Slumdog Millionaire: Notes from Toronto and Q&A with Danny Boyle

By James McCaskill, DC Film Society Member

Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” The show’s host, Prem Kumar, has little sympathy for this rags-to-riches contestant. Having clawed his way up from the streets, Prem doesn’t like the prospects of sharing the Millionaire limelight, and refuses to believe that a kid from the slums could know all the answers. When the show runs out of time and breaks for the night, Prem has Jamal arrested on suspicion of cheating, Jamal tells the police the incredible story of his life on the streets, and of the girl he loved and lost. But what is a kid with no interest in money doing on the show? And how is it he knows all the answers?

That’s what the Police Inspector wants to know. Interrogating through the night, he finds that Jamal is as confused as anyone else by how far he has come in the contest. They go over the questions one by one; Jamal explains how he came to know each answer. As he does his extraordinary story emerges. Jamal’s story is a story of modern India. Growing up in the slums of Mumbai, as a young boy his mother is killed in a religious uprising. Jamal, his older brother Salim and Latika, an orphaned girl they befriended develop an unusual relationship. Jamal begins to fall in love with Latika and Salim falls for wealth and power. At the Toronto International Film Festival director Danny Boyle is asked how he became involved. “They sent me the script and told me it was about Who Wants To Be A Millionaire so I turned it down. They sent it again and I began to read it. Twenty pages in and you must say ‘Yes.’ My job as a director is to make you feel what I felt when I first read the script.... In India people come out of the womb with movies printed on their heads. ‘We don’t care about film, we do music.’ Kids are happy doing a bit of acting. In casting a film that takes place over many years the trick is to get kids who look like each other at each age.... We tried to do most of our work on location in Mumbai. That was an enormous challenge. The word slum is pejorative in the West. In India slums have schools and, as India is a democracy, everyone votes and they have enormous political power. The residents like the close community and resist governmental efforts to clean up the slums and move them to outlying communities. Hospitality in the slums was incredible. The guy who did the music (A. R. Rahman) is so famous. He can not go out alone as he will be mobbed. Even in London people would see him and come screaming across the road. It was like being out with the Beatles. He works on many Bollywood films. He did a lovely, lovely soundtrack for us. The screenplay was adapted from a novel. There is no love affair in the book. Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Among Giants) did a wonderful job of weaving twelve stories together. He weaves memories for young people who have their whole live ahead of them. The dance sequence, which was filmed at Victoria Terminus in the heart of Mumbai, was not in the script but you can’t film in India without dance. Where would we put it?” Stay seated through the closing credits and you will see where they put this wonderful sequence.


Q&A With Danny Boyle

This Q&A took place on October 22 at Loew's Georgetown Theater. Michael Kyrioglou, Director of the DC Film Society moderated.

Michael Kyrioglou: I saw a reference in the press notes that the novel or maybe the adapted screenplay had some references to Dickens.
Danny Boyle: I didn't read the novel at first. I read the screenplay which was written by Simon Beaufoy who also wrote The Full Monty. I only read it because of him. The agent described it as a film about "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". And I thought, 'who wants to make a film about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and who wants to watch a film about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.' But it was a wonderful wonderful script and it was Dickensian in a way. You feel that when you go there [India] because there are such extremes in society. It feels like that's what Dickens witnessed in Victorian London, an economy expanding at a phenomenal rate creating enormous disparity of riches and poverty. You just get challenged to work on a large scale, emotionally and melodramatically. Bollywood films are like that with good reason. I like extreme things, I like pushing things to extremes as much as I can. People have exiled those extremes to fantasy films in the last 10-15 years because we don't witness those extremes anymore although they are all around us. It's an extraordinary land of contraditions and they're not resolvable. Your mind tries to find a solution but you have to allow the contradiction to be there.

Question: In the credits a co-director was listed. Could you tell us about that?
DB: She [Loveleen Tandan] was the casting director originally and I worked with her for months on the casting of everybody in Mumbai and elsewhere in India but mostly in Mumbai. And I realized as I was working with her that I wanted her to be on the set the whole time. I managed to persuade her and the money people to let her be on the set the whole time because she worked well with the kids, most of whom don't know English. She wants to be a director in her own right and you could tell that she could do it. I set her up with the second unit and she did some of the second unit work. It seemed right to credit her as a co-director. Without the help that she and the first assistant director Raj Acharya gave me, the film would not have been a quarter of what it is.

Q: How did you pick the actors?
DB: Anil Kapoor [who plays the game show host] is a big star in India. He never did a film in English although he speaks it well. The rest are actors from the Bollywood world; the kids are from different parts of Mumbai. Some are slum kids from a very poor background. Dev Patel, the lead who plays Jamal, is from London. I couldn't find anyone in Mumbai; I wanted someone who is 18 and all the 18 year olds in Mumbai are training to get into Bollywood. They're all in the gym ten hours a day and they're all built like the Michelin man. Because they're only 18, their heads remain the same size but their bodies are huge. They can't put their arms down by their sides because they have huge muscles. My daughter who is 17 said "you should watch this guy in this British television show called Skins." I watched it; he plays quite a small comic character in it. He was sort of what I had in mind visually for the part. So I met him and he was fantastic, actually. The biggest problem was that we had to get rid of his mom who came to all the auditions with him. We eventually persuaded her to let him come to Mumbai on his own.

