"Still Dreaming" follows a group of retired actors who mount a Shakespeare play; Netflix pulls its movies from the Cannes Film Festival in a disagreement over screening policy; composer and producer Gustavo Santaolalla returns to the concert stage.
'Still Dreaming' shows a retirement home's quest to put on Shakespeare
Stories about older adults are hard to come by in Hollywood. A movie that honestly portrays some of the harsh realities of aging is even rarer.
The new documentary, "Still Dreaming," is an example of that rare kind of film. Beyond that, it's also an incredibly uplifting story about the power of creativity.
The film follows a group of seniors putting on a production of Shakespeare’s "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." They’re all residents of The Lillian Booth Actor’s Home, an assisted-living facility in Englewood, New Jersey.
While some of the residents are new to acting, others are seasoned professionals, albeit long-retired. Aideen O’Kelly, who’s featured in the film, was in “Othello” with James Earl Jones. Another resident, Charlotte Fairchild (in the video above playing "Puck") was Angela Lansbury’s understudy in “Mame.”
"Still Dreaming" begins as two founders of the New York-based Fiasco Theater company, Ben Steinfeld and Noah Brody, are brought on to co-direct the play with an ambitious six-week production schedule. Several challenges crop up along the way, but the production ends up having a revitalizing effect on the entire retirement home.
The documentary is directed by filmmakers (and husband and wife) Hank Rogerson and Jillan Spitzmiller. They made a similar documentary in 2005 called “Shakespeare Behind Bars,” about a staging of “The Tempest” in a maximum-security prison.
The Frame host John Horn spoke with Rogerson and Spitzmiller about "Still Dreaming," which airs April 14 on PBS SoCal.
Interview highlights:
Jillan Spitzmiller on the idea of creativity as a "life force":
I think what the film reveals is the importance and the power of creativity and of creative engagement. And [someone like] Aideen [O'Kelly], she's still so in touch with that, she still knows that creative force is life force for her. And she's put it aside and misses it profoundly. I think the film is about that — it's about how creativity can help us get back in touch with our joy, with our meaning for life, with our purpose.
Hank Rogerson on why "A Midsummer Night's Dream," with its themes of confusion and mistaken identity, was a good fit for the setting and for these actors:
It actually became a better fit than we ever imagined. We thought with the themes of love that are very prevalent in 'Midsummer Night's Dream' that we'd go in and get all this sage advice about love, and that didn't really pan out at all. What really came forth was the confusion and the dreaming-versus-reality, and how in a room of people at any age — and, in particular in this instance, people in their 80s — that everyone is dealing with their own perception and everyone is dealing with their own reality ... And there's not only the themes of the play around confusion, there was the confusion of the residents as to, What are we doing? What are we aiming for? There was the confusion with Ben and Noah of what sort of production this would be. And I think for ourselves as storytellers, [confusion about], What exactly is this story we're trying to tell? I think where it all gelled for us was when we sort of embraced the confusion and it kind of made the story work in a way that we just weren't expecting.
Spitzmiller on the lessons that the retirement home staff brought to the film about taking every day as it comes:
It was an incredible thing to witness because we came in kind of as Ben and Noah did. We expected that the play begins, the rehearsal begins, it progresses and voila! — there's a fantastic production at the end. We had no idea how difficult a mountain every day would be to climb. But the staff doesn't look at it that way. They take it as it comes and that was such a beautiful lesson for all of us, to just meet each day with what it brings to you ... And, in the end, the product of the play was really irrelevant. It was the process, it was the day-to-day. Is this bringing us joy today or is this bringing us learning or is this bringing us community? Or is it getting us out of bed even? That's all that matters.
Gustavo Santaolalla's music travels from TV to film to the concert stage
If you listen to Mexico’s most famous rock band, Café Tacuba, you likely recognize Gustavo Santaolalla’s name as the group’s producer.
That’s just one of the dozens of Latin American bands he’s worked with. And if you saw the films “Babel” or “Brokeback Mountain,” you’ve heard the Oscar-winning soundtracks he composed. But you may not know his history as a musician and performer. He’s currently re-visiting that part of his career.
