It was wonderful to work with Colman Domingo this issue, and chart his career path from New York to LA, from theatre to film. His journey has been a steady burn, the labours of a hard-working actor who has found success later in life and ensured his longevity. I’m very drawn to his story, I’m a similar age and I’ve also worked consistently and it’s only been in the last decade that things have stepped up to what he describes as his ‘harvest stage’. I was inspired to hear his acceptance of change – the changes to him and the changes to New York City where we finished our interview during the week of his SNL debut. Colman’s story also resonates with me as we visited two theatres that were integral to his path. I feel comfortable in those spaces as both my parents worked in the theatre and I grew up playing there. The idea of kismet also plays into Colman’s life – another thing I feel linked to. While in LA, we visited a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf that was the place that kicked off his involvement in Rustin, the film that changed everything for him, and was also the location for his first billboard in Los Angeles (also for Rustin). I love the idea of chance changing the entire course of a life.
Photograph by Bob Ford
As part of my bi-coastal cover story, I spent time with Colman over Oscar weekend in LA and although he was going to parties as a celebrated artist his humility shone out and I feel that that’s often a marker of people who have found success later – because they’ve known tougher times. But being humble and authentic was also present in my shoots with younger artists. Spike Fearn is so connected to his hometown of Coalville in the UK and wanted to create work there. It was incredibly refreshing to meet an actor who didn’t just want to move to LA and was keen to work in his own way. Also marching to the beat of his own drum – quite literally – was Lewis Pullman. The son of a beloved actor who’s grown up in Hollywood, Lewis is reverential of his lineage and pragmatic about his career. I like that he felt he would take a lifetime to figure out acting – just because he had a famous dad, he didn’t have all the answers.
And shooting Ellie Bamber in Lucian Freud’s former studio was an amazing privilege, not only because I’m such a fan of Freud’s work but also because Ellie was ‘at peace’ with whatever anyone thinks. That stuck with me because it’s a place all creatives hope to get to in life – and all four of my subjects this issue seem to have found that sweet spot. That’s inspiring and humbling for me. And I hope for you…
Greg Williams takes pause to consider the bigger picture on images seen small on his social media. This issue: Willem Dafoe at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.
I shot this picture of Willem Dafoe at the Venice Film Festival. I had a very short amount of time with him. We were in this hotel courtyard, which was very pretty but it didn’t really offer anything. Willem said, “I get it. It all looks great, but it’s not what you want.” So we looked for something to do. And there was this little fountain and he said, “Oh, I can play with this.” So he started playing with the water, flicking the water up at me. He completely soaked my trousers, so at the end of it I looked like I’d peed myself!
But anyway, he’s throwing this water up in the air, he probably did it 20 times, and this is the one picture that by far outshone all the others. There’s this beautiful curve where the drops of water frame his face so perfectly. I focused on him, so the drops of water are out of focus. Really, he gave me this photo. He knew exactly what he was doing, and we waited for this happy accident.
Leica Q, 1/1000 sec, f/2.5, 1600 ISO, 28mm
Photograph and words by GREG WILLIAMS Dafoe was awarded the Best Actor award at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate directed by Julian Schnabel
Though it was released on New Year’s Day you may not have made it to the cinema to catch the latest potent fever dream from Robert Eggers – but you should make it your resolution to do so. Darkly designed to fill a big screen (it opens by descending an audience into pitch blackness and sounds of distress), the filmmaker’s reinterpretation of FW Murnau’s 1922 take on Dracula is a crepuscular, filthy and visceral vision of sexual obsession and the plight of women who speak up against predators. Yes, it’s about bloodsuckers and staking, but with current headlines it’s inescapable to not see a correlation between the claims of a young woman (Lily-Rose Depp) being dismissed and her realisation that only her own bravery will stop abuse.
Depp plays Ellen, a new wife to Nicholas Hoult’s solicitor in 1838 Germany, whose pallid complexion and nervous disposition are caused by the night terrors she suffers as a creeping, shadowy presence stalks her. When hubby is called away to attend to the needs of a client in Carpathia, a count ‘with one foot in the grave’, Ellen fears losing herself in the nightmares and moves in with friends (Aaron Taylor Johnson and Emma Corrin). Meanwhile, her husband undertakes the six week journey to the snowy mountains where gypsies warn of evil and Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) lurks in his inhospitable castle with nails like a Guinness World Record holder and a truly disquieting, fetid voice that is the aural equivilent of damp, decay, death. The fresh blood that willingly enters his home sets Orlok on a course of destruction to Ellen that takes in plague, exorcism and monster hunting courtesy of Willem Defoe.
Though the story may be familiar, Eggers’ reliably striking visuals are not; Skarsgard’s creature design is disgusting enough you’ll be sure you can smell him, while the cinematography recalls a Vermeer painting – characters often framed in doorways, tree-tunnels, gateways to heartstoppingly beautiful effect. Set pieces such as Ellen’s possession (Depp contorting herself, eyes as large as saucers), her husband’s welcome in Carpathia (thundering horse hooves in the snowy gloaming) and a city laid waste by disease are grotesque, gorgeous, grim. The detail of costume, set design and sound is richly layered, while Eggers’ cast are pitch perfect. Skarsgard is cornering the market in terrifying characters you can’t shake while Hoult’s terror in Transylvania is palpable. But the film belongs to Depp; as fragile as glass, tremulous and bruised – but also erotic, feral and ultimately, kickass.
Viewers who are not fond of rats or scuttling things might find Nosferatu intolerable, but for everyone else Egger provides a thrumming discomfort of terrible beauty that will haunt as certainly as Orlok himself.
