In Possession A pair of literary sleuths, played by Gwyneth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart unearth the amorous secret of two Victorian poets, played by Jeremy Northham and Jennifer Ehle only to find themselves falling under a passionate spell. It is based on the Booker Award winning novel by A.S. Byatt..
Neil Labute is writer/director who made a powerful splash in 1997 with the film In the Company of Men and won numerous awards. Subsequently he made the similar themed Your Friends and Neighbors and then everyone did a double take when he did his first film that he did not writer Nurse Betty.
Possession is another leap forward for Labute in the fact hat it has real Oscar potential and deserves. His biting humor is still evident in the screenplay, which was written by him and Laura Jones.
This is his fourth screen collaboration with actor Aaron Eckhart and Labute himself is still a devout Mormon. Enjoy.
The website for the film is: www.possession-movie.com
Dan Epstein: Why did you pick Possession as your new movie?
Neil Labute: Well, I didn't do it in terms of "let me make myself more likable". I read the book ten years ago. Not right when it was a hit but it was one of those things I just picked up. It had won some big Booker prize. Being a grad student, a teacher and an anglophile, all the elements seemed interesting to me. It was a smart seductive read and it ended great. This movie hopefully ends great too, it was just lifted from the book [laughs]. I was really moved by the book and I hope it works.
When I got the chance to work on something other than what springs from my head I asked my agent, "Who has the rights to Possession?" Warner Bros had the rights for ten years. I went to them and said that I would really love to do it.
DE: Along with Bryan Singer [The Usual Suspects, X-Men] and David Fincher [Fight Club, Se7en], you are one of the directors, which reinvigorated the twist-ending genre in the mid-nineties, what appeals to you about it?
NL: I've done a lot of that in the theater as well. Not even so much as the twist ending but I like both as a viewer and a director, I like being redirected, mislead, challenged. I like to take people to where they think they are going and go someplace else. Surprises are a good thing. Birthday partiers are good and surprises in movies are great. I like the technique. Its a nice additional element. I don't want to be O. Henry either. I don't try to be more provocative than last time. I don't want to get into a routine of topping myself. I think that's dangerous because then you have no choice but to up the ante. The most provocative thing I think David Lynch could have done a few years ago was do a G-rated film for Disney [The Straight Story, released in 1999]. Not only was it a great film but it was truly provocative. It was shocking for me more so than someone's brains being knocked out.
DE: Do you think Possession will shock anyone?
NL: If it does I hope that it will shock people in a good way, the shock of the new. I don't think there's enough work of mine to call it a body of work let alone to say "Wow, its a real deviation from the past." Yeah, from the past three movies [laughs]. That's all I've done. It's only a momentary shift. I will continue to write the way I do. When something plops on my desk, the way Nurse Betty [starring Renee Zellweger, released in 2000] did. It came to me and I wanted to do it. For Possession I went after it. You never know where material will come from.
You have to be interested in a project for so long. In theater it's a much faster process, usually unless you have to wait for months to fit into a theater. Usually it's written, then you cast and put it on. It's a much different situation than developing a script, casting it, shooting the movie, postproduction, previews, scoring, then the release.
This film waited to be released. We finished and at the time USA films already had Gosford Park [directed by Robert Altman] ready to come out. Gosford Park did really well and carried over to March for the Oscars. They didn't want to put another period film out and be fighting themselves in a relatively limited market for period/romantic films.
It's still not an easy movie to market, even with Gwyneth in it. Then they wanted to go in the summer and counter program. Then Warner Bros, our very own partners came to us and said we'd like to bump the movie because we want to put out Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood that same day. So we either move or put it out together. That was the only film slated for the entire summer that might be competition. I'm not big on any movie thats built around an audience, chick flick or anything. So we blinked first because they had the monster marketing campaign so we had no choice but to move. Thankfully when the smoke clears when this movie comes out it will be a good time because this summer has been very profitable but filled with the usual kinds of noise that summer movies make. There hasn't been a lot of choices and certainly not a lot of romance film choices.. It's a crap shoot that things will go well and hopefully it will be nurtured so that it will be around a month from now because September still doesn't have anything quite like it. I don't know how I got to this answer exactly.
