Mark
Pellington is the director of ARLINGTON ROAD (1998), THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES (2002), HENRY POOLE IS HERE (2008), I MELT WITH YOU (2011) and THE LAST WORD (2017). Getting his start in MTV,
Pellington was responsible for such exciting, innovative music videos as U2's 'One' and Pearl Jam's 'Jeremy', amongst many
others. He is also an in-demand director of TV pilots, and executive produces the hit series Blindspot. Pellington directs short films and
documentaries as well. His new film NOSTALGIA is a moving meditation on loss and our relationship to objects, and boasts an amazing cast that includes Jon Hamm, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Catherine Keener, Patton Oswalt and John Ortiz. I spoke to Pellington about how he got the initial idea for the film, collaborating with Alex Ross Perry on the screenplay, how personal the film is, the influences on the film, and working with the actors.
I've always had a lot
of interest in memory and identity and mortality. I specifically read
an article in the New York Times titled 'What is Nostalgia Good
For?'' that I found really interesting. I put it away in a file
thinking it could be the idea for a movie, but I had no idea what it
would be. I thought it might even be a book. When I decided it could
be a film, I contacted Alex Ross Perry because all of the ideas are
sentimental and I wanted a writer who wasn't sentimental. I'm
surprised that some of the reviews have bashed the film for being
sentimental, but that's okay. I was interested in exploring the
honest feelings of people going through loss.
When you got in touch with Perry
about collaborating, was having him direct it at all on your mind?
No, it was always for
me to direct. He had written things for other people, like CHRISTOPHER ROBIN for Disney, and he was a fan of I MELT WITH YOU. It was an
assignment and a place for him to make some money pretty quickly
whilst exploring themes that he was interested in. He could also
create the structure on his own. I wasn't asking him to stick to some
tight Hollywood system – it was fairly freeform in structure. He
had a lot of creative freedom in that very little changed from what
he wrote and what I made. As the producer I could have changed a lot
if I had wanted. He's a very specific voice and I love his writing.
When he delivered his draft, it attracted a lot of the actors.
It's personal, but it's
not autobiographical. My brother was the primary one who dealt with
my mother when she was moving out of the house to live in a
retirement community, but I have personally gone through my family's
possessions with siblings like the characters in the movie. My house was
also destroyed by a fire. I've had a lot of friends who have gone
through the experiences you see in the movie. I felt nobody was
making a movie about these things. I wanted to make a film that was driven by
the emotions of the characters rather than the plot.
At what point did you
come up with the color motifs that occasionally wash over the screen
and separate the stories?
It was during editing.
I've never seen a simple transitional device in a movie, and I wanted
it to be like the spaces between songs on an album, and to hear a bit of
distortion and analogue sound. I wanted the color to represent a
transition between different states of mind or subconscious states,
or different ways of experiencing something, and then have the intertitles
cut to black.
I did a Q and A where
there was a woman who said she found the motifs terrible. It's very
interesting how polarising the response has been to the film. It's
kind of like the reception to I MELT WITH YOU. There's very little in
between - people either really like it or really hate it. Although I
have to say more people like NOSTALGIA than they did I MELT WITH YOU.
There are those that say the film is sentimental, manipulative and a
tearjerker. I was positively trying to not make a film like that. I
really was. Every story in the film is about loss. I'm not trying to
hide that. It's meant to be a meditation on loss, and an analysis on,
ultimately, the relationship between objects and death.
I felt watching the
film that it was obviously made by people who had lost people. It
didn't have a Hollywood-style representation of grief. It felt very
real and the emotions convincingly ambivalent.
I've experienced the
loss of my parents and my wife, and the grief goes through different
stages. I was on a plane last night, coming home from New York where
I was prepping a TV pilot that I am getting ready to do, and I
watched MILLION DOLLAR BABY (2004), the Clint Eastwood film. I don't know
how I missed it, but I had never seen it before. That movie is just
devastating. I was experiencing grief via that movie that I had not
felt in five or six years. It was so raw and so cleansing. For a good
45 minutes on the plane, in the dark, I cried and it was obviously
what I needed at that time. I was at that stage in my own grief. I
was reliving it all and accepting the losses that I had
experienced. I think this was felt through Ellen Burstyn's character
in NOSTALGIA where the house fire really restimulates her grief, yet
at the end she kind of had to let it go. Giving up the baseball was a
big part of her accepting that. Like she tells Jon Hamm in the film,
her selling him the baseball will mean nothing to him, but everything to her.
Alex really explored
all these layers in his writing. It's not traditional storytelling. It's a sad film, and structurally it doesn't have cause and effect
or a plot, which is what audiences expect. But if you watch the movie
for what it is, you can certainly appreciate it for its intent and
get more out of it and be affected. It's the kind of experience where
what people get out of it is based on what they have gone through in their
own lives.
I find it interesting that you mentioned being influenced by Clint Eastwood, since I felt your directing style on the picture recalled his style. There were not many cuts in the dialogue scenes, and you let scenes run long. I thought the longer scenes helped portray the awkwardness of people talking about, and dealing with, loss.
