Reflections from director Morten Tyldum on his Oscar-nominated "Imitation Game" collaborators
By Robert Goldrich |Road To Oscar Series, Part 10
LOS ANGELES --On one hand, director Bennett Miller was in line with history when he earned a Best Director Oscar nomination today for Foxcatcher despite not being one of the DGA Award nominees named earlier in the week. Only five times in the 67 years of the DGA Awards have the Guild nominees exactly mirrored the Oscar lineup of directorial nominations. This time around, four of the five nominees for the DGA Award and the Achievement in Directing Oscar are in sync: Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman, Richard Linklater for Boyhood, and Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game. However, while Miller garnered the remaining Oscar nomination, the other DGA nod went to Clint Eastwood for American Sniper.
On the flip side, if Bennett Miller were to win the Best Director Oscar next month, he would be bucking DGA historical odds. Over the past 66 years, only seven times has the DGA Award winner not gone on to win the Oscar. The most recent instance came in 2013 when Ben Affleck won the DGA Award for Argo while Ang Lee earned the Oscar for Life of Pi.
Foxcatcher garnered a total of five Oscar nominations. In addition to Miller, the film’s other nominees were Steve Carell for Lead Actor, Mark Ruffalo for Best Supporting Actor, E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman for Original Screenplay, and Bill Corso and Dennis Liddiard for Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling.
Miller earlier shared with SHOOT in a Directors Series profile (10/17/14) his decision to cast Carell as multimillionaire John du Pont. Foxcatcher tells the real-life story of the strangely disconcerting and ultimately tragic relationship that develops among du Pont, Olympic wrestler Dave Schultz (Channing Tatum) and his brother, wrestler/coach Mark Schultz (Ruffalo).
Best known for his comedic touch, Carell would on the surface seem to be an odd bit of casting for the measured performance needed in Foxcatcher. “It’s counterintuitive,” acknowledged Miller regarding the casting of Carell. Yet when Carell’s name initially came up, Miller recalled, “It stopped me in my tracks. There was something about it that somehow made a lot of sense. Steve as a performer feels benign in the same way that du Pont feels benign–no one thought he could do what he did.”
Miller observed of Carell, “There’s a lot more to him than he shows the world. You don’t become a comic without having a secret store of hidden feelings. I started to think this might work when I went to have lunch with him. I found that he had done his homework. He knew quite a bit about du Pont. I saw the seriousness he had for the project and the role. There were certainly more obvious choices to play du Pont–actors who would be viewed as lower risks. But I felt that if this would work with Steve, the reward for the risk would bring the highest return.”
Miller is a two-time Best Director Oscar nominee, the first time having been for Capote in 2006. Capote also earned Miller a DGA Award nomination. (Miller is handled for commercials and branded content by production house Smuggler.)
Morten Tyldum
On the strength of The Imitation Game, Tyldum this week garnered his first career Best Director Oscar and DGA Award nominations.
The Imitation Game stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, a computer pioneer who broke the Nazis’ elaborate secret communication code, an accomplishment which Winston Churchill heralded as the single greatest contribution to helping to win World War II. Turing’s historic story is also a personal tale as he was a closeted gay man at a time when homosexuality was criminalized in the U.K. He was prosecuted for his sexual orientation and committed suicide in 1954.
The Imitation Game scored eight Oscar nominations, the others being for Best Picture, Best Leading Actor for Cumberbatch, Supporting Actress for Keira Knightley, William Goldenberg, ACE for Achievement in Film Editing, Alexandre Desplat for Original Music Score, production designer Maria Djurkovic and set decorator Tatiana Macdonald for Achievement in Production Design, and Graham Moore for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In an earlier installment of SHOOT’s The Road To Oscar, Tyldum discussed several of his collaborators on The Imitation Game. “I always wanted Benedict to play Alan Turing,” noted Tyldum, “For me he was the obvious choice. He went so deeply into Turing, he did so much research into how Alan’s mind worked, his speech being affected because his brain worked faster than his mouth. Alan was strong and driven yet so awkward and fragile. He was a young man who lost so much, who had layers and layers of secrets—and Benedict’s performance captured all of this.”