Q: How did the film do in India?
DB: We don't know yet. In order for any film to screen in India it has to be vetted by the Indian government. There's a kind of Soviet style censorship which has a lot of control over films. They haven't seen it yet. We are hoping to release it there in January provided they don't ask for too many unacceptable cuts. They are likely to ask for some cuts--not the ones you probably imagine. But we are hoping to show it there. There are some Bollywood elements in it. There are some very serious films made in India as well as the Bollywood films. The guy who played the police sergeant [Saurabh Shukla] is a writer as well as an actor. He wrote a film called Satya which is as good a film as I have ever seen. A wonderful serious film about gangsters in Mumbai. There's some wonderful films there as well as the Bollywood stuff which is three hours long with singing and dancing. You can't live and work in Mumbai and not dance, so we had that dance at the end.

MK: Did you have any difficulties with the filming or filming where you want to?
DB: Permission for aerial photography was very difficult. They're very nervous about it. Mumbai is an island and there's a naval base there. They eventually did give us permission. We applied when we first got there, about 14 months ago, and written permission for it came through about six weeks ago. Too late.

Q: How long were you there and how long did it take you to acclimate to the society?
DB: We filmed there for three months--November, December, and January. Before that I was there eight months, about a year from start to finish. I fell in love with the place. I loved the energy of the place and the generosity of the people. The slums are very surprising places, they're not what you expect. Full of amazing people who don't have enough water or sanitation or electricity, but it's not their fault. What they have is an enormous and amazing resourcefulness. I admire the place. The film was made with a great deal of love for it, not to exclude some of the tough things that happen there, but to do honor to the place. They had to drag me away. We took about ten western crew and they had all gone home and I kept going with the Bollywood crew. The producer left and closed all the bank accounts, forcing me to go home. It's a wonderful very inspiring place. There's a great book about it which I recommend called Maximum City (2004) by Suketu Mehta. That was my Bible, it was with me every day. An extraordinary book. Everybody calls Mumbai the "maximum city" now.

Q: What was your budget?
DB: We raised 7 million pounds, about 13-14 million dollars at the time. That's all I can raise as a director without a star in it. Anything more than that, you need to have a star. We kept to the budget. We were with Warner Independent but a few months ago they shut down Warner Independent and we were like orphans, in terms of North American distribution. But fortunately they showed the film to Fox Searchlight and Fox is distributing the film.

MK: What are your thoughts on the independents disappearing. Will this cause difficulties for filmmakers like yourself?
DB: It will be very difficult. We were at Telluride and Toronto and they had panels about that issue. Clearly everybody's going to have to take a wage cut; they will have to make things more cheaply. Distributing films will be difficult. I've been really lucky so far; I've never had to struggle.

Q: Could you talk about the sound track?
DB: A.R. Rahman did it. He is famous in India. It's difficult to say how famous he is. He's like Beethoven, John Williams and Tom Cruise all put together with a bit of Lady Di thrown in. He's a wonderful, modest man who is one of the biggest selling artists in the world. Every CD he puts out sells a hundred million copies. They don't pay very much for each copy obviously, but with a hundred million but still he's in the top 30 artists of all time. It will be on i-tunes in a few weeks time.

Q: What will you do next?
DB: I don't know. I was thinking about an animated film. I've got three kids and have watched all kinds of animation over and over again for the last 20 years. I've done all the homework. That fell apart at last moment. So, I don't know what I'll be doing. I like to do one thing at a time and just finished this project.

MK: Is there a common thread in your material?
DB: Pots of money. Scenes in toilets. No other national culture is as obsessed with toilets as we are. This film has two key scenes in toilets. We use a combination of peanut butter and chocolate, same as in Trainspotting. It's very delicious!

Q: Some of your locations were not in a Bollywood backlot. What was it like to shoot in this kind of environment. Did you have to shut down the train station, for example?
DB: You can't shut down anything over there, not in Mumbai anyway. It's a really interesting question because the thing you normally have as a director is control. That's really what directing is about, getting control of something, shoot it in a number of different ways. You can't control Mumbai at all. To think you can is just insane. You'll spend your whole budget just trying to get control for one scene. So I learned really quickly that you just have to go with what there is and hope and trust that something will come back to you eventually. You can turn up at a location and it is completely changed from the day before. You have to go with it and see what happens. Suddenly four o'clock in the afternoon arrives and you think you'll never get any of the shots and suddenly the whole scene appears, ten fold better than you could have ever imagined. It's the only way to work there. Our philosophy was to shoot on the streets, Bollywood tends to shoot in studios because they need to control everything. But I loved it out there; it liberated me. We followed the script quite closely but you have to be brave.

MK: Subtitles were used so dynamically that you don't even think you are watching a foreign film.
DB: Originally the script was written in English. But when we went there it was clear that the seven year olds couldn't act in English because it wasn't native to them. I had a conversation with Warners, giving them the great news that the film was going to be in Hindi, and even more exciting with subtitles. So we tried to make them colorful, more interesting, moving them around on the screen.

