Kent Jones keeps the beat

0:00KCRW sponsors include HBO Max presenting My Mom Jane, a film by Mariska Hargitay, nominated for three Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special. Don't miss the film, deadline called Extraordinary, now streaming on HBO Max. From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:27it's the treatment i'm elvis mitchell it's always good to have an old friend who has never done the show before especially one has accomplished and esteemed as kent jones a critic uh the former director of the new york film festival and director of several films his most recent film is the adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's Late Fame, which he's directed. And first of all, the thing that I like about both of these films, about Diane and this, is they really both take their time to breathe. I mean, the first 10 minutes of both of these films are really about pulling the viewer into the kind of the rhythms of the storytelling.

1:06Yeah, that's very important to me. I think it's very important to movies in general. And a lot of that has to do with, I don't know, it's a combination of a lot of things. What's the relationship of the movie to the actors? And then in the editing room, just letting the film find its proper rhythm. And I'm really fond of quoting that great comment that Bob Dylan made, don't let the beat get in the way of the rhythm. I see a lot of movies where the beat is set with the editing, and that's just not a good thing to do. The rhythm, on the other hand, you find within the material, you know. So it's just sort of like, I think that at the beginning, yeah, letting things begin in a very slow, quiet way.

1:53It's probably true of both movies. And then on the other hand, just letting the whole movie find its own life. But it's also about in both movies, giving the audience a chance to see who the protagonists are in relationship to the other people. I mean, I think that's really interesting, given that they are both kind of short films that there doesn't feel like any rush at all. And I just wonder if it really is about sort of finding the rhythm of the actors, because both these are actors who are very comfortable in being wary. I really am a big fan of concision. Sometimes it's important for me to be taken away, taken out of the editing room so that I don't make the film, shorten it to like five minutes or something.

2:33But like, I mean, I feel like concision is important, but then when you take things out, it lets things breathe more so that time becomes, you know, kind of elastic, which it always is anyway. Right. But I think that with actors, it's like, yeah, Willem Dafoe in late fame, Mary-Kate Poisson, Diane, they are people who, I mean, that's just good acting, man. You know, they understood the characters they were playing. And I, you know, we spent time finding that understanding together. What you say here, too, that Late Fame is a story about just that, about a civil servant who finds himself sort of rediscovered as a poet.

3:19But he had written a slim book of poetry in the late 70s, discovered by a group of young, I don't want to say dilettantes, because that's sort of making fun of them. And I think the sweetness I talk about with Defoe here, who plays the lead character, Saxberger, also appends to the characters in the film. I think unlike sort of the story, the schnitzel story, these characters aren't judged at all, which I think makes for a much more compelling look at this very short time in Saxberger's life when he's rediscovered Paul away from being an employee at the post office and sort of introduced this world that he'd stayed away from for a long time.

4:01Yeah, I mean, he'd stayed away from it because the scene kind of fell apart, you know? So it's just sort of like he was part of the scene and then everybody scattered as they do. Willem and I talked about this. It's like there's a job at the post office. It's got, you know, union, good benefits, et cetera. and you're like, okay, I'll take it. So it's not that he walked away from it. It's just that it dissolved. And of course, poetry is not, people don't think to them, I'm going to make it in the world of poetry. I'm going to be the number one poet in America. It's just sort of like, that's the opposite of what poetry is.

4:36And so every poet I know, including Peter Gusey, my friend, that the film is dedicated to, they work, he's a professor and most of them do teach. to make their living, but poetry is something else. And I think that with the guys led by Edmund Donovan as Myers, you know, who find him, you know, that's the old story familiar to those of us, you know, as you know, as well as I do in the world of cinephilia, reclaiming the lost genius. It's a very romantic thing and a beautiful thing. And, you know, Willem is initially wary of it, but then after a while, it's like, who can resist it? It is true that the Schnitzler is very harsh.

5:17I think the situation's great, but I'm not a satire guy, and I'm not into making lots of fun of people. I wanted to feel their plight and his, and Gloria's. It's the treatment. We're talking generosity with our guest, Kent Jones, whose new film is director, is late fame. The younger generation in the films, we'll talk about the younger generation in late fame, Constantly sort of looking for things to measure themselves against for the Saxe-Burter character and for the way Dafoe plays it, especially because he was a part of that scene in the late 70s. He knows what downtown New York was like. He knows how that sort of combination of the ephemeral and the ambitious that was a part of the late 70s New York that these guys were trying to recapture is not something that's maybe worthy of being recaptured.