DE: The key to this movie seems to be the casting. It seemed kind of tricky. The couples are commenting on each other through the years.
NL: They do. The more intimate the relationship the more difficult the casting. You're asking people to do something more and more emotionally naked. That is something I haven't even done much of as a writer, which is to show the beginnings of relationships. The more unknown a partner is the more passionate they may feel but you're more passionate because of how little you know of them. You're sparked by the fear of not seeing them again.
Getting people into a comfortable place to portray that and be as emotionally honest as that takes is tough. I don't know that you can create chemistry. I could bring two actors together and say "You look like I thought they would look. But are you going to be able to look at each in a way that shows you are falling in love." I think I got lucky in terms of these four people. They really imbue those relationships with honest longing.
DE: What was Barry Levinson like as a producer?
NL: He wasn't really hands on in this case. Not that he wasn't ever there but he was doing Bandits [starring Bruce Willis and Cate Blanchett]. He was more available in post-production and previews phase. We talked about casting but it was mostly over the phone. I only really met him when we were in post-production.
He brings a director's eye. He's able to look at something, not just with fresh eyes, but he was someone who thinks in pictures far more than I do because he's been doing it longer. He would say things like "Why can't you just jump to this spot here because I know about it because you said it back here." It's obvious only when someone points it out. It's very specific and tangible things. Not just "Feels good, maybe you can take a couple of minutes out." Where would you suggest, off the back or front.
He was very specific so you appreciate someone who knows what they are talking about. Also like the best kind of teacher, he was not trying to say how he would do it. He would say, this is what you made, what you are trying to tell me and this how well you're doing it. Not "If I made Possession it would look like this." If anyone else made it, it would be different. So many people have taught me as a student that way and I think that is the most foolish kind of teaching that I've ever been around. I want to know how to fix what I am doing. He very easily could have used his influence as producer and Oscar winning director to be more influential than he had to be. He was interested in what I wanted to do.
DE: You said that you were an anglophile. What interests you about the Victorian era?
NL: I was very interested in the artists of that period. I hadn't seen a great deal of Pre-Raphaelites on film or it never got presented in the right way. It always interested me, kind of the bohemian lifestyle of the artists often and the kind of work they did. I looked at anything I could find. Ken Russell made a film about Dante Rosetti [Dante's Inferno released in 1967] and even though it was in black and white it gave me a sense. Oliver Reed played Rosetti and it was a rather freewheeling depiction of the times. It gave me a sense of what the patterns and streets were like back then. I enjoy the strictures of the time. People couldn't overtly say "This is how I feel about you." It had to come out figuratively or in metaphor. They could write a letter or a poem but they can't just walk across the room and say "You're great looking, could we just go out?" I'm not saying that's better but as a writer anytime anyone says, "You can't write that." It interests me because I lash out against that.
DE: Did that repression result in fascinating art?
NL: I think so. It resulted in people taking risks because they knew exactly what they were risking against. In the film, they took a risk on what became a chaotic love. It's interesting how these bookish scholars who think they know everything about these people come to learn something new about them as people but to have their lives altered by it and have them risk loving again as well.
DE: What was the screenwriting process?
NL: Well, Laura [Jones, screenwriter of Angela's Ashes and A Thousand Acres] and I really did all the writing. All of the material written previously was available to us. We would take an incident from David Hwang's [writer of M Butterfly] screenplay and tale a line or two from here or there creating a cocktail that ends up being the script.
DE: When did you decide to change the main character of Roland Michell from English to American?
NL: I think it was more towards the end of the writing process. I don't know if it was a joint effort. We just agreed to do that.
DE: In all your works everyone is hiding from their true selves from other people either consciously or unconsciously. In Possession, the main characters are romancing each other through the other long dead characters. Why is that?
NL: Because I find it interesting. I find that the illusion versus reality, the faade that we have the public and private selves that we carry around are interesting subjects to me. So I continue to harp on it until I find that other great subject.
DE: Is it something you do yourself?
