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 Tim
Blake Nelson | Delmar Indeed
an emily blunt interview
Delmar
indeed. That's the image that comes to mind as I walk towards
the chi-chi hotel room to meet with multi-talent Tim Blake Nelson.
As with his brilliant thought provoking film le triumph The
Grey Zone, he's not what you expect. Tim's exhausted but
cordial. He really wants this film about the horrors war forces
man into to be seen - and it should be. It's an important piece
especially in the current on again off again war climate we face.
Tim
Blake Nelson was in Oh Brother Where Arth
Thou as Delmar, the simplest of the dueling simpletons.
This, quite honestly, is how I best know the guy. Naturally, the
real man is far from a simpleton. Well spoken, witty and highly
intelligent wrapped into a beaming package of intensity. He's
a playwright, producer, director, actor and possibly a closet
candlestick maker.
He's
also got an eye for casting. I mean placing David
Arquette in the lead of a heavy Holocaust film about morally
challenged souls facing annihilation in any number of gruesome
ways was brilliant. Of course all I'm really thinking about is
how I can work George Clooney's telephone
number out of him before our chat is over… we begin:
Emily:
I understand this is a very personal film?
TBN:
It absolutely is! There are two reasons why it is personal. My
mother is a holocaust refugee. She and her parent's fled in 1938
and they crossed the Atlantic in 1940 during the war. My grandfather
said to me, and to my mother on more occasions, "you should
not exist. But for luck, and privilege are you alive." Therefore
life itself is a privilege. Something to be heralded.
The
Grey Zone is concerned first and foremost how we value life.
And in particular in the predicament faced my the Sonderkommandos.
How much they valued their own lives.
That
can be a pretty difficult question to ask yourself when it is
asked in such a context as that faced by the sonndecommandos.
Do you value your own life to the extent to which you will forget
your own morality to save your own life? Will you abet the slaughter
of another's to save your own? It's a question asked in a cold
morally neutral way.
The
predicament they faced, pitting the individual will to survive
against the equally potent human impulse to reach out and help
others. This sort of Hippocratic oath morally "I shall not
injure others." The unfathomable choice the Sonderkommados
had felt irresistible to me. I literally couldn't spend my time
any other way - then writing about them - after I read about them.
Emily:
Do you judge the Sonderkommandos?
TBN:
I don't. And the film is careful not to judge them. The film is
also careful not to let them off the hook. The film is calibrated
not to supply you with an easy out as an audience member. David
Arquette's character is a good example. The movie begins with
David. David is clearly the most sympathetic character and he's
probably the most emotionally fragile of the characters. He is
our way into the movie. He is the one with which we identify.
Then it's David that beats a man to death. There's a reason why
it's him. It's pulling the rug from under you as an audience member.
Emily:
Sure. I got that. Very shocking and reminding of where we are.
TBN:
The film presents an arena or a forum in which the audience member
where they can judge him or herself - that's what's going on.
That's why the last line of the movie is "this is how the
work continues" not "continued" this is not in
another time. You're meant at the end of the film to ask yourself
ask in as frank a way as I hope the film asks "what is the
value of my own life" and "at what cost, morally will
I preserve it?"
Emily:
Hmm. Okay. But they went into these "jobs" with the
knowledge that they were buying a mere four months of life. They
went in knowing they are going to die anyway.
TBN:
Well there's an early scene in the film in which David Arquette's
character is intentionally oblique. It's not so clear, I didn't
want to put signposts at it, but David Arquette's character says,
"But there' s planes almost every day now." Which is
meant to…they kept hoping in "their" four months
the camp would be liberated. And the Nazis also, even though it
was every four months, the nazis kept saying, as Harvey Keitel's
character points out, they never say they are going to kill them.
They say they are "moving them" or, "we are going
to give you a reprieve. This is the best commando we've had. You're
going to be different" Hand and hand with our desire to survive
at ant cost is the ability to listen optimistically to the lies.
Emily:
There's no Schultz party scene. You know the guy's sitting around
the barracks getting drunk telling jokes. There's no comic relief
at all.
TBN:
I want the film to feel rigorous. Those scenes in movie always
seem to have more to do with narrative projectory, than truth.
Emily:
Coddling the audience?
TBN:
Yes. It's good story telling but, I don't think Holocaust films
can be caught anymore telling the story well. I think any film,
ideally, must be experienced not watched. And there were certainly
ways we could have had the audience have a rest. And there were
scenes I shot that did so. They were trashed in the edit.
Emily:
How did you get all those naked bodies to be willing to pose for
what must have been hours [there are scenes with hundreds of naked
people in the film]
TBN:
By shooting the film in Bulgaria. On the final day DP Russell
Lee Fine, who shot all three of my movies, as is his custom he
gave me the clapper. The whole crew signed it…we are shooting
the final scene. The scene of the train at night the extras cheered
and the crew  cheered
and all I said was we could only have made this film in Bulgaria.
I can't think of a clearer indication of that then the extras.
This is a country in the twentieth century has suffered soviet
repression and for centuries before that oppression under Ottoman
rule. When we arrived and announced we were making a film about
the Holocaust the country embraced us. Extras were literally fighting
to be apart of this film. Even when it meant some of the most
difficult scenes. In a country for what ever reason long beautiful
hair is very important, two hundred and fifty women shaved their
heads. And they worked only nights for the girls' part.
