For Randall Robinson, the Caribbean is not a tropical getaway. The region is his adopted home, his refuge since leaving the United States three weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The founder and former president of TransAfrica Forum, a humanitarian organization dedicated to promoting enlightened U.S. policies toward Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America, Robinson left America for his wife’s native island of St. Kitts. In his new book “Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man From His Native Land,” Robinson writes, “I had always felt spiritually countryless. I belonged to the black world and not necessarily to America.”
A lifelong political activist, Robinson is also the author of “The Debt,” which articulates the highly controversial argument that the United States should address the legacy of slavery by paying reparations to African-Americans. Although favorably reviewed by such mainstream-left publications as the Nation and the Christian Science Monitor, “The Debt” was attacked by some on the right as racially divisive and by some on the left for Robinson’s suggestion that slavery in America may have had a more devastating impact on African-Americans than colonialism and imperialism did on blacks living in Africa. His new book has also raised hackles. “Quitting America” opens with a look at the man Robinson considers the granddaddy of Western capitalists, Christopher Columbus. Robinson argues that Columbus’ ruthless exploitation of the Caribbean paved the way for like-minded Europeans to follow suit in the centuries to come.
Right-wing commentators, such as those at David Horowitz’s FrontPage magazine, have savaged the book. “By leaving America for the picturesque beaches of the Caribbean, the wealthy Robinson has demonstrated that he favors self-indulgent separatism above engagement and political debate,” wrote Anders G. Lewis, who termed Robinson a “smooth-talking racist.”
Some on the left may also scratch their heads at Robinson’s apparent choice of flight over fight. Indeed, there are plenty of politically disgruntled Americans who refuse to flee the country, who are committed to effecting change from within. Yet Robinson hasn’t abandoned the U.S. altogether; he continues to involve himself in efforts to shape American policy and writes that he intends to remain a U.S. citizen in “good standing.” But he says he could no longer abide living in a country he had found so inhospitable to African-Americans, and he wanted his daughter to grow up in a culture where he believed her race would not marginalize her.
“Quitting America” doubles as a chronicle of Robinson’s decision to leave the States and a scathing sociopolitical critique of the country he once called home. The book is also a valentine to St. Kitts and Nevis, a nation, Robinson writes, that disdains materialism, provides universal health care and has little crime.
As would be expected, Robinson has harsh words for President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and the other engineers of the Iraq invasion. But he also finds much to condemn in the policies of Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Perhaps the most powerful section of “Quitting America” details the tortured history of Haiti. A longtime friend of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Robinson undertook a 28-day hunger strike in 1994 to protest the Clinton administration’s policy toward Haitian refugees. Robinson explores Haiti’s subjugation at the hands of the U.S. and Europe and also looks back to one of the few glorious episodes in Haiti’s history, the successful slave revolt of 1803.
Robinson’s writing on Haiti is particularly timely given the events of recent weeks. On Feb. 29, Aristide was exiled to the Central African Republic. The Bush administration said Aristide resigned voluntarily. Aristide himself claimed he had been kidnapped. Two weeks later, Robinson and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., a vocal critic of the administration’s Haiti policy, led a private delegation to the Central African Republic. The group flew Aristide to Jamaica, where he has been granted temporary asylum. While many observers, including some on the left, became critical of Aristide’s presidency, Robinson remains one of the deposed leader’s most fervent defenders.
The trip was very much on Robinson’s mind when Salon spoke to him two days after his return home from Africa.
At one point in your book you predict that “Quitting America” will draw a relatively small white audience. What made you feel this way?
The mail I’ve received suggests I was wrong. I’ve gotten more mail in response to this book than the three previous ones I’ve written combined, far and away. I would guess at least 40 percent of the mail is from white Americans who identify with the disillusionment I expressed about what has happened to the real character of American democracy. They’ve been important letters to me. One white writer said the racial experience I had described had accelerated my disillusionment but in no other way was it different from his.
The isolation of racial realities in America causes one to form assumptions about things we find little opportunity to test. It causes the black community to believe — and I think I’m speaking for the huge majority of blacks — that white Americans just don’t care about what happens to other people, that they’re not even intellectually curious about [people of color] who for them are opaque or faceless, that they have no interest in Native Americans as anything but a momentary curiosity. I felt that way. But then I came to discover, reassuringly, that there are at least enough white Americans with enough interest to write in response to this book and say that my experience has been their own.
For me this sense of disillusionment is an old phenomenon; for these readers it’s a relatively new one. Some of it comes up in discussions of the press. A prominent journalist recently confided in me his feeling that the American press has failed its democracy. The term “embedded” that became popular during the Iraq war is more than just a description of a practical and physical relationship. It describes what has happened more generally to the American press, to what has caused it to miscarry its responsibility.
The story of what has happened to American democracy has never been written. I’m not talking about the whole ritual of elections but what democracy is supposed to mean for all of us and how we’re supposed to treat each other with relative compassion. These are not just Republicans we’re dealing with these days; this is something extraordinary, where there’s no regard for law. What we did to Iraq is one thing; what we have done to Haiti is absolutely criminal and the press has been involved in it.
I have been known to irritate those who have wanted to support me, to criticize people on the left, black people, any kind of people, when what they are doing is unresponsive to people’s fundamental human rights. Because of what I have seen — and I’ve berated everybody I can put my hands on, Wolf Blitzer and everybody — because of what I know about Haiti and have seen in the press coverage, I don’t believe anything I read or see anymore. I can’t trust any information that is part of a news package. Journalists have behaved so badly and in virtual knee-jerk favor of whatever the Bush administration has done.
In an interview with [National Public Radio host] Tavis Smiley in January you expressed the hope that “Quitting America” would enable its readers to understand what has made so many people feel displaced in the United States. Is it possible that your book implicitly encourages people to leave the U.S. and to quit fighting for change here?