6:05But he's also lured in by a siren spell, too. Yeah, I mean, you know, nothing can really be recaptured. It can come back to us fleetingly, you know, like Proust knew, you know, but it doesn't it doesn't stay because nothing ever stops changing. And I think that for them, they're guys of means, you know, they have time on their hands, but particularly Myers, you know, he's the guy who has the grand dream of the group that isn't quite a group, but he likes the idea of a group. And he's a guy who's probably seen the red shoes a few, you know, he mentions Diaghilev. And of course, the Anton Walbrook, Lermontov is based on Diaghilev.

6:49I don't know, you know, the grand impresario idea. But it's a noble thing, you know, and it's a beautiful dream. That's the thing that I was really attracted to. It is ridiculous, but the way that he embraces it, I find touching, you know, moving. And I mean, you know, the way that Edmund as an actor did it was, you know, peerless. I mean, you know, what an actor, man. To go back to the schnitzel, I mean, there's almost like those guys are circling Satsby as if he were the last remaining meal, the kind of predatory. And there's nothing about that here. And that's what I'm talking about with, I think, the generosity of spirit that you bring to this, that these guys are looking for something that's kind of an uplift.

7:30I mean, clearly Myers wants to create the Bloomsbury, or recreate rather, the Bloomsbury group in the way that he can. And he wears as much of a uniform as Saksberger does to the post office. I mean, you wonder how many Turtle Nexus does this guy have? That's a shout out to my wife, Teresa Kelly, by the way, who's the costume designer. I mean, she's great. Oh, my God. When Edmund saw what she had picked out for the scene in his apartment, he's like, all in white, really? And she's like, yep. And he put it on. He was like, OK, I got it. That's a real style choice in New York to wear all white in Manhattan.

8:05It certainly is. Yeah, I mean, you know, in the novella, you know, Schnitzler himself just left the novella unpublished and reportedly did not care for it. It's just that he wrote a great situation. You know, Gloria is kind of a charlatan in the novella too, you know. Yeah. And, you know, that wasn't of any interest to me. What I wanted was people, you know, three different stories converging, Ed, Gloria, and the boys, led by Myers. And, I mean, you know how they all have different visions of the past. His is the one that's lived. Theirs are the ones that are imagined. It's a beauty to that. And we should say Gloria is the actress who's a part of the group, who's of a generation between the younger guys and Saxberger and played beautifully by Greta Lee.

8:50And what she really brings into the story is how performative all their lives are except for Saxberger. I mean, he's the one person who lives in the real world and wears the same coat that he wears to work. I'm really talking about your wife's really impressive work as a costumer. I'm incredibly aware how everybody seems to have a different coat for every occasion except for Saxberger. Yeah, for Saxberger, you know, he manages to find that coat to wear to the reading, you know. You said, you know, Greta Lee played it beautifully. I can't imagine it being more beautifully played. I mean, man, what a dream to work with Greta.

9:28She was just the greatest. You know, when I was talking to her, we were immediately on the same page. And then, you know, when I mentioned I wanted her to sing, you know, Surabaya Johnny by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Fehl, she was like, you can't. Okay, I'm going to get to work on it now. so get busy on the rights. Her character is giving a performance in every scene, but then at the same time, she's an actress giving a performance, playing a character, giving performances, except for the one scene where, you know, she lets everything drop. We'll take a break. We're talking to an artist right now, Kent Jones.

10:00He's the director of the film Late Famous, The Treatment. There's more to come. Stay with us.

10:08KCW sponsors include HBO Max, presenting DTF St. Louis. In this darkly comedic series, a love triangle between three adults experiencing middle-aged malaise leads to one of them ending up dead. Nominated for 13 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited Series. Don't miss the series TV Guide is calling Transcendent and Audacious. Now streaming on HBO Max. Welcome back. It's The Treatment. Our guest is my old friend Kent Jones, who's done wonderful things as a filmmaker. His latest film is the film Late Fame, which stars Willem Dafoe and Gaudelaire. and talking about her awareness of audience. And we can see how she's able to use her limitations because everybody she's playing to wants her to succeed.

