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The script had been around for quite a time before you became attached to it. Did you know of it before it was sent to you?
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No, I’d never heard of it before. My agent basically told me where it had been developed and who had been attached in the past. When I read it for the first time last August, it had this incredible impact on me. I think it captures so much of what is going on right now in American society without being a direct message film. It captured racism, it captured the breaking of the circle of violence - it captured so many different issues, including the death penalty, without saying what’s right or wrong and without being preachy.
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For a second feature, you’ve got a fairly amazing cast. Can you tell me how that came together?
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When I got the script sent, the only attachment was Wes Bentley, the actor from American Beauty. At the same time, my agent passed it on to Billy Bob and he responded to it. Then I met up with him and we hit it off: we saw the film in the same way. After that, Halle Berry got involved. I met with her and she was just so passionate. Halle lived in the South for quite a while, so she’s very familiar with the Southern way of life and that community. There are certain expressions, certain bits of dialogue, that are not written in the script, which are totally Southern.
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The scene where the relationship develops between her and Hank is very sudden. Was that difficult for the characters to work with, because it’s like a dam breaks for him and simultaneously for her?
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At the beginning, I had my concerns about it. But, you know, there is so much repressed for both of them and so much tragedy in their lives that, when you come to this point in the movie - and she is a little more drunk than he is - they suddenly start expressing their emotions and their desperations and their repressions. And at that moment, it’s like you open a bottle and everything just flows out: it’s sort of like an explosion of emotion. I think the scene leading up to them actually getting together is one of the most powerful I have ever witnessed. When I was standing in the room while we were shooting it, I felt like a ghost in someone’s living room watching two real people performing. I have never experienced anything like it before. Even the script supervisor who’s done about 40 movies just looked at me and said ‘God, I’ve never seen anything like that’. It was very special.
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It sounds as though you adopted a fairly fluid attitude toward camera positioning. Did you, as it were, let them get on with it and film them, or did you carefully block it out and rehearse it?
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No, we definitely blocked scenes out. But the idea was to shoot it in a more seventies style - to have longer takes, long shots, and let the characters ‘become’ instead of just cutting very fast and interrupting a scene. I thought it would be better to let it develop slowly, because then the audience would be more drawn in.
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We talked about the first encounter between Hank and Leticia and the experience you had shooting it. Were there any other scenes that were unexpectedly difficult to shoot for either practical or emotional reasons?
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You know, it was a very tense shooting schedule without much time. We just moved through things and never did more than three or four takes. The good thing is that Halle and Billy Bob and I had such a good communication between the three of us and we all trusted each other so much that it went incredibly smoothly.
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Did you spend time talking with them about the film first?
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We met twice in Los Angeles before they arrived in Louisiana. But I try to create a very calm and magical sense on set. People say ‘Directors should be dictators, they should be leaders’, or whatever. But I see the director more as a magician. You try to create magic, and you try to create it according to what you need and whatever the script asks you. I try to create a safe place for the actors, so they can feel safe in front of the crew and go to whatever places they want and not feel judged or insecure or anything. Billy Bob and Halle are both very sensitive to their surroundings. They trusted me and it went incredibly well.
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How about Coronji Calhoun, who plays the boy?
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We did an open call on a black radio station in New Orleans and we had, like, 400 kids, 400 mothers, responding. And there was this one kid: after the first reading, I just said ‘Oh my God, that’s him’. There was no question.
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It’s quite a tough thing for a kid that age to do: to be called ‘a fat little pig’ by someone playing his own mother.
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We explained it to the mother and the kid. Halle was there with me and she said, ‘We’re planning on doing certain things to you in this movie. Obviously it’s a film and we don’t mean it personally in any way’. It was a very sad moment and I remember the kid sitting there and saying to us, ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’m used to it from school’. You know, it was just like you couldn’t do anything that he hadn’t heard before.
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Where are you at now with the film?
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I just showed my first cut to Lions Gate yesterday. It’s 114 minutes, but I’ll probably cut it down. Even Lions Gate said, ‘I don’t know what you want to cut here’. But I have a few things that I can tighten up, so it will probably end up around 108 or 110 minutes, like how the script was.
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Have you got any music on it yet?
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Not yet, no. I’m working with two composers I hired who work together, and they just read the script and wrote about 100 minutes. Some of it is so spectacular and fits so well, while we were in the editing room working, I thought I had to hire them. They really shared the vision I had. It was wonderful.
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Would you be able to articulate that vision? Would you be able to say what that was?
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Basically, for me, it’s a story about tolerance and redemption - a cautionary tale about the price of complacency.
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A quick question about you: whereabouts in Switzerland are you from and what took you to the States?
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I grew up in a town called Klosters in the mountains without TV or anything. And, when I was about 12 or 13, I saw my first movie and just fell in love with film. When I graduated from high school in Switzerland, I found a benefactor who would pay for one year at NYU and, if I had any talent, he would pay for the second year. So I went to film school in New York for three years, from ’90 to ’93.
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Have you considered working back in Europe?
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Not right now. I like it here in the States and, once you start building your career, it’s hard to go somewhere else and start again and meet all the people. Right now, things are going quite well here. I think there are still a lot of stories to tell.
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On the outside looking in: Leticia (Halle Berry) prepares to buy the gift for Hank (Billy Bob Thornton, preceding page) which will trigger a crisis in their relationship.