I’ve left America physically but I’m still very much involved in its policies. I think you’re better Americans when you live somewhere else at some time in your life. You don’t learn anything about the world living in America; you need to talk to people who are affected by what the U.S. does. I think it’s a good thing for young people, people early in their careers, to live somewhere else for a while. If you participate in the American political process when you return you will do so much more sensitively than you would have otherwise.
Going back to Haiti and Aristide, you talk at length in your book about Aristide’s virtues, describing him as one of the few true Christians you have encountered. He has been widely criticized, in the press and elsewhere, as a one-time populist who ended up using the same corrupt and authoritarian tactics he once decried. I take it you don’t agree.
It’s quite clearly untrue. In America you wouldn’t just write in a newspaper or say on television that President Bush is authoritarian. You would have to particularize the charge and then a reader would draw from that a conclusion that the president is or is not corrupt. With Aristide the American press has started with a verdict, that he is corrupt. The particulars are never described.
In a democracy you are elected and vested with certain powers and you exercise those powers for the period of your term. But in fact Aristide never had any power to begin with because of those who made war against his efforts to make the country right. And the coup began in 1994 when the Republicans took over the United States Congress a month after Aristide was restored to power. Because of this enormous unrelenting enmity toward Aristide in Republican circles, they began to deconstruct his government almost from the very beginning.
I was on the plane with Aristide when he went back to Haiti [in 1994], and there was nothing there, no institutions of government, no bureaus, no departments. It had all been destroyed by thugs, the Macoutes, and by the [paramilitary group] FRAPH, whom we had armed and trained, who had been part of the Duvalier machine. Aristide was facing an army he couldn’t trust, so he dismantled the army. But they were never disarmed, so they just went over the border into the Dominican Republic. They just fled across the border and were never held accountable. One of these killers, Emmanuel Constant, “Toto,” went across the border, got on a plane, and has been in New York ever since. He was the head of FRAPH and the United States has protected him. If he’s not already back in Haiti he’s coming soon.
Under Bush we removed all bilateral assistance for the Aristide administration. Then we blocked a $500 million loan package from the Inter-American Development Bank, money that had been earmarked for literacy education, for safe drinking water, for road development and medical care. The Republicans blocked it all. And then we started to give about $3 million a year to form an opposition to Aristide comprised of unelected businesspeople.
Why were these people so opposed to Aristide? Because he had the temerity to suggest several things. One, that the wealthy business community begin to pay taxes. Two, that the minimum wage be raised from the current rate of $1.60 a day. Three, that the practice involving the indentureship of girls working as domestics in the homes of the wealthy for room and board alone be ended. That enraged the wealthy community.
There was a recent piece on Haiti in the Boston Globe in which you described Colin Powell as the “most powerful and damaging black to rise to influence in the world” in your lifetime.
Even before the [Haitian] coup the secretary of state had indicated a callousness toward the black world. We had appealed to him years ago to use his influence to get the Clinton administration to desist in the work they were doing to wreck the Caribbean banana-dependent countries, the exporting countries of the Caribbean. There was a special regime of the European Union to create a market for the Caribbean countries to sell their bananas. Most of these countries are so small that diversification is just not a practicable kind of objective to pursue. In the Dominican Republic, 85 percent of their foreign exchange earnings came from banana exports.
But Chiquita wanted that market all to itself and gave huge amounts of money both to the Republicans and the Democrats. The head of Chiquita came to Washington and slept in the Lincoln Bedroom and Clinton went to work at the WTO [World Trade Organization] to destroy the Caribbean trade understanding with Europe. And so now Dominica is in a shambles, farmers have been committing suicide in St. Vincent, but these are places that Americans don’t know anything about and don’t care anything about. Clinton knew this wouldn’t cost him politically, not even with the black community, because they didn’t know anything more about this situation than anyone else. And the black community just adored Clinton — for what reason I have no idea, but it was certainly largely undeserved.
So we had gone to Colin Powell, assuming that because he was a son of Jamaica that in his breast would stir some sympathy. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Of course if a black rises to high places under the wing of Ronald Reagan that ought to tell you something about what you might reasonably get. But I think African-Americans, including myself, wanted to believe in Powell. We wanted to be proud that this charming man who had become the first black secretary of state would do well and would make a difference, not just for the world but for our community. What distinguished him from Condoleezza Rice was that she was never known to anybody. She’s an academic and relatively mirthless. Powell is an engaging man — I met him at the White House with Aristide — but his policies have been godawful and devastating to black countries around the world.
You recently got back from the Central African Republic, where you retrieved Aristide and brought him to Jamaica. How did that happen?
[Rep.] Maxine Waters and I had been talking to the Aristides on the phone five to 10 times a day in the month leading up to the coup. We were arranging for Tavis Smiley to come down on Sunday. Tavis was going to do an interview in the palace and then ABC News was going to do an interview as well.
On Saturday night [the night before Aristide's removal] I called the palace and a woman whose voice was unfamiliar to me answered the phone. I said, “Can I speak to the president?” and she said, “He’s busy.” I was calling to warn the president because I had been told that Colin Powell had sent a message that [Aristide] was going to be killed on Sunday morning and that the United States would do nothing to help him. I became alarmed when I couldn’t get through. Then I didn’t hear anything except that the coup had occurred.
It was on Monday that President Aristide called and said he was in the Central African Republic. He said over and over again, “It’s a coup, it’s a coup.” Mrs. Aristide said they had been taken from their residence in Haiti and put aboard this white aircraft with U.S. markings. She said there were some 20 American Marines in full battle gear, helmets and all. They took their helmets off and put on baseball caps once they were onboard. And all the shades on the plane were drawn and then they took off and flew not a terribly long distance and landed and sat on a tarmac for two hours. Friends of ours in Antigua described to us this same plane. Our friends said all the shades were drawn and there were supposedly no passengers onboard.
They took off again. Mrs. Aristide raised the shade and was told to put it down, and then they flew for six hours and were on ground somewhere for three hours — they don’t know where. Then they took off again. Only when the plane was approaching the Central African Republic were the Aristides told where they were going.
