Sarah Silverman's career took a serious turn when she took on the lead role in "I Smile Back," and now she's getting award buzz; Phyllis Nagy worked for 18 years to adapt a Patricia Highsmith novel for the movie, "Carol"; composer and conductor Pierre Boulez had a long connection to the Ojai Music Festival.
Phyllis Nagy and the long road to writing 'Carol'
The film “Carol” centers on a love story between a young woman named Therése — played by Rooney Mara — and an older married woman named Carol, played by Cate Blanchett.
It’s set in New York in the 1950s and is based on the book “The Price of Salt” by Patricia Highsmith, which also was written in the ‘50s.
The screenplay for the film took 18 years to finish and screenwriter Phyllis Nagy says the long process taught her everything she needed to know about screenwriting — and some things she never wanted to learn.
The Frame's John Horn talks with Phyllis Nagy about the good and bad things about writing a screenplay for that long, her personal relationship to author Patricia Highsmith, and how she responds to the criticisms of the film.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
What were some of the positive things you learned from writing a screenplay for 18 years?
Generally, if you're not a writer who just produces a draft that's all over the place just to get it out, your first draft is very close to what something should be. Those are the things that turn up oddly 18 years later.
You have said that this experience taught you some things you wish you never had to learn. What are those?
Well, everybody who has kind of a tangential interest in the movie — no matter what the role is — has something to say, and I learned how to navigate all of that. And the best ways in which to do that are not to storm out of rooms or say, "You're an idiot," or any of those things that may or may not be true. What I did learn is that you have to do the work no matter what it is, and you have to waste time doing it and hope that people come to their senses, which generally people do. People aren't just morons. That's another nice thing I've learned.
"Carol" is based on the novel, "The Price of Salt," which was written by Patricia Highsmith. But the book was not published under her name. Could you tell us a little bit about the history of the book itself.
From what I understand, this was a book that she wrote after "Strangers on a Train," but before "The Talented Mr. Ripley." She was already successful from "Strangers on a Train," and she wrote this book in a sort of fever dream, as she put it, after seeing a fetching blonde in a department store. She wrote this book fairly quickly and her publisher was very reluctant to. Of course, they didn't have the word brand back then, but basically it was about her brand as a mystery writer.
They asked her if she would consider getting another publisher for this, which she did. I believe that publisher asked her to even publish it under a pseudonym, which was Claire Morgan. The book was actually a very nice success even at the time. It got good reviews and it surprised Patricia Highsmith over the years with how many lives it apparently changed.
You were able to meet Patricia Highsmith many years ago. What were the circumstances and how did your friendship develop from there?
I was working as a researcher for The New York Times magazine in the late '80s and the editors wanted to send a mystery writer to do a walking tour of Greenwood Cemetery where a lot of notorious gangsters and entertainment people are buried. I suggested Patricia Highsmith when their first choice wasn't available and she happened to be in New York on a book tour, and to our surprise she said yes.
So they sent me to accompany her to the cemetery. To this day, I'm not sure if it was a reward or a punishment, but it was something. So we had a very weird car ride to an incredibly gruesome tour of the crematorium and all of these awful things. At the end of which, Patricia produced a hip flask out of her jacket — this was about 11 a.m. — and said, "Oh, I don't know about you, but I need a drink," and held it out to me like a challenge. I took it, and from that moment on we became rather good friends over the next decade.
One thing that's notable about this film and screenplay is at no point do Carol and Therese say, This is a strange thing. What are we doing here? Which obviously is a very conscious decision on your part. Why did you make that choice?
Well, for one thing, the screenplay describes the act of falling in love and so does the film. I find that it's really truthful in human relationship that people don't sit around obsessing about the nature of their feelings. In the case of Therese and Carol, there's a lot of outside obstacles that they have to overcome. The thing that is pure, and that I felt absolutely had to remain pure in the script, is the lack of banal psychologizing about the state of being gay or indeed the state of being in love.
The book largely steers away from that, too. This is something that I chose to really honor. Although over the years, this is one of the areas where I was asked by several people, "Well, wouldn't there be some guilt?" And it was the one thing that I actually always refused to do.
For what reason?
This absolutely betrayed the intention of the source material. If we were to go off on a tangent, we might as well as write an original script. It's clear that this makes the material special.
This movie is loved by a lot of people, but there are critics who say that film is too patient and modest, but that could be some of the highest praise they could give you in some ways.
I get it. I don't think that all films have to be for everyone. I'm relieved when they're not because I do think that a general wash of acclaim means that you're really approaching mediocrity. I believe that. But what I would also say is that we've lost the ability to be patient with things and to value the kind of filmmaking that was once prized.
The films of Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder — all of those things are quite glacially paced in a lot of ways. I don't think that "Carol" is glacially paced, but it aims to be realistic in a way that's increasingly difficult to find. But I'm really glad that it was made in this way and I'll take the occasional group of people who militantly dislike it.
Phyllis Nagy is nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for the 2016 Writers Guild of America awards.
Sarah Silverman: '100 percent of comedians become funny as a means of survival'
It's not uncommon for comedians to hit it out of the park when they take on dramatic roles — think Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Murray — but that doesn't mean the transition isn't difficult.
When Sarah Silverman learned that she would be playing the self-destructive lead in "I Smile Back," she "collapsed on the bathroom floor" and had a "full-body panic attack."
Silverman has appeared in dramas before — she had a role in the 2011 film, "Take This Waltz" — but this movie was on another level. Adapted from the novel by Amy Koppelman, "I Smile Back" is a deeply serious story about a seemingly well-situated housewife, Laney, who cares about her family but struggles with mental illness, addiction, and self-destructive behaviors.
