm), Jane Campion (The Piano), George Miller (Lorenzo’s Oil), and Peter Weir (Green Card). “I was fortunate enough to be working for a company that would let me do sound and picture work,” Lee informs me. “For quite some time I did start to specialize in sound, and with me moving back into picture I carried those skills with me.” Graduation day for the Australian as a film editor arrived when Peter Weir gave him the responsibility of assembling Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003); the trust was well placed as the native of Sydney received an Oscar nomination for Best Editing.

“As I work on cutting X-Men: First Class [2011] all those sound skills are needed because the [film editing] systems we are working on now can continuously create moods and atmospheres right from the inception of a scene,” says Lee Smith, “I see sound and picture as being impossible to separate because, as in life, everything we perceive is visual and audible.” The film editor, who received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Editing in recognition of his work on The Dark Knight (2008), tries to keeps an open mind. “Each scene is its own beast. If you can pull it off without showing implicit violence it can be a successful way of creating a scene. I also believe what you think you saw can be much more horrific.” Lee tries to remain objective in the edit suite. “My theory is that the longer you can resist putting music on a movie, the more you analyze and the more brutal you are on the images. Music is the great glue that can stick sequences together.”

After working on three consecutive films for British director Christopher Nolan, Lee Smith jumped at the opportunity to collaborate again with his fellow countryman Peter Weir. “The great thing with films is that you can go on a journey with the people that you are interested in watching. You almost feel a part of them,” remarks Smith who assembled the footage for The Way Back (2010), a World War II prison escape and survival epic. Financial and weather troubles delayed the $30 million production, causing a scheduling conflict for the in-demand post-production talent. “With Inception [2010], I came on to it a few months into the shoot because Peter’s one got pushed back; Chris Nolan very generously agreed to let me finish his film.”

Costing five times the budget of The Way Back, the dream within a dream heist thriller became a Hollywood blockbuster juggernaut grossing $824 million worldwide. “A lot of what you were seeing in Inception, what I am sure people were thinking must have been matte paintings and all manners of CG [computer graphics], were practical [effects],” reveals Lee Smith. “Of course there are CG elements in Inception. Paris doesn’t turn on its head for anybody… If you can capture reality and then augment it, it always looks better than a hundred percent creation, in my opinion.” The gold standard for utilizing practical effects remains a classic helmed by Stanley Kubrick, which served as inspiration for the gravity-defying hallway sequence in the picture. “The rotating sets in 2001 [1968], obviously we’re great fans of that.” He adds, “Kubrick had a great vision and [made] great use of wide shots. Both Chris [Nolan] and Peter [Weir] are into that.” When I tell him that my favourite scene occurs when the character played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt goes about setting the explosive charges in the elevator shaft, Lee chuckles, “That was very much like a space movie.” As for the reasoning behind Nolan choosing to have action-sequence dreams rather than surreal ones, the film editor believes, “I don’t think that thinking was driven by budget only. That was really just the film he wanted to make. He wanted to make a complex mind-bending film that would appeal to a massive audience and be entertaining, which is what I think we all want.”

X-Men: First Class sees Lee Smith collaborating with a new director for the first time since he teamed with Christopher Nolan for Batman Begins (2005). “Matthew Vaughn has his own unique view,” observes the Australian who is co-editing the comic book superhero film about the rise and fall of the friendship between Professor X and Magneto. “I’m not seeing much of him yet as we’re still shooting.” As for the performance of Jennifer Lawrence who is a major contender for Best Actress at the 2011 Academy Awards because of her role in Winter’s Bone (2010), Lee remarks, “She is very good in this.” He also tells me, “It’s a big film being done in a short amount of time. It’s going to be intense but so far what I’ve got has been very good. Everyone is happy with it. So fingers crossed.”

Questioned about his involvement with The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Lee Smith answers, “I’m booked to start that on May 1st.” Upon mentioning the casting rumour that Oscar-winner Rachel Weisz might have a part in the highly anticipated conclusion of trilogy helmed by Christopher Nolan, Lee quickly responds, “Honestly, I don’t know anything about it and that’s how it always is with him. In the fullness of time I’ll get a script. Secrecy with his projects is paramount.” As for whether or not he will be helping Zack Snyder, who was selected by Nolan to direct the tentatively titled Superman: Man of Steel (2012), the film editor tells me, “I doubt it because I don’t actually know when that’s one going to go. Probably, the director will pick his own editor and that’s always a good idea.”

