by Jane Smiley
“There are Russian directors, both here and in Russia. Why don’t you go to one of them? Or a Ukrainian director.”
This was the obvious question, so Stoney was a bit surprised that he himself hadn’t bothered to ask it.
Mike said, “You are thinking of whom?”
“Well, Konchalovsky, of course. And I saw that movie about the Hermitage, which you must have seen. His name starts with an S. Sukurov.”
“And there is Mikhalkov,” said Mike. “We have thought of them, and others, too.”
Al said, “I talked to Sukurov. He is not out of the question. We are not interested in Konchalovsky, for various reasons. And Mikhalkov is very busy. He never stops filming. For this movie, we need a meticulous planner, which we understand is true of you, Mr. Maxwell, but also someone who seems to be in sympathy with a Russian way of looking at things. I have seen your movie Grace, and Mike has seen it twice. To write that movie, you would have to have that sympathy.”
“When I was a boy, my grandfather told me those stories, but I’m not that boy any longer, as you can see. I’ve made lots of other movies since that one—”
“I think,” Stoney pushed his way into this remark, “that there is something else going on, if you don’t mind my saying so. I think that you do not want this production to be parochial or provincial, am I right? I think that you want it to be world-class, a great Hollywood movie that reeks of Hollywood, that is unapologetically a kind of Doctor Zhivago of our day, am I right?” Mike nodded, followed by Al and Sergei. Everyone was saying what they truly thought, but the thing they truly thought that they were not saying, Stoney suspected, was that they were steering away from Russian and Ukrainian directors because those directors would have their own ideas about Gogol and the book, and would be quick to elbow the moneymen aside. As well they should. Max, the best compromise, would be quick to elbow the moneymen aside, too, but as far as Stoney was concerned, he could do that later. He had to make a deal with them first.
“Anyway, as I said,” Mike cautioned, “Gogol was not Russian. He wrote in Russian, but he was a man from Ukraine. This is a story about Ukraine that takes place at a time before Russia was Russia and Ukraine was Ukraine. Here are the Cossacks and the Poles and the Turks and the Jews. All of these people have very long memories, as Gogol did. To see this, for them, is to see something that happened the day before yesterday, or a few springs ago. If you go to the steppelands, you see roads and towns, of course, but you also see just what Gogol would have seen and Taras would have seen, and it is not worth seeing only because they would have seen it, but because it is beautiful to see and should be put on film—”
“Before it’s changed forever,” said Stoney. Then he added, “That’s what Isabel thinks. Isabel is Max’s daughter. I don’t know if you met her.”
“Perhaps. But what I was thinking was that a painting of this place is not big enough. Cinerama, or even IMAX would be almost big enough.”
“Yes,” said Sergei, “I have often thought that Taras Bulba in IMAX would be a worthy project.”
Max said, “You gentlemen have ideas of your own. You have a vision of your own. This is your movie. Why don’t you make it yourselves instead of trying to find someone to make it? I mean, produce it and direct it.”
How could this idea be insulting? Stoney thought. And yet there was some way in which it did seem like an insult, as if Max were saying that this was not an interesting enough project for him, that he had better things to do, but also denigrating whatever it was that they did do for a living and implying that he could not be bought. But of course he could be bought, he had been bought many times. Directors in Hollywood of Max’s sort rather prided themselves on being bought, because if you could be bought to direct a project that you had not conceived yourself, and you did a good job with it, as Max usually did, then that meant not only that you were technically proficient and a good executive, but also that you could see the look of every subject you were given—in some sense, of every subject in the world. You could read the material and visualize not only how it would play out but also what there was about it that had a certain sort of meaning. With this actor here and this actor over here and these objects in between them and this wall and ceiling and window in the background and this chair with a certain slipcover on it in the foreground and this shot before and this shot after, you could evoke not only specific feelings and sympathies in the audience, but also specific thoughts and pieces of knowledge. A director who could be bought was above all things intelligent, and not every director was, some were more instinctive. But the sort of director Max was combined a lively curiosity about all sorts of subjects and ideas with strict visual integrity that was similar to, but in some sense more active than, a decided sense of taste. Each shot had to look right, and Max knew instinctively and immediately whether it was right and how to make it right. This was a mere talent, probably a brain function, and yet it brought together all of those other things that Max could do, and it made them all hang together and, always important, look classy. He had made good movies over the years and he had made dogs—Southern Pacific was a prime example of a movie of Max’s that Stoney considered a stinking dog—but with all of them, the sum of the parts was better than the parts, because of his intelligence and this visual thing he always had.
