Singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane (pictured) wrote "The Ambassador," a song cycle inspired by architectural landmarks around L.A.; Yann Demange's new film is set in amidst the violent Northern Ireland conflict known as The Troubles; a new study concludes that watching even just one film can immediately change our minds about a topic as charged and complicated as politics.
Yann Demange 'steals' inspiration from John Carpenter for debut film about the '71 Troubles
Yann Demange is a half-French, half-Algerian, London-based director who, after years of working in the commercial and television world, is poised to break out in the U.S. with his first feature film, "'71."
The movie tells the story of a young British soldier, played by Jack O'Connell, who's caught behind enemy lines during The Troubles.
The Troubles is the common name for the multifaceted, violent conflict in Northern Ireland that took place between Unionists — those who wanted Northern Ireland to remain a part of the United Kingdom — and Irish nationalists, who strove for a united Ireland. O'Connell's character must find a way back to his fellow soldiers in a life-or-death environment, where it's difficult to differentiate friend from foe.
When Demange stopped by The Frame studios, he spoke about casting Jack O'Connell in the lead role, how the films of John Carpenter heavily influenced "'71," and how he found a nine-year-old scene-stealing actor in a boxing gym.
Interview Highlights:
How would you describe this film to someone who hasn't seen it?
One could call it "Apocalypto in Belfast" if they wanted to be reductive. But you can enjoy it on a very visceral level. It's an experiential film, a genre movie, but it's about young boys and children growing up in conflict. It's about civil war, sectarian violence...it's about many things.
As you were developing the script, you made a choice about making Jack O'Connell's character an orphan. Why was it important that he was an orphan with a brother?
I loved the screenplay [by Gregory Burke]. I connected to it straightaway. It really felt like it transcended the specificity of the Troubles and it had a universality that was almost contemporary. You could be talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine; it really identifies a pattern in human behavior that, unfortunately, perpetually repeats itself.
I felt that we had a real passive character at the heart of this story, and I thought that introducing his younger brother would really help the audience to root for him, knowing that he has a child that he's responsible for.
One of the themes is about belonging: belonging to a tribe, belonging to a family. I thought it would really help to push that theme if he didn't have a family. So he and his younger brother were from an orphanage, because I think the army often preys on these kids that are seeking a sense of the paternal, a sense of tribe, a sense of belonging, a sense of family.
They desperately need that anchoring, and an army's there with open arms and says, We're your family now. But there's a terrible betrayal that takes place when they're quick to sacrifice these boys in dirty conflicts when no one really knows what's going on.
Most people might know Jack O'Connell from playing Louis Zamperini in "Unbroken." How did you go about finding him, and why was he so perfect for this role?
Jack O'Connell has an old school masculinity that you don't really see much nowadays, and it's not affected. He grew up wanting to be a soccer player or to join the army. He understood this character more than anybody I'd met. He was 23 years old and he was on the cusp on manhood trying to figure out the man he wants to be. So there was this vulnerability to him.
And he has felt pain. He lost a parent, and he comes from a very Catholic family — actually, very Irish Catholic family — so for him it was a big responsibility to put on the British uniform. We spoke a lot about what the film was about, so he really engaged on many levels. And apart from all that, he's a star. What do I mean by that? He can hold a silent moment, he understands the camera, and he understands: Show, don't tell. He doesn't need the crutch of dialogue. He's got a charisma that shines through.
We should also talk about Corey McKinley, a nine-year-old boy that helps O'Connell's character when he's caught behind enemy lines.
I'm so pleased you mentioned Corey McKinley. We found him in a boxing gym. It's happened to me a couple times over my career, where you cast an unknown actor. And every time he was on set you could hear a pin drop. Everyone was completely in love with this kid.
He's just got a charisma, a kind of self-awareness and body-awareness that's unparalleled for anyone his age that I've met. We didn't even rehearse — between takes, we'd box. He's a boxer, and we'd have him on the pads to keep him in that dominant space. Do you see that walk he has? He looks like he's about to go in the ring, it's like fight night. He's an amazing kid, and he's thriving now — he's got an agent in L.A. [laughs]
This Q&A is an excerpt from the interview. Listen to the audio for more!
Also, if you want EVEN MORE, we posted the complete interview here:
Gabriel Kahane's 'The Ambassador' is LA history in a song cycle
Los Angeles has inspired many musicians to write songs about the city, but singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane has gone above and beyond — he decided to make an entire album dedicated to the architecture and landmarks that have made this city famous.
