Film festivals offer a varietal menu for film aficionados and hopefully provide at least one film experience worth remembering for a long time as well as panels and social settings to interact with filmmakers. If you are lucky enough to be a journalist on assignment, then sometimes you can get up close and personal with writers, directors, and actors to question and probe for insights about their creative processes.
At the Nantucket Film Festival in June, Showtime offered this writer up-close views of two of its films, EDGE OF AMERICA and SPEAK. Both are engaging features with strong viewpoints and solid themes. They are films you can emotionally respond to without much effort and feel like you’ve tasted an important slice of life. Each focuses on alienation without the oft-expected and predictable bluster and fury of bigger Hollywood statements on the subject. Though linked by similar themes, each film chooses widely different milieus to grapple with the subject.
After the Friday afternoon screening of EDGE OF AMERICA at the theater in ‘Sconset, Holtzman sat down at Schooners to talk about the film. Initially, EDGE began as a commissioned script for PBS’s AMERICN PLAYHOUSE in 1991 when Holtzman was brought in as a writer after his successes on stage. Though it was close to being produced, the project fell apart when the director was removed. Holtzman found director Chris Eyre, a Cheyenne-Arapaho Native American (SMOKE SIGNALS), who became excited about the project. Together, they worked three years to obtain the rights. Later, it took two more years of talks with Showtime before the film was greenlighted. Says Holtzman, “Put yourself on the other side of the desk as an executive. Even if they loved the script, it has an African-American lead, and we wanted to use amateur Native American actors in it. It took a while doing it. But they really got behind it. They get all the credit.”
Holtzman likes to work from factual material, and he spent considerable time doing research on the reservation. Though it’s based on real-life events, he says, “We fictionalized a lot of the story. Technically, you could say we were inspired by a true story. We wanted to protect certain identities of the people who struggled with alcohol or with teen pregnancy. But those were important elements in the story.
Asked about the long, sometimes torturous road from script to screen, Holtzman says, “If you really do your work as a writer and really create a unique role for an actor and get it to the actor, something will happen. James McDaniel and I have been talking about doing this film for ten years.”
James McDaniel, who had a nine-year stint as Lieutenant Arthur Fancy on NYPD BLUE which earned him an Emmy nomination, stepped out of an SUV and into Schooners ready to talk. He gravitated to the script because it was “quite an unusual story,” he says, settling at a table upstairs ready to talk. “It was fertile material for something to actually happen with an African-American and six or seven indigenous young women. I thought that would be an experience I wouldn’t want to miss.”
In his search for meaningful, unique roles, he decries the sameness of so many contemporary movies. “You walk into a movie theater. You get introduced to the male lead, then the female lead, and you know exactly what the story is going to be. You sit there and you eat popcorn until the inevitable happens, and you leave the theater.”
To prepare for the role as girls’ basketball coach, McDaniel spent a lot of time in gyms absorbing the sport and coaching his son. Years earlier he had worked as a volunteer at the 52nd Street Project, an artist-mentor project for inner-city youth in New York City. So when the challenge arose to work with untrained Native American youth in EDGE, he parlayed his background experience into an asset. “You were working with people who were like sponges, who really wanted to explore.”
Showtime allowed for a week’s rehearsal before shooting commenced. “I became a de facto acting coach. It gave me the opportunity to work with the girls individually and as a group.”
As a minority working within a minority community, McDaniel approached his position two ways: as an artist with the character he played and as a human being in a real day-to-day mix with Native American culture. “I tried to let go of my assumptions and to be as open-minded and sensitive as I could be to the culture because the cultures are very different. The more I understood about them, the more I could understand what it was to be a fish out of water, which is what the film is about to a certain extent.”
McDaniel recalls the Sundance showing to a packed theater and how afterward the audience applauded with a standing ovation, some, he noticed, with tears in their eyes. He says, “It works on a very human level, and that’s what it should be.”
SPEAK was the other Showtime-backed independent film to play Nantucket. Based on the novel by Laurie Halse Anderson, SPEAK was brought to the screen by writers Annie Young Frisbie who first tackled the adaptation and Jessica Sharzer who co-wrote and also directed the film in her debut feature. Ironically, SPEAK is about silence-silence about an unspeakable event in the life of high school freshman, Melinda, played compellingly by Kristen Stewart (PANIC ROOM, SAFETY OF OBJECTS). It looks at teen angst with a veritable cause beneath the surface and doesn’t pander to audience preconceptions of youthful rebellion. With honesty, it cuts to the heart of teenage rage and fears, never giving in to “mean girls” cliché.
Sharzer, who took Frisbie’s adapted script to the next level, worked painstakingly to capture the novel’s strong, narrative, first-person voice. “We tried to create scenes that would really portray Melinda’s experience without needing a lot of internal work,” Sharzer says. “We did play with how much voiceover we needed.
“While we were editing, I went to L.A., and I recorded with the actress everything we could possibly want. Then, in editing we put in more, then less. In the final sound mix we eliminated about thirty percent of voiceover that we put in.”
As Melinda gradually emerges from her silent self-absorption, her physical appearance changes. With her make-up team, Sharzer developed “seven looks” for the teen lead. During the long silences the director walked the 13 year-old actress through her emotional states, giving her directions to suggest emotions that she wanted her to portray. Sharzer says, “I’m speaking to her through every take. I’m giving her, her internal thoughts.”
The film began in development in 1999 and was shot in August 2003 in Columbus, Ohio with generous help from the mayor’s office, which provided excellent support and facilities.
Sharzer believes screenwriting mirrors directing. “When you’re writing, you’re directing on the page. You have to envision a movie to write one.” But there are differences too. “You can junk a day of writing, whereas in production, it’s like being on a roller coaster. You can’t get off.”
Annie Young Frisbie, meanwhile, who had her hands on the novel first, wished, like Sharzer, to maintain the narrative voice. Since Melinda in the movie is an artist, Frisbie used a different approach to voiceover-the teenager’s cartoon drawings would talk to her, which would entail the use of animation. Frisbie says, “It “was a fun exercise to use.” But finally it didn’t work.
Frisbie, however, was thrilled with the final version when it premiered at Sundance. “I can’t believe it looked like what I thought it should.”