NL: Sure. While you try to be true to yourself you are a different at any given point during the day let alone your lifetime. I know I do it for the dramatic effect of my characters in the movies. I'm not making documentaries. I want to do something that's beyond the ordinary.
DE: So when you read Possession that's what grabbed you?
NL: That's one of the aspects sure. I just liked the whole package.
DE: Did you ever find something that sparked a mission for you the way it did the characters in the film?
NL: Well, I don't think I ever discovered anything. But I have opened used books on several occasions and found a clipping or a pressed flower. I remember one time I got a volume of American plays and opened it up and this was this typewritten letter and that it was the first prize of an amateur dramatics-writing contest. I had no idea who that person was but I had the scenario and a name. I think Aaron doers a great job of having to know more about what he finds. There is something in human nature that leads us to the unknown and possibly damaging information.
DE: How did the cast come together?
NL: Gwyneth was the first one not Aaron. Aaron was a much less well-known quantity for the studio. They wanted Gwyneth and there is nothing about her that makes a studio frightened.
DE: Then you can cast everyone else you wanted to.
NL: Pretty much. Once you have that lynchpin you are freer to do what you want. It wasn't like take her or else. The only thing about her for me is that she was so perfect for it that I was second guessing myself. Im not used to it being so easy.
After that I told Aaron "Cut your damn hair, go have drinks with these people, show them that youre charming then we could go to England. And if you don't you're just going to read about this movie." He had proven himself a very fine actor, as good as I know. But not someone who could carry the romantic stuff. It happened kind of easily. I said, "Show me someone better and I will cast them." They could find me someone they could spend more money on, I know that. They could find me someone as good as him but until they showed me someone as good as him. If it's as good why not take Aaron and if he's better we'll talk. I don't think they searched high and low and they kind of said, "If you put it that way, smarty pants why don't you just have them."
DE: When is The Shape of Things? [based on a play written and directed by
Neil Labute using all Smashing Pumpkins music]
NL: Probably first of the year. The same company that is releasing Possession is releasing Shape of Things. Possession will cruise into the awards season. They're putting the appropriate amount of distance between this and that.
DE: What music are you going to be using?
NL: Instead of Smashing Pumpkins it's going to be all Elvis Costello.
DE: Thanks Neil.
Neil Labute is writer/director who made a powerful splash in 1997 with the film In the Company of Men and won numerous awards. Subsequently he made the similar themed Your Friends and Neighbors and then everyone did a double take when he did his first film that he did not writer Nurse Betty.
Possession is another leap forward for Labute in the fact hat it has real Oscar potential and deserves. His biting humor is still evident in the screenplay, which was written by him and Laura Jones.
This is his fourth screen collaboration with actor Aaron Eckhart and Labute himself is still a devout Mormon. Enjoy.
The website for the film is: www.possession-movie.com
Dan Epstein: Why did you pick Possession as your new movie?
Neil Labute: Well, I didn't do it in terms of "let me make myself more likable". I read the book ten years ago. Not right when it was a hit but it was one of those things I just picked up. It had won some big Booker prize. Being a grad student, a teacher and an anglophile, all the elements seemed interesting to me. It was a smart seductive read and it ended great. This movie hopefully ends great too, it was just lifted from the book [laughs]. I was really moved by the book and I hope it works.
When I got the chance to work on something other than what springs from my head I asked my agent, "Who has the rights to Possession?" Warner Bros had the rights for ten years. I went to them and said that I would really love to do it.
DE: Along with Bryan Singer [The Usual Suspects, X-Men] and David Fincher [Fight Club, Se7en], you are one of the directors, which reinvigorated the twist-ending genre in the mid-nineties, what appeals to you about it?
NL: I've done a lot of that in the theater as well. Not even so much as the twist ending but I like both as a viewer and a director, I like being redirected, mislead, challenged. I like to take people to where they think they are going and go someplace else. Surprises are a good thing. Birthday partiers are good and surprises in movies are great. I like the technique. Its a nice additional element. I don't want to be O. Henry either. I don't try to be more provocative than last time. I don't want to get into a routine of topping myself. I think that's dangerous because then you have no choice but to up the ante. The most provocative thing I think David Lynch could have done a few years ago was do a G-rated film for Disney [The Straight Story, released in 1999]. Not only was it a great film but it was truly provocative. It was shocking for me more so than someone's brains being knocked out.