I find it interesting that you mentioned being influenced by Clint Eastwood, since I felt your directing style on the picture recalled his style. There were not many cuts in the dialogue scenes, and you let scenes run long. I thought the longer scenes helped portray the awkwardness of people talking about, and dealing with, loss.
That was very
conscious. I think the movie I was most inspired by the most was
Michael Haneke's AMOUR (2012). I like him a lot. I thought I would just make
something really simple and very still, and have confidence in the
composition and in the actors. In retrospect, I would have used even
less music. If I had the chance to go back in again, I would remove
three more cues I think.
You assembled an
amazing cast of veterans and younger actors who have all had their
own experiences dealing with loss I would imagine. Did you have any
interesting conversations with the cast about loss?
I had more
conversations with Bruce Dern because we had more time on his shoot.
When I met Jon Hamm I found out he had lost his parents at early
ages, so he had a very particular perspective on loss. When I first
texted Catherine Keener after she first read the script, she was only
two weeks out from having lost her Dad. So her doing the sobbing in
the movie was very personal and unique to her. I didn't really get
into much personal history with Ellen Burstyn because she flew in
from New York, and I only met her the day before we shot. We didn't
really have a lot of time together. But she's such a lovely, lovely
woman. Amber Tamblyn was someone I already knew, so we had spent some
time together previously. Each actor read the script, responded to
it, and decided to join on.
What was it about Jon
Hamm that made you want to cast him? I feel he's a very underrated
actor, even considering his acclaim on Mad Men. He's terrific in the
film.
I agree that he's
underrated. I wanted someone who was charismatic. We sent it to him
through his agent Chris Andrews, who had been very helpful on I MELT
WITH YOU. I knew that he had a lot of clients. I asked him if he
wanted to play the insurance adjuster because at the time I felt that
that was the bigger role, but he said he wanted to play the
memorabilia guy.
Was making the film a
cathartic experience for you?
Every film I have made
has been cathartic. I finished it in the summer of last year, so it's
been a while, and watching it again it brought up the shooting and
certainly the editing of it. Once a picture is locked, I tend to
drift away from it, but it was definitely cathartic. I am very glad I
made it.
Do you think it
changed you as a filmmaker at all? Are your films from now on going
to be any different?
I doubt that the next
film I do will be slow and personal like the last four films have
been on some level. I think I want to do a bigger movie, a genre
movie, next. Making films that are so connected to me can be a little
draining, and they are harder to get made too.
Do you hope that the
film will have a healing effect on audience members who are wrestling
with similar issues to the characters?
I would love that. I've
definitely had that reaction from certain people. I hope it helps
people reflect, to see themselves more clearly and have somewhere to
put their pain.
Did you feel there was
a resistance to getting the film made and difficulties getting a
distribution deal given the subject matter deals with death?
Absolutely. 100%. It
was difficult, even though we had a great ensemble cast. I wrote a
note to the head of Bleecker Street thanking him for distributing the
film. When I started thinking about a marketing model, I thought the
worst case scenario was that a company like IFC or Magnolia would put
it out in four theaters and then onto VOD, and Bleecker Street are
putting it out to 70 cities in something like 150 theaters. I'm very
happy with that. The spandex movies gobble up everything else.
Do you think you could
have made this film at any other point in your life or career?
I feel like my last
four films - HENRY POOLE IS HERE, I MELT WITH YOU, THE LAST WORD and
now NOSTALGIA - are all personal films that signpost where I was at
that time in my life, the same way that my music videos are. I'm
currently working now on a project that might be a silent film about
a photograph. The challenge is to tell a story completely visually
and do it on a lower budget.
In your recent films
you've got to work with older veteran actors like Shirley Maclaine,
Phillip Baker Hall, Ellen Burstyn and Bruce Dern. What has been the
most rewarding aspect of that for you?
They're so experienced.
They have so many stories and I have so much respect for them as
humans. They bring so much craft to their work. They're just so good.
It's like watching musicians. They do still need and want direction,
maybe a little less. Mostly I just leave them alone. In the final
scene of NOSTALGIA, the young actress, Mikey Madison, was completely
in the zone and I barely had to speak with her. She was in the zone
from the moment I cast her. Even critics of the film still say the
performances are good. It's the least I've directed actors on a film
ever. I only had to guide the actors, but not much.
Compared to your
previous films, how do you feel about the critical response to the
film?
I've just accepted that
I am not a critical darling. I've got my fans and there are certain
critics who just don't dig my work. I think my work is always
different and some people appreciate that, like the way a band will
put out different kinds of albums and their fans will appreciate
them. Others just like certain things you've done. I don't think
people in the industry care that much. After the response to I MELT
WITH YOU, I wondered if I would ever work again, but I've gotten work
based off of ARLINGTON ROAD or a success I've had on TV or whatever.
The studios don't see some of these films that have polarising or
negative receptions. I think people appreciate that I make different
kinds of movies, some of them personal, and that I work with good
actors.
NOSTALGIA is on limited release now, and will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on May 1st, and digitally around that time.
Part one of MiL's interview with Pellington on his previous films.
Pellington's website.
Interview by Paul Rowlands. Copyright © Paul Rowlands, 2018. All rights reserved.
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