[Assistant Secretary of State] Roger Noriega said on “Nightline” that Aristide had chosen to go to the Central African Republic, which if you know anything about the Central African Republic is just ludicrous. Then Noriega said later in a congressional hearing that the Aristides didn’t know where they were going until just before they landed, proving that he had lied before.
We talked to the Aristides several times a day after they got to Africa. While the people in the Central African Republic were hospitable, it was clear to the Aristides that they were being held there against their will. They were escorted outside their room only twice in the week or so they were there. It became clear to them that these officials were not in fact their keepers, that they had been asked to hold the Aristides there and were doing someone else’s bidding.
I think this is very illustrative of the character of the United States. On the one hand we did nothing about the ruthless killers who fled from Haiti across the border to the Dominican Republic. On the other hand we overturned the government of a democratically elected president and flew its leader 17 hours to a landlocked country in Africa that has no relations with the other African countries, that has been ostracized because its government came to power by virtue of a military coup.
Your ultimate hope is that Aristide will be restored to power in Haiti. What was the immediate goal of your trip to Africa?
Our immediate goal was to bring President Aristide to Jamaica. We had Sharon Hay-Webster representing [Jamaican] Prime Minister P.J. Patterson with a letter saying that Jamaica was offering temporary asylum. Maxine Waters and Sharon and I arrived in the Central African Republic at about 6:30 in the evening. The military government there planned to celebrate the first anniversary of its coup the following morning. When we landed there were no passengers in the airport, only soldiers with guns, and we told them that President Aristide needed to be released so he could leave with us as soon as possible.
Their interest was in persuading us to stay over and participate in the festivities celebrating the coup. Obviously we did not want to be associated with the celebration of a military coup and we said, “We want Aristide to come with us, we have a letter, and if he is not a prisoner then he should be free to leave.” Then we were taken down to the presidential palace complex. We saw the Aristides and a night of negotiations began.
Since the Central African Republic doesn’t have much contact with the outside world, the government wanted to use President Aristide’s presence, which had brought them more attention than they had seen in ages, as a kind of bargaining chip. We said, “No, we’ve got to leave tonight.” They said, “We can’t make this decision right away,” and we said, “Why? If he’s not a prisoner he should be free to leave.” And they said, “No, he can’t leave” — and this was critical — “He can’t leave until we speak to Gabon.” Gabon had been instrumental in paving this whole placement of Aristide there with the United States. Then they told us Aristide couldn’t leave until they also spoke to the French, whose air force facility is right beside the airport. Then they said, “We can’t let him go until we speak to the Americans.”
And then it became clear who was really holding us. It wasn’t the president of the Central African Republic but the United States. We said we weren’t going to leave until Aristide was released, and I think having a member of the U.S. Congress there raised the stakes for Powell and the U.S. government and they allowed the Central African Republic to let Aristide go.
Amy Goodman from [the radio news program] “Democracy Now!” accompanied us on this trip, and she pointed out the novelty of the whole venture, that no one had ever done what we had done before. The U.S. government absconds with somebody and takes him into exile in some remote, distant place and a private group of people charter a plane and go there and get him. There were moments where we really understood the risk. Not only were the president and Mrs. Aristide prisoners, but for the time we were in that country, we ourselves had very little power.
At this point in history, you write, the U.S. conducts itself as though the rules apply to everyone but us. What do you see as the long-term outcome of this position, vis-à-vis our position in the international community?
We don’t ask questions. We haven’t counted the Iraqi bodies because from Vietnam on we haven’t cared. That’s suicide. I’m not talking about America against other people; this is certain Americans against other countries, and certain Americans against other Americans. And patriotism is just a disguise for the greed that drives this.
The most undemocratic and mercenary thing that we have done is to use an all-volunteer army to do our bidding. This is a poor army or else they wouldn’t be volunteers. I would be willing to bet everything I have, everything I will have, that if we had had a draft this war would never have happened. I ask a question in the book that is so important, that if the life that is to be lost in pursuit of this policy were yours, would it be worth it? Before you send somebody else’s children — poor, black, white, Hispanic — to fight a war and die, ask yourself this: Would you be prepared to die for the same cause? If the president can’t answer that question, if Powell can’t answer that question, if Rice and Rumsfeld can’t answer that question, then they are loathsome.
You write that great leaders anguish over the decision to go to war, but that you think Bush and Rumsfeld felt no such anguish. Why not?
Oh, God. It’s a subject for serious study. I really can’t understand it. It was what I thought compelled them to send Aristide where they sent him, and to threaten him and destroy as they have, and to hate him as they do. I don’t understand it. It is trite to say that these are mean, unfeeling people but indeed they are.
I’m always rather wary of people who want power. One has to wonder about the mental health of anybody who wants to be president. That ought to be the first sign that something is wrong. If you want no privacy, if you are inflated by the realization of power, that means something is wrong with you. When you get decency in the presidency it’s rather an accident.
I thought Clinton was brilliant, perhaps the most gifted president. I mean, he swamps Bush hands down. There are two kinds of things to worry about: That a brilliant guy like Clinton, who believes in absolutely nothing, who’s a moral void, can become president of the United States, and the other, that an abjectly stupid person like Bush can become president. What does that say about democracy? I don’t know.
I felt it when I was working in Washington, more over the last 10 to 15 years than earlier in my career, that good people, decent people, are disinclined to run for office anymore. The people who want all parts of it are invariably the people who should have no part of it. The United States is now the most powerful nation ever in the history of nations and it’s almost drunk with its sense of power, this feeling that it can do anything to anybody anywhere. And it is frightening.
Paul Giamatti has fashioned a career out of being humbled and humiliated, giving oddball life to an assortment of schmucks, nebbishes and clowns.
