Short and Long-Form Projects Informing One Another
By Robert Goldrich
The feature filmography of director Scott Hicks is most impressive, among the highlights being best picture, director and screenplay Oscar nominations for Shine, the lauded Snow Falling On Cedars, and the recently released, critically acclaimed The Boys Are Back starring Clive Owen.
Clearly Hicks’ experiences on each theatrical motion picture have informed the next over the years but that is only one dynamic contributing to his artistry, reflected in the adept, truthful manner in which he maintains an emotionally resonant story in The Boys Are Back without falling into the trap of contrivance or sentimentality.
The film addresses the devastating aftermath of divorce and early death on a family as Owen’s character deals with becoming a single parent, somehow retaining a measure of likability even while profoundly flawed in the way he raises his children.
The believability and delicate emotional balance attained by Hicks in the film stem in part from the director’s involvement in capturing intimate profiles in his documentary work and the discipline of his commercialmaking experience. Both Hicks’ spot endeavors and his most recent documentary have come through Independent Media, the production house headed by executive producer Susanne Preissler.
The alluded to documentary is Glass: A Portrait of Philip In 12 Parts, which was produced by Independent Media in tandem with Shine’s Mandalay Motion Pictures Ppy. Ltd., and in association with KojoPictures.
Glass is an intimate look at the prolific, acclaimed music composer Philip Glass whose work spans varied artistic forms. Though he hadn’t originally planned on operating the camera for the documentary, Hicks wound up doing so. The value of this hit home when he briefly went with a full crew as originally planned–a separate DP, grips, gaffers and accompanying paraphernalia.
“I could see that suddenly this was becoming a much more formal event,” recalled Hicks, “and I was losing the camera’s intimacy with Philip. By scaling back to just me with Philip, he began talking and acting as if the camera wasn’t there at all.”
This intimacy is now found in the narrative underpinning of The Boys Are Back. “When you shoot a documentary, you don’t control everything that is happening,” said Hicks. “So when events unfold, you get it or you don’t. I like to infuse movie sets I work on with some of that same sense of urgency, particularly for The Boys Are Back where we worked with a very young child who is not a trained actor. While there was no acting experience, he has a great capacity for stepping in front of the camera and telling the truth. It’s important to capture that feeling, which is fresh and new, from him very early on because he’s not equipped to do it over and over again.
“You have to shoot the work as if it’s really happening like a documentary,” Hicks continued. “That informed the way I set out to shoot The Boys Are Back, working closely with cinematographer Greig Fraser. Greig understood I wanted to be very nimble on my feet. We were ready to roll the very second this child walked onto the set while not putting constraints on the youngster–we were just prepared to follow him in whatever direction he went. I encouraged Greig to think along those documentary lines.”
Hicks similarly hearkened back to an Independent Media-produced AT&T spot assignment he directed a few years ago which involved capturing the essence of a young girl.
“We ended up,” related Hicks, “doing a piece of her dialogue in fifteen minutes, which meant everything had to be ready on our part–the set, the background, the mood and tone–before you bring the child in and put her in the best position to be her delightful and real self.”
There was also a memorable series of automotive safety-focused commercials Hicks directed for Audi, one of which featured a young man cuddling a baby in his arms. The young father says straight to the camera that today he will get into a car accident, a moving declaration that underscores the importance of the safety issue.
“My hope all along was simply to capture that little moment of action that really happens between a father and his baby,” related Hicks. “Robert Richardson was the DP who is just a wonder to work with. He shot Snow Falling On Cedars for me and we’ve done quite a few commercials together. Robert is a perfect example of someone who works closely with you to capture the unexpected. There have been times when I’m setting up the action and can see that he’s already started rolling and getting in gear. I can see where his camera is heading and I start directing the actors. And when I see where he’s going, I know it’s important that I do everything I can in order to make sure it’s happening by the time he gets there.”
Hicks credited Independent Media’s Preissler with introducing him to the commercialmaking world.
“It’s been a great relationship over the past eight or nine years,” he assessed. “It’s a relationship we then took into the long-form world with A Portrait of Philip, a film that simply would not have been possible without Susanne and Independent Media. She was totally committed to the project and instrumental in it all coming together.”
These filmmaking experiences, observed Hicks, enabled him to bring that much more to The Boys Are Back.
Conversely his latest feature will help to inform his commercials and documentaries down the road. “The different disciplines are a healthy mix of influences,” he affirmed.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More