Charlize Theron and Writer/Director Paul Haggis Talk In the Valley of Elah
At the Los Angeles press conference for his dramatic film In the Valley of Elah, writer/director Paul Haggis said that his movie is based on two actual incidents, however he preferred not to go into depth about either event so as not to give away too much of the film’s plot. That’s fair, and totally understandable. His directing follow-up to Crash is a real whodunit and giving away details would spoil the experience for moviegoers.
What is safe to say about In the Valley of Elah is that it follows the story of a retired soldier (played by Tommy Lee Jones) who goes in search of his son after getting a call from son’s superiors saying he’d gone AWOL shortly after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq. Charlize Theron co-stars as a police detective from the town right outside of the military base who is drawn into Jones’ search for answers.
How much dramatic or artistic license was taken?
Paul Haggis: “Well, I found two true stories. One was in 2003. One was the beginning of 2004. I decided to meld them. Richard Davis’ story which is the largest portion of this, a lot of the events are exactly as you saw, exactly what happened and the locations. Exactly as it was said with the chicken house and the strip club. Richard’s parents were on the set and they’ll tell you that the story is different than their son’s. I was very concerned because I called them to say, ‘You understand I’m fictionalizing this story?’
He looked like Tommy Lee, he sounds like Tommy Lee. He’s a very quiet, proud American and military police officer, Vietnam Vet, Korea Vet. Everything that we said, he’ll tell you that the specifics of the murder are still in question. [spoilers deleted]”
Was the political statement a hindrance in raising the money for In the Valley of Elah?
Paul Haggis: “Yes. I optioned the magazine article. That was end of 2003. It was a time when the war was incredibly popular here and everyone was driving around with flags on their car, if you remember not too long ago. When I talked to my agents about doing this, they just said, ‘Oh, no, no. You’re never going to set this up. We’re never going to sell it. We’re never going to get it made. Just forget about it.’ I thought about that for a month and said, ‘No, no, I have to do it.’
Now, see, if you make a film and then two and a half, three years later, suddenly the country’s changed and you look like you just happened to hit it. I actually like being contrarian. I would have preferred to come out three years ago when everyone was disagreeing with me. But hopefully it asks a lot of questions about our responsibility in sending young men and women to war, especially a war that’s so complex, where there’s no right answer, where they’re forced with impossible decisions every day. So I really wanted to make a nonpolitical political film. I wanted something that folks in red states and blue states could look at and not ask if this is the right thing to do to be in this war, but what this war is doing to the fabric of our society. What happens when these young men and women come home so scarred and so wounded? We are ignoring that fact. We’re just shoving them under the carpet.”
Did Clint Eastwood help you?
Paul Haggis: “Clint did. I couldn’t get the thing made. I went to my agents to CAA… Larry Becsey, who had been my agent said, ‘You might want to go over there.’ I met with their literary folk and said, ‘Go through all your files. Find me stuff, look for something that in your heart you know will never, ever get made into a movie and bring it to me.’ So they did and this is one of the articles they brought me. I took it to my movie agent and they said no one’s going to finance it. So I took it around, took it to a couple studios. Six months later, people are going, ‘Yeah, really want to work with you Paul!’ And nothing was happening.
I called up Clint and sent him the article. I thought he was going to call me back and go, ‘You Commie son of a b—-,’ and never talk to me again. But you never guess where Clint’s ever going to come down on any issues. That’s the one thing, you know? As soon as you think you know Clint Eastwood, you don’t know Clint Eastwood. So he called me back and said, ‘Wow, that is tough material.’ I said, ‘Yeah, but it’s the truth of what’s happening.’ He said, ‘I’ll help you make it.’ So he called over to Alan Horn at Warner Brothers and said, ‘The kid…’ – I’m the kid – ‘The kid has something I’d like you to see yourself.’ That’s what got it made.”
Is there more deception and cover-up in this war?
Paul Haggis: “This isn’t really a movie about deception and cover-up per se. There’s no real cover-up by the government in this. There may have been in the real story. I don’t know. It’s just really the story about what our brave men and women have to do, and the possibility of getting tasks where there is no right answer, there is no wrong answer. There’s no way to get through the day without having truly big moral dilemmas that seem unsolvable.”
Did you meet with any female police officers for research?
