Then, once you learned the language, you also worked with a dialect coach?
Julie Adams, who had done a bunch of movies with me, helped me by reminding me to stay consistent. I’d tell her what I was going to do: “Here is how the language works. This is what these things mean.” With dialects, everybody has their own way of working. Some people endlessly like to hear tape recordings of the dialect coach doing the language. I think that’s really destructive and bad. You shouldn’t have another person in your ear, because you’ve got to live the language, not just hear your teacher’s voice and repeat what they say.
What I’ll do is find one phrase that has a couple of good e’s, a couple of good o’s, a couple of good u’s, and is one phrase. Like “Hello, doctor. My name is Clarice Starling.” Or, “I went to UVA. It’s not a charm school, doctor.” Then when somebody says we’re about to roll, I just go to that one phrase that has the e’s I need, the o’s I need, and the u’s I need. And I’ll just say it and then do the scene.
It sets the coordinates for you.
Yes, your brain actually remembers how your mouth is supposed to move when it does those things.
You also worked with a movement consultant.
My friend, the production designer Jon Hutman, who was my college roommate, called me from North Carolina because he was doing all the prep work on the Nell set. He was one of the first people brought in — he and the location manager. He’s calling me and saying, “I hope you’ve got something planned for this part.” I’m like, “Why?” He said, “I just hope you’ve got something planned. I hope you’re not just going to show up and be spontaneous because, let me tell you, there are a lot of big questions.” He knew, because he had to build Nell’s house, so he had already been asking himself: “Who built the house? And if you can’t see out of it, then what can you see? and other questions about who Nell was.
So first I talked to Mark Morris, the choreographer. I said, “Maybe Nell should move in kind of a dance.” He said [adopting a gruff accent], “Whatever you do, no dance. Don’t do any steps. No steps.” So I went to this movement coach in L.A. and told her I wanted to see what two little kids would do together. When you take one child away and keep the other doing the gesture alone, as Nell did, I wanted it to look like she’s a nut.
So what’s next for you?
I’d like to finally direct Flora Plum [a circus movie that stopped shooting in late 2000 after Russell Crowe was injured]. We’re also developing a script about the filmmaker and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, whose film Triumph of the Will some people argue was responsible for Hitler’s rise. It’s a great morality tale about artists’ responsibility. Fascist art makes form and beauty more important than anything else, which is basically superficial thinking. But artists need to be deeper thinkers. Because if you just stay on the surface, like all sorts of things we do in Hollywood, without realizing it you can move the consciousness of the country in a direction that’s not only dangerous but cruel.
It doesn’t sound like your kids are slowing you down at all.
I feel like I’m spinning in all different directions. I’ve really realized: Who are all these people who have children and make three movies a year? Are they just not seeing their children? I think they’re not. I just couldn’t do it. And let me tell you, part of me wishes I could.
