Laremy Legel
Managing Editor of Film.com, member of the BFCA and OFCS, writer of criticism, noted interviewer, box office oracle, walker of dog named Bugsy, Qui audet adipiscitur.
Edward Zwick Talks Defiance, Directors, Darfur, and Dollars
Laremy Legel January 16, 2009
I recently had a chance to sit down with critically acclaimed director Ed Zwick, director of Defiance, which opens wide today. Our conversation was free-flowing and entertaining, and we hit on a lot of big topics that I think fans of his movies will find interesting. I’ve always considered him one of the smartest guys in the business, and our half-hour together only impressed me more. Enjoy!
Laremy Legel: In Defiance there’s a balance between the three brothers. One is aggressive, one is more passive, and one is a mediator between the two. Which one do you empathize with?
Edward Zwick: I think when you write, I think each character takes on a facet of your personality. I also think that some part of me was referencing the intellectual that Mark Feuerstein plays, trying to cope with what’s happening around him, trying to make sense of it. That is what’s personal about the movie, seeing where you fit in.
LL: You also do a nice job here of portraying different points of view. I found myself pulling for Liev Schreiber‘s character quite a bit. Not that violence is the answer, but we see so many portraits of victims in WWII movies.
EZ: He’s somebody for whom violence becomes a kind of expression. It sets him free. There’s an injury that it gives him an opportunity to redress. No culture is a monolith. It was important to me to show that there was class, divisions based on education, religion, and sexuality. Things that give an understanding to a group of people rather than to objectify them as one kind of thing.
LL: Is there a right answer here? I mean, was one brother’s method preferable?
EZ: No, it’s situational and I think it expresses the same kind of dialectic we face in polite society. We want to do good and worthy work and have the bounty of life. We want to be married and domestic while being hot and sexy. You want to be thoughtful but you want but you want. That ambivalence is always at the heart of experience, whether it’s in the forest in the midst of wartime or in someone’s living room.
LL: I think in our culture the Russian aspect of the war gets vastly overlooked. Everyone remembers Pearl Harbor, and Nazis, and Mussolini. But it seems like this massive part of World War II, Russia vs. Germany, gets missed by Western culture.
EZ: 20 million died. There are a couple of magnificent books. Stalingrad by Anthony Beevor and The Fall of Berlin are two. In fact, the Russian part of the war is in many ways the most important part of the war, as important as we like to think Western Europe is. That’s something I looked forward to giving a taste of. The partisans were a very important part of Stalin’s campaign. Not just to harry the German’s army, but to sew the seeds for the reoccupation that he knew was going to come.
EZ: The funny thing is that once you get to know Daniel Craig you know he agrees. He has a modesty about him. And a generosity. He was a working class British actor who just happened to become James Bond at age 40. His experience, I would think, makes him more comfortable in an ensemble than out in front of a story. Because he’s done that his whole life.
LL: When you were casting was he already Bond? How did the timeline work?
EZ: I met him before he was Bond, and we got to know each other. Then he went and become Bond. Then when I had this done I sent it to him, it was before Casino Royale came out.
LL: Do you think the victimization of the Jewish community has been the continuing negative from World War II? It seems like your movie and Munich both seek to set the record straight a bit.
EZ: History has its uses, and the German propaganda of the war was to cast an entire culture in that role. The funny thing is if you know anything about history, the Book of Judges is an Iliad of Jewish warriors. That had been the tradition. Obviously, one need always remember six million died. But also to understand that it was a very complex circumstance and not a simple thing. To give it a more rounded portrait makes it more knowable, more accessible. They are like anyone else, and we’ve learned a lot about resistance in America, going back to Vietnam. Of course there’s the impulse to resist, how could there not be?
LL: You asked the question, “Does one have to become a monster to fight monsters?” I’d like you to answer that one, because it’s one that plagues me. It sometimes seems as though leadership and being a good person aren’t always the same thing.
