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You said in the DVD commentary track that you were never interested in doing a biopic of George Reeves. Why didn’t the idea of a biopic appeal to you?
“Well, I just thought it was limiting, you know? If you’re going to do a biopic, then you have to stand very far back from the subject. I mean if you’re gong to do a biopic, let’s face it, what business do we have of putting words in their mouths? We don’t know what he said or what his relationship was with Toni Mannix or Eddie Mannix or anything. I think there’s a misconception about biopics. I’ve thought about this a little bit because I know that I’ve probably taken a beating, though I’ve refused to read anything about this whole process. But a biopic by nature is a lie because no one knows what these people said or what they’re daily lives were like, or what they’re emotional lives were like, so already you’re lying. So to split hairs and say, ‘Well you didn’t tell the truth about this or that or the other,’ is a bunch of crap, in my opinion, because you’re already lying. It turns into one of those things where they reproduce crimes on TV. It’s just a bunch of crap, you know? So my feeling was I’m not interested in doing that because then you should just make a documentary and show only real footage and people’s opinions. Otherwise I think it’s up for grabs.
My feeling was what we had to be true to, what interested me, was the emotional truth beyond the story. What I felt was the tragic tale of George Reeves and his desire to be a different kind of star than he was and how, in our case, that impacts and reverberates with the life of Louis Simo, the detective played by Adrien Brody. And what it says about the world we live in now where everybody it seems wants to be a star for 10 minutes, even if it just means standing behind home plate or standing in the stands and waving at the camera like some idiot. Somehow that gives your life meaning because your friends saw you for 6 seconds behind Tiger Woods standing and waving madly. Or worse yet, standing behind some scene of tragedy and smiling and waving at the camera. That modern desire and need to be validated by the camera is something that I think George Reeves was on the first wave of. That interested me and the only way to tell that story was to fictionalize some of the aspects of the story and try to be true to what we felt, and what I felt, was the essence of George Reeves life.”
How much input did you have into what went on the Hollywoodland DVD?
“Well I was actively involved in my own portion of it which was my commentary. Actually I have to confess I have not seen the final DVD, but I was made aware of the scenes that were deleted which were actually scenes, I’m happy to say, that I did request at one point that I thought would be the scenes to put on there. I’m aware now of what those were and they were scenes that I thought, because they were kind of complete and to themselves, that they should be back on there. Let’s put it this way: I know what I did but I was not involved directly in a couple of the portions in it.”
Is there less guilt when you have to cut a scene out of a film knowing that there’s a good possibility it will be included on the DVD?
“Well, here’s the thing. When you’re shooting, you don’t think that way. When you’re shooting, you think everything is going to make it. When you cut it out, people say that to you. ‘Hey don’t worry, we’ll put it on the DVD.’ It doesn’t feel the same. I agreed with all the cuts, ultimately. If you were to ask me what should be the director’s cut, I’d say the version that was released because ultimately I came around to finding a way to accommodate the desires and the wishes of Focus Features in a way that satisfied me. But when you do that, you do cut things that you like. Do I think the film would be better with these deleted scenes? No. I think it would be different. I think it would probably have been more difficult for the average audience to stick with the film. I mean it’s a difficult film as it is. There would be with the extra length that these scenes would have required and the dead end that they led to, that might have been enough to make a few more people shut down. So I agreed ultimately with the cuts. I myself like these scenes and I think that they’re good where they are, which is for someone to look at them and go, ‘Damn, that’s interesting,’ I hope (laughing).”
Was it difficult to fill a commentary track for Hollywoodland?
“You know, strangely enough I didn’t find it difficult at all. The only thing that was difficult, to be honest, was trying to limit what I said. I could have said a lot more. That was like the tip of the iceberg. That was the hard part, was sort of on the fly editing yourself. That’s difficult because there’s so many things I could say. I could do an entire commentary track on one scene, of all the things I thought about and the variations and all the things that went into making decisions about whether it’s performance or the color of the wall or the way we shot it or the placement of the camera or the choice of the lens. You know what I mean? I could talk endlessly about one scene. I thought about this. I spoke recently at Columbia University and I was just sort of touching on some things and I realized I could do an entire class easily on one scene – easily. I’m talking about a two hour class.
I’m not one of those directors who believe in keeping secrets. I figure if someone wants to take what I’ve said or what I’ve done and turn it into something, it’s not going to be to do what I did. And they’re not going to do it the way I did it. I don’t feel in the remotest threatened by revealing so-called secrets, or that I’m particularly demystifying something. Although it did cross my mind that, you know, if someone watches this do they look at the film and become bored immediately? But you know I think it’s just one of those things honestly where you’re just making it up. It’s not unlike directing. You’re making hundreds and hundreds of choices a second. You’re very quickly weighing and comparing things that you want to get across, and making a very quick decision about which one weighs more.”
