I first met Bennett Miller when we were both guests on National
Public Radio's Anthem series, as part of a panel discussion on
digital filmmaking with producer Peter Broderick in the Spring of 1999.
I had just finished my book The Second Century of Cinema, which explored
the future of digital cinema in what was then the dawn of the 21st
century, and Peter Broderick, as the CEO of Next Wave films, had just
produced Christopher Nolan's first film, Following (1998). The
broadcast was a live "remote" done from a small recording
studio above Carnegie Hall, and when Bennett and I met, we immediately
hit it off. He had just finished his first feature-length documentary,
The Cruise (1998), a 76-minute portrait of the eccentric New York tour
guide Timothy Levitch. The film was the result of typically intense
research by Bennett prior to shooting; after focusing on the figure of
Levitch as his protagonist, Bennett shot some 80 hours of digital video
as exploratory material, before he actually began shooting the film in
earnest.
Before the show, Bennett and I fell into a discussion of the
about-to-be released Blair Witch Project (1999), which was the hot topic
at the time, and bantered about the future of film as a viable
production medium. When we went on the air, we all talked about whether
or not film would disappear entirely in the new millennium; I held out
(reluctantly) for film's inevitable demise, simply as a matter of
business economics that the industry couldn't ignore. Since The
Cruise was a low budget digital film, I was sure Bennett would agree
with me that film's days were numbered. But to my surprise, he
didn't, and felt that unlike the manner in which CDs had replaced
vinyl records, film would remain the dominant standard within the
industry. I'm pleased that he was right, and I've often
thought about that conversation since.
Flash forward to 2006; Capote (2005) is released, and I picked up
my conversation with Bennett, who had now, at a single stroke,
established himself as a major director. But what, I wondered, had he
been up to since The Cruise? I knew he had gotten an agent, but seven
years is a long gestation period for a film; most directors, once
they're hot, immediately strike out into features, accepting nearly
any assignment. But Bennett had a much smarter strategy. Instead, his
agent got him work directing high-profile television commercials, at
which he became a master, creating his own "shop" to create
commercials with branches around the world, picking up valuable
technical expertise and contacts, and making a nice chunk of change at
the same time for his efforts.
The anonymity of the process also suited him; since the commercials
were unsigned, Bennett could work on them, forget them, and then move on
to the next project, all the while keeping an eye out for his first
major project. That opportunity finally came with Capote, featuring a
screenplay by Bennett's longtime friend Dan Futterman, and starring
Bennett's other oldest friend, Philip Seymour Hoffman. This seems
to me a very practical and sensible strategy; why make films you
don't care about, when you can work in commercials, and save your
real intensity for a project that deserves it? During our talk, Bennett
talked about his childhood, his first forays into video and film
production, the making of Capote, and his future as a director. Our
conversation took place on March 20, 2006 by telephone; Bennett was at
his apartment in New York, working on his next project.
Wheeler Winston Dixon: So how are you?
Bennett Miller: I'm great. A long time.
WWD: Tell me how you made the voyage from digital handheld to a
full-scale theatrical work in 35mm. Capote is your first fiction piece.
What pushed you away from the documentary approach, and into a
full-scale recreation of an era?
BM: I was not pushed away from the documentary format at all; in
fact, I fully intend on returning to it. But also documentary was never
my ambition. It's something I kind of discovered along the way.
Since I was a kid, I've been aiming towards feature narratives.
WWD: That's funny, because I gathered from other interviews
that after Capote your next project was going to be a documentary.
BM: It just might be. I kind of fell in love with the documentary
form, and really do hope to make a few more projects. I've got a
couple right now that I'm kicking around.
WWD: But all your life you wanted to make a fiction feature.
BM: I wanted from the time I was 12 to make narrative features. And
along the way, before that ever happened for me, I discovered some great
subject matter that I wanted to turn to a documentary.
WWD: Timothy Levitch, the tour conductor in The Cruise. You
basically follow him around during a typical series of workdays, as he
shows off the Big Apple to out-of-town tourists from the front of a
double-decker bus.
