Mike Nichols Gets Closer
The producer-director addresses the press before the 2004 release of Closer
Mike Nichols talks to the press before the release of Closer alongside producer John Calley and his cast. It took very little to prompt extended answers. His answers below are almost verbatim.
Can you draw a line from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf to Closer?
The answer to the question about the line from Virginia Woolf to Carnal Knowledge, I figured it out, talking about it. Patrick Marber and I both started out as comedians. All the best people started as comedians. Surprising people: Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Harold Pinter, to name but a few. I started out in a group called Compass, which became Second City, and so on and so forth. I worked with Elaine May, and we did... I wasn’t very good at it at first, then I got good working with Elaine, and we did what the people in the group called "people scenes." And because we were a man and a woman, we did scenes about men and women. It’s what we were best at and what interested us most, and it went on in our work. Elaine’s movies—The Heartbreak Kid, A New Leaf—they are on the same subject. It’s how we started, it’s how we went on. It’s what interested us, not particularly sex more than anything else, it was just living in a relationship. Or in the case of Carnal Knowledge, a series of relationships. I think that’s what it came from and why it continues to interest me.
They are us, we are them, there are parts of us that are not so wonderful.
I think that Carnal Knowledge was really about the Hefner generation; it was about something that’s over. It was really, y’know, thinking of women as objects and encouraging women to think of themselves as objects, because of the way they were treated. It was a time that’s passed. I think that Closer is indeed about the dangers of closeness, that you can go too far. If you get too close, or want to get too close, you can get into trouble. I think that things are a lot better, at least in many countries, as far as the equality of the sexes is concerned, but it’s still going on. And since Closer is also about men’s aggression and men’s need to compete with each other and ultimately kill each other, it’s the two working together.
Why plays as source material?
Plays are among a lot of other source material. I’ve made movies from books. I’ve made movies of original screenplays. There are some plays that are suited to becoming movies, I believe. And many plays that are not! I like turning a play into a movie when it’s capable of it, when it is something that can be transformed, because plays and movies are very different.
I read it before I saw it and I think that the central scene, which upset me very much when I read it, it had a very strong effect on me, of Anna telling Larry that she was going and him forcing her in his way to tell him about what she did with the other guy. I thought that was very much at the heart of all relationships. There’s something we’ve all heard, namely, “I promise I won’t be mad, I just want to know." And everybody above, say, the age of eleven, knows that you don’t answer that question!
Nichols laughs.
But to answer the question is to start a slide into pain for both people. I think in some ways, it’s about that. My wife said that one of the things Closer is about is about the importance of lying in a relationship. Or withholding. It’s about the definition of closeness. Do you really have the right to know what’s in the other person’s head? Do you have the right to protect what’s in your head? I think the answer is yes, of course. Love involves leaving each other intact rather than trying to be absorbed, or absorb the other person. Two people can’t be one person. In my experience, happiness comes from being together but always maintaining enough separateness. My wife, for instance, does not answer the question, "What are you thinking?" She simply doesn’t answer. Which, I think—I’ve tried it, it’s very interesting. I’m not as good at not answering as she is! But it’s important, I think, to remember that you don’t have to answer. The point is what you're thinking, not what you’re saying. It’s yours.
He has to force her to say those things, because he wants to be free. He wants the wound cauterized. He says… He says, "Thank you. Thank you for your honesty. Now fuck off and die."
Is the movie at all "softened" from Marber's play?
I don’t think of it as softening. I also don’t think that, I think the whole idea of likability is a kind of Hollywood concept. That of the past, but not particularly of the present—I mean, the Macbeths were no sweethearts, yet we don’t condemn the play because Lady Macbeth is not an adequate role model for young women. It just doesn’t work that way. I always used to use “Macbeth” as an example of, in the old studio days, somebody from the studio would call you in, away from your work, to say, we would like Lady Macbeth to be more of a role model. Not so terribly unpleasant. And then you would have to explain that character is plot and that her character is the plot, that her ambition is what causes everything to happen. And that’s why we call it… theater. If everybody’s adorable, you can’t go anywhere, you can’t have any events.