“At the end of the day movies are expensive to produce and basically they do have to make money,” reflects Lee Smith. “It depends on how brave the people are who are funding the projects. Some of the best films you could name were probably films that weren’t at first look guaranteed to be huge successes; someone took a risk and someone took a punt and said, ‘You know what? Conventional wisdom doesn’t think this is going to be a huge runaway success but I like it. I think it’s got a chance.’ And they do it. We’re in an age of economic rationalism and I think it’s killed a lot of our thinking.” In regards to Inception and The Way Back being strong contenders for Best Picture at the 2011 Academy Awards, Lee remarks, “I would be very happy to see that happen. They couldn’t be more completely different movies but I wish them both well.”

Many thanks to Lee Smith for taking the time out of his busy schedule for this interview.

Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: The Mosquito Coast (1986)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at the director's seventh feature...

The Mosquito Coast, 1986.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Andre Gregory, Conrad Roberts, Martha Plimpton and Dick O'Neill.


SYNOPSIS:

Inventor Allie Fox uproots his wife and children from the comfort of their New England home to start anew in the vast jungle wilderness of Honduras. Fox’s dream of getting away from civilization turns into a very real nightmare.


Returning to the project which was meant to be his Hollywood debut, well-respected Australian director Peter Weir reunited with his Witness star, Harrison Ford, to shoot his 1986 film adaptation of Paul Theroux’s book The Mosquito Coast.

While the filming was taking place in Belize, a small agricultural country of 148,000 people, local residents were all abuzz about the movie. Jungle roads were built and over three hundred Belizeans were employed to aid in the movie’s production. Overall, The Mosquito Coast location shooting poured eight million dollars into the nation’s economy making it the third largest industry in the country at the time.

Weir had high hopes for his second Hollywood picture. “There’s a tremendous amount of emotion in the story.” He explained. “Unless it is harnessed into some sort of framework for me, I’ll be stirring the audience up and they’ll wander out feeling uncomfortable because they were moved, but without understanding what to do with their emotion. I think I’ve got the framework in this operatic feeling. In opera, many times you start with everything wonderful, the songs bright and positive, and then the complexities arise and you end with tragedy.”

For Weir a completed script is just the beginning of the storytelling. “I like to open the door to chance. That implies enormous risks. You presume on the muse visiting you, but at the same time you don’t count on it. Driving to work you see street scenes – a face, a hat, a detail – that you often end up putting into the film that very day. I saw a man with a plastic bag on his head with just his face part cut out and a straw hat on top of that and said, ‘Lets do that.’ But it won’t help the drama itself. You’ve got to have good acting and good thinking.”

Narrated by teenager Charlie Fox, The Mosquito Coast is a story about his father Allie whose frustration with commercialism causes him to resettle his family in the jungles of Central America. Once in his unadulterated paradise the elder Fox cannot entirely let go of the modern conveniences he has left behind. As a result, the eccentric proceeds to construct an ice machine with a religious fervor matched only by that of a Christian missionary who is determined to convert the local inhabitants. A showdown with armed bandits causes the massive mechanical creation to go up in flames. The destruction of the invention lays claim to what remains of Fox’s sanity and utopian ideals.

In regards to portraying Allie Fox, Harrison Ford welcomed the creative challenge. “I had none of the difficulties that other people had expressed with the character being too irascible, too unconventional. I found him more often right than wrong in what he was saying. There is also the complexity of the family story, the relationship between a father and a son and between a husband and a wife. There is humour and pathos, a real range from antic comedy to gut-wrenching stuff.”

Peter Weir believes that the character Ford plays in the movie is very much grounded in reality. “Central America is full of Allie Foxes. I’ve heard of four of them since I’ve been here in Belize. May came down in the late sixties. Belize is one of the last places in the world where you’ll find the drifters, the travelers. No one is down here just on a holiday. If someone says they’re here on vacation, you know they’re C.I.A. or they’re drugs.”

Immersing himself in a setting situated faraway from urban life, the esteemed filmmaker found it to be a welcomed change. “On location in the jungle you don’t have the nine-to-five mentality that you have in city shooting.” Weir remarked. “I like the concentration that results from everybody being at hand and the ideas that abound in the surroundings. The atmosphere of the film is within the setting all around you. You disappear into the film.”

As with many novels adapted for the big screen, modifications needed to be made to the source material. The Mosquito Coast was no different explained Harrison Ford. “Both Peter Weir and I thought we shouldn’t be slavish to the book. We needed a different Allie Fox. In the book Fox is crazy from the beginning. If audiences thought that he were crazy, they’d given up on him.”

Sadly, Ford’s character proved to be so unlikable that the film was universally panned by critics and moviegoers from the test screenings onwards.
The Mosquito Coast trailer...