But Mike did not react as if he had been insulted. He said, thoughtfully, “Mr. Maxwell. Here is the problem with that. It is that I am not a patient man. When I was a boy, it took me a very long time to learn to write. My handwriting was poor for many years, and then I learned to dictate! My mother thought that I would never amount to anything, that I would go out on the street and become a petty criminal, as many of those in my town did indeed do if they were not good students. When I was given a toy to build, a model of something, I could never make the pieces fit together. It was very frustrating. My fingers would not do it. The strategy I developed from this deficiency was to induce my sister to do it for me, and she always did. From this I learned that I didn’t have to be patient, or learn how to do something, that there are those who take pleasure in putting the toy together, such as my sister, and those for whom having to put the toy together results in absolute hatred for the toy, such as myself. And so you see my house. It is my job to say to Joe Blow and Mr. D’Amico, the master builder, ‘An Amber Room would be nice,’ ‘A Reformation Room would be nice.’ Have you seen the Reformation/Counter-Reformation Suite? It begins with Hieronymus Bosch, who died, of course, the year before Martin Luther actually broke away from Rome. My Bosch is only a drawing for a section of his larger painting entitled Hell, but that sets the theme for the suite. It is not a hospitable room because of the drawings of martyrdoms and burnings at the stake, and so we did not put any of your party in there, but the art is unusual, and I go in there sometimes. At any rate, I try to make the most of my impatience by inviting those who are more patient to exercise their talents at my expense. This is one of the few times when I have suggested an idea to someone rather than merely picking and choosing among the items that are available, as I have done in furnishing this house. I am not so new at this now, and what is available doesn’t seem so much like an inexhaustible treasure to me now. I see what’s missing, and I want to supply it—”
Stoney said, “Thank you so much for that, Mike. It was very illuminating. And, Max, weren’t you saying to me just a few weeks ago that Hollywood doesn’t make the kinds of movies anymore that they used to, the epic films about history and culture like, say, The Grapes of Wrath, or even Gone with the Wind? You said it’s all some kind of fantasy now, and you were right. This is a way to go back to, or, maybe I should say, to circle around again to, that epic sort of film, to say that, well, the American customer doesn’t matter so much anymore, so the adolescent tastes of the American customer don’t have to be accommodated every single time anymore, especially if we have a backer with the vision that Mike here has. I see a huge audience for this film, not only Russians and Ukrainians, but all of
the audiences that like films about exotic places and exotic times, films that are important enough to win at Sundance and also find their way into the Oscars in the foreign-film category. I mean, didn’t you say to my father a couple of years ago that the nominees in the foreign-film category are so much more serious than the nominees in the best-picture category? This is your chance to go there! To become an international director with an international vision—”
“I see that,” said Max, “but—”
Now Stoney could feel Jerry’s voice coming into him. He sat up slightly and cleared his throat again. Jerry had had a way of looming, and Stoney could feel him looming right there in the My Fair Lady study. He exclaimed, “Hell! What else are you doing? You’re sitting around your bedroom getting old! You’re paying attention to your cholesterol count and the number of trans-fatty acids in your diet! You’re listening to Delphine and Cassie every day! You’re thinking about gas mileage! You’re taking nice little walks and digging in your garden! You’re pinching pennies, too. What’s the next step with that? Pretty soon you’ll be calling your stockbroker every day, and all you’ll have for excitement is a little e-trading! Aren’t you planning on doing any art? You want to end up like Howard Greco, making animated pornography out in Pasadena about whores coming to the house? What kind of a man are you?”
Stoney noticed that Max was amused at this, and realized that Max thought he was imitating Jerry, but he was not imitating Jerry, he was channeling Jerry. He raised his voice a little bit. Mike, Al, and Sergei were staring at him. “You think your reputation is still intact, after that stinking dog Southern Pacific and two made-for-TV movies? You’re gonna leave it at that, your last finished efforts? You want to be one of those footnotes in Hollywood history, the kind of guy where you turn to the index and it says ‘Nathan Maxwell, page 89,’ instead of ‘Nathan Maxwell, chapter 12’?” Personally, Stoney thought Jerry was going a little far here, but Jerry was Jerry, after all. “First! Husband! Of! The! Legendary! Zoe! Cunningham! Also directed a few movies! Is that how you want it? This guy Mike here, Russian though he is, is offering you a better option—he’s offering you redemption after a sorry fading away! He’s saying, Get back into the fight, be a man, do what you know how to do! What if he takes the project to some ambitious kid? You know any kid will go for this, no matter what. Any kid with balls, at any rate! A kid says, Ukraine, no problem, are we going on Aeroflot? Are we taking Ukrainian National Airways? Kids are not impressed by far, far away! Kids are not lazy. But can a kid do this project? Can a kid organize things so that Mike doesn’t go broke or go crazy? Can a kid see this, all these Cossacks and Jews and Russians and Poles? Taras is a father! He has a father’s sentiments! Isn’t a kid going to focus on the two kids and put the father in the background? Do you want that to happen? You want this movie to be a Ben Affleck–and–Jennifer Lopez vehicle and cut out the father and the older son completely? Because if Mike goes to some kid, that’s what’s going to happen, and it will be your fault.”