DE: Do you think Possession will shock anyone?
NL: If it does I hope that it will shock people in a good way, the shock of the new. I don't think there's enough work of mine to call it a body of work let alone to say "Wow, its a real deviation from the past." Yeah, from the past three movies [laughs]. That's all I've done. It's only a momentary shift. I will continue to write the way I do. When something plops on my desk, the way Nurse Betty [starring Renee Zellweger, released in 2000] did. It came to me and I wanted to do it. For Possession I went after it. You never know where material will come from.
You have to be interested in a project for so long. In theater it's a much faster process, usually unless you have to wait for months to fit into a theater. Usually it's written, then you cast and put it on. It's a much different situation than developing a script, casting it, shooting the movie, postproduction, previews, scoring, then the release.
This film waited to be released. We finished and at the time USA films already had Gosford Park [directed by Robert Altman] ready to come out. Gosford Park did really well and carried over to March for the Oscars. They didn't want to put another period film out and be fighting themselves in a relatively limited market for period/romantic films.
It's still not an easy movie to market, even with Gwyneth in it. Then they wanted to go in the summer and counter program. Then Warner Bros, our very own partners came to us and said we'd like to bump the movie because we want to put out Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood that same day. So we either move or put it out together. That was the only film slated for the entire summer that might be competition. I'm not big on any movie thats built around an audience, chick flick or anything. So we blinked first because they had the monster marketing campaign so we had no choice but to move. Thankfully when the smoke clears when this movie comes out it will be a good time because this summer has been very profitable but filled with the usual kinds of noise that summer movies make. There hasn't been a lot of choices and certainly not a lot of romance film choices.. It's a crap shoot that things will go well and hopefully it will be nurtured so that it will be around a month from now because September still doesn't have anything quite like it. I don't know how I got to this answer exactly.
DE: The key to this movie seems to be the casting. It seemed kind of tricky. The couples are commenting on each other through the years.
NL: They do. The more intimate the relationship the more difficult the casting. You're asking people to do something more and more emotionally naked. That is something I haven't even done much of as a writer, which is to show the beginnings of relationships. The more unknown a partner is the more passionate they may feel but you're more passionate because of how little you know of them. You're sparked by the fear of not seeing them again.
Getting people into a comfortable place to portray that and be as emotionally honest as that takes is tough. I don't know that you can create chemistry. I could bring two actors together and say "You look like I thought they would look. But are you going to be able to look at each in a way that shows you are falling in love." I think I got lucky in terms of these four people. They really imbue those relationships with honest longing.
DE: What was Barry Levinson like as a producer?
NL: He wasn't really hands on in this case. Not that he wasn't ever there but he was doing Bandits [starring Bruce Willis and Cate Blanchett]. He was more available in post-production and previews phase. We talked about casting but it was mostly over the phone. I only really met him when we were in post-production.
He brings a director's eye. He's able to look at something, not just with fresh eyes, but he was someone who thinks in pictures far more than I do because he's been doing it longer. He would say things like "Why can't you just jump to this spot here because I know about it because you said it back here." It's obvious only when someone points it out. It's very specific and tangible things. Not just "Feels good, maybe you can take a couple of minutes out." Where would you suggest, off the back or front.
He was very specific so you appreciate someone who knows what they are talking about. Also like the best kind of teacher, he was not trying to say how he would do it. He would say, this is what you made, what you are trying to tell me and this how well you're doing it. Not "If I made Possession it would look like this." If anyone else made it, it would be different. So many people have taught me as a student that way and I think that is the most foolish kind of teaching that I've ever been around. I want to know how to fix what I am doing. He very easily could have used his influence as producer and Oscar winning director to be more influential than he had to be. He was interested in what I wanted to do.
DE: You said that you were an anglophile. What interests you about the Victorian era?
