Mr. Beaks And John Patrick Shanley Talk DOUBT, Dutch Angles And JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO!

Until recently, John Patrick Shanley's filmmaking career was a one-title cautionary tale: JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO. Now, after the release of his sophomore feature as a writer-director, DOUBT, the conventional wisdom is that he's two-for-two. Funny how that works. According to Shanley, the critical and (slight) commercial failure of JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO in 1990 was not the sole cause for that eighteen-year gap in between movies. Lots of things got in the way: kids, plays, advanced glaucoma... you know, the usual stuff. But here is Shanley on the other end of these crucibles with one of 2008's most celebrated films in DOUBT, which is based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a Catholic school power struggle between an old-school headmistress (Meryl Streep) and a progressive priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman). For folks who stopped paying attention to Shanley when he retreated to the theater in the mid-1990s, DOUBT is a far cry from the life-affirming whimsy of MOONSTRUCK ; this is a tough, remorseless parable about moral certitude or the lack thereof (emphasis on the "or", as the film has no interest in meting out easy answers). It's such a deft, visually accomplished work - thanks in part to cinematographer Roger Deakins - that one figures Shanley is ready to dispense with the obligatory eighteen-year layoff and get right back into it. If so, I'd love to see him attempt to make cinematic sense of one of his earlier theatrical triumphs (my pick would be DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA, though SAVAGE IN LIMBO would be nice, too). As for Shanley, well, he's got other ideas. In the following interview, we discuss the future, the past, the semi-controversial decision to jettison the celebrated Broadway cast for film, and the critical reassessment of JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO. (Kicking myself for not working in a FIVE CORNERS question...)

Mr. Beaks: Unlike much of your stage work, you didn't direct DOUBT for the stage. In terms of allowing for a somewhat fresher approach to the material, is this preferable?

John Patrick Shanley: Well, I was doing three plays at once, and I couldn't direct any of them because they were all in rehearsal simultaneously. So I got Doug Hughes to direct the stage play. I've directed a lot of my own stuff and it's very hard work, so I delighted in the fact that he was doing that work [while] I would excuse myself to go out for coffee, read the newspaper and come back a couple of hours later. I thought it was great! I never worked very hard at figuring out how to do the show; I figured that was his job, and I was very happy about that. I would've stepped in and had a bigger opinion had they been going the wrong way, but they were on track from the very beginning. So when the time came to do it as a film, I hadn't really thought how to do it. I'd seen how Doug and the cast had done it, but I think it probably made it easier for me to make the transition.

Beaks: Then having seen how they did it, that was part of the reason you went in another direction with the cast.

Shanley: Well, I hadn't directed a movie in eighteen years, and I felt that if I was going to direct a movie I ought to put my stamp on it - start from scratch and put it together. If I used one or two members of the cast, I would've created a couple of lifelong enemies. (Laughs) But in addition to that, I would've had one, two or three [actors] who had been doing the play for a year-and-a-half, and then someone who's just walking in fresh. It's very difficult to integrate those two worlds. It's better to start off with all new people or all old people. And for obvious reasons, I wanted a new cast.

Beaks: I hope you didn't create a whole batch of new enemies then by going in a completely different direction.

Shanley: No, I told them I was going to move on in my thinking - most especially Cherry [Jones], but also Brian (F. O'Byrne) - and they were very generous about it.

Beaks: A lot of theatergoers feel very protective of Cherry Jones, and think that, while she's done some fine work in film, audiences across the country have not seen her at her best. I think that's a part of the difficulty some admirers of the show had with Meryl Streep coming in. Yes, Meryl's a wonderful actress, but... it's just not Cherry.

Shanley: Right. But if you're a student of these things, you get to see two terrific actresses and how they choose to interpret a role instead of just one. And you never know what the chemistry between a national audience and an actor is going to be: that you cannot predict until you do it.

Beaks: Doing DOUBT as a film, it allows you, visually at least, to catch subtler gestures and glances and little things that aren't necessarily perceptible in the theater.

Shanley: I wrote virtually everything in because I knew I had to motivate camera movements in these extended dialogue scenes, and that it was going to require motivations for the characters to move around the room - and that that aided and abetted the telling of the story and the revelation of character. So light bulbs blow out, phones ring, windows are opened and closed, blinds are opened and closed, intercoms ring, teacups are spilled... all those little events are treated as fairly big events because of the modest scale of the physical story. But it helps. Rather than shaking the camera to create a feeling of visual intensity or event, I wanted to have real reasons for moving the camera.

Beaks: Although you did employ some dutch angles.

Shanley: Well, you know, that makes me feel a certain way. This is a very foursquare story by and large, and if you put a dutch angle in the middle of a lot of foursquare work, it hits you. I mean, if you go and look at SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, it probably has ten times the amount of dutch angles as [DOUBT], but you don't notice because they're doing it all throughout the film. But when I do it, I'm saying, "I'm doing this for a reason." And it's a very strong reason that has to do with this particular moment in the story. It's not simply visual stylization; it has a visceral effect. Some people like it and some people don't, but everybody feels it. It hits you.

Beaks: I always like little flourishes like that as long as they're kept to a minimum, but there is a danger sometimes in manipulating the audience too much - especially in a controlled work like this. You feel each cut in this movie. So to do something that calls attention to itself like that, you run the risk of forcing the audience to feel something rather than allowing to feel it themselves.