I didn’t think of the characters [in Closer] as needing to be softened. I’m different, also, from the audience. I’m startled that many people are shocked by it. Because, to me, either for other reasons, or because in order to do this work, you have to love the characters, you have to consider them as you consider yourself and the people you love. You can’t make a division, "We’re okay, but they’re terrible and I’m going to show you how terrible they are." They are us, we are them, there are parts of us that are not so wonderful. There are parts of these characters that are wonderful. In fact, as Elaine May put it, they don’t put any spin on bad news. They never make a case for themselves. Anna doesn’t say, “My god, if you told me about one more case of bad acne, I was going to lose my mind. You did this and you did that. That time at the party with So-and-So, you talked to her all night, you never looked at me.” They never do any of that. They don’t spin. They just give the news. And the bad news, they have the guts to just impart the bad news. At the same time, it’s very clear that we’ve left the good parts out. There’s a year-and-a-half, Dan and Alice have a year-and-a-half of happiness together before he even sees Anna.
So because of the deliberate foreshortening, in the skipping of the “good” parts, because what we’re really doing, you know the long-lens effect of looking back when you remember acute beginning, y’know, two months in bed, and then a middle that somehow you can’t quite recollect, and then a painful ending, that looking back, there is a foreshortening. In being interested by that foreshortening, and going for it in the structure, first in the play and then the movie, the good parts are skipped. So they probably seem more terrible. If you put all our crises together, and all our leavings and being left, you get a picture of a very different person from the person who says, “Honey, I left the plums in the icebox, I should be home around 10." That part of life is deliberately left out [of Closer].
Is casting an effort?
No, I love casting. That’s the job. That’s the job, and insofar as opening veins is concerned, they’re safe. That’s the beauty of doing it, you do these scenes… Take Natalie and Clive doing the scene in the strip bar, they had a great time. it’s not you. It’s not about you. The feelings are the feelings. Y’know, I had a stress test because I had a disk problem and I couldn’t get on the treadmill, so they gave me a chemical. That speeded up my heart, chemically. Which was extremely unpleasant and weird. But. It reminded me a little bit of what it’s like to work on this stuff, for the actors. You gotta get it together for the scene. Those feelings come up in the scenes. And then I say "Cut." And they’re, they’re okay. And they laugh. They laughed all through this. We all laughed all through it. It’s not your pain.
I wanted to start with a beautiful young girl so adorable that Audrey Hepburn would worry. And that’s who we got. And then, you think, there’s nobody cuter, nobody more loveable, and then Julia comes on and blows her off the screen, because she’s a woman, and not a girl, and a very beautiful woman, and intriguing.
What did it require to get Julia to her confrontational scenes?
I didn’t prod her! Part of my job is finding the physical circumstances, literally, the activities for the actors during the scenes that it possible to do and say the things in the scenes. When we got to that scene and that language and the things that Julia had to say, we found that neither could they just stand there and yell them at each other, because it was horrible. You couldn’t do it, you couldn’t watch it. And also, it wasn’t truthful. It didn’t seem like people in the course of their lives. So, as we were getting ready to shoot, I said, "Well, why don’t you, instead of that, Julia, why don’t you just go upstairs and get your coat and leave, rather than tell him these things. And you, Clive, why don’t you chase her? And force her?" He has to force her to say those things, because he wants to be free. He wants the wound cauterized. He says… He says, "Thank you. Thank you for your honesty. Now fuck off and die."
Nichols laughs.
He has goaded her until she said unsayable things, the things that you never want to say, and God knows you never want to hear, so that he could go on. And not only does he goad her until she has to do it, but it works. He gets through and he forms his plan, and then he puts his plan into effect, and then his plan succeeds, and he bests the other guy, and does him severe harm, forever, and then he gets his girl back. So, that’s the plot. But in order for them to get there… It’s more a question of finding out how and under what circumstances. That’s our job. Marber gives us the sort of tip of the iceberg, how it comes out. Our job is, "What are you doing, what have you done, how do proceed so that the tip comes up above the water and you can see it?” A lot of time it’s a choice of how you stage it, who’s where, what’s happening, what are they doing? And that’s more important than goading the actor or making them "dig deeper," any of those things. These people have no problem digging deeper. Julia is like, I don’t know… She blushes in scenes. Her battle is to stop it from happening to her, not to make it happen. She’s got to control her strong feelings.