Q: How did you get the rights to use the name of the TV show [Who wants to be a millionaire]?
DB: We were very lucky. You'll see a name on the film Celador. The guy who invented the show 10 years ago sold it for hundreds of million of pounds. The show has aired in more than 100 countries. He had a clause put in the contract saying that if there was ever a film to be made that they [Celador] would have the right to do it. Technically, they have the right to make the film. We got to use all the sets for free. They wouldn't let us use the Hindi title because they weren't sure how we would protray the show. But other than that we could do what we wanted.

Slumdog Millionaire opens in D.C. on November 12.

Adam's Rib Delves Into Great Movie Deaths

Happy Go Lucky: Q&A with Director Mike Leigh

By Ron Gordner, DC Film Society Member

This Q&A took place October 13, at the American Film Institute’s Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD. Former Washington Post film critic Desson Thomson interviewed renowned British film writer and director Mike Leigh, who has made such unforgettable films as Secrets and Lies and Vera Drake. Happy Go Lucky opened in the Washington area on October 20.

Desson Thomson: I am thrilled to be able to interview one of my favorite film directors of the past 21 years, Mike Leigh. I don’t know where the films are always going and he has such universal characters. I was completely delighted with this film.
Mike Leigh: It’s great to see you again, Desson, and to be back in Washington DC. I will be on the road the next few weeks and will miss the beginning of the London Film Festival.

DT: AFI has created a terrific showcase of theaters, and a chance to interface with the film maker. Mike, have you seen old theaters like this restored, and programs with the film makers?

ML: Yes, the National Film Theater I used to attend when I first got to London has been running since 1931. I was there when Jean-Luc Godard was booed and people threw stuff at him. I even saw the old restoration versions of Abel Gance’s Napoleon. A great deal can be learned from viewing these older masterpieces.

DT: Poppy is a character we don’t see often in films, a happy spirit or one that has such a life affirming view.
ML: Yes, well don’t confuse Poppy with the title of the film Happy Go Lucky. She is not a delirious, air-head, or someone that seems to have had a lobotomy. Sally Hawkins portrays Poppy more about the happiness of being fulfilled, being a responsible proactive being. Poppy is not naïve. She has a great joie de vivre and a healthy sense of optimism. A challenge may come when you are confronted with someone like Scott, the driving instructor, who has no sense of humor. It brings out the worst in those characters.

DT: She is a teacher and with students at the beginning of life and learning.
ML: The film is about teaching and learning. We all live in tough times. We are destroying ourselves, the environment, and the economy, but there are many people out there rolling up their sleeves and maintaining optimism or positive outlooks. I have started to view this film as the “anti-misery film.”

DT: I thought at first it was an anomaly, not one layer. Even films like Vera Drake and her character, helping others with abortion. All your films have a least some fleeting happiness.
ML: They also have pain, especially Scott in this film, and also Poppy’s younger married sister, and the damaged homeless man she meets one night. I make films about life as we live it, full of joy and pain, comedy and tragedy. I was asked do I approach a comedy like a drama. They are all chances to show life.

DT: The film has a definite teacher motif. At least 3 teaching situations are presented: Poppy and her fellow teachers with the students; Scott, the driving instructor; and the flamenco teacher. They say the dance teacher is a good teacher but needs to keep all her emotional crap out of the dance classroom.
ML: Scott was not based on a real driving instructor who was bad. His character is a composite of many teachers we have had in various schools and teaching situations. Scott is very vulnerable. Poppy is firm, but sensitive, to the situation, but he is utterly deluded and has strange ideas. We know she can deal with the kids, and Scott is in a way a big kid, but has many more problems.

DT: I found it to be a thriller. I dreaded what would happen to Poppy being with Scott.
ML: Many people say that or when she meets the homeless man, that something dreadful is going to happen. Audiences have expectations, but I like to subvert expectations. Topsy-Turvy turned the expected British costume drama on its head, although a number of current British films seem to be perpetuating those old stereotypes.

DT: Many American films are using those themes also. Your films convey more stories about typical people.
ML: Yes, it is healthier to make films far away from Hollywood stereotypes.

DT: Secrets and Lies is your most successful film to date.
ML: Yes, I don’t think it was because of the Palm d’Or at Cannes, but because it was illegal in the U.S. and many other places to trace your biological mother after an adoption.

DT: The Hollywood press is rumored to have said that we can’t have many films with women as the lead characters. Yet, you have many films with strong women.
ML: I have made about 18 feature films and I would say half have had women lead characters. I make films about real people. I do deliberately make very good parts for women. There are plenty of strong women in my films. Many other films only have women as side kicks or as being subservient to the male (factory) leads. So I collaborate with actresses to make good parts.

DT: Katrin Cartlidge was one of those strong women in our films like Naked and Career Girls and a wonderful actress who died very young. I see some resonance of her acting in Sally Hawkins.
ML: Katrin was a wonderful actress. I don’t see Sally really in that type of acting, if so it is not deliberate or conscious. Katrin also played a part in the brothel in Topsy Turvy and told me she had been to Paris to research the part.

DT: Can you discuss what the film started as and what it became in the process?
ML: I start with very little script, including this film. It came into existence with what I would call a feeling, and then getting a location, etc.; but I work for about 6 months with the cast developing the script, rehearsals, and then creating the film that is later shot.

DT: The end result is very unique. A boxed set of Mike Leigh’s films is coming out soon. Let’s open up the discussion with some audience questions.