Stoney wound up his spiel at the top of his voice, and by this point Max was laughing and laughing, great ha-has, and Mike and Al and Sergei were smiling, though uncertainly, because they had never met Jerry and didn’t know what was happening. Stoney sat dead quiet for a moment, breathing heavily with the effort of hosting a guy like Jerry, who was Stoney plus, and then, after Jerry moved off, Stoney himself burst out laughing, and then Max said, “Well, if you’re going to put it that way, then how about I put it this way? Why do I have any sympathy at all with Taras? Shouldn’t I have sympathy with the Jews who scuttle around here and there, instigating the fights and serving only as go-betweens? What if I do the whole Taras Bulba story, the whole epic history of Ukraine, from the point of view of the Jews in the shtetls and the merchants who have to watch out for their lives and their livelihoods every single minute, because those Cossacks are great unpredictable drunkards who have no self-control and hardly any larger motives other than addiction to drinking, fighting, and killing? What do their lives look like to the old Jewish man who leads Taras to the execution of Ostap? To Taras, it looks like the crucifixion of Christ, but to that man, let’s call him Abe, it looks like just another day in the life of the crazy Christians, who pause in their killing of one another only long enough to steal his goods and money. That would be where my sympathies lie, if we’re talking about sympathies. My idea is not to do an epic. I’m not in the mood for epics anymore—”
Mike eyed Max, and then said, “You see? The material is very rich and complex. Yes, indeed, your sympathies lie with the Jews—whose do not? Are you saying to me that Gogol had the ideas of his time about Jews? Yes, of course he did! And about Cossacks and Poles and Turks. That is part of the pleasure of the material, that small distance we have from the way Gogol looks at it. He brings in this Jew. To him, perhaps, the man is only a Jew doing something that, plausibly, a Jew would do in the middle of the sixteenth century, but to us the man is something different. Why would we make a movie of a book, any book? It is because the book can only exist as it was printed, caught in the time when it was written, but with a movie we can add something. We understand this Jew. He is an old and experienced Jew who has survived doing the one thing he could do in the middle of the sixteenth century, but doing it in a certain way, a way that the actor understands and communicates to me in the audience, something about the tragic nature of the situation. Yes, Taras and this man are watching the execution of Ostap, but the execution is not seen from their point of view. The camera sees it. The camera looks at Taras, then the camera looks at Avram, then the camera looks at Taras and again at Avram. In these shots, we see two men who have different feelings about the execution. One man is somehow astonished, even after a life of violence and killing, that such a thing could have happened to him, and the other man has seen this sort of thing far too often in his life. Where does the tragedy lie? Don’t they split the difference between them? Isn’t the tragedy that it doesn’t matter what you know or where your loyalties are, here, once again, is someone’s child being put to death? May we add this to Gogol? If we are making a film, then we must add something. Why not this? Or do you think that the ending of the book promotes violence and war? After Taras vows to avenge Ostap, he puts village after village to fire and sword. Do you think Gogol thought this was good, or do you just think he thought it was inevitable? And was he wrong? There are people here in the U.S. who think that if the people in Iraq give them trouble the American Air Force ought to carpet-bomb the whole country. I have read this and heard it on the radio.”
“Yes,” said Max, “there are those people. You know the American saying, ‘We had to destroy the village in order to save it.’”
“As we make our film, then, we can add the fact that we know this, too. That almost two hundred years of warfare have passed since Gogol and five hundred since Taras, and how we feel about it is different from how Taras and Gogol felt.”
Max said, “Of course, you make a good point. But once we humanize all the characters—Cossacks, Poles, Turks, Jews—then we’ll be criticized by everyone for softening the story and making it politically correct—”
“Critics never say that if you have enough slaughter,” said Stoney. “All the characters can be well meaning, but if there is plenty of gore, then whether they are basically good or basically evil gets kind of lost in the chaos.” He looked around the table. He continued, “Jerry always said that. He said the best way to get good reviews was pour on the fake blood, and preferably have it spouting.”
“He did say that,” said Max with a smile. “But for me that brings up the fact that I don’t want to make another bloody movie. I want to make something more intimate.”
Stoney began shaking his head, right in Max’s direction, warning him off this subject.
“What’s that?” said Al.
“Have you ever seen a movie called My Dinner with Andre?”
Al shook his head.
“That’s a movie where two guys sit in
a restaurant for a couple of hours and talk. One of the guys in it wrote a movie you might have seen, or at least be interested in, called Vanya on 42nd Street.”
“I have seen that movie,” said Sergei. “I did not understand it.”
“Anyway, I would like to do a movie like My Dinner with Andre, except that, instead of talking in a restaurant for two hours, the two characters make love in their bedroom for two hours.”
Mike sat up and looked at Max, then poured himself a fresh glass of tea. He said, “Do they make love in some new way that allows them to keep going for two hours?”
“No, they mostly talk. I’ve been writing the script. I have about thirty or forty pages. Even though they’re naked, I have to say they’re having a difficult time getting to the lovemaking. But that’s actually more interesting to me than it would be if they were just going at it—”
“What are they talking about?” said Stoney, despairingly.
“Well, in this draft of the script, they are talking a lot about the Iraq war. She’s more interested in it, really, than he is, but she gets him worked up at one point. That’s the fascinating difference between them. They love each other and they respect each other, but they simply cannot feel the same way about the war. For him, it’s just another screwup, but for her, it’s the big screwup, the screwup that changes history, and her entire view of human nature—”
“You are promising sex and only giving talk? This also sounds like Chekhov to me,” said Al. “Intellectuals will be interested in this movie, but I don’t see that it has broad appeal.”