I
found myself on day in the gas chamber one day…the gas chamber
was meant to deal with about 1000 bodies but at this point in
1944 they were putting about 1700 in per gassing. So all these
people would crowd into the showers the would shut the door [lock
it] and drop the gas through four slots…people would immediately
start choking and rush the door. At the door from floor to ceiling
it was packed with bodies, then in the back it was empty. From
just rushing the door. That's how "the girl" survives.
She gets trampled she's in pocket of air. In this scene we were
shooting what happens just after a gassing. What the Sonderkommandos
would do is they would open the door then they would burrow through
the bodies and create an aisle down the middle. Then they were
done with that they would start hosing the bodies down and cleaning
them and removing them form the gas chamber. We're shooting that
hosing. To accomplish that we piled up about 800 dummies floor
to ceiling. Then we got 250 Bulgarian extras to lie on top of
them intertwined with one another as corpses. I found myself…and
this was about ¾ of the film…with 250 Bulgarian extras
ages five, to eighty…men women boys and girls naked…covered
in excrement- movie excrement and movie blood intertwined on top
of one another in a representation of what Miklos Nyiszli described
as a "lattice of flesh." And I felt so incredibly grateful
to the commitment these people were showing. And they were treating
it as their film. Day after day when we were calling on extras
there was that kind of commitment to this film. They were not
getting paid much. We were a four million dollar movie. We built
everything you see except for the ammunitions factory. The production
period on this film was three months. Normally a preproduction
period in three to six weeks. Three months six days a week. What
we built we built on the architectural plans.
Emily:
Yes the sets looked exact.
TBN:
They were. We went around the countryside and we went to old collective
farms and tore don empty buildings so we could get reconstituted
brick. The same color the exact look. The sprinklers that you
see are period sprinklers. The wardrobe came from all over Europe.
The furnace room is a to-scale replica, again based on the architectural
plans. There's not a single digital shot in the movie. Everything
you see is real stuff being films. Three of the furnaces are practical
furnaces so we could burn bodies. NOT real bodies movie
bodies. It wasn't easy. As you can imagine.
Emily:
Several of the characters, like Steve
Buscemi's and David Chandlers hated each other even though
they were both inmates. There was no comradery. They were prejudice
to even each other - even in the face of death. Why did you go
that route?
TBN:
I grew up around a lot of internecing hatred between Jews and
other nationalities. My grandfather was a German Jew had conspicuous
disdain for Jews of Eastern Europe. And I found it astonishing…really
astonishing. The way Jews talk about other Jews.
TBN:
How did you cast this film? How involved?
Emily:
Heavy and finally. Harvey was on first after he joined three others
joined in. Then we went with hat in hand to raise the money. I
was told it would take seven years to raise the money. Seven years
only if I directed a film of such commercial success what ever
I wanted to do next would be made - even The Grey Zone.
Then Pam Koffler, Christine Vachon and I met these extraordinary
men, the Lerners, who have a company called Millennium Films.
They said to us, and they are Israeli - they grew up among survivors-
they said to we will make this movie, we will fully finance it
based on the actors you bought us and we fully expect we will
lose money. We just want to make this movie. We must do it.
It was my own response when I read Primo Levi's essay. I said,
" I must write about this." After I had the money I
called Harvey and he said fantastic! I called the other three
and each one of them found a reason not to join! [laughter] I
think it was easy to commit when they never thought it was going
to get made [laughter]. They figured his would never get made
in a million years. But I was confident that because of what the
material was asking of the actors, that these three 'truants'
would be replaced. And they were with David, Steve and Mira.
Emily:
Mira Sorvino was unrecognizable. Brilliant. It was fifteen minutes
before I realized it was her. David Arquette was another treat.
I always liked him, but here he absolutely shines. How did you
pick him? He's known as a kinetic mad man.
TBN:
I knew David we had done a western together called A Dead Man's
Walk. And I recognized immediately in David an extraordinarily
goofy person capable of incredibly goofy performances who was
also deeply serious. I also felt that goofiness in comedy has
a cousin in dramatic work and that cousin is shame. What is goofy
in comedy is shame in drama. Because the goofy character is allowing
you to laugh at him for all the ways he falls short. That's what
goofiness is.
Emily:
It's a mask
TBN:
Yeah. I thought when David expressed interest in doing the role
I thought it just may be he was the perfect actor for the role.
He came in and we worked for over an hour. And in the end I really
at the point what I needed to overcome was - and you must think
this way as a director- what the audience's reaction to his presence
in a film like this. Would an audience allow the film to operate
with David Arquette at its center?
Emily:
Yeah but you cast two heavy anchors beside him in Harvey Kietel
and Steve Buscemi. Steve's gold and Harvey's a magnet for an audience
that would see this.
TBN:
Yeah. The movie exploits the audience's expectations about David.
When I cast him I said the film will begin with David. When you
see David and knowing all you know about him from his other roles
and you see David absolutely still and with such a gravity in
his aspect in his eyes you immediately understand this movie's
different.
END
Yes.
Yes it is. Brilliantly different. There's no coddling or softening
of the frames to keep you secure in your seat. Even the film's
"noise" - lack of soundtrack that allows for odd sounds
to
permeate through is unnerving. You keep checking around you to
be sure you have not been physically transported to this horrible,
and real, world.
Tim's
created a work of macabre art. His actors are incredible and compelling.
He may have broke David Arquette's shell of absurdity, which would
allow the guy to grown and gain a better respect as a serious
contender in the actor's market. He also gave us all a thought
provoking film based on the truth of a time we shouldn't forget.
The Grey Zone is one helluva film.
I got so wrapped up in the talk I forgot about Clooney! DRAT!
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