Question from Audience: Thank you for the film. It’s great to see films that challenge us to see the world with a new perspective.
ML: Thanks, that’s why I make films.

Q: I found the relationship with Poppy and the social worker awkward and wasn’t sure if they connected.
ML: You are all welcome to your experience with the film, but I didn’t get that. I see a straight connection or click between them right away. I see it as a healthy relationship, that they don’t always have to tell the other what they are thinking. It is not a Hollywood fake romance.

Q: I agree with you that there was an immediate, but honest, easy communication between the couple, like they had already been friends. I must tell you I saw this on an airplane flight, and it is much better on a big screen.
ML: I agree it needs a wide screen viewing.

Q: Thank you for taking your films on the film festival circuit. Talk a little about Sally Hawkins, she does a phenomenal job, more about the casting?
ML: Sally was the posh girl who is raped and obtains a legal abortion in Vera Drake. She was also in All or Nothing and recently was the lead "Anne" in a remake of Jane Austen’s Persuasion that was successful in England. She is a brilliant character actor, very adaptable, and can play real people. It was great fun, and I thought this is the time to put her to the front.

Q: Can you tell us who have been your favorite directors and those that influenced you?
ML: There are so many. I was a boy during World War II in Manchester. My mother avidly took me to the pictures. It was when I went to London I finally saw my first non-English language films and great world cinema: Fellini, Satyajit Ray, Bergman, Renoir, Ozu, Kurasawa, Capra, Billy Wilder among others.

Q: I loved Poppy’s boots, how long did it take to choose them and her wardrobe?
ML: We create the characters first, and then the actors and the costume designer, Jacqueline Dunne, go out shopping to find the look. They found the clothes locally at major department stores or shops last year. Edith Head did not work on this film. The actor and costume designer pick it out. Part of the outfits is how Sally dresses also; the boots were hers.

Q: I loved the musical score. It was an old fashioned, but vibrant score.
ML: It was written in the classical style. Gary Yershon did the original music and score. He does scores for theater and animated films. He did a score for a play I did. Andrew Dickson usually does my movie scores, but I went with Gary on this for his succulent, tuneful score. It begins with the motivation from the opening scenes on her bike. One of my favorite parts of making a movie is going to the recording sessions.

Q:I have read some unfair reviews that say the character is too perky. As a teacher, I envied her courage.
ML: We all know someone like Poppy. Some critics thought she was an unbearable, irritating woman. I don’t get why they don’t like her.

Q: Isn’t Poppy a happiness touchstone?
ML: Especially when she visits the youngest, pregnant sister. It makes her sister question her values and goals.

DT: The use of various sounds works well also.
ML: Some scenes with far shots had muffled sounds. I take sound very seriously, including the dialog. These days we work with sound editors, advanced on technical knowledge, who can do the most remarkable things. When we made Vera Drake we shot some scenes with dialog under a glass roof during a rainstorm. The sound editors were able to remove the rain sound and maintain the voices, something that was impossible to do until recently. In the car Sally and Eddie had to be actually driving at times, and the sound editors could blend all the voices correctly together.

Q: What was the reason to add the scene with the homeless man? Was this another teaching moment?
ML: When we planned that scene, Poppy has just kept walking and she and we do not know where she is. She has been pulled out of her comfort zone when she meets the tramp. The scene is about Poppy’s openness, but also her ability not to be judgemental and to connect in some way with this guy. Was she naïve to go there? We who live in urban places, often run into alleys or unknown spaces. Stanley Townsend, a brilliant theater actor, plays the homeless man, very well as a damaged person, but one who still has dignity. We can tell he is a poet that has been bludgeoned by life’s experiences. It’s also a private moment, and Poppy never tells anyone else about her encounter during the movie. I see it as a moment of reflection. Many people tell me there was a period of impending doom or dread about the scene, that Poppy was over her head and in a dangerous position. But at the end of the day I see it as another moment of her connection to others.

Q: How tightly scripted was the film which felt so real?
ML: There was none, or very little improvisation in the final script. It is very well rehearsed by then. Most of the improvisation had already been done as we developed the characters and the story the first weeks that the cast go together.

Q: I felt that Poppy was so empathetic to others that it was sad. Luckily, she could take that and move on with her life.
ML: That’s absolutely right. She was empathetic but still tried to better situations.

Q: I thought that one of the best performances was that of the schizophrenic, homeless man.
ML: Yes, Stanley is a very distinguished Dublin stage actor. The chant he uses is identical to that of Dublin news vendors. The Dublin audience at a screening were the only ones who recognized the chant for what it really was and laughed.

Happy Go Lucky is currently playing in local theaters.

"Little Voice" Director Gives Big Voice to a Tough Subject: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

By Ronn Levine, DC Film Society Member

At first glance, a film director like Mark Herman and a novelist like John Boyne look and sound pretty much like we do. The middle-aged Herman speaks softly and has good hair. The 37-year-old Boyne is more forceful and engaging, with a shaved head and dark glasses. Herman wonders how in the (film) world they are going to market a Holocaust fable starring children and unhappy endings; no Life Is Beautiful here. Boyne gleefully says he’s a little ashamed to have had such a good time on the set, given the subject and all, watching his novel become a movie.

But then you ponder the accomplishments of these two artists–the British Herman directed the fun and triumphant Brassed Off, the award-winning Little Voice and the star-laden Hope Springs; the Dublin-based Boyne has written six novels, read his work throughout the world, and won numerous awards–and you sit up a little straighter and listen a bit more intensely.

They ocean-hopped to America together late last month to rally enthusiasm for Herman’s new movie, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, based on Boyne’s 2006 novel of the same name. Though polite, Herman does not look and sound as if cheerleading is his favorite pastime. But after spending six months adapting the book, 10 weeks filming in Hungary and a year editing–the longest he has ever spent for that chore ("I just wanted to get it right," he says)–cheerlead he must.

"I was aware that the subject matter might scare studios off," Herman recalls. "But I was wanting some challenges at that time, so I bought the rights myself, did the writing and then went to Miramax. They gave me a green light on it straight away. It was a new regime there and this was their first actual production. Quite a brave film to make."

That Herman and Boyne travel together seems to reflect the respect each has for the other, especially since Boyne had very little to do with the movie.

"I wrote Brassed Off and that got transferred to the stage," says Herman, explaining how he could relate with adapting someone’s novel. "Even though it wasn’t contractual, I sent John every draft and asked for his notes and thoughts. It’s very rare that the person who wrote the original work is here promoting the film."

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas tells of a high German officer (David Thewlis) who is assigned the running of a concentration camp. So he must uproot his family from a busy city life–more noticeably remove his son Bruno from his friends–and take them to a remote area. His wife, played by The Departed’s Vera Farmiga, is unaware of the atrocities around her–a fact that Herman strongly defends from his research on such families. Bruno (Asa Butterfield from Son of Rambow) is also unaware, especially after sneaking in to view a German-made propaganda film about the camps, showing the prisoners happily playing, singing and eating. Bruno wanders off into the woods one day and encounters, through a strong wire fence, Shmuel (newcomer Jack Scanlon), a boy his age dressed in striped pajamas. The two strike up a friendship, talking, playing checkers and averting loneliness. But the storm clouds hover.

Herman says that he based the propaganda film on a real one–Hitler Gives the Jews a City–that he was able to watch during his research. "It’s horrific," he says. "I was going to use the original, but it was a bit too old." He put the film in to help Bruno’s journey. Doubting his father, he gets something to restore that faith. The propaganda film also helps push the wife’s story "because [the audience] thinks that in hindsight surely she knew, but then you see how they portrayed it."

In addition to inserting the film, one of the few changes from the book that Herman made was cutting down the dialogue between the boys and increasing the role of the wife. "In the book, 70 percent is the kids talking; very charming to read but on film it can get irritating, so I cut that right down," Herman says. "That created a void for the story; we needed to follow someone in their voyage of discovery."

The film is in English, perhaps disconcerting at first, but it feeds into Herman’s intention to humanize the characters. "The only authentic thing to [have done] would [have been] to shoot in German," says Herman, "and then we wouldn’t be discussing this movie now [because it wouldn’t have gotten made]. We were very keen that this movie reach as wide an audience as possible. We could have tried German accents, but I know how off-putting that can be, especially to kids."

Seeing the film, one probably agrees that this way was best. Hearing German or a German accent may have closed the audience off too soon to any expansive thought. But seeing and hearing a "typical" family around the dinner table, we might think of atrocities in our nation’s present that go on quietly in our midst. Where does our responsibility as human beings start and stop?

"I do like what [hearing English] does to people’s notions, that terrible things can go on [in any society]," Herman says. "The book has been translated into 35 languages, so the language doesn’t seem to be that important."

Boyne adds that "the book is very successful in Germany actually. I’ve been to literary festivals there where the audience has been very big–very interested, very engaged in the subject, naturally a very difficult subject for the national consciousness. People today reading the story, it’s not their story; they have no responsibility for it. People there felt it’s an original way to approach the story, and they seem quite grateful for it."

Herman hopes that families come to see his movie and discuss it together afterward–as he says has happened in Europe. He notes that no violence is depicted and little bad language is heard. But getting children to see it still poses a problem. Another movie out now, A Secret, hides its Holocaust story in a web of family intrigue. Herman puts his front and center; let’s confront what happened and see where it takes us.

Boyne says that he has been discovering the subject "since I was 15. "I read The Periodic Table [short stories] by Primo Levi, his other autobiographical writings, and a lot on the subject, trying to understand those times better. Writing fiction, it never crossed my mind that I would be writing about this until this idea came to me. I knew three things from the start: the boy would be taken away from his normal setting, he would meet the other boy and how it would end.

Bruno appears in just about every scene, so casting his role was important. "I knew straightaway; he was on the first tape I saw," Herman says. "He just stuck with me." The "talent" behind the film is also quite impressive. David Heyman produced the Harry Potter movies, The Daytrippers and the forthcoming Yes Man. James Horner is an Academy-Award winning composer. And production designer Martin Childs won an Oscar for designing the stylish Shakespeare in Love.

At interview’s end, Herman says he is grateful for any help pushing the movie. "It needs the help. Such a hard film to market." Again, he looks and sounds like an everyman, of someone hoping that his car might just last a little longer or his young daughter for once might score a goal in soccer. He knows that he has picked some difficult ground to play on.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: Q&A with Director Mark Herman and Author John Boyne

This Q&A took place at the AFI Silver Theater on October 27. AFI programmer Todd Hitchcock moderated. Director Mark Herman has received numerous awards including a Cesar and author of the novel, John Boyne, has won two book awards. The novel has sold three million copies.

Todd Hitchcock: Can you tell us about your experiences in writing this novel?
John Boyne: I started the novel in April 2004 in Dublin. I had done a first draft of another novel called "Next of Kin" and was taking a bit of a break to recharge my batteries. I had the idea for this story; it started with just a very simple idea of two boys sitting at a fence talking to each other. I knew where the fence was and that it was a place that nobody should be, let alone two little boys, and I was interested in writing the journey of what would bring them there, the conversations they would have and the necessary end that their story would reach. I started writing it almost immediately and it was published in 2006. In mid 2005 before it was published it was in proof form. Mark and I share an agency and he got a copy of the book.
Mark Herman: I had just come off a romantic comedy. Each project takes about 3 or 4 years out of your life and I was thinking about the next project. The book blew me away. It's not just another holocaust story. It's seen through the eyes of a child, a German child. The book made me cry.

TH: I'm impressed at how quickly the book was made into a movie.
MH: Sometimes you buy before the book is written. It was difficult to imagine as a film. I bought the film rights myself. I wanted to be my own boss. Writing the screenplay took a few months. I took it to Miramax who was brave enough to make the movie.
TH: Had you worked that way before, taking options of your own and developing them?
MB: No, this was the first time.

TH: Why did you decide to shoot the film in Hungary?
MH: Financial. You get more on the screen for the money. The crews are excellent. Hungary often doubles for Berlin in films. The only problem was that it was very hot.

Question from the Audience:: How has the film been received in Europe, considering that it is in English rather than German? MH: It would be more authentic for it to be in German. But I wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible. The book has been translated into 35 languages.
JB: I'm sometimes asked why I didn't write the book in German. [Everyone laughs].

Q: How did you cast of the two boys? Was this your first time working with child actors?
MH: No, but it was the first time with kids that young. I had worked before with 13-14 year olds. The casting was long and tough, the line for auditions was long. You live or die by the performances of two eight-year olds. Asa Butterfield was fantastic with expressive eyes. But it's difficult because of the regulations--you have only so many hours per day to work with child actors. The challenges were enormous. Asa is in almost every scene; he had great stamina to be on the set all day.

TH: I noticed two other actors: David Thewlis and Vera Farmiga. Vera Farmiga is working a lot these days; she's always different and remarkable in each movie.
MH: I didn't know her very well; I knew her from The Departed. As you said, she's very different in every film and that was a real attraction; she also has a Central European look. I had tried to get David [Thewlis] before but he always turned me down. But I was glad to get him this time.

Q: Why was it important to write from the viewpoint of a child? You have done this in other books.
JB: I've written seven novels, two are through the eyes of children. For this, I wanted a child, and a German child rather than a Jewish child. I have studied Holocaust for years and am very interested in the subject and it was something that I really wanted to understand and I read widely. When I started writing this, all my reading fed into the story, and I felt that I wanted a protagonist who really didn't understand anything, who was trying to figure out what was going on there. He wakes up every day and looks across and asks "who are all these people and what are they doing there?" He takes the place of the reader or myself, of someone who is just asking questions. Despite the fact that I had read widely, despite the fact that I feel am educated as I can possibly be on the subject, I know nothing really. So I figured that was the way to do it, through the eyes of an innocent child. I couldn't put myself in the shoes of the Jewish character, so I take the place of the other child who is asking the questions.

Q: How did you two collaborate on the screenplay and dialogue. Were there any disagreements?
MH: We didn't have any disagreements because we didn't collaborate. I did Brassed Off (1996) which was later transferred to the stage and know how it feels to hand off your baby to someone else. With such a special book as this, I certainly wanted John's involvement, approval and support. I sent him every draft of the screenplay.
JB: He sent me drafts and I sent him my comments and would try to be as constructive as possible. His decisions were in the best interest of the movie.

Q: Does the book end the same way as the film?
JB: The novel ends similarly but in a slightly different way although the fate of Bruno is exactly the same. The chase sequence that you see on film is not in the book but the result of the chase is the same. In the novel Bruno does go under the fence and they look for Shmuel's father and end up the same way. But nobody knows what happens to Bruno. It's only three pages at the end of the book that tells you what happened afterwards. Several months later the family still hasn't understood what has happened to Bruno. He just sort of vanished. And one day, Bruno's father walks to the fence and walks to that particular place where Bruno sat and he kind of looks around, he thinks, and pieces it all together and when he does he sort of falls to the ground and collapses in grief. And then a few months later the soldiers came with the liberation army and when they took him away, he didn't care what they did anymore. Nothing mattered to him. Bruno's mother goes back to Berlin, hoping that Bruno will show up there someday, but of course he doesn't. She becomes very unhappy and depressed for the rest of her life. In spite of all the fights and arguments they had, his sister spends her days crying because she misses her brother so much.

TH: When you worked on a screenplay and visualizing the climax, did you try different scenarios?
MH: I wanted the Hollywood element of the chase and followed it with an un-Hollywood ending. I was delighted to get James Horner to do the music. The music of the final scene is one of the best he has ever done.