And Portman?
Natalie and I were friends for a long time before. We did a play together, “The Seagull,” with Meryl Streep in the Park in New York, and she was about nineteen. She was a great Nina, and you’re not supposed to be able to do Nina when you’re nineteen, but she did. She and I had been talking about making a movie of Edie Sedgwick. We both thought that was an interesting movie and a good part for her. You know that book, "Edie," it’s a very good book, very interesting. This is a book of people just talking about her, brilliantly edited by George Plimpton [and Jean Stein]. It looked to us like a movie, but there were complicated rights [issues], reasons why it didn’t work out. When I started to think about [Closer], Natalie was the first person I thought of. She’s a real actress, a remarkable actress, and what Closer needed, which is, well, I had a thing I wanted to do. I wanted to start with a beautiful young girl so adorable that Audrey Hepburn would worry. And that’s who we got. And then, you think, there’s nobody cuter, nobody more loveable, and then Julia comes on and blows her off the screen, because she’s a woman, and not a girl, and a very beautiful woman, and intriguing. And Natalie comes back [into the story]. She’s changed, she’s increased, she’s not just adorable, she’s a great beauty. That was one of the stories I wanted to tell. It seemed like these were the actresses who would enjoy doing that. Natalie’s ability to be four or five different women, consecutively, always, of course, the same woman, but different facets, and they’re startlingly different. I’m very interested in the aspect of her in the club. Because we’ve just seen her be mortally wounded. And now she’s a cold bitch. How interesting to know why she’s acting like that. And to what degree she’s not cold, and not a bitch. All of that interested me and that’s what Natalie was able to deliver.
Why do you dislike director’s cuts?
I’ve never understood that aspect of DVDs, where you suddenly put back the things you took out that could go. Why ruin your movie? With material that you’ve taken out? I never get that. I don’t have that impulse. It’s very interesting, when you’re cutting a movie, and towards the end, you take out little dead places. They really are like turning on and off a light. The living places are living and there are little places you wait until you’re back to light. When you take them out, everything sort of fuses and becomes lifted one rung higher. To put them back seems very unpleasant to me. And pointless. It’s like when you’ve written something, when you cut a paragraph, doesn’t it seem dead to you? Doesn’t it look like something you’d never want to include, because the point is, it could go? You’ll never see anything in my pictures, the stuff that came out, stays out. Somebody makes the DVD. I’m not part of creating a DVD. There’s the usual, the EPK, the actors talking about their characters. I suppose having something hot and interesting on the DVD that nobody got to see is useful.
How many people pick up the phone on the first ring? Very few people. It’s everywhere, just the game that is being played. How many guys say, "He owes me a call"? Women in the office just pick up the phone and call him again. It’s in everything. Competitiveness is in everything and games are in everything.
Is this story innately the stuff of theater?
No, I don’t think so. I think life is riddled with it. I just think that, heightened and concentrated in theater and film, which is the point. Everything is heightened and concentrated, which is how you make it a story. But I think the reason it’s compelling when you do that is that it reflects aspects of life.
Did you see that book, “The Rules”? I love “The Rules.” Not for dating, in my case. But for business. I think “The Rules” are excellent. Of acting like you’re not interested, codified into a bunch of rules. And that aspect of people that we all play on, all the time. How many people pick up the phone on the first ring? Very few people. It’s everywhere, just the game that is being played. How many guys say, "He owes me a call"? Women in the office just pick up the phone and call him again. It’s in everything. Competitiveness is in everything and games are in everything. "Owes me a call"? We’re all nuts. It’s in the fabric of everyday. So that when you heighten it in a story, it may seem like, "I don’t know these people, I’m not like these people." But we are. I don’t think we’re as tough on ourselves as we might be. The people we’ve left have another story from our story. That’s what it really is about. It’s always so startling when somebody says, "She says you were a real bastard, you were cold," and you think, really? These things strike us differently. That’s the whole problem. So I think we give ourselves a clean report card too easily in these matters.
Mark Harris’ “Mike Nichols: A Life” tells many more stories about Closer and, well, a life.