That is to say, Laney's drama — both internal and external — is the whole point of the movie.
So it was a challenge for Silverman, but one she lived up to. She's been nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role, and there's talk that she may be in the running for an Academy Award nomination, too.
It was, in fact, Silverman's trepidation at the role that convinced her she could understand Laney's character.
Sarah Silverman sat down with The Frame's John Horn to talk about the role, her own experiences with mental health issues, and why "keeping your overhead low" is the best path to creative freedom.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
This is a movie that you agreed to do based on Amy Koppelman’s novel of the same name that was published several years before the movie was made, correct? So there was an intervening period of time between when you were interested in doing this and when the movie was actually happening. In those intervening years, did it feel like this was always going to happen?
You know, I’ve been around a while and most movies don’t get made. Especially when the attached star is me, and it’s a drama. I was pretty fearless in connecting myself to it because it didn’t occur to me that it would get made. Then a few years later I got an email that said, We got the money! We’re going to make it! And I remember replying, “Yay!” and then just collapsing on my bathroom floor in a puddle of full-body panic attack.
Because you knew what this part required?
Yeah. And the unknown, I think, was probably the basis for the panic attack. It was just all unknown area for me.
I was completely panicked that I wasn’t going to do this well, that I was going to be a disappointment, that it was going to be a disaster, that it was going to be not in any way fun. In therapy they say that if you live in the past, that’s depression, and if you live in the future, that’s anxiety. And that’s why ideally we should be in the moment. And I was living in the future. And we all do, at some point. We tell ourselves horror stories. What if I can’t do this? What if I never fall in love again? What if I never write another joke? And in this case, What if I fail? I can’t do this. And then it did occur to me that Laney, this character, completely exists in that anxiety state. It made me realize that I do understand this character.
What did you understand about her that helped you understand how to play her?
I have my own experience and relationship with depression. And I’m also interested in it, which has been of great benefit to me. I’ve found a great therapist and I’ve learned a lot about myself and about it in general. So I felt like I had kind of the bones of that. I don’t think there is anyone who hasn’t been on one side or the other of depression, of addiction, and all these things. And I certainly have as well. I haven’t suffered from addiction but I consider myself embedded in it as a comedian.
Because people in that field tend to have higher rates of addiction, do you think?
Yeah. And also, the audience is often drunk and you deal with a lot of people who are not sober in various ways. And also, as comedians — I would venture to say that 100 percent of comedians become funny as a means of survival. And that’s kind of what makes us “Everyman” in a way, because everyone has had to survive childhood in some way.
“Survival” in terms of getting square with the world? Not survival as in putting bread on the table, but surviving as a person and understanding your relationship with the world, through comedy.
Everyone has had to figure out a way to get through childhood. Then, as adults, they still have those, quote-unquote, “skills.” And sometimes the healthiest thing is to try to unlearn those things. That’s, a lot of times, why comedians are afraid to go to therapy because what they learned to survive was to be funny. And they get afraid that they might not be funny if they investigate their own childhood and their own reasons for being certain ways.
I don’t feel that way. That said, I’ve been far from hilarious in this interview. So I could be wrong.
But there’s also part of a persona that you play as a comedian that is a little bit arrogant or self-centered.
Yes!
Which is a little bit consistent, without labeling Laney, in some ways, of what she is like in the world.
I love that. Because, on its surface you would see no similarities between this character and my comedy at all. But . . . we misunderstand self-hatred and self-loathing and self-deprecation as modesty. It’s not. It’s self-obsession. There’s no room for anything else.
And with Laney, she does have a lot of self-hatred, and she is consumed with anxiety that she’s going to destroy her kids. She’s going to abandon them, she’s going to ruin them — and there’s no room for anything else. Even though it comes out of a desperate worry. It has to become a self-fulfilled prophecy. There’s no room, even for hope. So, there were parallels for me, you know.
You’ve said that you “don’t have a big nut.” In other words, you’re not like Robert DeNiro, who has so many different mortgages and alimony payments to make that he has to do movies. You have the flexibility to choose things that are appealing to you and don’t have to plan things out. Is that what helps you be able to do a movie like this? That you have the freedom to do whatever moves you at that moment?
Well, yeah. One, I’ve never planned any kind of trajectory, for better or for worse. I’ve never thought about my career as a whole. But I keep my overhead incredibly low. I don’t like stuff. I live in a small apartment. I’ve got my car . . . The thought of having even a whole house is overwhelming to me. And I’m not saying that’s the way to go, but when I do give advice, when young women or people ask, I always say, Keep your overhead low. You can always be free, creatively, if you don’t owe anybody.
What do you need? You need a fancy purse? It’s a bag. It carries stuff. Get a backpack. You’re being ridiculous.
Does “I Smile Back” mean that you get different kinds of offers now? That the scripts you are sent are materially different now than they were a year ago?
Yeah. It is interesting . . . It’s so rare that anyone can imagine you as something they haven’t already seen you do. So the fact that Amy Koppelman heard me on Howard Stern and decided that I was Laney, was magic for me. And a great break, just such a lucky thing, because that’s so rare. And now that people have seen me do this, I’m getting scripts that are just this. [Laughter.]
Another person suffering from some sort of mental illness and addiction problem? You probably don’t want to go back there immediately.
Yeah, I don’t think I could do anything that bleak again . . . This was challenging for me.
"I Smile Back" will be released on DVD on Feb. 23.