Sidney Lumet is old school. The 83-year-old director of Network and other essential American narratives from the last quarter of the 20th century still refers to movies as “pictures” and calls members of the opposite sex “dear.” But he’s also a fan of digital video and hardly a conventional storyteller. Walking a fine line between vintage showbiz insights and contemporary industry know-how, Lumet discussed his latest project, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.
NYPress: Have you reached a point in your career where it’s easy to get support for the movie you want to make?
LUMET: You know why Steven Spielberg formed his own studio? So he could cast a picture without asking anyone. It never ends. Steven is a great director. George Lucas is a fabulous film person. As soon as they could, they got themselves genuinely independent. It never stops. I’m sure [Robert] Zemeckis gets just about carte blanche, but he’s had stuff that’s been turned down. It’s the nature of it. The money gets turned down by bigger money.
Will you shop around with a project if one company won’t offer its support?
I’ll try. This film was easy. When I got the script, it might not have been fully financed yet, but it was damn close. Everything has changed. There’s been a burst of financing. All these supermarket owners and shopping mall executives. Hedge fund guys.
Did that catch you by surprise?
Somewhat, because bookkeeping is always so suspect. I always assumed it was something that people who are smart about money—which I am not—would stay away from. But almost every studio now uses independent money as part of its budget.
How did you assemble the cast?
Phillip [Seymour Hoffman] had just won the Oscar. That was very easy. What was interesting to me was that I didn’t know what part I wanted Phillip to play. He’s one of the best actors we’ve got. I knew that I was going to be after a level of intensity. I said to him, “Pick the part you want to play.” He was number one. Then Ethan [Hawke] picked his role.
I remember hearing you give an interview about Dog Day Afternoon where you said that Al Pacino required a certain amount of freedom to reach his maximum potential. Was that the same case here?
Not quite. They got room to breathe, but only because when you’re asking for that degree of mad commitment—well, that’s always there. But Dog Day was a unique experience. Talk about improbable stories. If you think this is an improbable story, talk about Dog Day Afternoon!
I did think that, until I saw some of the real footage from the day of the robbery depicted in the film.
The first obligation of Dog Day was to let you, the audience, know that this really happened. Without knowing that, you’re just into an exploitive situation. The freedom for the actors to improvise at times was paramount to getting a sheer humanity going. The sense that you’re watching something as it’s happening. It affected every decision of the movie.
In comparison, this film has a rawer sense of realism.
We worked very hard to achieve that. We were very controlling. I never storyboard. It’s the lack of art direction: Keeping everything very flat and unimportant, and getting the audience to believe this. You know that expression, “suspend your disbelief”? On something like this, that’s our main job. It’s fiction. Your first impulse is to disbelieve. Suspend that, because we’ve got a good story to tell you.
Why did you choose to tell the story with flashbacks? I believe the only other movie where you’ve used that device is The Pawnbroker.
That’s right. It’s there for two reasons. First of all, because each one of the people contributes to the disaster, it’s very important to get it from each person’s point of view. Second of all, it’s very limited visually…which allowed me to take a different visual point of view with each flashback, because it was coming from somewhere else. Not many people recognize that, which delights me, because I don’t want the technique to show.
You’ve always resisted having your work lumped together so that critics could call you an auteur, since you believe projects shouldn’t be dictated by an outside influence. Does it bother you when people talk about your movies as a single accomplishment?
That’s exactly what a critic is for. It’s not a question of opinion; my elevator man can give me an opinion. If you have educated taste and training, that’s your job. As far as I’m concerned, the less I say, the better. I’m not out to tell you what I did. The work is there.
NYPress: Have you reached a point in your career where it’s easy to get support for the movie you want to make?
LUMET: You know why Steven Spielberg formed his own studio? So he could cast a picture without asking anyone. It never ends. Steven is a great director. George Lucas is a fabulous film person. As soon as they could, they got themselves genuinely independent. It never stops. I’m sure [Robert] Zemeckis gets just about carte blanche, but he’s had stuff that’s been turned down. It’s the nature of it. The money gets turned down by bigger money.
Will you shop around with a project if one company won’t offer its support?
I’ll try. This film was easy. When I got the script, it might not have been fully financed yet, but it was damn close. Everything has changed. There’s been a burst of financing. All these supermarket owners and shopping mall executives. Hedge fund guys.
Did that catch you by surprise?
Somewhat, because bookkeeping is always so suspect. I always assumed it was something that people who are smart about money—which I am not—would stay away from. But almost every studio now uses independent money as part of its budget.
How did you assemble the cast?
Phillip [Seymour Hoffman] had just won the Oscar. That was very easy. What was interesting to me was that I didn’t know what part I wanted Phillip to play. He’s one of the best actors we’ve got. I knew that I was going to be after a level of intensity. I said to him, “Pick the part you want to play.” He was number one. Then Ethan [Hawke] picked his role.
I remember hearing you give an interview about Dog Day Afternoon where you said that Al Pacino required a certain amount of freedom to reach his maximum potential. Was that the same case here?
Not quite. They got room to breathe, but only because when you’re asking for that degree of mad commitment—well, that’s always there. But Dog Day was a unique experience. Talk about improbable stories. If you think this is an improbable story, talk about Dog Day Afternoon!
I did think that, until I saw some of the real footage from the day of the robbery depicted in the film.
The first obligation of Dog Day was to let you, the audience, know that this really happened. Without knowing that, you’re just into an exploitive situation. The freedom for the actors to improvise at times was paramount to getting a sheer humanity going. The sense that you’re watching something as it’s happening. It affected every decision of the movie.
In comparison, this film has a rawer sense of realism.
We worked very hard to achieve that. We were very controlling. I never storyboard. It’s the lack of art direction: Keeping everything very flat and unimportant, and getting the audience to believe this. You know that expression, “suspend your disbelief”? On something like this, that’s our main job. It’s fiction. Your first impulse is to disbelieve. Suspend that, because we’ve got a good story to tell you.
Why did you choose to tell the story with flashbacks? I believe the only other movie where you’ve used that device is The Pawnbroker.
That’s right. It’s there for two reasons. First of all, because each one of the people contributes to the disaster, it’s very important to get it from each person’s point of view. Second of all, it’s very limited visually…which allowed me to take a different visual point of view with each flashback, because it was coming from somewhere else. Not many people recognize that, which delights me, because I don’t want the technique to show.
You’ve always resisted having your work lumped together so that critics could call you an auteur, since you believe projects shouldn’t be dictated by an outside influence. Does it bother you when people talk about your movies as a single accomplishment?
That’s exactly what a critic is for. It’s not a question of opinion; my elevator man can give me an opinion. If you have educated taste and training, that’s your job. As far as I’m concerned, the less I say, the better. I’m not out to tell you what I did. The work is there.