NL: I was very interested in the artists of that period. I hadn't seen a great deal of Pre-Raphaelites on film or it never got presented in the right way. It always interested me, kind of the bohemian lifestyle of the artists often and the kind of work they did. I looked at anything I could find. Ken Russell made a film about Dante Rosetti [Dante's Inferno released in 1967] and even though it was in black and white it gave me a sense. Oliver Reed played Rosetti and it was a rather freewheeling depiction of the times. It gave me a sense of what the patterns and streets were like back then. I enjoy the strictures of the time. People couldn't overtly say "This is how I feel about you." It had to come out figuratively or in metaphor. They could write a letter or a poem but they can't just walk across the room and say "You're great looking, could we just go out?" I'm not saying that's better but as a writer anytime anyone says, "You can't write that." It interests me because I lash out against that.
DE: Did that repression result in fascinating art?
NL: I think so. It resulted in people taking risks because they knew exactly what they were risking against. In the film, they took a risk on what became a chaotic love. It's interesting how these bookish scholars who think they know everything about these people come to learn something new about them as people but to have their lives altered by it and have them risk loving again as well.
DE: What was the screenwriting process?
NL: Well, Laura [Jones, screenwriter of Angela's Ashes and A Thousand Acres] and I really did all the writing. All of the material written previously was available to us. We would take an incident from David Hwang's [writer of M Butterfly] screenplay and tale a line or two from here or there creating a cocktail that ends up being the script.
DE: When did you decide to change the main character of Roland Michell from English to American?
NL: I think it was more towards the end of the writing process. I don't know if it was a joint effort. We just agreed to do that.
DE: In all your works everyone is hiding from their true selves from other people either consciously or unconsciously. In Possession, the main characters are romancing each other through the other long dead characters. Why is that?
NL: Because I find it interesting. I find that the illusion versus reality, the faade that we have the public and private selves that we carry around are interesting subjects to me. So I continue to harp on it until I find that other great subject.
DE: Is it something you do yourself?
NL: Sure. While you try to be true to yourself you are a different at any given point during the day let alone your lifetime. I know I do it for the dramatic effect of my characters in the movies. I'm not making documentaries. I want to do something that's beyond the ordinary.
DE: So when you read Possession that's what grabbed you?
NL: That's one of the aspects sure. I just liked the whole package.
DE: Did you ever find something that sparked a mission for you the way it did the characters in the film?
NL: Well, I don't think I ever discovered anything. But I have opened used books on several occasions and found a clipping or a pressed flower. I remember one time I got a volume of American plays and opened it up and this was this typewritten letter and that it was the first prize of an amateur dramatics-writing contest. I had no idea who that person was but I had the scenario and a name. I think Aaron doers a great job of having to know more about what he finds. There is something in human nature that leads us to the unknown and possibly damaging information.
DE: How did the cast come together?
NL: Gwyneth was the first one not Aaron. Aaron was a much less well-known quantity for the studio. They wanted Gwyneth and there is nothing about her that makes a studio frightened.
DE: Then you can cast everyone else you wanted to.
NL: Pretty much. Once you have that lynchpin you are freer to do what you want. It wasn't like take her or else. The only thing about her for me is that she was so perfect for it that I was second guessing myself. Im not used to it being so easy.
After that I told Aaron "Cut your damn hair, go have drinks with these people, show them that youre charming then we could go to England. And if you don't you're just going to read about this movie." He had proven himself a very fine actor, as good as I know. But not someone who could carry the romantic stuff. It happened kind of easily. I said, "Show me someone better and I will cast them." They could find me someone they could spend more money on, I know that. They could find me someone as good as him but until they showed me someone as good as him. If it's as good why not take Aaron and if he's better we'll talk. I don't think they searched high and low and they kind of said, "If you put it that way, smarty pants why don't you just have them."
DE: When is The Shape of Things? [based on a play written and directed by
Neil Labute using all Smashing Pumpkins music]
NL: Probably first of the year. The same company that is releasing Possession is releasing Shape of Things. Possession will cruise into the awards season. They're putting the appropriate amount of distance between this and that.
DE: What music are you going to be using?
NL: Instead of Smashing Pumpkins it's going to be all Elvis Costello.
DE: Thanks Neil.