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.

Peter Weir Retrospective: Witness (1985)

Trevor Hogg continues his Peter Weir retrospective with a look at the director's Academy Award-nominated US debut...

Witness, 1985.

Directed by Peter Weir.
Starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Jan Rubes, Danny Glover, Lukas Haas, Viggo Mortensen and Angus MacInnes.


SYNOPSIS:

Internal Affairs Det. John Book’s perfectly defined world of right and wrong is turned dangerously upside down when a young Amish boy identifies a fellow police officer as the murderer of his undercover protégé.


What was originally conceived as an episode of Gunsmoke resulted in Harrison Ford’s only Oscar-nominated performance. And to make things even more interesting; the story revolves around a community of people who believe that modern conveniences are instruments of vanity – the Amish.

In his Hollywood film debut acclaimed Australian director Peter Weir teamed with an actor better known for flying spaceships, brandishing a bullwhip, and killing rogue androids than conveying a vast array of emotions. Their collaboration altered the public’s perception of Harrison Ford who was seamlessly able to shift through moments of drama, action, violence, romance, and humour.

Propelling the story forward in Witness is what screenwriting guru Syd Field refers to as the “contradiction of image”. The opening scene features wheat fields, farm houses, and Amish farmers creating the impression that we are visiting a time and place centuries since passed. That is until the tractor trailer appears behind the horse-drawn buggy along with the title 1984: Lancaster County.

The cultural gap is furthered emphasized when the recently widowed Rachel Lapp and her young son, Samuel, arrive in Philadelphia on a train stopover. The plain Amish attire of Rachel and Samuel glaringly clashes with the opulent grandeur of their newfound surroundings.

While in the train station bathroom Samuel witnesses a murder and is subsequently questioned by Internal Affairs Det. John Book. The victim turns out to be Book’s undercover protégé thereby placing the investigation in his jurisdiction.

Needless to say, the Lapps’ stopover becomes an extended stay as Samuel is a material witness to a homicide. When Rachel declares: “No, we don’t stay in hotels.” Book takes them to the home of his sister. This provides us with an opportunity to gather more insight into Book’s character, especially when he is indignant upon learning she has a lover staying over while her children are present.

The most dramatic scene occurs in the squad room when Book is distracted by a phone call. Samuel breaks free from him and decides to explore the strange environment, encountering a variety of characters, from criminals to police officers along the way. Samuel’s aimless path leads him to a glass trophy case. When he peers inside his big eyes become so wide that Book is drawn to him. Samuel points at a newspaper clipping with a picture of a much-lauded police division chief. The thunderstruck Book gently lowers the young boy’s finger.

The revelation of the murderer’s identity radically expands the movie’s theme of conflicting cultural differences to also include clashing moral codes. After informing his superior officer of the corruption breach, Book is shot in an underground parking garage by the identified killer. Book flees with the Lapps back to their farmland where he succumbs to his injuries only to have himself nurse back to health by Rachel.

“Basically, I perceived John Book as functioning in the Philadelphia police department as having all the impulses of an Amish man.” explained the film’s co-sceenwriter Earl Wallace to Fields in the latter’s book Selling a Screenplay. Wallace went on to add: “If you look at it that way, when he goes to the Amish it’s like he’s really come home; he doesn’t realize it, of course; everything’s strange, they milk cows, they don’t have phones or refrigerators but there’s something else there for him, something spiritual, an ethical environment he’s perfectly in tune with, even though it takes him a while to realize it.”

Book adjusts to the Amish lifestyle which pinnacles with him participating in a spectacular barn-raising. However, all is not well as the community threatens to shun Rachel due to her blossoming romance with the “Englishman”. As the antagonistic forces gather against them, Book realizes neither he nor Rachel will be able to survive in the other’s world.

The situation is finally settled when, upon learning of his partner’s death, Book recognizes that in order for justice to prevail he must return to Philadelphia. His crooked colleagues save Book the trip by paying him a visit, armed with shotguns. The violent ways of the “English” and the pacifist attitudes of the Amish reach a climatic confrontation when the whole community comes to Book’s aid.

“I always knew this should be a classic gunfighter love story.” stated Earl Wallace to Syd Field. “Picture Gary Cooper riding into a corrupt town, or Alan Ladd in Shane riding into a situation where everything’s going to hell, and he cleans up, but can’t stay. If you can make that work, that’s a good story.”

Academy Award members thought Witness was “a good story” too for the film was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture and went on to win Best Film Editing and Best Original Screenplay.

Witness trailer...


Peter Weir Blogathon

Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer who currently resides in Canada.