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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Director Mike Figgis talks about putting his troupe of actors through the rigors in his four-films-in-one marvel, "Time Code."
May 11, 2000 | Mike Figgis' one unequivocal critical and financial success, "Leaving Las Vegas," was not the work of a play-it-safe temperament. This musician, composer and former stage director has always tried to bend his adopted medium to the beat of his distinctive, sometimes perverse drummer. Figgis has never gone farther out than he has in his new "Time Code," and not just because it's a Tinseltown tell-all comedy-drama.
Think of it as an avant-garde narrative version of "Hollywood Squares" -- or simply "Hollywood Rectangles." In its unique blend of a multitasking screen and ruthless, real-time storytelling, the movie is challenging in many ways: "Time Code" unspools as essentially four different movies -- the action is played out on a screen that's split into quadrants. Each of these quadrants tells a different part of the same story, with the shifts in the level of each screen's soundtrack nudging your attention from frame to frame. Making this all work put astonishing demands on the director, crew and cast: The action was recorded simultaneously in 93-minute takes on four digital video cameras and synched without editing. Figgis put his team through these rigors 15 times before he was satisfied.
Add the theatrical daring of two dozen actors -- from Holly Hunter, Salma Hayek and Jeanne Tripplehorn to Stellan Skarsgerd and Saffron Burrows -- improvising within the director's outlines, and what you get is a project that doesn't lack for audacity.
Does it lack anything else? Maybe heft and affect. I found "Time Code" engaging from moment to moment, largely as a humorous game. But the spine is a satiric, off-the-cuff exaggeration of movie-world emotions that are either evanescent or overblown. Skarsgerd is the grandly self-pitying co-founder of a mini-major production company; Burrows, his down-in-the-mouth wife; the ever-alluring Hayek, an aspiring actress; Tripplehorn, her wealthy lover; and Hunter, one of the shallow top executives in a conference room that's loaded with them. Tripplehorn, playing the only character (as far as I can tell) not directly connected to Hollywood, delivers the most compelling performance: For me, the others function to put her genuine expressions of jealousy and rage into stark relief. About 15 years ago, a Los Angeles friend began referring to "contact anxiety." That's what most of these folks have, too.
The best continuing book series on filmmaking today (and perhaps ever) is "Projections," put out by Faber and Faber. Figgis, the guest editor of "Projections 10," makes a provocative, blessedly frank contribution to the series; after I read it, "Time Code" took on new and deeper meaning for me. In a way, it's a combination script and prospectus for Figgis' new movie: The bulk of it is 28 interviews (conducted also for Channel Four, the British TV network) with Hollywood filmmakers, performers and production executives -- and, yes, one critic, the Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan.
Figgis' questions are full of sympathy for the plight of the artist in an age governed not by old-time gambling and personality, but by fear and calculation. They also convey the hope that new technologies will engender fresh possibilities. So peruse "Projections 10" and then see "Time Code." And read this talk with Figgis, conducted before a screening of his film at a San Francisco megaplex.
I would guess "Time Code" relates not just to your interest in new technology, but also in working as closely as you can with actors in filmed theater like "The Browning Version" and "Miss Julie."
I like to find musical analogies, and really, the state of cinema, up to the present, is almost like a 19th century idea of orchestras. There's the composer, and the benefactor -- that would be the studio -- and the filmmaking community, which is like a highly proficient orchestra of people whose job is to reproduce, as clinically accurately as possible, what has been written down.
But then you think about American music -- and obviously jazz -- and one of the great things about jazz, whether you like jazz or you don't like jazz, is that it represents the liberation of the musician as an individual, as an artist, away from the idea of repressing the individual into an ensemble, or an orchestra, under a conductor. To the point where some of the greatest figures in jazz, like Charlie Parker and Armstrong and Coltrane, emerge as the American artists of the 20th century. And yet, where we do revere our actors, they're almost like opera singers, in the sense that at their peak they do turn up and do very dependable jobs, of very high quality; they're divas, basically, and they get paid as divas.
So the idea is to liberate actors away from the diva system and away from the orchestra system. Finding techniques that support the concept that they would take more responsibility for their own work. Simple things like longer takes, and smaller crews, and lower production values -- all these things instinctively do liberate them, and then one becomes less like a conductor and more like a catalyst. And I'm always amazed by how, in my opinion, the quality goes up. And, for an audience, how exciting that is.
Actors fall into categories, don't they? There are actors who are addicted to the kind of nourishment that comes from the studio system. They're pampered, highly paid, over-revered; they're led to believe that they somehow occupy a higher ground in the culture -- for what reason I don't know, other than physical affection. When given the opportunity to jump ship, some of them say yes, and some say no. Some of them definitely get nervous.
Often they're nervous because their support groups -- their managers, their agents -- get terrified. Ten percent of the money I offer actors is not something [a manager or an agent] can retire on. We can never get away from the reality that these are golden-egg-laying geese, who represent total financial security for their personal industries. Politically it's complex; often, you find an actor who says, "I didn't know you wanted me for this project." And I say, "Didn't your manager tell you?" Of course he didn't, because I'm asking the actor to work for scale -- that's of no interest for the manager.
In any kind of ensemble, you find there are certain performers whose ego will push them to the front -- "I'm a tenor saxophone player and I can solo on top of this." Others come to play bass or drums, or do riffs. In the process of shooting something 15 times, you come quickly to see who defines themselves in this way, you know? There are natural brilliant solo talents -- Holly Hunter, Steven Weber, Salma Hayek. Jeanne Tripplehorn does this amazing silent movie all by herself. And all these different personalities emerge.
I always thought an interesting and unique musician, in terms of what we are talking about, was Charles Mingus. He was a bass player, so he was at the back, driving everything, and he came up with these complex structures that had specific timing, and so on, and then, essentially, long periods of improvisation, I think "Time Code" is a little like that. There are complex technical things within it, but once you master those it's really up to each actor's talent to interpret.
