Writer-director Jeff Baena turned a series of 14th-Century novellas set in a convent into a bawdy sex comedy; The Kronos Quartet is expanding the repertoire of contemporary music for string quartets; American movie studios benefit from taking on Chinese partners.
In Jeff Baena's 'The Little Hours,' 14th-century nuns are just like us
When director Jeff Baena's producer told him she had been looking for a film to shoot in Italian medieval villages, he had the perfect pitch.
It was for his latest movie, “The Little Hours,” a comedy that follows a group of mischievous nuns in a medieval convent. The cast features Baena's romantic partner Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, Kate Micucci, Paul Reiser, Adam Pally, Dave Franco and a plethora of cameos.
“I wanted to do something a little bit more feminine after my second movie, 'Joshy,' which was so masculine,” Baena said.
Turns out, making a film about nuns in the Middle Ages wasn't such a hard sell. Baena recalled:
“When I brought up this idea [for 'The Little Hours'] to my producer, she [said] one of the investors — who had previously invested in my first two movies — had been asking for years for people to shoot in these medieval villages that she has access to.”
A month later, Baena was in rural Tuscany scouting locations for “The Little Hours.”
Baena cast several actors in the film that he had worked with previously. He says he thinks of them as the “mother dough” for his movies.
When he visited The Frame, Baena talked about having actors who know his process can set the tone for the rest of the cast:
When you have new people coming in and you sort of want to show them the ropes, it's always easier to have people that know the process and are able to sort of just do their thing, and then everyone can kind of follow their lead. I find that really useful. Plus, who doesn't want to be around these people? I mean, Paul Reiser's one of the best people in the world. Adam Pally ... I love writing for him. And Aubrey's my girlfriend so it's a really great shortcut when you're making a movie to be able to around the person, because otherwise you'd be gone for like four five months and not get to see them. Plus, she's an amazing actress and I always want to work with her. I couldn't think of a better partner than her.
The screenplay of “The Little Hours” is based on a story in “The Decameron,” a collection of novellas by the Italian Renaissance writer Giovanni Boccaccio. Baena was intrigued by Boccaccio's depictions of life during the Middle Ages:
For us, when we think about the Middle Ages, it's sort of this rarefied, distant time that we have no connection to, especially if you grew up in America. Nuns or priests, it wasn't like a calling necessarily, it was almost like they were forced into it ... It was almost like this punishment ... like being in a prison. And the vast majority of women that were in these convents didn't want to be there. And a lot of times they were rebelling by doing crazy stuff. They were getting wild and getting drunk and having sex acts and getting busted all the time for this.
Boccaccio, he was kind of making light of the situation and just sort of how hypocritical this all was. And how vast of a difference between what we thought was going on and what really was going on just blew my mind, and I wanted to kind of highlight that.
Though the film is set in the Middle Ages in Italy, the characters speak in contemporary American English and obscenities are often involved. This was a deliberate choice for Baena:
Some people think the whole point of it is to have nuns talking like sailors. And for me it was less about that and more about just nuns talking like us ... My ultimate goal was to humanize these people, people that we think of as being something that we have no connection to ... They're just like us, just in a different time period with a different set of circumstances. Obviously minus the technology ... I just sort of figured the best way to kind of get through that is just have them speak in somewhat contemporary but non-slang language that we would relate to.
Even though it is a comedy, Baena aimed for realism and naturalism in the film. He says everything in the film is historically accurate — from production design to wardrobe. When it came to filming a particular scene involving nudity, Baena says it wasn't an issue:
I wasn't expecting that amount of nudity to be portrayed. I thought I would just have to figure out ways to shoot around it so it didn't look like I was avoiding nudity. When the performers arrived, they basically offered it ... It was sort of like a snowball where everyone kind of just was down with it, ultimately, because they believed in the movie and they wanted for it to achieve what it was trying to achieve.
Before directing his own films, Baena worked for director David O. Russell. He recalls a prophetic dream and experience he had during this time in his career:
I had this really weird dream where I was driving in a car and there was this big, white, sort of spherical motorcycle ... There was a little reflector light on the side of it and I clipped it. And just as I passed by it, I saw a cop and I was like, Oh god, I'm going to get a ticket for doing this. And then as I looked in my rearview mirror to see if this cop was going to pull me over, a green truck lost control and hit me from behind.
A couple days later, I was paying real close attention my driving, and I was at a stoplight and I looked in my rearview mirror and a green truck went out of control and hit me from behind. Just like in the dream. And there was all this dust in the air ... I told David, I told everyone about this dream, and everyone was like, I can't believe it — your dream came true! And David, for whatever reason, was just so fixated on this white motorcycle. And I'm like, What about the green truck?