EZ: I had a very intense conversation with my wife about torture. I asked her what her position was on torture if her daughter was being held somewhere. I think that it’s a very slippery slope once you get on it. I think there’s a very famous quote from Auden:
I and the public know
What all school children learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
I think that is what is human.
EZ: I made a movie about what happened in West Africa and in the years since that story happened eight million have died in the Congo. Any movie is hard to do. And any movie that takes on a contemporary subject is particularly hard. And one that is in the mind’s eye in the media is particularly hard because you don’t have the distance that stories often need. With something as overwhelmingly tragic and contemporary as Darfur it’s hard to figure out how a story would tackle it. On the other hand, Dave Eggers wrote a wonderful novel called What is the What about The Lost Boys. So, of course, there are stories.
LL: You seem extremely socially conscious in what you make. Glory, Blood Diamond, Traffic, and now Defiance — it seems as though you’re trying to make a difference. But how do you make peace with the real world that you live in?
EZ: By making phone calls at a phone bank for a political campaign this year. Canvassed in Oregon and Nevada. And gave money. It’s the same thing about Africa, you just start doing something.
LL: You have quite a range of characters in the Bielski camp. There are bullies for instance, even within a group of people struggling to stay alive. I think I have this romanticized notion that if we were all fighting for our lives we’d get along.
EZ: Ha! When there’s not enough food, or shelter, that’s the basis of the naturalistic novel. You put four people in an open boat and sit and watch what happens. I think that was the whole point though, to make it real. In a community people take roles, things happen, and they’re revealed.
LL: Do you think this sort of crisis brings out the extremes in people’s personality?
EZ: I think that’s why I’m drawn to stories that put people in extremes. Things are stripped away. The niceties of social interaction tend to fall by the wayside.
LL: Would someone who is a bully when there isn’t enough food be a different guy if there was enough to eat? Or would he just be a jerk in other ways?
EZ: Well … when you’re hungry you worry about having enough food. When you have enough food you worry about who you’re going to fu*k. When you have someone you know you’re going to fu*k you worry about… (pauses)
LL: You’re saying we just replace our worries with the next thing?
EZ: Yeah. It’s human nature.
LL: I have this debate with my wife a lot, when it comes to worrying. It’s like once whatever we were worrying about is solved we’ll just worry about something else so we might as well try to be as happy as we can with what we have.
EZ: Yeah, and our Buddhist friends would tell us that attachment of any kind is the source of all unhappiness.
LL: I’ve read that you never want to do a theme-ride movie. Why not? Or a disaster movie? Just to get away for a year …
EZ: Because it’s just too hard to make any movie. And at the end of that year I’d have a theme-ride movie (to show for my efforts).
LL: Do you feel like being smart is a prerequisite for being a director? Do you ever meet other directors and think, “How the hell does this guy get by?”
EZ: No, I don’t think being smart is a prerequisite at all. There are hugely gifted directors who have visual talent and aesthetics that are so unique, but not by any classical means “smart.” They are just artful. And there are others who are incredibly intuitive about acting, and yet wouldn’t know a story if they tripped over it. But if they get a good script they can do it wonderfully. So no, I don’t think it’s a prerequisite. You do need a good script though.
LL: Is your style on set collaborative or more dictatorial? How do you lead people?
EZ: I think I give a very good approximation of a collaborative and collegial person who at the end of the day does what he wants to do.
EZ: Well, I’ll get in line for anything Peter Weir does. I think Danny Boyle has consistently done great work. I know Darren Aronofsky well. I really like Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck who did The Lives of Others.
LL: Where is success at with this project? Box office? Awards? Just getting to make the film?
EZ: I think just getting to make the movie. There have been little moments along the way already that have been gratifying. They say you make a movie for no more than ten people, five of whom are dead. I got to sit with Elie Wiesel last week and that was pretty much worth the price of admission.
LL: So you’re not attached to a box office result?
EZ: Well, you can’t let go of the result because there are a lot of people around to remind you. But also your ability to keep doing them is determined by your ability to get people to come watch them. And I do want to keep doing them.
Tags: daniel craig, defiance, edward zwick
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