In “Private Parts” he appeared opposite Howard Stern as a much maligned radio exec nicknamed “Pig Vomit.” In the Martin Lawrence vehicle “Big Momma’s House,” he was an undercover cop chastened by snarling pooches and Bundt-bearing Southern matrons. And in “Big Fat Liar” he played a shady movie producer pummeled into submission by vengeful, sitcom-cute tweenyboppers.
He’s so adept at playing losers that his lofty pedigree might surprise his audiences; his late father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was an esteemed scholar who taught Italian, English and comparative literature at Princeton and Yale. Bart Giamatti became the youngest president ever of Yale and went on to serve as commissioner of baseball (he died in 1989 just days after banning Pete Rose from the sport).
Paul Giamatti, 36 and also a Yale man, first drew notice as a stage actor, garnering accolades for his work in productions of “The Iceman Cometh,” “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” “Three Sisters” and “Arcadia.”
On-screen he hasn’t fared quite so well. Until recently, Giamatti seemed doomed to permanent what’s-his-name status. He’s had big parts in bad movies, small parts in big ones (“Saving Private Ryan,” “Man on the Moon,” “The Truman Show”). But in the last couple of years, he has slowly emerged in bigger, better roles — most notably in 2001, when he starred as hapless documentary filmmaker Toby Oxman in the Todd Solondz film “Storytelling.”
Now Giamatti’s career-making role comes in the biopic “American Splendor,” which opens in limited release this month. The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the film chronicles the life and times of V.A. hospital file clerk Harvey Pekar. Unable to draw even a stick figure, Pekar nonetheless launched a comic book series — the autobiographical “American Splendor” — in 1976, enlisting Robert Crumb and other artists to illustrate his work. Giamatti stars as the persnickety Pekar opposite Hope Davis as Pekar’s wife, Joyce. Appearances by the real-life Harvey Pekar and a 2-D animated Harvey punctuate the main narrative.
Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, “American Splendor” marks the first time Giamatti has had to carry a film — which he does with a nervy and risk-taking performance.
Salon spoke to Giamatti by telephone:
I came upon this quote from your father: “Being president of a university is no way for an adult to make a living.” Do you think he would have viewed acting as a legitimate way for an adult to make a living?
Sure. He was kind of a theatrical guy himself. My brother was an actor and my mother’s an actress, and my father was very much into the arts. He died before I ever started acting and I’m sure he would have wanted me to know what I was getting into, but he would have been all for it.
You’re generally described as a character actor. Is that a label you would choose for yourself?
I’m not exactly sure what it means, but sure. I think people regard me as quirky; they don’t see me as a leading man.
Could you talk about the challenges of playing a “real” person in “American Splendor”? Did you feel any pressure to be “authentic,” or did you approach Harvey Pekar as you would any other character?
When I met with the directors, they said, “We’re pretty sure we want Harvey in the movie, so we’re thinking we want to cast someone who can be as much like Harvey as possible.” There was a certain amount of pressure and challenge involved because I’d never done that kind of thing before, specifically been told, “We want you to be like this guy.” On the other hand, what you’re seeing in most biopics is a character based on a person; it’s always ultimately a fictional character. I’ve played real people a bunch of times and have finally reached the point where I realize that you do have a lot of room for interpretation with these roles and you can confine yourself too much if you forget that you’re playing a character.
Did you and Harvey talk much during the filmmaking process?
I met him a couple of days before filming began and he’s a really nice guy. We didn’t hang out a whole lot but we did talk; he’s a chatterer. He seemed to get a big kick out of the whole process, and he was remarkably relaxed with the idea of someone else telling his story.
You’ve said you’re playing the “comic book version” of Harvey. Could you talk about the challenges of conveying a persona that feels at once larger than life and credible?
Someone else told me I said that and I’m like, “I said that?” I don’t know what I meant by that. Harvey created a persona in his work and I’m taking on the character he already created. You’re right that comics are slightly larger than life, and Harvey is certainly larger than life, so as an actor I felt permitted to go in that direction, because Harvey slips in and out of a persona himself. He’s got kind of a shtick. He’s a bit of an actor and performer. He knows when to turn on the character. He’s a heightened guy to begin with, just sort of physically strange and a little unreal.
I’m not the most subtle actor in the world, I like to play things a little heightened, so this all felt comfortable for me.
The directors have described Harvey as a hero. Would you?
He’s a heroic figure in the sense that anybody who can get out of bed in the morning without putting a bullet in their head is a heroic figure. There’s heroic effort being made just to put up with everything. What’s heroic about this guy is that he doesn’t just sink into this morass; he makes something out of it. He’s a really smart guy. The funny thing to me is that people always describe him as an Everyman. He is but he’s not. He’s very eccentric, an odd guy. It shows that there’s no such thing as ordinary.
You and Hope Davis have such a strong connection in this film. Could you talk about your collaboration on this project?
Frankly, I think she makes the movie. We didn’t have a heck of a lot of time to work on the film, we didn’t rehearse it, but Hope picked up her character really quickly. She and I talked about how we wanted to make this film as completely unsentimental and unromantic as possible.
Hope met with Joyce once before filming, and she said Joyce told her that she and Harvey really did get married after knowing each other just two days. The feeling Joyce had when she met Harvey was “He liked what I was selling and I liked what he was selling.” Hope wanted to convey this feeling in the film, this image of two people who are way past anything else but the notion of “I like what he’s selling, I like what she’s selling.” There is that matter-of-factness to both of them. I thought this was a great detail to bring to the film; without it I might have had the tendency to overact.
You’ve appeared in such a broad range of work everything from “Planet of the Apes” to “The Iceman Cometh.” Do you invest more of yourself when you’re working on “serious” projects like “American Splendor” as opposed to something like “Big Momma’s House”?
I have to tell you that “Big Momma” took it out of me. Movies like that present their own set of challenges. I appear in comedies a lot, but I don’t feel I actually have the greatest comedic skills in the world. I don’t think I should only be playing King Lear but I think there are some people with that extraordinary ability to hit the laugh every time. I just don’t have that. “Big Momma” was purely about getting laughs through physical comedy, and I wanted to see if I could do that, because it’s not something I feel very comfortable doing. I think I’m pretty terrible at it. A lot of things were very tough about that movie. Sometimes the films that appear to be the most lowbrow choices end up being the most difficult.