Charlize Theron: “Yeah, I did. I met a woman in Albuquerque and she came and hung out with me in the trailer. It was really just more to kind of really understand my biggest concern was always the interrogation scenes. Remember, that’s why I really wanted to meet somebody because you see those scenes on TV so much. It kind of becomes, which I’m not saying this is bad, but, ‘You can’t handle the truuuuuth!’ So I needed some help on that because also Paul had written it how it was edited, editorialized in the film. I’m talking and then you see it’s somebody new. To do that in a way where it’s truthful but it somehow escalates to what Paul had written. So I met with a woman who interrogates all the time, a detective.”
What did she tell you?
Charlize Theron: “She said it’s actually very opposite from what is on television because you really don’t want to antagonize them that much. But she said sometimes when it is something that kind of touches you, which is something that is really serious, you do get to a place where you have to push a little bit. But she said most of the time the best thing to do is to just play it very, very neutral. Towards the end, we went to that place of, ‘Now I’m going to really just put you in that position.’ These are young boys. You try to get them to kind of get so angry and so passionate that they would say something that they wouldn’t say if they were calm and collect.”
Did she face sexism?
Charlize Theron: “I didn’t really go into that because I’d done a lot of research on North Country in many fields, not just in the mining community. But the thing that I found probably most upsetting was that bigger things still going on today in much bigger corporations than what happened to Josey Aimes.”
What did you take from working with Tommy Lee Jones?
Charlize Theron: “Just that he’s really good. It was funny because when Paul and I had lunch and he brought up Tommy, and he said he wanted Tommy to play the part, I was very intimidated. He’s a great actor. He’s very strong and Paul said, ‘He’s the guy.’ I tend to, if I decide to do a job, want to be able to trust my director, so Paul was completely right. I can’t imagine anybody else playing this part. He’s incredibly talented. We all know that.
The thing that blew me away the most was how accessible his vulnerability is for who he is physically. You see this guy that’s just really tough and strong, and then the camera rolls and it’s like he has access to that. And very few men, I find, that I’ve worked with, will do that. I think it’s tougher for men, but for him it’s just there. I had a great time working with him.”
The veterans were afraid of him. Did that factor in?
Charlize Theron: ‘You know what? Tommy doesn’t suffer fools easily. I think everybody knows that, but I have great respect for someone that’s very direct and very honest. I don’t have thin skin so I’m okay with that.”
Paul Haggis: “Tommy loved you.”
Charlize Theron: “Tommy, for some reason, I don’t know what it was, but he really did take me under his wing. ….Fran McDormand was great because she said, ‘What I used to do when I worked with him was I would just walk on the set and I would give him a big hug. Somehow his guard would just drop.’ So I took that advice. Remember I came to Albuquerque to do a hair and makeup test and wardrobe fitting; you guys were already shooting. It’s tough when the movie’s already started and you kind of show up. You’re the new kid on the block. I walked onto the set and Tommy was about to do the scene. I just kind of walked up to him. I was shaking, but I just gave him this big hug and he just had nothing to say. He was like, ‘Gotta go to work now.’ I had a great time working with him.”
Your films of the last few years have all had a social theme. Is it hard to get interested in a project that doesn’t have that?
Charlize Theron: “No. I’m doing one now. Well, I like intelligent stuff. I like things that actually say something. It’s not an agenda of mine. At the end of the day, I’d much rather do a piece about people in a story that I find riveting and intriguing and moving, versus really carrying some kind of heavy political agenda on my sleeve. That’s not who I am. That’s not why I do this. I do this because I’m an observer of people. That’s why I want to be an actor. I’m fascinated by human beings and the circumstances they find themselves in.”
Where does playing a drunk superhero’s girlfriend [in Hancock] fit into that?
Charlize Theron: “Actually, I’m not his girlfriend. It could so easily sound like a little summer blockbuster, but it’s actually got a lot of weight to it. That’s why I wanted to do it. It happens to be a big budget film and big star like Will Smith, but it actually has a lot of weight to it. But it was very smart and very intelligent and had this kind of historical element to it that I was fascinated by. It’s not silly. It’s not stupid. It’s fun, but I think it’s smart. I think Akiva [Goldsman] writes really interesting material and there you have it.”
What’s been your experience behind the camera as a producer?