CANNES DISPATCH 11 … Words by JANE CROWTHER Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS
As Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinds Of Kindness bowed at Cannes Film Festival, the film – a triptych of contemporary tales starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Jesse Plemons – got a standing ovation and a flurry of engaged reviews lauding a challenging film with no easy answers. ‘Listen, I’m a total cheerleader for festivals,’ smiles Dafoe when Hollywood Authentic sits down with him in a Carlton Hotel suite on the Croisette. ‘This is not a popcorn movie. So when it comes to a festival, it starts a discussion, and that’s a good way to make contact with a critical world.’
Though he’s made so-called popcorn movies during his long and illustrious career, Dafoe is well known for collaborating on invigorating films that prompt discussions on meaning that often start at festivals before moving the lobbies of cinemas globally, and Kinds Of Kindness marks another piece of provocative work as the actor plays three roles. In the first story, he’s a businessman with an idiosyncratic wardrobe who minutely controls every aspect of the life of his subordinate (Plemons). In the second he essays the father of Emma Stone’s lost-at-sea wife who returns to her cop husband (Plemons) and arouses suspicion that she may not be who she seems. And in the third, Dafoe is a cult leader who is sexually permissive and cries tears into a vast vat of sacred water, sending his acolytes (Stone and Plemons) out into the world to find the group’s new messiah.
Having previously worked with Stone and Lanthimos on last year’s acclaimed Poor Things, Dafoe was intrigued by the script as soon as the director offered it to him during post production on their period awards winner. He didn’t hesitate in jumping in again. ‘Poor Things was such a good experience. Yorgos is a filmmaker that I’ve always followed, and have always enjoyed. And he’s so good with actors. He gives you really fun stuff to do. He’s very playful. He’s very intellectually curious. It’s a very conscionable and very creative set. So, to work with him again was fantastic. Also, this structure was interesting, the fact that we’re playing three different characters. It became very clear that [Lanthimos] didn’t want this to be a showy thing of actors transforming. Because they’re three distinct films, but they’re all obviously thematically related. And they’re all different, given each different world, and our function in that world. For example, in the first one, I have a pretty substantial role; in the second one, quite a smallish role; and in the third one, a medium role. How I fall into those worlds is different each time. But it’s the same group of people, dealing with the same kind of mentality and themes.’ It also meant re-teaming with Bella Baxter herself, in Emma Stone. ‘Emma, I adore!’ he enthuses. ‘She’s really fun to work with.’
Those themes then; all the stories explore control and cruelty, the weird and illogical kindnesses that humans do for each other in marriage, business, friendship, faith. And each story, while not related, informs the next as a viewer. But like all of Lanthimos’ work, the meaning is defined by each audience member – a Rorschach test in cinematic form. ‘It’s a little bit of a Russian doll,’ Dafoe nods of the project. ‘But you work so hard to just try to be engaged with what’s in front of you. You know, that’s one of the tricks of an actor: that’s your world, so you want the other parts to fade away, because you don’t want to point to those things, or be too tied to that. You want a fresh start each time.’
While playing Stone’s Dad required Dafoe to tap into his affection for his co-star (‘I just cued off my love for Emma’), playing a cult leader did have him looking into real-life examples. ‘I’m fascinated by the nature of cults. I looked at a documentary that I think Jesse recommended to me called Holy Hell, also I liked Wild Wild Country. Not so much because I need that to figure out how to play a cult leader. That’s not it. The themes are there. You know, the kind of devotion, the need to give your freedom up to someone else, or dedicate yourself to something outside of yourself. All those themes, the power dynamics, the things about sexuality – they’re all in that. You’re swimming in that pool. You’re not necessarily taking something, and seeing something, and saying, ‘I’m going to do that’. It’s just to get you in that head.’
Lanthimos is also known for his rehearsal process before filming, another aspect that Dafoe was drawn to. ‘Yorgos is very good at making a company. Rehearsal is not so much to deal with the text, or even talk about character, except to play games and get comfortable with each other. And that’s very helpful. So once you finish that rehearsal period, you feel very comfortable with each other, and everyone is kind of on the same footing. And it’s a good way for you to understand Yorgos, what his impulses are, what he likes, and what he tends to go towards. You get in his head a little bit. And it’s always good any time you can get that in a movie, because then people stop worrying about that old thing of, ‘leave your ego at the door’.’
Dafoe will be digging into ego, legacy, fame and the impact of praise on the soul with his next project, a film he’s also in Cannes to launch. Late Fame, adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s 19th century Vienna-set novella, switches the time period to 70s New York with Dafoe playing a poet long forgotten by society. Until, that is, his poems are rediscovered and feted. Sandra Hüller will play a Broadway actress and fan of his work who challenges his ideas of genius. Directed by Kent Jones, the film starts shooting in New York this Autumn. The project was sparked by creative serendipity for Dafoe.
‘The Schnitzler novel that it’s adapted from, a friend brought to me, independent of this production, and said, ‘I think there’s a movie here’. I was carrying it around when I happened to meet the director, and we started talking. To make a long story short, we came together on it but from separate places. We were both reading this, and were interested in this, at the same time. And then it’s Samy Burch who wrote this beautiful adaptation that sets it in New York at a time that I was in New York, and it was a very special time, the late ‘70s. It’s very rich material. It expresses a very particular time, and it has lots of interesting ruminations about fame and personal history and memory and ambition, and about what it is to aspire to be an artist.’
Kinds Of Kindnesspremiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and will be released later this year. Late Fame starts shooting in autumn this year, release TCB