BM: Yes. I had the wherewithal to do The Cruise back then, but I
didn't have a subject, or the money, to get a feature done at that
time in my life.
WWD: What was the budget on The Cruise?
BM: The Cruise was a pinch more than $100,000 at the end of the
day, after blowup to 35 mm, and prints, and final sound mix. But to
shoot it, it cost much less, maybe a couple of thousand, because the
whole thing was digital video. It was inexpensive.
WWD: How do you feel about the difference between video and 35mm
now? On that NPR show, I was predicting the immediate demise of 35mm,
which obviously didn't happen, although I think it's still
moving in that direction. But what was it like working in 35mm for the
first time on Capote?
BM: Well, I wasn't working in 35mm for the first time. After
The Cruise, I began doing television commercials. Lots of them.
WWD: Back when we did the NPR show, I understood that you were
going to do something with "This American Life," the NPR radio
show.
BM: Yes, I dabbled with them for a while, but then I got into
television commercials, and I got in at a serious and high level.
WWD: Whom did you shoot ads for?
BM: You name it, I did it. Everybody from Verizon, to Cingular, to
Kellogg's Cereals, Lincoln Navigator, the list goes on....
Commercials are a great way to learn more about the craft, and so I shot
dozens and dozens of commercials.
WWD: In the wake of The Cruise, you were very hot, and I'm
sure people were giving you scripts, but you made the decision to go to
commercials? That's smart.
BM: Well, my goal is to make very special films. And you can't
just like knock one off after the next. I finished The Cruise, and there
were lots of new opportunities. I got a great agent, and began to read
scripts, and also had this opportunity to direct commercials. The
commercials were never a destination for me, they were never a goal. But
they were a means to practice my craft. I needed that, because I'm
a drop out. I never got to fully study the craft at NYU.
WWD: But you did graduate from Mamaroneck High School in 1985.
BM: I did.
WWD: Did you know that that's Norman Rockwell's alma
mater?
BM: Indeed, I did.
WWD: Is this where you met [Capote's scenarist and actor] Dan
Futterman?
BM: I met Danny in junior high school actually, when we were 12. We
met in the library. We didn't really become friends until a few
years later. I was a little bit of an exhibitionist, I think, at the
time. I had some kind of little routine that I would do.
WWD: Some shtick.
BM: Some shtick, for which I was constantly getting kicked out of
the library.
WWD: Did you work on any videos or other early projects when you
were in junior high school?
BM: Yes, of course. Dan and I did a couple of little things
together, but Danny is more into theater. Still, we had a great program
at Mamaroneck High School, a great television and video program. The
town's local cable station is actually in our high school, and we
have a large high school of about 2,000 students. So this was the local
cable community cable television studio, right there for us to work in.
WWD: The public access station.
BM: Yes, the public access station was in our high school, and
every morning it broadcast a new show. Every homeroom had a television,
and you would watch the announcement. I was not so interested in the
live news format that they did, but when I was a freshman I immediately
started making videos, shorts to be played during the morning
announcements, and they would go out through the community. I did that
throughout my high school career. Before that my family had a little
video camera, and I was just obsessed with it. So I was making videos
early on.
WWD: I was just going to ask you about your parents. Can you tell
me a little bit about what they did, and whether they were supportive of
your work? How did they feel about your interest in film and video?
BM: Well, my mother is a painter, really quite a good one, and my
father is a builder, a contractor.
WWD: Were they supportive of your work?
BM: Not particularly. I think I had what was a fairly common Ice
Storm type upbringing [a reference to Ang Lee's 1997 film about
growing up in 1970s affluent suburbia]. Actually, I grew up not that far
from where The Ice Storm was shot. I had, thankfully, a complete absence
of supervision. If parents today ask me "how do you foster
creativity in your children?," I always say "neglect, just
neglect them." That's the best thing. Then they'll do
something.
WWD: You met Philip Seymour Hoffman in 1984 in a summer theater
program in Saratoga Springs, New York, correct?
BM: Right. Danny and I both met him there.