Q: It's unusual to see both the writer and director on stage. What impressed you most?
JB: What didn't impress me most is that he refused to cast me! What impressed me most is the fact that the scenes that were added feel to me like scenes I wish I had written. For example, you remember when Bruno goes downstairs in the cellar to look for his football and sees all the naked bodies of the dolls piled up; meanwhile something similar is happening on the other side of the fence. It's one of those things I wish I had thought of. It's a very visual thing and works best on the screen, but it's so in keeping with the book. Also when we first met and talked about this, Mark asked, "Are there any particular moments that are really important to you?" There is a moment at the end of the novel when Bruno and Shmuel hold hands in the climactic scene. It's important to me because I felt that despite what is happening, despite their death, that it's a small moment of beauty and friendship. They die as best friends for life. So that closeup on the screeen is just a second or two, but it's crucial. It's really important to me. It's one of the things I felt quite grateful for when I saw it for the first time.

Q: It's unusual to see a 94 minute holocaust movie.
MH: Most movies are too long. We edited it for a long time, editing it down. It's more powerful when it's only an hour and a half.

TH: The photography was exceptionally nice. Was the crew new or had you worked with them before?
MH: Martin Childs was the production designer. It was a very difficult set. He did a great job on the fence. It was designed to look like a farm even though it's a camp. Also there was a camp set already there which had been used for another movie.

Q: It's rare to see a PG 13 rating for a holocaust film instead of an R. Was it an issue getting that rating, was it something you were looking for?
MH: We were keen to get as low a rating as possible. It's shocking and upsetting and it's heartbreaking but it's good to have your heart broken sometimes.

Q: What was the historical context of the novel and what historical examples are factored in?
JB: There is a lot of research you can do on this period. The commandants and senior officers brought their families but were ordered under pain of death not to tell their wives what was actually going on. The most famous commandant was Rudolf Haas who was at Auschwitz for most of the war and had his wife and his five children at the camp. Anyone who has been to Auschwitz knows that the garden where the children were playing was separated by a wall from one of the gas chambers. So the children playing in the garden would be able to hear people walking to their fate. I knew that there were German families there but I didn't want to base the story on any one of them. I didn't want to use the word Auschwitz. It's not about one place, it's about all the camps. I don't know of any situation when a child would have crossed over into the camp. Inmates on work duty would walk through villages and people there would be aware of them walking through. There are some stories which have come to light recently of people who knew each other back during those days on either side of the divide and who met up later in life. But again, it's not based on any of those things. One German said that the story is possible but implausible. But the implausibility of it is not important to me. There are bigger truths in the story.

Q: Could you tell us about the propaganda film?
MH: Yes, that was based on real footage, "Hitler Gives the Jews a City." It's horrific to watch. Jews were photographed at gunpoint pretending to have a good time--playing soccer, playing in an orchestra. Rather than use that footage--it was too old--we recreated it ourselves.

Q: How did the two child actors process those scenes in the gas chamber?
MH: One of the things I've learned about the difference between being a film director and being a parent is that when, as a director, you ask a kid to do something, they do it. Certainly it was scary for them in that scene with 200 Hungarians they had never met. It was a shocking moment for them, regardless of the story.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas opens in our area on November 7.

The Venice Film Festival: The Mostra, 65th Edition

Synecdoche: Q&A with Director Charlie Kaufman

At a preview of Synecdoche on October 18 at Landmark's E Street Cinema, director Charlie Kaufman answered questions. DC Film Society director Michael Kyrioglou moderated.

MK: How did you come to direct this film? Could someone else have directed it?
Charlie Kaufman: When I was writing it Spike Jonze was going to direct it and by the time I finished it he was starting another movie. I didn't want to wait until he was done with that movie so I asked him if I could do it when it became available. It [directing] was always something I wanted to do at some point.

MK: But the original idea was that he was going to do it?
CK: I was going to write and he was going to direct.

MK: What sort of challenges did you find in directing and how involved were you in your previous projects?
CK: I was very involved in all aspects of production in other films. I did a few plays and had experience with actors. It gave me confidence. This was a massive project with a lot of scenes, around 240, and not a big budget. I had to figure out how to do everything. We shot it over 45 days.

Question: Does that warehouse exist?
CK: It's an armory in Brooklyn. We made the interiors on a computer model and placed it in various locations.

Q: How autobiographical is the film and what is the significance of the burning house?
CK: Everything that everyone writes is autobiographical whether or not you want it to be. Obviously I never built a replica of a warehouse in New York, but the characters, etc. are things that I think about. About the burning house: I don't like to explain the meaning of things because I think it's for the audience to interpret it as they will. I have the authority as the writer (that's where author comes from) and if I say it then everyone says "oh, I see, that's what it means," whereas my goal is to have people come to their own interpretation. At every Q&A I've done someone has asked that question. People come to me and tell me about various things that are in the movie that are private things and I like that. So I don't want to take that away.

Q: Do you want to do more directing?
CK: I like writing but I do want to try directing again. It makes the work more ideosyncratic and I like that about it. I like the job; it's a very different job than writing. I don't think it's a bigger job or a better job. I don't think there's a hierarchy involved as I thought when I first started doing it--there's the writer and there's the director. I like doing both.

MK: How collaborative do you get with actors as far as generating ideas?
CK: Collaborating with the actors is more about figuring out the characters and I want to do it that way. They bring so much to their roles. And it's not just the actors, but also the production designers and cinematographers.