The album, titled "The Ambassador," has a track list that reads more like a tourist map. The song titles — including “Griffith Park,” “Union Station” and the title track about the former mid-city hotel — are each accompanied by the corresponding street address.
When Kahane visited us at The Frame, host John Horn asked about his relationship to Los Angeles, the multimedia nature of the live production of the album, and how he went about writing songs about restaurants.
Interview Highlights:
If you were deciding, would this show be reviewed by a theater critic, a music critic, an architecture critic or a film critic? You get to pick, who are you sending to review your own show?
[laughs] It's funny that you bring that up, because when we did the premiere at BAM [the Brooklyn Academy of Music], we agonized over whether it should be reviewed by a music or a theater critic.
I had gone to the length of collaborating with these fantastic theater artists — John Tiffany, who directed "Once," and Christine Jones, the designer behind "American Idiot" and "Spring Awakening," among other things — and it felt like we were trying to explode the notion of what a concert is and to take away the crutch of direct address [to the audience], which normally I lean on quite heavily. I'm chatty with the audience, as I'm chatty with you now. [laughs]
Without spoiling it, we should describe what the show looks like and how it's presented when it's staged.
Christine Jones' conceit for the design is stacks of books, a reel-to-reel player, an old '90s boom box, and so on and so forth. It's this idea that emerged for her out of the first day of our workshop, where, apparently, before I introduced myself to anyone, I brought five huge bags of books and I said, "These are my books." Before saying, "Hi, my name is Gabriel." [laughs]
She later disclosed to me that when she works with musicians, she's really just trying to look inside the artist and evoke what comes to her, but I think that in a more abstract sense, her design puts on stage the question of how cultural artifacts relate to place, and how we think of place, how memory operates, and how cultural artifacts triangulate with place and memory.
But that's almost the creative inspiration for the work itself.
It is, yeah, which is why I think it's a good design. [laughs]
Did you initially imagine this as a musical composition or a theatrical stage work? What was the chicken and what was the egg?
This is a weird situation in which the chicken and egg arrived at precisely the same moment. I was commissioned by BAM and then UCLA quickly came on board. And shortly thereafter Sony Masterworks courted me to make some records for them, so I realized that there was an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
I had been spending a lot of time in L.A. and I knew that I wanted to make a piece to wrestle with the pathos and the ache that I experience in this city. This is a city that I've grown to really love, despite having lived on the East Coast and then Northern California, where you're supposed to hate L.A. Beginning in my mid-20s, I started spending more and more time here and just totally fell in love.
I'd like to talk about the 1991 killing of the black teen, Latasha Harlins, which is the basis of the song "Empire Liquor Mart." Her shooting death and the light sentence — probation given to the Korean liquor store owner who shot her in the back of the head — inspired songs by Tupac and Ice Cube. What does her death mean to you?
Unfortunately it's part of a pattern that continues. I wrote this song eight months before the Michael Brown shooting and maybe a year-and-a-half after the Trayvon Martin shooting. And I think that on a certain musico-literary level — and I feel a little bit ashamed to be talking about someone's life in that context — but this project for me was trying to get a handle on how I felt about Los Angeles and why Los Angeles affects me the way that it does. That song began as a sort of prose just about what is the experience. If I want to imagine an afterlife, what is the experience of this girl from the moment that she dies?
Because the song is written from the girl's perspective.
Yeah. The French philosopher Baudrillard said this thing about how Los Angeles is best viewed from a jet at night. And then I read elsewhere that to see during the riots from above — coming in to LAX — to see both the fires and the lights of the city was one of the most spectacular views one could ever have. And then I began to imagine that as Latasha ascends to some sort of afterlife that the only salvation in this otherwise totally senseless death was the idea that she gets to see this incredible spectacle as the city is unraveling and eating itself.
There's a sadness to that song. There's a wistfulness to some other songs. In "Villains" you write, Who needs history? Was history ever any good? In "Ambassador Hotel" you say, The Ambassador has been bleeding out and now they've let her die. And yet, so much of Los Angeles right now — "Union Station" and "Griffith Park," which you write about — are both being preserved and being celebrated. So are you optimistic about architecture and preservation in Los Angeles? Is this album and stage piece celebrating those buildings and their future?
Yeah, I think I am optimistic. I think that there's a current of melancholy that just runs through a lot of what I do and I think that it would be a mistake to read this record as throwing shade at Los Angeles. I think it's quite the opposite. I think it's a love letter to the city.
Gabriel Kahane will perform "The Ambassador" Feb. 27-28 at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.