WWD: Tell me a little bit about that meeting, what brought you guys
together, and how you clicked.
BM: The program was four weeks long. We were living at Skidmore
College, in the dorms, for the program. At the end of four weeks, I had
made a few friends from that place, and they became lasting friends. Dan
and Phil were some of the main ones; there are a couple of other people.
But Phil was the real one that came out of that. It was probably just a
matter of weeks after the program was over when he started hanging out.
He was living in up-state New York, I lived in Westchester, and so he
came down to Westchester, and we took a trip into the city, and I
started showing him around New York, New York, where I was born.
WWD: So you graduated from high school, and then you went to NYU.
How long did you stay there, and why did you drop out?
BM: I was in the actual film school maybe a year and a half. I
dropped out because I just have always been a bad student, and I hated
it. I think Woody Allen dropped out, too.
WWD: And after that, you got The Cruise off the ground. So
let's just move past The Cruise and past the commercials. How did
you become interested in Capote as a person, and what drew you to the
subject?
BM: Well, Danny Futterman was the one that got me involved. He
conceived the project, and sent me his first draft of it, while all the
time he was working as an actor on "Judging Amy," the
television series.
WWD: How does he feel about that now? Does he seem more interested
now in writing, or is he still interested in acting?
BM: I think he is going to continue to do both. And I hope he does.
WWD: The script is absolutely brilliant. How long did it take him
to write it?
BM: I don't know, I really don't know. Years. We tinkered
on it for a year and a half before we shot it, and then as we shot it,
tinkering continued to happen. But from the time he gave me a draft, to
the final shooting script, it was about a year and a half.
WWD: What was the major key to Capote's personality for you
and Dan?
BM: Well, I think that Capote was abandoned, and I don't think
he ever really overcame that problem. I think, not to belittle or
trivialize his art and his career, that there was always an element
beneath everything that was this kind of free floating neurosis and
insecurity. I think that was born very, very early within him. He never
really found a way out. No amount of success, no claim to fame, was
going to undo these feelings that he had. For me, it's so
interesting that such a vocal, articulate and eloquent person was not
really expressing that.
WWD: Well, probably he was too close to it to even understand it.
BM: Absolutely.
WWD: So how did you get the film off the ground? You have the
script, and Phil has agreed to do it. I gather that there was a very
dramatic sit-down where you and Dan and Phil all met together with the
producers to green light the film. Is that true?
BM: Well, I don't know how dramatic it was, but we did that
numerous times with numerous different people. All of which said no,
until Danny Rosett of United Artists agreed to do it. He's really
the one who got behind it, and made it happen.
WWD: What kind of a budget did they give you, and what kind of a
schedule? It was brutally short, wasn't it?
BM: They gave us 5 1/2 million dollars to make it, and then our
producing partner, Infinity Media, gave us like another million
something, and then Canada gave us a tax break, so we ended up having a
budget of something like 7 million dollars.
WWD: And the schedule?
BM: I think we shot the whole film in 34 days.
WWD: How many takes did you do on a given setup?
BM: Anywhere between 2 and 25.
WWD: Wow. What was the one that took 25 takes?
BM: Do you remember the scene where Bob Balaban, as William Shawn,
the editor of The New Yorker, calls Capote when Truman is in Spain?
WWD: Yes, right.
BM: It's one shot of Capote answering his phone. He's
writing, he answers the phone, and he has this brief conversation with
William Shawn. That took about 20 takes to get it right. We had to get
it right.
WWD: How long did it take Phil to get into the character? It's
such a tough character to play.
BM: It took about six months to learn.
WWD: Did he do it basically by watching archival footage of Capote
at work, and stuff like that? How did he prepare?
BM: Most of that work Phil did by himself alone in a room with a
locked door. That's his craft.
WWD: Capote was a rather diminutive guy, and his body gestures were
very close to the body, very controlled. Phil is a rather burly guy, and
rather tall. Did you use a lot of "apple boxes" to cheat the
height of the other actors throughout the film?
BM: Absolutely.
WWD: I figured.