Shanley: Yeah, although you also have to keep them awake. There's that. One of the reasons that people do shake the camera and swirl it all over the place is because it gives the audience a feeling that something is going on. Again, I think there's been a tremendous amount of that done over the last many years - in television and in film. But it's a statement when I do a dutch angle in this film; it means something. Some people bridle at the suggestion that that means something, but in fact I'm saying, "Yeah, it means something! Live with it!" (Laughs) You can do [dutch angles] on the grounds of visual interest, and that's fine. That's been done to great effect sometimes. I mentioned SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: I think that's a beautiful looking movie, and I love the way [Danny Boyle] makes me feel at the way he uses the camera. I'm just choosing to use the camera in the way that I use it to establish a language and to stick with that language.

Beaks: Well, thank you for not shooting DOUBT like TRANSFORMERS.

Shanley: (Laughing) My nerve!

Beaks: I was just reading an old New York Times profile where you talked about the rather extreme abuse you witnessed in grammar school. You said the brothers were very physically abusive towards some of the kids. Here, however, you're presenting a more compassionate view of the brothers--

Shanley: Well, there are no brothers in this school. There are sisters of charity and there are priests. It was after that when I went to another school, and there were guys there who were free with their hands. They were brothers. I saw a couple of things there that were really bad, but I did not have any significant physical abuse aimed at me there. But in the course of puberty, I think every child experiences the weirdness of adults; when kids make the transition from being non-sexual to sexual beings, it brings out all sorts of colors in the population. And many of them are utterly ambiguous or unfathomable. Not simply this sort of "Is this guy a child abuser or isn't he?" There's a lot more to it than that. If you take a kid into an old age home, it's like all the ghosts wake up. All the people in the old age home will stand up and start walking towards the child. (Laughs) It's a little spooky, but it's the recognition of the life force. People are attracted to it like moths onto a flame.

Beaks: Was there any reason why, other than the experience you had making JOE VS. THE VOLCANO, you didn't direct another movie for eighteen years?

Shanley: There are a million different things: I adopted children, I got advanced glaucoma and had five rounds of eye surgery, went blind in one eye and blind, then in the other eye... and that went on for, like, three years. It took quite a while to get through that passageway. There was just, in my nature, a desire to return to the theater. If I find something that meant something to me - and that can be a long, wandering period in the desert doing that... it's kind of an act of faith. Also, I don't easily transplant. I was in Los Angeles for the better part of a year in a hotel - and after I had children that was unimaginable to me. I was raised in an incredibly stable environment and couldn't imagine any other lifestyle - for my kids especially because they were young. Now when DOUBT came up, it came to me very strongly. Scott Rudin just came to me and said, "I want to make a movie of this, and I think you should direct it." I said, "Yes, I agree. I think I should." My kids were now sixteen years old, and I had found something that meant something to me. This particular story took place in my old neighborhood, and nobody else would know as much about it as I would. It seemed very organic and a natural thing to go back to.

Beaks: Do you think it would've been better to have started your directing career off with something smaller in scale?

Shanley: Actually, I loved starting with JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO. It's like, after that, what can't you agree to tackle? I was doing typhoons and volcanos exploding and islands sinking into the sea. No, I was very happy doing that, and I felt well able to do it. I just had a very peculiar, particular vision - which involved, I think, a lot of the idea of the uncut master. That was antithetical to the zeitgeist at the time that I made the film. Films were shot with many, many cuts and a highly mobile camera, and I was like, "I don't want to do a lot of cuts, and I don't want a highly mobile camera except in a few places. But I do want very significant art direction, and I want to see things play out in master." That was my taste at the time.

Beaks: Orson Welles says that a long playing master is where you separate the men from the boys.

Shanley: (Laughs) Well, god knows he's got a couple of 'em. What was it, TOUCH OF EVIL? That's just the most amazing shot ever. Ever!

Beaks: Do you feel that JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO is finally being appreciated for what it is?

Shanley: Oh, yeah! It's one of those things where, over the years, more and more people seem to like the film. Actually, when I did the Q&A with the Directors Guild, I was shocked that when the title was mentioned the audience burst into applause. That was a heartening thing.

Beaks: Have you thought about filming any of your other plays - in particular, DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA?

Shanley: At one point, they did a French-language version of it for like a million bucks or something. I saw it, and it was really more of a filmed play. It was pretty good; there were some very nice things about it, but it definitely needed to take a quantum leap in terms of screenwriting to truly be a film. I thought about it, and there were some people who wanted me to do it at one point, but I'm not sure. It's very hot. It's extremely hot for film. And you really have to be careful with that. It's something that I could conceivably do, but it's one that I would be very skittish about for that reason. I have another one called DEFIANCE, which is about the Marine Corps in 1972. That would lend itself to film better. But it's actually cut from the same bolt of cloth as DOUBT, so I've sort of gone back and forth about whether that would be a good thing to do. The most organic and natural thing for me to do is to write an original screenplay. Turning DOUBT into a film was really, really difficult because it was conceived as a play. And to find that way to turn it into a film is just extremely challenging. There's a theatrical stamp on it that's never going to go away - and that's okay. But I'm not sure that I would want to follow it up with another film that had that same stamp on it. I might want to do something that's more filmic.

Beaks: Tonally, do you think you'd like to try something a bit more whimsical?

Shanley: In between. I'm trying to find the place where I am now. But I do like to tell fantastic stories; that is part of what I like to do.

DOUBT is in theaters now. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks