Final Cut: Mr. Baltimore Goes To Philadelphia
"I generally never see actors. I see characters. People will say who did you have in mind for this? And I'll say I don't know because I was thinking of the invention in my head. I don't think about movie stars in a film when I'm writing it, but who are the characters and what is the story?"
-- Barry Levinson
On February 4th, 2004 film director Barry Levinson was honored by The Philadelphia Weekend Film Festival with a retrospective of his work. His distinguished oeuvre includes such commercial successes as Good Morning Vietnam (1987), Rain Man (1988), Wag the Dog (1997) and Bugsy (1991). His latest feature film Envy (2004), stars Ben Stiller and Jack Black. Yet Academy Award winning Levinson is still very much associated with Baltimore, the backdrop of his most personal films. So far, he's directed four movies and one television series there: Diner (1982), Tin Men (1987), Avalon (1990), Liberty Heights (1999) and the Emmy Award Winning television series Homicide: Life on the Streets (1993).
The Philadelphia Weekend Film Festival was held at the Prince Music Theatre, where Dr. Annette Insdorf, director of undergraduate film studies at Columbia University's School of the Arts held a Q & A, following clips from his distinguished career. In addition, An Everlasting Piece (2000), Levinson's look at the struggles between Catholics and Protestants living in North Ireland was screened in its entirety. Prior to the retrospective, Reelwriter.net was fortunate to speak with Levinson about his craft.
Kelly McCarthy: Just like Woody Allen has made New York a character in his films, you have given the same homage to Baltimore, Maryland. As a filmmaker, what are your reasons for returning to that sense of place?
Barry Levinson: That's a good question. I return to Baltimore periodically because in my mind there is a clarity to the city and characters that are beneath the surface but impact the piece for me.
McCarthy: What are the advantages to returning to something so familiar?
Levinson: I know what it looks like, what it sounds like and how it should feel. I can be as exact as I want to be, which in many ways is a short hand because I know it so well. So I know exactly what I'm looking for rather than being in some other place and having to go through the whole learning process. And I try to tell various stories about certain subjects that I'm interested in like in Liberty Heights, which deals with racial issues and religious issues in the 50's.
McCarthy: What are the disadvantages?
Levinson: The downside to doing these pieces is that they are considered too much of a specialty kind of movie because they are semi autobiographical, therefore they are not either commercial enough, or mainstream enough.
McCarthy: So, when you make a commercial, studio film like Rain Man does that give you the ability to say, O.K., now I'm going to go back and make a personal film like Avalon and not worry how much money it will make at the box office?
Levinson: Yeah. But, of course, then you get caught up in some of the other things that come from that. It's very hard to make movies about character, subject matter and issues that by today's standards are not at all considered mainstream. Today, movies are more devoid of anything to do with the world of people.
McCarthy: For example: in Liberty Heights you tackle the subject of cultural diversity, not as popular a subject matter these days as say a Hollywood shoot-em-up.
Levinson: And Liberty Heights is not a genre movie. Therefore it's harder for you to be positioned by a studio.
McCarthy: In films like Liberty Heights and An Everlasting Piece, which will be the feature film selection screened by the Philadelphia Weekend Film Festival, you create a dialogue about cross cultural conflict. Do you hope that the dialogue that you've created about cultural diversity could help affect change?
Levinson: I don't think that you can ever affect change. I don't know that we, (filmmakers) are that important. But I think it is worthwhile to show an audience some of the things that we struggle with, both the issues that were on the table yesterday as well as today. What I really like about An Everlasting Piece is that it deals in a comedic fashion with a very serious subject. And there are moments of feeling serious even though it is a slightly absurdist way to deal with those issues.
McCarthy: I've read that when you wrote Diner, you loosely based the character of Shreevy on Alan Mason, whom you've collaborated with on the majority of your film's soundtracks. Were there other characters that were inspired by guys you grew up with?
Levinson: Well, they are specific to guys I grew up with, yes. But sometimes those characters are composites of different people.
McCarthy: Is there one character that's more like you?
Levinson: I don't think so. I'm sort of a little bit of everybody and no one.