BM: We hired tall extras, and elevated people, and used lifts in
footwear, and platforms and stuff like that. But also camera angles, and
wardrobing, and Phil losing more than 40 pounds really helped.
Phil's performance is really the key to the whole thing, though. He
really worked on it.
WWD: Where was most of it shot?
BM: Winnipeg. Almost all of it was shot in Winnipeg.
WWD: Was any of it shot in New York?
BM: We did two days in New York.
WWD: What did you shoot in New York?
BM: Basically we did the party scene. The first party scene was
shot up in Harlem, the one where Truman is talking about Jimmy
Baldwin's novels.
WWD: Now I want to talk about Adam Kimmel, your Director of
Photography. Did he work as a DP on your TV ads?
BM: Yes, he did. He also shot [Alison Maclean's 1998 feature]
Jesus' Son. He's probably done like around a dozen features.
WWD: How did you meet him originally?
BM: Well, Alison is a friend of mine, and I went to a rough cut
screening of Jesus' Son, and that's the first time I ever got
to see his work, which was great.
WWD: He also played a cameo as Richard Avedon, the photographer, in
Capote.
BM: Right.
WWD: Was that sort of an "in" joke?
BM: No, it's not a joke at all. He was just the best person
for the part. He really just moves around beautifully in that scene. We
shot in Winnipeg, and so we had to cast the thing out of Winnipeg, and I
brought in a lot of people, but nobody really knew how to handle a still
camera. I didn't want to do it myself, so I actually operated the
camera on that scene, and Adam operated the still camera. He was just
the perfect person for the scene.
WWD: How did Catherine Keener [who played Harper Lee] become
involved in the project?
BM: She came on in the most conventional way. Everyone else was a
friend or somebody I have known from the past, or colleagues from the
past. But in her case, the casting director just suggested her. I
revisited her work; I've always been a fan. So I met her, talked to
her, offered her the part. And she was really good in the role.
WWD: How did you do the research to get the correct period feel?
Because I really think you nailed it completely.
BM: Care, and attention to detail. I had a great crew to work with.
It was really a labor of love.
WWD: But how did you get that period feel; the sets, the props, the
music, the feel of the piece? The whole film just seems so seamlessly
60's.
BM: Well, we try to not make the mistake that some films make,
which is an effort to oversell the period.
WWD: Overdressing the set?
BM: That makes it really fake, you know? It's not hard to
research that period at all--you just have to do it right. You
don't have to scratch too deeply to unearth oceans of reference
material. A few things were very helpful to us. One was a documentary
made by Robert Drew called Primary [1960].
WWD: Right, that's a great film. That's one of the first
16mm documentaries shot with sync sound, way back in the day.
BM: If you look at the wardrobe in Capote, like the courthouse
scene, when the killers arrive and stuff like that, you know it's
just taken from that documentary. And also In Cold Blood [1967], the
Richard Brooks film, is also a very good reference, because it really
captures the era completely. It was shot in the 60s.
WWD: Right.
BM: Shot just a few years later, in the actual house, in the actual
courtroom, on the actual street, with some of the actual people, and the
actual jury. So that was a great reference for us. But mostly it's
just not trying to sell the period, but just being truthful to it. And
then within that, find the tones and colors and compositions you want,
using true period elements to communicate what we wanted to, on a more
tonal level.
WWD: Could you speak a little bit about Mychael Danna's music?
Because it seems to me it's like the perfect score for the film.
BM: I agree.
WWD: It's almost "not there."
BM: When I first started thinking about the score, the guiding
principle was that I wanted a score that was not specific to the period,
and not specific to the region; in fact, not specific to any period and
not specific to any region. This is a period piece set in the middle of
America, but I wanted the film to have more universal resonance. So I
didn't want the music to be from the 50's and 60's, or
from the middle of the country, or sort of jazzy New York or anything
like that. I wanted a score that would communicate on a narrow level.
And I thought "what score does that?," and then I thought of
The Ice Storm. I keep coming back to that film.
WWD: Perfect, perfect.
BM: And you know who did The Ice Storm? Mychael Danna. So I spoke
to Mychael, had a great conversation, and it was a no-brainer. He was my
first choice.
WWD: And what about [editor] Christopher Tellefsen? His credits are
all over the board. He cut Larry Clark's Kids [1995], Harmony
Korine's Gummo [1997], and then Harold Ramis's Analyze This
[1999] and Milos Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man
on the Moon [1999], which are much more mainstream films. How did you
pick him?
BM: Kids and Gummo were the two most attractive credits on his
resume for me. But the fact that he was all over the map, and worked
with all sorts of different directors, plus the fact that he worked with
Milos twice, made me realize that this guy is versatile, and he gets
along with people. So I spoke to him on the phone, and we had a great
conversation. Our very first conversation was one of the great
conversations about this movie. As a director, and I'll even say as
a person, I find that my own ability to articulate is very influenced by
the person I'm speaking to. I find that with some people my doors
are just open, and I flow, and I'm articulate, and I'm
connected to myself and what I'm talking about. But with other
people, I feel the doors slam shut, and my throat crunches up, so I just
want to be around the people who allow me to be creative and feel safe
doing it. I got on the phone with him, and I felt like I was being
received, and I felt like he had great ideas. It was a total vibe
decision. I hired him over the phone.
WWD: Did he do a rough assembly before you looked at it?
BM: He was in New York. We sent him the footage, and he was
assembling the footage as we shot it. He was basically just putting it
together. When I returned to New York for the editing, he had a two and
one-half hour rough assembly, and we both realized that we had our work
cut out. But there couldn't have been a better collaboration. He
was really there, all the time.
WWD: Well, the editing is razor sharp. Every scene is up there just
exactly as long as it needs to be. Did you story board the whole movie?
BM: No. We shot listed the whole thing, and if there was ever
something that was somewhat confusing, I would just do my own little
"chicken scratch" story boards. But [the DP] Adam Kimmel and I
sort of speak the same language, and we are really of the same mind. We
can walk into a room, and understand the problem. When somebody has the
answer, we know it. It's in our minds. There's just no reason
to draw it.
WWD: I understand that you kept a really tight closed set on
Capote, which I totally understand; nobody hanging around who isn't
necessary.
BM: Yes.
WWD: Could you talk briefly about that decision?
BM: Phil is a very sensitive guy, I'm a very sensitive guy.
Something that is very important when you make a film is to create the
kind of atmosphere that is necessary for this sort of tender work to
happen. I'm just very sensitive to people's vibes, and
it's enormously distracting and irritating to have unnecessary
people and thoughts in the room.
WWD: I absolutely agree. Because then you become sort of a
"host," so to speak, for the visitor. It's good to see
that the film has done so well at the box office.
BM: Yes.
WWD: But it's not a "blockbuster film," despite the
fact I think it's perhaps the best film of the year, and your
direction is really stunning. I'm just wondering in the future what
kind of work you're going to do. I hope it won't turn out like
Alfonso Cuaron, who directed one of the great films of the early 21st
century, Y tu mama tambien (2001), but then went on to make Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004). Or the worst case scenario, somebody
like Christopher Nolan. I don't know if you ever saw Following
[1998], but that's a really interesting and original film, but then
after remaking, badly, Erik Skjoldbjaerg's Insomnia [1997] in 2002
with Robin Williams and Al Pacino, he winds up directing the utterly
ordinary action vehicle Batman Begins (2005). Now he's in
pre-production on a sequel to the Batman film. Do you see yourself
headed in that direction?
BM: No, no. I would not have made either of those two movies,
because those movies don't really speak to me, although I heard
they both did very good jobs with those projects.
WWD: Well, they elevated them slightly, but there is still the
source material to consider, which is distinctly limited.
DM: Right. I think it would be difficult for me to accept any
assignment that I didn't feel passionately about.
WWD: How are you going to resist that, though, if somebody offers
you millions and millions to do a highly commercial project?
