James Foley
Appearances
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, it's good, which is very different. And I think the most important thing when I read this screenplay, I certainly was aware of what it was, and I really began to read it with some trepidation, like, why do I want to make a film out of this Pulitzer Prize-winning play? It was not something I ever saw myself doing. And so I read it with, yeah, well, you know, not likely.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
But what really surprised me was that the reading of it seemed much more emotionally accessible than my memory of the play. I had thought when I saw the play that it really appealed to me sort of from the neck up and was an interesting intellectual, philosophical, black, humorous sort of experience. But reading the screenplay, for some reasons that I later analyzed for myself,
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
it really opened up a whole nother level of an emotional accessibility to the characters that had not been evident for me on stage.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
No, that was very important because I became aware early on that there was a real danger that actors could get into with language like this where they get seduced by the superficial level of gratification that comes from just saying good dialogue that's written in a rhythmic way. Because if you just memorize the lines and say them fast, they sound good.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And so one could get convinced that it actually meant something. And That actually happened a lot when we had actors come in to read and some really heavyweight actors had come in and read and they made a big mistake by sort of having prepared in that superficial way and so it was flashy and entertaining but totally boring to me.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
What I was much more interested in was getting actors who had an interior emotional life that was easily accessible, and I felt as if the technical aspects of being able to fire off this rapid dialogue was something that would come later, but it was secondary to me to this internal life, and an internal life specific to cinema actors.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I was going to sit and wait to hear you get an adjective for each guy.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Yeah, there was certainly no intention to deliberately pick people with different styles. It was really... I mean, Al and I literally sat down and made a list of who we thought were the best living actors, without even regards to what parts they could play, how old they were. Who do we think is great? And... And the list isn't that long, you know, when you sit down and just say who's the best.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And we started from that idea and wound up with these guys. And it's very true that they all have very different styles of acting. And it was a great fun for me when, particularly when they were all in the scene together and, you know, you say cut and then you need to go out and speak to each one of them.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And you would, I'd find myself instinctually sort of speaking an entirely different language to each one. which was nice because it made me sort of really expand my own idea of what it means to be a director and for me the most important thing is to do what needs to be done rather than what you want to do.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Jack Lemmon is very... will speak very clearly about the thing, quite literally. The thing being what's going on at the moment that... And perhaps the most telling thing is that when Jack would talk about the character, he would say, he. He would say, I think he's feeling this because of this, and blah, blah, blah, and say whole articulate sentences. Al would never speak like that.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Because first of all, he would say, I, referring to something, but he would never talk about any kind of singular idea or notion. And it's something that I understand very much, because if you articulate a single idea that's happening, then you might sort of glom onto that. in too much of a specific way rather than letting all the contradictions and ambivalences that might naturally come out.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
So he's very reluctant to identify any one particular feeling and even reluctant to finish a sentence. But I began to understand very well what he was talking about and I agreed with him. So our communication was more like him saying, I think, you know, maybe, you know, and I'd say, yeah, right, more so. And we somehow did it.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And even to the point where it got to, you know, where once we had done enough takes where we both felt like we really had it, we would always do one crazy one. And that's who we just call it a crazy one because to try something just that was a stupid idea. But it's amazing how many of the crazy ones are in there.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
That's very interesting. I think exactly that. I have thought about that because I had one experience where I... did that and it was hell. I directed an episode of Twin Peaks and it was in the second season and they asked me in the first season and I couldn't do it.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
So they asked me at the beginning of the second season and I said yes and I made this commitment and thinking it would be like the first season. By the time I got there, David Lynch had totally abandoned the thing and The scripts, he was not putting input into the writing of the script. He was off in Tokyo selling his art.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And there I was stuck with this script that had nothing that was like faux Lynch. It was like a bunch of people sitting around sort of making believe they were David Lynch. And I'm stuck with this script and it was horrifying. Nothing was more terrible in my life. Because you don't know what to do. I don't know where to put the camera. I don't know what to say to the actors.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I just want to go home. And it was really, really an awful experience. Luckily, it was only four or five days, you know, one episode. But it gave me a lesson about that very thing, that there's no way I could get through making a film that I didn't, even if delusional, didn't think had the potential to be good.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
No, it was, which has been my experience really on every film, that actors really, really want to be directed and they want interaction.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, that's what's great, is that, you know, it doesn't matter who it is. And I really think the best actors, I mean, you know, like Alan and the rest of the guys, are so interested in trying anything that they very much want a reaction. And what was interesting, as you said before, is that each person wants that reaction in a different way.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I mean, some people don't want you to say certain things, and other people do want you to say certain things. And that's the fun part, is this instinctual idea of, figuring out what it is that they need at what time, including sometimes being a little bit... pushing a little bit more than they might want at the time. But there's a mutual understanding of what you're doing.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Oh, I pushed them all at different times in different ways, you know. But it's all different how you push them. Because sometimes pushing just means... Let's do another take right now really fast. And they go, well, wait.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And you say, no, it has to be really fast because, you know, we're really in, and you sort of discombobulate them on purpose because you feel like perhaps we're getting into a kind of rut and it's getting too precious and people are getting too conscious of what they're saying and you want to.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And I've taken to do weird things like, you know, I demand silence all the time from everybody on the crew and everything. I'm always barking about that. And then I get total silence. And then when it's ready to go, I scream, not cut. What do I scream? Action. One of those two things. And just scream, action! Like as loud as I can, which is like really startling.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And then the actor's got to start saying his line. But it's sort of like sometimes you see them standing there and they're getting too much into a plan of what they're going to do. And you want them to forget their plan and let whatever happens going to happen. And so it's all different things of doing.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I actually threw a fit once, a fake fit, yelling at somebody on the crew just to get the actors out of their lethargy and change the mood, the electricity on the set.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I was throwing the fit about people talking, because I'm famous for throwing fits, real fits, because people will not shut up. So I asked this one guy to talk, right, so then I could turn around and scream at him. It worked.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
It got me, the actors, being more immediate. The thing you always have to fight on take 11 is that people are doing the exact same thing and it begins to become, they begin to remember that they just did it before and so there's a repetition, an inevitable repetition. So it's almost like this feeling you have when all of a sudden in the middle of the day,
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
the weather changes dramatically and it goes from being sunny and calm and then wind is coming and you feel your whole mood and everything change and you've got to sort of change the weather on the set sometimes.