When “Storytelling” came out, Todd Solondz told Salon that he despises directing. He described the production process as “assaultive and nightmarish and horrible” and said the only reason he directs is because he doesn’t want anyone else directing his scripts. Could you talk a bit about his general approach on the “Storytelling” set?
He said that? That surprises me. His scripts are tricky because they’re written in a very specific voice and style. They’re not easy to get a hold of. He really wants you to stick to it, which I like, this sense that the script was written exactly as he intended the actors to read it. He’s an incredibly warm and pleasant presence on the set, but I guess he’s miserable. I didn’t know that. He’s really a perfectionist; he does lots of takes and really lets you work.
Could you discuss your role in the upcoming John Waters film?
It’s a really funny script, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do it. I might have a scheduling conflict. It’s about people who get concussions and develop these specific sex fetishes, so you have characters wearing diapers, humping trees, stuff like that. It’s like one of the old John Waters films. It’s insane.
Rebecca Miller’s debut feature, last November’s “Personal Velocity,” came off as a high-rent version of the glowy, woman-friendly teledramas that buttress the Lifetime Network. Composed of three distinct vignettes, the film is worth seeing only for the performance of Parker Posey, who portrays a Manolo Blahnik-shod book editor in the film’s most fully realized segment.
Married to an exceedingly nice fact-checker who’s been laboring for years on a bloated dissertation, Greta comes to realize that she’s “rotten with ambition,” both personally and professionally. And so her eye starts to wander.
At one point, she gets coquettish with a cutie in a coffee shop, tossing off a meaning-laden “Bye” on her way out the door. Posey infuses the casual farewell with plenty of flirty possibility, revealing once again that she’s capable of doing more with one syllable than most actors are with spotlight-focused soliloquies.
The Mississippi-bred actress, named after ’50s-era cover girl Suzy Parker, snagged her first big break back in 1991 as the odious Tess Shelby on the soap opera “As the World Turns.” But it was her brief turn as authoritarian cheerleader Darla Marks in Richard Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” that won Posey critical notice — and established her as a supremely watchable screen presence.
Since then, Posey has zinged barbs in more than 40 films, including “Clockwatchers,” “The Daytrippers” and “The House of Yes,” in which her performance as a batty Jackie-O worshipper earned the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Though few have honed the art of cinematic sarcasm quite as adeptly as Posey, she always conveys far more than just snark and sass. Indeed, her performances in films like Hal Hartley’s “Henry Fool” have revealed Posey’s dramatic depth, her ability to invest virtually any role with nuance and complexity.
But what has proven most revelatory about Posey’s career in recent years has been her work in the Christopher Guest mockumentaries. In “Waiting for Guffman,” a sendup of the cutthroat world of community theater, Posey played a starry-eyed Dairy Queen waitress. In “Best in Show,” a spoof of the canine competition circuit, she played a high-strung yuppie with an equally high-strung pooch.
And in “A Mighty Wind,” which opened last week, she portrays a formerly troubled teen enlisted to play mandolin in the folk world’s only “neuftet,” the New Main Street Singers. The film follows the color-coordinated ensemble and two ’60s-era groups — the tradition-bound Folksmen and the sweetheart duo Mitch & Mickey — as they prepare to perform a memorial tribute to the late legendary manager Irving Steinbloom.
Like “Guffman” and “Best in Show,” “A Mighty Wind” relies heavily on improvisation. Director Guest and co-scripter Eugene Levy provide the actors with a detailed outline enumerating key plot points; within the boundaries of that outline, the cast is free to improvise dialogue. In all three films, Posey has shown she can hold her own against celebrated comic geniuses like Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard.
Posey is nothing if not ambitious; she recently took a break from the film world to star in an Off-Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s play “Fifth of July,” for which she earned a Lucille Lortel Award nomination. I spoke to Posey by telephone last week.
Did you have any background in improvisation prior to your appearance in the Christopher Guest films?
No, but when I went to college at SUNY Purchase we did these Sanford Meisner exercises that are all about forgetting. They’re these repetition games where you describe something the other person is doing or wearing and the other person has to repeat back exactly the way it was said to them. The idea is that if you repeat what you’re hearing you’re not thinking about how you’re going to say something; you’re just repeating what you hear. It’s a game about instincts and forgetting.
I don’t think I could do the kind of improv where you have to respond to audience suggestions and think of funny things to say on the spur of the moment. I’m just not that kind of actor. I’d rather just react.
How much leeway did you have within the outline Guest and Levy provided to improvise dialogue or shape your character?
We had all the freedom in the world. What you bring to these films is a particular psychology you’ve developed about the character. That’s what makes it all so interesting.
Could you talk about how the Guest ensemble has evolved, from “Waiting for Guffman” on through “A Mighty Wind”?
It’s the most relaxed set I’ve ever worked on. People bring their cameras and sneak around and listen to what everyone else is doing; we’re all interested in seeing how everyone is working. When we weren’t acting we were all hanging around outside, listening to music.
I’m sad that this is all going to be over someday. These movies are all about flying by the seat of your pants, yet Chris is the most trusting director I’ve ever worked with. A lot of directors want to get their hands into your performance; they want to have input, they want to have power.
Christopher Guest filmed between 50 and 80 hours of material for “A Mighty Wind” and whittled it all down to 87 minutes. Did the final product meet with your expectations?
I haven’t seen the final film. When you see any of the others it’s crazy. When we were doing “Guffman” we were all in Austin, Texas, and every night we would watch dailies and see all this great material. Then we saw the movie and we were heartbroken. You could tell after seeing “Best in Show” that John Michael Higgins and Michael Hitchcock felt kind of sad because some of their scenes were cut. But you’ve got to make it into the movie that it is, and you don’t know what kind of movie it’s going to be until people start talking. Chris gets everyone together and then he starts composing, like a musician. He’s editing a documentary, but it’s a documentary cut for comedy.