BM: Well, I just ask myself this question: "is this going to
help me make peace with myself before I die or not?" It's that
simple. And I also ask myself the question, "when I'm two
years into this three-year commitment, am I going to feel good about it
and myself, and is it going to be giving me energy back?" And if
the answer is "no," I'll be an unhappy person with a big
paycheck.
WWD: Right, exactly. All the publicity surrounding Capote has
vaulted you into international prominence. But whenever I see you on
television or doing an interview in Time or whatever, you always seem
very quiet and controlled as if you are sort of "taking it all
in," and watching what happens.
BM: Yes.
WWD: Are you conscious of what you have to do to retain your
artistic integrity in the face of all this publicity, to say nothing of
maintaining a handle on reality?
BM: Yes, I think so. I hope so.
WWD: How are you approaching all of this? This is a life changing
experience.
BM: Right. I don't know, really. I just try to be honest about
what I want, and make sure that there is integrity in the work.
WWD: Do you and Dan and Phil keep each other grounded?
BM: Definitely, definitely. You know both of those guys are very
grounded and down to earth and care about the work. It was actually a
very good experience going through the whole release process, the
distribution and fanfare with them, because whatever we did, they kept
me grounded. Especially Phil and I; Dan's got a family, and
wasn't on the road as much. Phil and I would be on the road pushing
the film, and no matter what we would be doing, whatever the kind of
publicity around the film was, it usually ended up with us hanging out
in one or the other's hotel room late at night, ordering French
fries and watching the news or sports programs. You know what I mean.
None of us party, or anything like that.
WWD: What are your thoughts on the continual struggle between
commercial projects, and the personal vision that constitutes the
battlefield of film? Movies have got to make money, but at the same time
you have to make films that you want to make, so that you respect
yourself at the end of the day.
BM: Just try to find the overlap. It's there.
WWD: How do you approach the commercials you shoot in-between?
BM: That's totally different. My name is not attached to those
works. It's off the record of my life. I'm just there to make
the car look good, so to speak. I'm not going to be making
commercials for a handgun corporation. You know what I mean.
WWD: Will you be doing more commercials in the future?
BM: Well, part of the answer to your question, on how to resist the
temptation to do junk, and to preserve my integrity in Hollywood, is
that I'm not dependent on feature film paychecks. I have a way to
support myself comfortably if I'm not finding the exact right
project to do. I enjoy shooting commercials, and I enjoy the people I do
it with. I'm very fond of my production company, which is called
"Hungry Man Productions." They are like a family to me. I
don't want to pooh-pooh commercials at all, you know, because
it's a good way to keep food on the table, and there is also some
amount of creativity.
WWD: Absolutely. Do you have any idea of how many movies you passed
on before you did Capote?
BM: Actually, in my apartment right now, there's a big pile of
scripts in one corner that I have yet to eliminate, all of which were
pre-Capote. But it's not like I was offered all these scripts. But
they were sent to me and I read them and passed on them, and there were
dozens and dozens and dozens.
WWD: In our last conversation, and this goes back to what I was
talking about earlier, what are your feelings about film versus digital?
What do you think is going to happen there? I've talked to a lot of
people about this, and the execs say they are going to do away with
film. It's already happening, because it's just so much easier
to shoot and edit video. And the studios are going to save so much money
on prints and advertising. But yet the film look of Capote is just so
gorgeous, and film, as a medium, has got this certain quality to it that
video will just never have. So what do you think?
BM: You're right. But I just visited with the David Fincher on
the set of Zodiac [2006] a few weeks ago, when he was wrapping that up,
and he shot that on video. So we'll see what happens; it's
definitely an issue on many people's minds. I like to work in both
mediums, so we'll see what the future holds.
WWD: Do you have any other fictional projects beyond this that are
sort of like the Holy Grail for you?
BM: Yes, I do. And I'm happy to say that I'm developing
it right now. It's going to take a while, but I'm optimistic
that it's not going to take forever. I can't tell you anything
about it until it's absolutely ready to go, but it's going to
be something really special.
WWD: Thanks for talking with me. It's nice to see that
you're doing so well.
BM: My pleasure, absolutely. See you soon.