Hours after the accident, Baena's almost could not open one eye because some dust from the accident got inside. Russell's then-wife, Janet Grillo, took Baena to the eye doctor and they discovered he had an ulcerated cornea. Baena says:
If I hadn't gone to the doctor, within minutes I could have actually lost my sight. And then we realized that the cap being knocked off the big white spherical thing was, like, my eyeball, and that little thing was like the ulcer. It was super insane.
Despite the harrowing experience, Baena continued to work in the film industry. He wrote several screenplays with Russell, including “I Heart Huckabees.” Baena says he learned a lot working with Russell:
When we were writing together it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I mean, he's such a genius and so smart. And being in your early 20s and working with someone who's established like that and has such a clear vision — I just learned so much from him.
We would sit side-by-side, sometimes being in a doctor's waiting room, wherever we would be we would just be constantly writing together. And I think we wrote four scripts together. And, yeah, he mentored me in terms of writing and, to some extent, directing. And I'm thankful for everything I learned. There's what you learn in school and then there's what you learned with someone like that, and there's no comparison.
To hear John Horn's interview with Jeff Baena, click on the player above.
Kronos helped turn the string quartet into a global art form
The Kronos Quartet has been performing for more than 40 years. The group has commissioned more than 900 original pieces from composers who include Terry Riley and Philip Glass, and have even played with rock stars such as Bowie and McCartney. They’ve also helped turn the string quartet into a global art form.
Seeing Kronos in concert is like seeing the Beatles or U2 of the classical world. Well ... it’s a little more subdued. A recent concert at the L.A. County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater attracted a fairly genteel crowd, with plenty of gray hair in the audience — although there was a nice mix of men and women, different races, and even some kids. But is there such a thing as a Kronos-head? Wayne Lecheminant from Glendale might qualify:
“The first recording I heard is Philip Glass’ Mishima String Quartets [from 1985]. And I listened to it constantly, probably for — without exaggeration, for probably six months, every day.
The Kronos Quartet is violinists David Harrington and John Sherba, violist Hank Dutt and cellist Sunny Yang.
Asked which Beatle each one is, Harrington laughed: “You know, the Beatles were such a great quartet, and part of the greatness was they each contributed something that the others didn’t have.”
The story of Kronos began when Harrington was 12-years-old, living in Seattle. He sent away for a recording of Beethoven’s Opus 127 string quartet after reading about it in a biography. Harrington recalls:
I kept putting it on and putting it on because the opening chords just did something to me. And I was playing in the Seattle Youth Symphony at the time. I called up another violinist, a violist, and a cellist — and I went down to the Seattle Public Library and checked out the music to Beethoven’s Opus 127. And a couple days later, we were playing it.
Some 10 or 11 years later, on the radio was the first recording ever made of ‘Black Angels’ by George Crumb. I realized, in order to play that music, I was going to have to get a group together that was really serious about itself, and would want to rehearse and spend a lot of time. And so that’s how Kronos started. And our first concert was in November of 1973.
My wife, Regan, came to that concert. She said, "How come there weren’t any women composers?" And it was like cold water in the face or something, because I didn’t know one single woman composer. And it’s taken many, many years, but at this moment right now, I can tell you that there are as many wonderful female composers writing for Kronos as male composers.
At the LACMA concert, Kronos performed a new piece, “Yessori (Sound from the Past),” by Korean composer Soo Yeon Lyuh. She joined the quartet on stage with her haegeum, a Korean two-string fiddle. It’s one of the 50 pieces Kronos has commissioned in its new "Fifty for the Future" initiative. Harrington explains:
"Fifty for the Future" is our attempt to hand the essence of our work to other groups, other musicians. Right now, you can go onto our website and you can download the scores and the parts, recordings, information about the music, interviews with the composers — music from Mali in Africa, from India, from China. We’re hoping that by the time all 50 pieces — 25 women composers, 25 men composers — when they’re all done, there will be this portrait, not only of Kronos, but kind of of the time that we’re all sharing right now.
Bands break up all the time. Harrington said he came close to walking away back in 2003, when the invasion of Iraq, combined with the birth of his granddaughter, made him question the value of what he was doing. Harrington remembers a conversation with the late historian Howard Zinn that turned things around:
One of the things he said is, Powerful people are actually afraid of artists. They’re afraid of music. Because it can change the way you see things, the way you feel about other people, the way you feel about life, and languages and religions and cultures.”
Harrington noted that the string quartet has become a worldwide language. “And if Kronos has had anything to do with that,” he said, “I’m incredibly proud.”