Love, Fear, and Peter Weir

Q: Someone related an anecdote to me about a contretemps that supposedly took place between you and the critic David Denby at a press conference. He allegedly asked you why, since the two male friends in Gallipoli were--as far as he was concerned--obviously homosexually involved, you hadn't just made that plain. And you suggested he might be projecting. In any case, Denby's reviews of your films have been pretty savage.

A: I don't remember the incident. But I do remember there were other voices that said that. But while making Gallipoli I had talked with war veterans and gotten closer than those critics to an understanding of what it's like being in combat, of how it gives you a view of love that is beyond the terrestrial and material concerns of ordinary life. Sexuality wasn't what I was dealing with in the film. As for Denby himself, I don't recall his individual reviews, but I know he's antagonistic to my kind of work, as a number of New Yorkers are. It's a unique and particular island, a very parochial place, as most islands are.

Q: Do you feel that Los Angeles is parochial?

A: No. This is the world. But not Manhattan. At least in the arts. There are second-and third-generation people who are more tolerant. The true natives I don't think care about anybody. But the most intolerant group are those who escaped the suburbs or the Midwest, or somewhere ordinary, and they have a vested interest in making New York something elite, an exclusive club. Parisians are a little like Manhattanites. In Paris, you would find the same as in Manhattan, there are many people from Frogville who went to Paris to be sophisticated.

Q: Getting back to Fearless, what did you do to make my friend and me feel like we were in some altered state? Was it something from your bag of tricks?

A: Well, the tricks can only get you so far--they're a cul-de-sac. Look at MTV. The real issue was how I worked with the cast--what they allowed me to photograph. When I started this film, it occurred to me how interesting it would be to attempt to "photograph souls." And I thought, Why did that phrase "photograph souls" come to mind? Where have I seen souls photographed? You know, with the barrier between the subject and the camera removed. Well, with children under a certain age--but that age gets younger and younger. Tribal people, the first time they're photographed. You can see faces where there is no projection of what they would like you to see.

In the world we live in, everybody tries to project image. So I tried to create an atmosphere with my cast where they, without knowing it, would allow me to photograph them without any barrier. I'm not talking about every scene--after all, these are professional craftspeople. But each cast member, in one or two or three moments, allowed me to photograph them that way.The great discovery of the cinema, this new art form, is the closeup. 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 it inside that face? That's what I was getting into in Fearless, thinking, Ah, this is the frontier.

Q: You think that's what made the movie feel so strange?

A: Yes, I think that's part of it. It sounds so pretentious saying you're "photographing souls." But I don't know how else to put into words what was really mostly an intuition. It's really just looking for [those times] when acting is not acting. And looking at the film, I think I did touch that, just occasionally. Only because you ask would I say that.

Q: I found the casting of John Turturro as a psychotherapist rather interesting, given that he usually plays characters very much in need of therapy.

A: That was my casting director, Howard Feuer. When he mentioned both Tom Hulce and John Turturro, I thought, These are both actors who've carried great films on their backs. I thought it was unlikely that they'd take these smaller parts, and I wasn't sure I wanted them to. I didn't want to lose control if they came through the door as people doing me a favor. But it wasn't the case with either of them. John based his characterization on the psychiatrist who had worked with a number of the survivors of the DC-10 that crashed at Sioux City a few years ago. The film's not based on that accident, but it's the closest to it in experience--they knew for a time that they were going to crash. I spoke to about six of those survivors. These accidents are generally made into TV movies, and the survivors told me nobody's gotten it right. So I told them, "Well, correct anything you want to correct."

Q: What about the casting of Rosie Perez? Again, this is counter-intuitive, having her play a woman who's deeply depressed by the loss of her baby.

A: The novel was set in New York, and having just done a film there and knowing I was shooting in summer, I didn't want to go there. Rosie's character in the book was Italian-American, but that just doesn't have the same ring in San Francisco, where I set the film. I decided she should be Latina, and Rosie was on a very short list of actresses for that 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 change. She's extremely intelligent and she wants to be, you know, a proper actress.

Q: You're known as one of the directors who is most sensitive to the use of music in his films. What about Fearless?

A: There's a curious Polish influence on this film. There's a director who has just struck me and inspired me, Krzysztof Kieslowski. I saw The Decalogue on TV in Australia and The Double Life of Veronique. I found myself playing various Polish composers on the set, as I do, and at dailies. Most noticeably, Heinrich Gorecki.

Q: Symphony No. 3?

A: Yes, I tried to buy it for the film and they said, "Oh no, it's become a hit, sold more copies than any contemporary classical record." They said they wouldn't sell it to us without seeing the movie. And I'm certainly not going to audition for a record company at this stage of my life. And they said, "Would you mind if an executive went to the test screening?" And I said, "As long as I don't know he's there." He came up to me after the film and said, "I think Mr. Gorecki would be happy to hear you use his music in your film." So we bought it.

Q: You've made only three films in the last seven years. What do you do during the time when you're not working on any film?

A: I have my family and I live in Sydney and it's a full life. It takes a while to unhook from this kind of activity. It's been a balancing act working for the last 10 years in America. Things will change when my son leaves school and my wife and I are free to travel as we wish to. But it's been a good thing to come from the intense Hollywood atmosphere to where the media have less power, where you're less in the win-or-lose ambiance of the American film community. That atmosphere is not healthy for creativity, and everybody finds their way of diffusing it.

Q: Do you isolate yourself from the media?

A: I go through binges of movies, magazines, newspapers and gossip. The media always make you feel as if you should know about everything. When I need to switch them off, I do. It's amazing how much the village drums beat--you pretty well pick everything up. But at least you can avoid all the anticipatory "news" about everything that might go badly--you know: "If things go even worse, then this might happen. Let's speak to our expert about that." You end up crawling to bed. I'm content to buy my CDs of the world's beautiful music and stay with that.

Q: What's your next project?

A: It's called The Playmaker, based on a book by Thomas Keneally, who wrote [the novel] Schindler's List. It's about the first play ever performed in Australia, in 1789, the year after the colony was founded. It's about my profession and the early days of the country. It's wonderful to contemplate. I can't do anything else about it now but contemplate. I'll start it as soon as I get a signal that my engines have been refueled. This picture wasn't physically tiring, but emotionally... I feel wonderful, but when I went to work on the second draft of the screenplay I was mute. I sat there like somebody else. Fit and well and able to go to lunch, but I got no voltage off my creative batteries.

Q: Are you happy with the results of what ran your batteries down?

A: Fearless is an unusual arrangement of familiar elements. I chose it because the screenplay just struck me. And the great challenge for a filmmaker is to take that initial moment of being struck--it really is like a light bulb for 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.

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Virginia Campbell is one of the executive editors of Movieline.

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