McCarthy: I understand that you've been working on a documentary about the friends you grew up with in Baltimore in the 1950's. Can you talk about that?
Levinson: Yeah, I shot them for over a nine year period and I'll probably do another segment with them this summer. The documentary tracks what would be the first generation of rock-n-roll dealing with the problems of middle age, that's the base of it. It's a work in progress. I don't know what I'll ever do with it. But I thought it was worthwhile to document.
McCarthy: Any ideas for another feature film in Baltimore?
Levinson: At some point I'd probably like to do another one. But like I said, personal movies get more and more difficult to make, just by the nature of the world we live in and the whole economics if it. And the fact that it's run a lot more by corporations that have very little tolerance.
McCarthy: In spite of Rain Man, Bugsy and Wag the Dog, many still associate you with the Baltimore series. What's your take on that?
Levinson: You have to defend yourself between one Baltimore film and another. They say, 'well he did that'. And I say, 'gee, does that mean that Faulkner who wrote about a place in the South, can only do it once?
McCarthy: I'm reading Sixty Six. It is a novel, but it reads like an autobiography.
Levinson: That's a good point. Someone said to me, you know you should have just put it out there as an autobiography because it's easier to sell.
McCarthy: So, are there parts of book that are autobiographical?
Levinson: It is autobiographical, but there are things in it that didn't specifically happen to me. So I would feel like a fraud to say this is my life. God knows a lot of these autobiographies do that. But, I would feel not accurate, and I would feel foolish having done that and mixed things up, tweaking certain things. Yes, I did work in local television, and almost all of the things are fairly accurate. But other elements are not fact.
McCarthy: Like the part in the book where one of the guys is blown up at the gas station?
Levinson: Yeah, like that. (Laughter).
McCarthy: The main character Bobby Shine reflects on his ability to look at a photograph and stare at it long enough that in his mind's eye the people came alive. You write in the book, "When I was three years old, I used to stare at the pictures in Look magazine. I once turned to a page and saw a man and a woman sitting on a park bench on a nice sunny day. They were both smiling. I would stare at that picture for the longest time until I could make the man and woman come alive. Then I would see them actually get up and walk away from the bench; leave the park. But once they left, I couldn't visualize it any further. My young imagination couldn't take it beyond that. . Is this something that has ever happened to you? Do you get similar images in your mind when preparing to write a screenplay or direct a film?
Levinson: I think that must be, because I was curious about the story and not just the photograph. How did they get there? What did they talk about and where did they go? And I think that's just something that intrigued me about people. When I see people arguing in a restaurant I wonder, what are they talking about? What happens after they leave? So I think that was the first inklings of that to me, the first little moments of what is this about. It's the quizzical mind that begins to address those issues.
McCarthy: Bobby Shine also talks about memory or the lack of memory. He recalls that his grandfather told him, "If I knew things would no longer be, I would have tried to remember better." Billy Shine says, "Now, years later, I realize that what he was saying is that it's not just that we forget, but that fragments live in our minds, our lives are turned into disconnected bits and pieces". Can you talk about that?
Levinson: It's an element that I thought was intriguing. Why do you remember certain things in your life? We all have them. Who knows why for some crazy reason why we remember certain things and not other things and sometimes it's not the profound that we remember but the totally insignificant.
McCarthy: How do you approach the artistic process? When you begin to think about a script, do you visualize the actors you would like to use?
Levinson: I generally never see actors. I see characters. People will say, whom did you have in mind for this? And I'll say I don't know because I was thinking of the invention in my head. I don't think about movie stars in a film when I'm writing it, but who are the characters and what is the story?
McCarthy: Do you picture an invented person and how they might look? Or do you create characters based more on a feeling of who they are?
Levinson: I think it's kind of a feeling, images of things. I mean in Sixty-Six I address how these various people look.
McCarthy: How was the book received?
Levinson: One of the reviews I read, which was in the New York Times, and they really hated it, spent all of their time comparing it to Diner. Yes, there is a diner and people are in the diner, but they are different people. These are different issues that the guys in Diner faced. But that person who read it couldn't separate the two because we've become so single minded now. In Sixty-Six Neil is not exactly like any of the guys in the fifties. The issues of Diner had to do with the lack of understanding of women and female relationships. Neil is nothing like that. The irony is that the New York Times got a film critic to review the book rather than a book reviewer. So that's part of the dilemma of characters and what we really are rather than it being under the genre label.
McCarthy: Unlike an M.Night Shymalan or a John Sayles who pretty much only direct the projects that they write, you've chosen to also direct other people's work. Was this a decision you made early on?
Levinson: I don't know. But it came about because of my varied interests. So therefore, certain things I will write will work in a certain area. There are other things that writers might do that might intrigue me but would be outside of what I might sit down to write. Saying that, it also gets you into trouble if you're too diversified and especially if you move too far outside of the box because then you're open for criticism if you don't follow a specific genre. So for instance, Disclosure (1994) did very well. O.K., it was an adaptation of a book to film. Sleepers (1996) did extremely well. You say O.K., crime movie. That's the genre, also from a book. Got it. When you write outside of that and I've been intrigued to write outside of the genre, you open yourself up for a whole assortment of attacks because then they have nothing to base it on. For instance, when I tried to do Toys (1992), which is an absurdist comedy, then you really leave yourself open for attack because now you are not in a place where you can say, oh, yes it is a crime thriller. When you go outside of that then you are in no man's land. Those movies are the most dangerous to do. You can make the most stupid comedy in the world but you'll never get as attacked if you make a comedy and then slightly move it off center.
McCarthy: Because it makes critics uncomfortable?
Levinson: Yeah, because it's like where is this coming from?
McCarthy: They can't pinpoint it and they don't like when you step out of the box.
Levinson: Right, unless you put all the flags up and say, "Look all you stylists -- see where I am? Look, look, look! It's like you literally have to say, 'O.K., follow me, over here!' If you tweak it one way or another you will either upset the critics or the studios. That is what happened with An Everlasting Piece. The studio said, 'well, we thought this was just going to be a comedy, but it's also got that whole thing with the Ira and that's political.' And you say, 'yes it is a comedy. But the IRA and the whole problem of Northern Ireland is inherent in the piece.' To a studio that makes them very nervous.
McCarthy: But comedy is a great catalyst to introduce a serious subject.
Levinson: Yeah, but generally to a studio that's a corporation, they're not that interested for you to go into a direction that's harder to market.
McCarthy: Your first commercial film after Diner was The Natural. How did you, as the director, put your thumbprint on the material?
Levinson: There are certain directors that draw attention to it. I try to put myself into the movie without basically having to say look at me.
McCarthy: But as the director of say, The Natural (1984) was your voice in how you shot it and in your sense of pace?
Levinson: Yes, in terms of the extravagance of it in a sense, which initially I got criticized for. They said The Natural is not like regular baseball and you go, 'yeah, right'. I mean initially the idea of it was to be so much larger than life and in being sort of mythical it was not taken well in its time. We did get some very good reviews, but we also got attacked. I remember one critic talking about Randy Newman's music and commenting how horrible it was. Initially, some people took it (the music) too seriously. To me, at the heart and soul of the movie is that a baseball game that you go to or watch in person is not just about that game. It's about all the games that led up to that game. And its about all of the history that comes to that game. That's why there's such a fascination about it.
McCarthy: What was it like to work with Robert Redford?
Levinson: The great thing about Redford is his bravery on two levels: one, he was willing to step up to do this kind of film and secondly, he decided to allow a director who made just one small film, Diner, to suddenly step into this rather large canvas. And here Redford was already an Academy Award winning director of Ordinary People (1980) and he says, I'm fine with this, you do it.
McCarthy: Did you feel he gave you space to do what you needed to do?
Levinson: Absolutely.
McCarthy: What a gift. You've talked about how difficult it is to make personal films these days. But
can you give some advice to a first time screenwriter or director about the business today.
Levinson: Today because of technology almost anybody can tell a story, which was not always feasible. Now with these little DV cameras and personal computers, you can edit your own movie and put your own music in and tell a story. That's the first step. Start by telling your own little stories and learn from that and you just start to progress down that road. The other elements will come. But the beginning is telling your story.