I know you learned to play mandolin for the film and had to perform live in the big concert scene at Town Hall. What kind of musical background did you bring to “A Mighty Wind”?
Playing an instrument is like finding an actor’s prop. When I think about musicians I think about that moment that made them choose a certain instrument. That kind of choice reveals so much about a person. Chris asked if I wanted to play the mandolin, and he played a few chords for me at his house. I put the mandolin down and then picked it right back up again. Chris said that was a good sign. I practiced from January until July, when we started shooting.
You’ve appeared in such a broad range of film roles. Generally speaking, do you feel more at home doing comedy or drama?
I like to walk a line. When I’m happy I’m sad, when I’m angry I’m funny. You get that kind of complexity in plays, in Chekhov, in parts that are written well. But you don’t find it in most movies.
Which filmmaking experience have you found most fulfilling?
Tall traditional.
What?
Oops, I’m busted. I said, “Tall traditional.” I’m at Starbucks. I just got done with the play and I’m still on night time; I can’t wind down until 3 or 4 o’clock. I’m sorry, what was your question?
Which filmmaking experience have you found most fulfilling?
“Dazed and Confused” was really fun. I like them all. I don’t choose a particular role because it’s a challenge; I do it because it’s right for me. I’m not going to play something that’s not in my makeup; I’m not going to get cast for those roles.
You’ve occasionally appeared in studio pictures like “You’ve Got Mail” and “Josie and the Pussycats.” What influences your decision to work on these kinds of projects?
I’d love to appear in more studio films, but I don’t get cast. I would love to make some money. People like me and want to work with me; they just don’t want to give me jobs. I think it’s a numbers game. My movies haven’t made a lot of money, and there’s a whole list of actors whose movies have made money, and studios think those actors will guarantee a certain number of ticket buyers. But it all works out. It really does. I don’t mind taking this kind of risk. It can be a compromise if you don’t stay true to yourself.
I read an interview where you said you couldn’t stop laughing while you were auditioning for the role Sandra Bullock ended up playing in “Speed.”
I didn’t know what to do besides laugh. Like — for real, you want me to pretend to be driving a bus? I mean, really. We’re all grownups here; we’re not 12 years old.
What do you do to make the experience of working on a film like “You’ve Got Mail” more fulfilling?
I use irony. It all depends on how good the film is. If it’s bad I can totally make fun of it. Let’s face it, comedies these days are terrible. Jim Brooks [i.e., James L. Brooks] was making great comedies that were very human, but now it’s all infantile and aimed for 7- or 8-year-olds, and I think even they’re more intelligent than these movies. So what are you going to do?
Are there particular directors you’d like to work with?
Wes Anderson, Brad Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson; the Andersons. David Cronenberg, Neil Jordan. All the good ones.
You recently completed a run of “Fifth of July.” What made you want to go back to the stage?
For actors there’s a lot of detective work involved in Lanford Wilson’s plays and that’s what makes it so interesting. The play is set in 1978 and I remember seeing women like the character I played; they were so grand, they had this almost English accent. I played a copper heiress — those kind of women make their own misery — but at the end she’s got a huge payoff in that she knows exactly what’s going on; in fact, she’s known all along. I had a great time.
Several years ago Time dubbed you the “Queen of Indies” and Elle once called you a “Gen-X Audrey Hepburn.” How would you label yourself?
I wouldn’t label myself. I’ve been really fortunate to have appeared in some good movies. I hope to do some that can pay and be good. But I don’t want to think about labels. That stuff just feels invasive.
Chisel-jawed lotharios, pointy-breasted housewives, violins played at fever pitch: Such is the stuff Douglas Sirk’s films are made of.
Born in Hamburg in 1900 (as Detlef Sierck), the legendary director hobnobbed with the likes of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in 1920s Germany, then fled the Nazi regime at the beginning of World War II. In Hollywood, he rechristened himself and made his name off a series of bold Technicolor weepies — “Magnificent Obsession,” “Imitation of Life,” “Written on the Wind” — shot for Universal Pictures in the 1950s. Sirk’s films wed a moralizing instinct to a genre, the domestic melodrama, known for its overheated emotions and torrid plot turns.
Sirk’s vibrantly hued and socially engaged movies served as the inspiration for director Todd Haynes’ newest film, “Far From Heaven.” Set in Hartford, Conn., in 1957, “Far From Heaven” centers on the seemingly picture-perfect Whitaker family. Early on in the film, well-heeled housewife Cathy (Julianne Moore) finds her hunky husband (Dennis Quaid) in a compromising position that throws their marriage into doubt. As Cathy’s home life starts to unravel, she strikes up a friendship with her African-American gardener, played by Dennis Haysbert. Using the conventions of ’50s melodrama — the swelling music, the stagy dialogue, even the ornately curlicued script in the credits — Haynes explores the impact of Cathy’s culturally taboo relationship.
“Far From Heaven” cements Haynes’ reputation as one of the most daring filmmakers of his generation. From the get-go Haynes has revealed an interest in the world’s misfits and outcasts. His 43-minute directorial debut, “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” uses Barbie dolls to relate the tale of the AM pop princess’s demise from anorexia (the film was yanked from distribution after Haynes made unauthorized use of the Carpenters’ music, prompting A&M Records to file a cease-and-desist order).
Haynes’ first full-length feature, 1991′s “Poison,” generated even more controversy. Partly funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the film was slammed as pornographic by opponents of the NEA. Inspired by the work of French novelist, poet and playwright Jean Genet, “Poison” features three intersecting story lines that explore sexual transgression, making use of familiar genres — the documentary, the love story, B-movie science fiction — to communicate its themes.