Q:How did the idea for this film come about?
CK: Spike and I were approached to do a horror movie, so we were thinking about things that were scary in the real world--aging and illness and dying and regret, relationships, disasters, etc. So it took the form of a man whose wife has left him, who has a series of illnesses, trying to figure out his life and afraid of dying.

MK: How long ago did you finish the film?
CK: We finished in August of last year and have been editing since.

Q: After working with other directors are you making a conscious effort to top yourself?
CK: I'm trying to become truthful and now that I'm older I have had different life experiences. And these experiences become included in my ideas of what I want to do and what I'm thinking about. Cader's project will never be finished. The only definitive ending is death.

MK: One of the things I loved about the movie was that it was an intimate story but it's epic also. The whole thing was so personal on so many levels.
CK: It's really subjective. I think that everything is. Someone, I forget who, wrote that the goal of a writer is that everything you know should be in everything you write. I like that idea and I don't think you can realize that but the goal is how you approach that. Not to compartmentalize things.

Q: Why did you pick "Synecdoche" for the title?
CK: I knew that eventually the character was going to move to New York City to do his play and I wanted to pick a city in New York. I don't remember why exactly I picked Schenectady, but once I picked it I had in the back of my mind that it would parallel with the word synecdoche. It wasn't the title at first, it was something I had in my head and it seemed like an appropriate title.

Q: In your earlier films Being John Malkovich and The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind you are interested in how the brain works. Is that your intention here?
CK: The only experience anyone has in the world is subjective and whenever I would try to write something I would come up against that. If my brain is creating the character's interior existence then that point of view becomes essential in telling the story. Everything is told from Cader's point of view; everything that happens to him is an externalizing of his internal world. The experience of time is completely subjective--it may not even exist outside our brains. I wanted that to be a driving force in the movie.

Q: How did you happen to work with Jon Brion? [composer of music score]
CK: I worked with Jon on Eternal Sunshine. Jon was interested in the script; he was really affected by it. He signed on right away. We talked a little bit about it during production and afterward discussed what the score represented in the movie, how the score fit in telling the story. He wrote some stuff and I made a few suggestions and he would transform them into results that were quite beautiful.

MK: The casting was quite interesting, especially some of the women. Did you have specific people in mind for the roles?
CK: I don't write with actors in mind. I would end up thinking about that person rather than the character. But once I finished, Philip Seymour Hoffman was the first person I went to. I next went to my favorite people and most everyone agreed to do it.

MK: I noticed Dierdre O'Connell
CK: Dierdre was the first person I cast; I actually cast her before Philip Seymour Hoffman. She is in Eternal Sunshine in a small part, playing Tom Wilkinson's wife and Philip Seymour Hoffman was excited to work with her.

Q: When other directors work with your material they act as a filter. Now that you are the writer and director there is no filter. Is that something you thought about? How did that affect you?
CK: It made it more personal and idiosyncratic. I respect Spike Jonze but I feel more raw and feel served by that idiosyncracy. But I didn't think about that when I was working on it. The thing I realized is that the main qualification of a director is to be someone with an opinion. People are asking you all the time and you have to make choices regarding the actors, sets, costumes. It becomes very personal. I have to constantly decide.

Q: Would you direct another person's script?
CK: I would rather not. Right now, I'd rather do my own. I like writing and I like that aspect of it; I like thinking about issues and characters. No one has offered me anything. I would rather do my own thing. I think I would be more open to doing an adaptation of someone's work. The only reason would be for expedience, to get it out quicker if I don't have to write it, although that's not a good reason.

Q: What are you working on now?
CK: I'm trying to write something but don't know what it is.
MK: Would you direct any of your writing for the stage?
CK: I love to do plays and would love to do another one and will at some point. But right now I need a job. It's been five years working on this.

Q: Can you tell us about your writing process?
CK: I like to think about things. I don't really outline. I start somewhere and things come over time. I spent two years thinking of this; I let it go in one direction and go back and forth. It's a kind of open, sprawling experience.
MK: Do you write dialogue?
CK: I don't do outlines at all. I write notes about the character, ideas I have about time, or death, or illness. I try to keep myself open. I would rather not write about something far in the past that I don't have a perspective on. I think perspective is a lie because it's on something that no longer exists. If you have perspective you're telling a story about something you are not in. But we're always in the situation that we are in. Always. My thought is to write about where I am and accept the lack of perspective and the chaos as part of the experience of being a person, and try to make that what I am writing about.

Q: How did Sony happen to make this project? Do you think now that Hollywood is becoming less of a climate for anything that is more challenging? Is is getting harder to sell your ideas?
CK: I don't really try to sell any ideas. But 8 of the 12 independent distributors went out of business and the remaining four are trying to figure out how to do the next quirky comedy. I did this without a distributor. When we first showed it, it was very hard to sell; it took awhile to sell it. That's an indication of what's happening right now. Obviously with the economy the way it is, things won't get better for awhile. The problem is, people don't go to these kinds of movies and it costs so much to market them. Nobody wants to spend the money on marketing something like this. If they put money into this then they've lost that much more money. People don't go to these kinds of movies, I don't know why. Certain things sell, but not this.

Synecdoche comes to our town on November 7.

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