The story gave all those involved a sense of purpose—and for that matter was a prime catalyst for their involvement to begin with, observed Tyldum. “Everybody I asked said yes. For this small independent movie, we got all these incredible talents who wanted to be a part of it—William Goldenberg, one of the best editors in the world. Alexandre Desplat, an incredible composer who is so busy and so hard to get. I remember him telling me the story was inspiring and ‘I want to be a part of it.’”
Tyldum added, “I saw Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and was so impressed by [production designer] Maria Djurkovic’s work on that film. She came on board immediately. She is able to do wonders within a budget. Our film covered different stages in Alan’s life spanning the 1930s, 1940s and ‘50s. One of the many things I love about her approach is how smart she is about time periods. So many times you see a move from the 1960s and all you see is stuff from the ‘60s. Instead Maria noted that if you have a story set in the 1940s, you should see things in a room from the 1920s and 1930s. She is so precise, so dedicated. And her creation of Christopher, Turing’s code-breaking machine [a pre-cursor to the modern computer—Tyldum and Djurkovic traveled to Bletchley Park, the main venue for the UK’s Government Code and Cypher School, to see a reproduction of the original Christopher].”
Tyldum noted that the design of the machine in the film is based on the real Christopher “but Maria took some liberties. She helped to make it a living character in the movie.”
On another front, Tyldum told SHOOT that among his concerns was how to handle the film’s “lighter scenes that contained humor. There’s a delicate balance to get the right tone, the right mix of seriousness and humor. I didn’t want to make it too light. At the same time I wanted to reflect the humor of the characters, the complexity of the characters that created the humor. Alan Turing had a genuine wit and humor about him.”
(The January 30th print issue, concurrent SHOOT>e.dition and The SHOOT Dailies installment of The Road To Oscar series will feature interviews with several nominees, including the other three Oscar-nominated directors: Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel, Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman, and Richard Linklater for Boyhood,)
This is the 10th in a multi-part series with future installments of The Road To Oscar slated to run in the weekly SHOOT>e.dition, The SHOOT Dailies, SHOOT’s January print issue (and PDF version) and on SHOOTonline.com. The series will appear weekly through the Academy Awards. The Oscars will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2015 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood and will be televised live by the ABC Television Network.
(For information on SHOOT’s Academy Season “FYC Advertising” print, digital and email blast marketing opportunities, please visit https://www.shootonline.com/pdfs/RoadToOscar20142015)
Review: Writer-Directors Scott Beck and Bryan Wood’s “Heretic”
"Heretic" opens with an unusual table setter: Two young missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are discussing condoms and why some are labeled as large even though they're all pretty much a standard size. "What else do we believe because of marketing?" one asks the other.
That line will echo through the movie, a stimulating discussion of religion that emerges from a horror movie wrapper. Despite a second-half slide and feeling unbalanced, this is the rare movie that combines lots of squirting blood and elevated discussion of the ancient Egyptian god Horus.
Our two church members — played fiercely by Sophie Thatcher and Chloe East — are wandering around trying to covert souls when they knock on the door of a sweet-looking cottage. Its owner, Mr. Reed, offers a hearty "Good afternoon!" He welcomes them in, brings them drinks and promises a blueberry pie. He's also interested in learning more about the church. So far, so good.
Mr. Reed is, of course, if you've seen the poster, the baddie and he's played by Hugh Grant, who doesn't go the snarling, dead-eyed Hannibal Lecter route in "Heretic." Grant is the slightly bumbling, bashful and self-mocking character we fell in love with in "Four Weddings and a Funeral," but with a smear of menace. He gradually reveals that he actually knows quite a bit about the Mormon religion — and all religions.
"It's good to be religious," he says jauntily and promises his wife will join them soon, a requirement for the church. Homey touches in his home include a framed "Bless This Mess" needlepoint on a wall, but there are also oddities, like his lights are on a timer and there's metal in the walls and ceilings.
Writer-directors Scott Beck and Bryan Wood — who also... Read More