Haynes achieved greater prominence with his next two films, “Safe” and “Velvet Goldmine.” “Safe,” perhaps the director’s most horrifying work, centers on a California housewife (Julianne Moore) who develops an environmental illness and ends up shuttered away from society, quarantined in a metal igloo at a spiritual retreat. And in the eye candy-rich “Velvet Goldmine,” a David Bowie doppelgänger drops from view at the height of his fame, prompting a reporter to investigate the disappearance 10 years later.
“Far From Heaven” is not as explicitly disturbing as its predecessors. In fact, in many ways it stands as Haynes’ most sentimental and visually seductive work. But the story it has to tell — about a culture that denies homosexuality, condemns interracial romances and refuses women the opportunity for true change — is decidedly dark nonetheless.
I spoke with Haynes by telephone a month before his film was set to open.
You have said that you used very few close-ups of Julianne Moore in “Safe” because you wanted to distance the viewer from the Carol White character. Is Cathy Whitaker a character you wanted viewers to have a stronger emotional identification with?
Ultimately I wanted this film, despite its very reverent use of outmoded styles, to draw you in emotionally. But I also didn’t want it to deviate from the language of films from the 1950s. When you look at these films and start to understand their terminology, you see that they operate at a certain distance; they’re very presentational. So we don’t go in as close as you do in most movies today. Almost all of Cathy’s shots where she’s talking to another character are filmed over her shoulder so you’re very much aware of the character in her social dilemma at any given point. But what’s so amazing to me is how it seems to have worked, how people get past these old codes and find those emotional connections.
Why did you cast Julianne Moore in this role?
Because she’s the best! I’m amazed at how she starts from scratch with each role and rebuilds it, almost on a molecular level. I knew the kind of acting involved in “Far From Heaven” would pose a technical challenge for the actors, to overcome its staid quality and not have it sound like the movie dialogue it really is. It’s a subtle process because I also didn’t want actors who would be nodding to a contemporary audience and doing things that would betray the vernacular of this particular period of acting. I knew Julianne would be up for the task as few others could be.
You’ve got actors trained in a naturalistic tradition delivering lines that have a deliberate staginess or dated feel to them — lines like “Aw, shucks.” What impact were you trying to create with the acting style?
We hoped to re-ignite what is innately powerful about cinematic experience. Movies are basically nothing until we bring an emotional life to them; they’re just shadows on a wall until they affect the viewer sitting in the dark. That’s why I’ve never been drawn to a more realist model, à la John Cassavetes or people like that, with the goal being to create reality on screen completely intact. Because it’s all artificial, it’s all a code, a trick, and it takes the viewer’s real-life experience and identification to make it something else.
What I love is using this completely dismissed, rejected, degraded form of narrative — the melodrama — and watching it play out really earnestly, without big quotation marks around it. We were trying to give it the respect it was due; none of us were treating this material as a parody.
The hope was that ultimately you wouldn’t be watching the form anymore, but would find yourself entering it and engaging it and bringing it to life with your own memories of movies like it, your connection to the content of the film — that combination of things we all bring to movie experience. We hoped that the form wouldn’t stay materially present in your mind’s eye but that it would come and it would go.
You’ve now made several films — “Superstar,” “Safe,” “Far From Heaven” — that explore the lives of women who are to some extent outsiders. What has drawn you to these kinds of stories?
Despite a lot of obvious advancements made since the 1950s in terms of roles and options and choices, women are still generally the ones who have to run the household and raise the children. The story of women’s struggle with marginality comes into this film in a very interesting way because both men on either side of Cathy can be called marginal in the sense that one is dealing with a homosexual life and the other with race and prejudice. Yet you have this social hierarchy that still puts Cathy on the bottom.
Getting this film made for what by Hollywood standards was not a huge amount of money — this is a $14 million film — was perceived as this enormous financial risk just because it’s a story about a woman who was not going to be portrayed by Julia Roberts. Hollywood is still a male-dominated industry aimed at a male market. It’s insane to me but that’s the reality.
Could you talk about Douglas Sirk’s influence on this film?
We all looked at three of the best ones: “Imitation of Life,” “Written on the Wind” and “All That Heaven Allows.” I’d be fibbing if I didn’t say that my film draws most from “All That Heaven Allows” in terms of both content and visual style. The other films have a palette that’s more primary and stoplight-bright, even garish at times, while “All That Heaven Allows,” which has less explosive material, is much more muted and complex in its color strategy.
When you watch it on DVD and freeze the frames, you realize how expressionistic each shot is in terms of color, shadow and intensity. But when you actually watch the movie the visuals don’t clobber you over the head; they serve the narrative needs of the story in a way that was our goal with this film.
Suburbia is generally presented as a site of repression in your work. Yet in “Far From Heaven” it’s also depicted as this physically beautiful place.
I’m taking up the incredibly excruciating attention to visual detail in the films of Douglas Sirk. They’re immaculately, painfully beautiful, almost oppressive in their beauty and their meticulousness, where every object, every dress and every hair has to be in place. It becomes an awful burden to maintain, and contributes to the pressure you feel Cathy having to negotiate as the floor is dropping out from under her. You see what’s at stake in this beauty, in what this idealized life is supposed to look like. It’s a friction that plays out at every level in Sirk, who created these fashion-plate movies with actresses who are lit beautifully, who wear perfect clothes and have perfect hair and makeup, but whose actions reveal they’re actually very ordinary people who fail in their desires and buckle under cultural pressures.
Why did you choose Hartford, Connecticut?
I was using this gut sensory instinct that took me to New England. Somehow Massachusetts seemed a little too progressive and New Haven seemed too defined by Yale. Hartford felt like this lost city. In the 1950s it was this prosperous, very important city with a healthy economy and its own brand of sophistication but it was still very provincial, subject — or so I imagined — to social pressures to be a certain way. I cultivated this whole movie fantasy of Hartford in the 1950s. I saw it as this place governed by a sense of decorum that people would embrace but would also find very stifling at times.