Santaolalla’s recording studio is in the hills of Echo Park. From the street, it looks like a normal 1950s ranch-style house. But just inside the entrance, there’s a wall with more than 50 covers of the albums he’s produced over the last few decades.
He walks in, singing a melody, and starts talking about the new album from his group, Bajofondo. The band plays contemporary music, re-inventing tango and other styles from Argentina, a region called Rio de la Plata. At first, he hesitates to tell me the name, but then…
“I’m going to say it. The album is called 'Aura.' Aura, for us, means the same thing [as] here ... the energy field that surrounds living things. But also in Argentinian, aura it’s like slang to say ahora — now.”
Santaolalla’s studio is called La Casa — The Home. This is where he’s recorded the bulk of his work as producer, composer, bandleader and solo artist.
“It’s impossible to count the amount of amazing music that has come out of this place and that has been created here," he says. "All major alternative Latin acts have done something here. All the music of the movies, at a certain point, most of it gets done here. So it’s very charged, the place.”
Before he came to Los Angeles, in the late 1970s, Santaolalla was in a couple of successful bands in Argentina. In the late '70s, when the military dictatorship ruled with an iron fist and things turned ugly, he moved here and formed a band called Wet Picnic.
Eventually, Santaolalla felt a different calling:
“I wanted to put my talent at the service of other people, instead of being so obsessed just with my project.”
Next, he went to Mexico City and saw the emergence of a rock scene that recalled what he lived in Argentina, in the late '60s and early '70s.
“It reminded me of that vibe, of that energy, that quality, that freshness, that innocence, that danger.”
Santaolalla recalls the first time he saw Café Tacuba. It was 1989, before he had his own record label.
“They were playing with cheap instruments, the sound was terrible, but they had something unbelievable. I thought, These guys are so unique! At the time I didn’t have [my own label], so when I saw a band that I liked I had, to go and convince a record label to sign them so I could produce the record. In this case, it took me almost two years to get Tacuba signed. [The labels]didn’t want to sign them.”
In the late '90s, Santaolalla was approached to work on the soundtrack of the first feature-length film by a Mexican director. Santaolalla was so busy producing bands he told his assistant to decline on his behalf. He had not read the script or seen any of the film. Then, something happened.
“That night, I woke up in the middle of the night and I started thinking, What if? What if he’s a genius?”
Santaolalla gave his assistant an urgent task.
“Call and tell them that if they come to Los Angeles and they show me the film, I will consider it. Sure enough, they came. We saw the first five minutes [and] I was like, I’m in, I'm doing this. Yes, it was amazing.”.
And that was how Santaolalla came to work on “Amores Perros” by Alejandro González Iñárritu.
Santaolalla followed that with the music for “The Motorcycle Diaries.” Then, “Brokeback Mountain,” which garnered his first Academy Award for original score. Then came a reunion with Iñárritu for “Babel,” and a second Oscar, followed by more than a dozen film and TV projects — and, of course, producing albums by many Latin alternative bands and his own, Bajofondo.
More recently, he’s been collaborating with songwriter Paul Williams on a musical version of Guillermo del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth.” And if that’s not enough, Santaolalla has also jumped into the world of video games, composing the music for the wildly popular “The Last of Us.” But one thing he’s been wanting to do for a while is to play his solo albums live.
“At this point in my life — I’m now 66 years old — I felt the need to look back at my life through my songs and through my music. This is basically a look at my songwriting since I was 15 to now.”
Before I leave Santaolalla’s studio I ask him to tell me about his work in the forthcoming season of the Netflix series, “Narcos.” Once again, he hesitates …
“…which is very exciting because …. ahhhh. I don’t think I can tell…”
But this much we know: the next season of “Narcos” is set in Mexico in the 1980s. Santaolalla says he can relate to the period. It’s the same time when he was in Mexico looking for the next rock band to produce.
Gustavo Santaolalla and Bajofondo perform on April 28 at Walt Disney Concert Hall.