Charlize Theron: “I think in general, Paul will probably agree with me, small movies have a hard time getting out there. I think since I did Monster I really started understanding how hard it is for first time directors. I think there’s a lot of great stories out there, but it’s high risk. Because it’s a first time filmmaker, it’s tough to get the financing. When I find something that I really like and I can get it off, then I put my time and energy into that because it is a lot of work. You’ve got to make sure it’s something that you really, really love. I’ve never been the kind of actress that just likes to show up and say my lines. I’m fascinated by what the crew does. I’m fascinated by what Paul does. I’m fascinated by what the DP does. I think I have a real interest in filmmaking, and it’s nice when I can go and do that sometimes. Then it’s also great to not do it and not have the responsibility (laughing).”
Paul, is there a learning curve for you as a director?
Paul Haggis: “Do I study my own screenplays is what you’re saying? No, I know. Yes, I learn from myself. Yeah, sure there is. I learned a lot from Clint. I directed a bunch of television, but I only got to hire myself because no one wants to hire me. Yeah, you learn every single time. You learn from terrific actors.”
Clint Eastwood shoots the rehearsal. Do you?
Paul Haggis: “We never did just one take. Multiple takes. Many. I did a bunch. Sometimes I do one take. Sometimes I did 20.”
Charlize Theron: “You’re very in tune with, because actors are all different, and it’s very tricky when you throw us all together because we all work differently. You want to get the best work out of every individual actor. I think it’s a real talent for a director to be able to shoot in a way where he’s not compromising himself but he’s also doing it where he knows the actors are working at their best. There was an instant, actually, when I said to him flat out, I said, ‘I don’t like rehearsal. That’s just me. I’m a cow and if you milk me a lot, I’m going to get dry.’
I was working with a certain actor who really loved rehearsal, really loved working out every single kink. It was about three in the morning and it just got to that place where Paul had realized that I wasn’t delivering anymore because we had just overdone it. It was incredible because the AD just came up and said, ‘We’re going to pick this up tomorrow.’ I just thought that was so… Very few directors will be that in tune. A lot of directors will just kind of be on their schedule. And I understand that. It’s reasonable. They have to make their film, but Paul just realized just from what I had told him and watching my work that I wasn’t going to be able to go there. So we picked it up the next day. It was a little fresher for me. It was a little better. It’s tough when you have two actors that are very, very different like that.”
How do you select your roles?
Charlize Theron: “It’s usually a combination of two things. Sometimes it’s not as equal as it was in this case for me. It’s the material and the director. It was very, very equal for me on this.”
Is it important to downplay your beauty?
Charlize Theron: “No, I just want to tell good stories. I want to tell good stories, stories that matter to me, stories that I think are beautiful.”
Paul Haggis: “Stories where you can be pretty.”
Charlize Theron: “Nudity is something that really didn’t make it in the movie.”
Paul Haggis: “Her and Tommy, exactly.”
Charlize Theron: “You know, Paul and I talked a little bit when we started to talk about Sanders. I said to Paul, ‘People make such a big deal about it. The irony of it is when it comes to finding a character for me, it’s just about the facts.’ You look at this woman. So, it’s not about how can we make me look different? I think the great thing about being an actor, it’s not about that. It’s about how do we get access to the truth. To me, that’s always the biggest question – whether it’s where is the scene going or how do I physically look or how are we going to facilitate Paul in telling this story correctly.”
Can you give us a Bond update? Daniel Craig said this one is going more humorous?
Paul Haggis: “No, he was joking. That was humor. No, it’s what you saw in Casino Royale, you’ll see in this. He has a wicked sense of humor. Everybody went, ‘Oh my God!,’ and they latched onto that fact.”
What can you do now that you’ve relaunched the franchise?
Paul Haggis: “I have no idea, which is why I didn’t want to do it. But now I’m doing it and I’m having a great time. I’m on page 22. I’d get to page 23 if you guys just leave me alone for a few hours.”
Isn’t it supposed to start in January?
Paul Haggis: “It’s supposed to start in December. I’m on page 22.”
Bond will be on time?
Paul Haggis: “Oh yeah, of course it will be.”
So it’s not the Roger Moore version?
Paul Haggis: “No Roger Moore version.”
So you’re not much further along than last time [you talked to the press]?
Paul Haggis: “No, I’m a lot further along. I wasn’t writing at all, I was doing the story. I just started this week. It’ll be good. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Source: About