On one level your film confirms the view of the 1950s as a culturally repressive era, but there’s also something more complicated going on here.
We wanted to suggest that the 1950s bear a far more disturbing resemblance to today’s society than we generally want to admit or cop to. There’s this idea that history is innately progressive and that as we move forward we become a more open and sophisticated society. Sorry, guys! It’s just not true.
The ’50s were an intense recuperation of traditional values after a war era that put women in the work field and completely changed everyone’s role from what their parents did. That was a radical, amazing period with Eleanor Roosevelt traipsing up and down the country, lesbians living in the White House, and then this victory over Hitler and Japan. They needed to do a lot to reinstate a sense of old-fashioned order to secure male ego and give it prominence. They had to really let women know what their place was.
At the same time, the civil rights changes that had begun during the war were starting to bristle under the surface. The ’50s are interesting because there’s so much going on under the surface that was about to explode; the decade was just this very quick patch job from what had just preceded it.
“Poison” was an exploration of a theme through multiple genres, and “Far From Heaven” is a 1950s melodrama filtered through a contemporary sensibility. How does rooting a film in a specific and recognizable genre open up possibilities for you?
Genre is definitely something I’ve always been interested in, because genres bring a series of historical references along with them and, as a result, create expectations in viewers that I like to tap into and slightly derange.
“Poison” was almost a textbook example of the ways in which different genres connoted different attitudes about the material at hand, the material being these stories about outsiders being shut out of or threatening their societies. For me, using genre in this way ultimately has a freeing effect.
Most of the time with film we’re manipulated by music in a very insidious way; it cues emotion and tells us how to feel. But here you’re not trying to conceal the role music can play, the way it prompts or reflects emotion in this grand, almost operatic way.
The Latin root of melodrama is “melos,” which is music plus drama. The very construction of the term implies this intense marriage between what drama and music do to us, whether that’s music literally interacting with drama or drama that provokes intense emotional feelings that aren’t always articulated or verbalizable.
Music in a lot of contemporary movies is irritating to us because it’s reiterating what’s been told in so many ways in the narrative. It’s just doubling it and it starts to feel overdetermined and you feel locked into a reaction you have no choice over. The music in Sirk’s films is almost a central character or chorus that fills in for the things characters can’t really express for themselves. These kinds of movies are almost pre-psychological. Characters are moved around by forces of society; there isn’t that privileged moment of knowledge at the end. So there’s a space for music in these films in a way there generally isn’t in movies today.
In “Far From Heaven,” the music goes from something so overt — like in the beginning, where most of the people watching are going to say “Oh my God, they really went for it, they didn’t hold back, we’re going to have a whole period postcard here.” By the end of the film the same music and the same intensity has accumulated a lot of our trust and involvement. You can’t imagine getting emotionally involved in the film at the beginning but by the end you really are and that dance from one to the other is also a model for how I hoped the overall film would work.
You’ve said that the film “deviates from the thematic possibilities afforded films in the 1950s in its depiction of homosexuality.” And in fact the film reflects a deeper ambivalence regarding the possibility of an interracial relationship in this era than a homosexual one.
It has a lot to do with what can be covered up and what can’t, which is what Sirk’s “Imitation of Life” deals with. Homosexuality has always been something that could be concealed and the movie is very much about surfaces. These two dueling themes on either side of Cathy’s story are mirrors of each other in a weird way. One — Frank’s homosexuality — is concealed by this carefully tended domestic life, and Cathy participates in that concealment. The other, race, is un-concealable, is in fact so hyper-visible that it takes on a charged meaning that doesn’t really reflect the facts of Cathy and Raymond’s relationship; it assumes an intense volatility in this particular time and this particular climate.
When you were filming “Safe” you added a shot, very late in the process, of the retreat leader’s mansion at Wrenwood, all in an attempt to make the audience more aware of the nature of your critique. Were there any points during the filming of “Far From Heaven” where you felt similarly concerned that the audience wouldn’t grasp your intentions?
No. The difference is that in this film the style puts everything on the surface. There’s something so naked it almost makes you squirm, how it’s all stated at a direct level. The content is made so painfully clear that there was never a point where I thought people weren’t going to get it.
If anything, I wanted to make sure that we didn’t hold back. I didn’t want to look back at Sirk’s films and say they were bolder than we were. His films were so bold in their exposure of what they were about, they were sort of screaming their themes. So in “Far From Heaven” you get these shots of spectators staring at Cathy and Raymond in these almost cartoonish depictions of prejudice, and that’s almost more interesting, where you see how all the pieces of the story are bald but somehow you’re not pulled out of the narrative and the hand that’s putting it all together disappears.
The line “She’s as devoted to family as she is kind to Negroes” is referred to repeatedly — sometimes ironically — throughout the film. And yet even as Cathy’s experiencing this awakening racial sensitivity, she remains a product of her class and circumstances, and so you have the scene where she basically ignores the NAACP volunteers who come to her house to solicit her signature on a petition.
We used the NAACP theme and Cathy’s ostensible “kindness to Negroes,” her tendency toward compassion, as a kind of instigator or marker of tiny little steps that she might be taking towards some kind of liberation from her own constraints. People who saw the film or were involved in financing said they thought the NAACP scene was stilted; or some said, “Oh, I think it makes Cathy look a bit disingenuous.” And I was like, no kidding.
But it was very important to depict Cathy as a character who has these sympathies but is incapable of taking any real action on her own. It’s necessary for the NAACP to come to her doorstep and hand her a brochure, for the brochure to already be in her possession, where after a series of events escalate and disturb her, that she might consider doing something about it in some small way. I was very careful to chart that, that she’s very passive, that she’s not proactive, because it’s going to take some radical changes for her to really realize the limits of her choices.
I wanted to show how Cathy’s role within the family binds her, how the ultimate burden a woman had in this time period was to her family and to the maintenance of that domestic tradition, the raising of kids and the making of home. To a large degree, that hasn’t changed.