10:53So she's kind of coasting on that a little bit. And that's a really subtle thing to play without giving the game away. And she does that in such an extraordinary way. Yes. And she's also sort of like, in a harsher way, there's an undertone that she, for these guys, is sort of like their guarantor of authenticity because she's kind of like their tragic heroine. You know what I mean? I mean, she's just somebody who, you know, goes out and gets, you know, hammered now and then because her life is just really, really hard. And surviving in New York is really, really hard. And she's come a little bit too late.

11:31You know, they all kind of, you know, not everybody, but a bunch of them just sort of like flirt with her. you know, she goes down the line with them because she's just sort of desperate, you know, and then there's, there's Saxberger and she attaches herself to him for a while. And it's, there's a, there's a poignant quality and a sad quality. And then there is that unspoken quality. It's nothing that's cultivated, nothing that they want. It's just something that's sort of like the group that's not a group is a dream to begin with. And so her being part of the group is part of the dream, I think.

12:08No, it's something you tell Pina about, but I also found myself thinking of the last section of the Henry James, The Tragic Muse, and how she felt like that to me, the sort of country that's sort of passing her by as an artist, but also about that thing in that book that's about the sort of free-floating ambition of artists, even without a place to attach it to. You know, when she says at the end of the movie to Willem, I'm an artist and I don't live for anything but my art. She's saying it in a very, in a kind of a grandiose, you know, way with her wild eyes, because she's just kind of recovering from being, you know, whatever.

12:49But she means it, you know, because she works at it. And I think that in the end, the kid played so beautifully by Luca Padovan, you know, at the end, he's like, I just want to know, can you tell me if I have any real talents and I'd love for you to read my work. And, you know, Sachsberger gives him a very harsh lesson, but it's a very good lesson, you know, which is like, don't attach yourself to anybody and think that you're going to gain anything out of it. We're all on our own. But he's probably the one who's going to be doing the most writing. He'll just probably keep at it. I mean, part of the reason we feel that he's giving that speech at the end is that he recognizes that he's the one who might do something, but he literally has to leave the nest.

13:29I mean, this is the person with the beginning of the movie says, I'm waiting for my mom to pick me up. Yeah, that's right. My mom's about to pick me up. Do you have any career advice you can give me? After these guys are just sort of like umming and ahhing their way through references to other poets. And it's like, oh, Burroughs. Oh, Burroughs. You know, he's iconic, you know, a word that I would feel like is used too much as it is. It's the treatment. Welcome to Etymology Now with my guest, Kent Jones, who's better known as a filmmaker, his newest filmist, director, his late fame. Even though films, again, aren't long, you sort of take your time to let us understand what each of these worlds are as Saksberger enters them.

14:16And the place they feel is the most comfortable, even when he tries to change, his friends are still welcoming to him. And I just wanted to ask you about how difficult that is to do, because you really accomplished that doing that, Kent. You know, there's this great phrase, Elaine May was brought in to look at Swing Shift by Jonathan Demme, you know, which was theoretically a problem picture. And she looked at it and she's like, I don't understand the problem. You know, there isn't a problem. It's a great movie. And then they went ahead and, you know, changed it anyway. But she said, you know, I really love the ecology of the movie.

14:49And I've always remembered that phrase. It makes sense to me. And I feel like every scene has its own ecology. Every grouping has its own ecology. The way that people interact with each other. It's why I wanted to have two cameras as much as possible and to keep them handheld so that we could really be responsive to every little nuance that these guys, you know, with the reactions. and I would sort of like, you know, refine them with the actors, you know, so that everybody reacting to each other was what the scene was about within the space that's familiar to them. So that bar, you know, where all those guys meet is, all those places in the film are a little bit out of time in relation to Manhattan because, and by the way, they're all in New Jersey, you know.

15:33Which was a cool exercise. Spoiler alert. Yeah, well, you know, Willem was like, you're not supposed to say that. I'm like, well, you know, why not? I like it. I think it's a great thing. You know, Marty did it in Mean Streets. Michael Powell did it. I know where I'm going and I was very into the exercise, but I think also that, you know, it's important to just understand who everybody is, where they're at, what they are to each other in the moment. What's, you know, what the, every place has its own, every set of people has its own rules and not even rules, just like common practices or, you know, ways of speaking.

16:09And, and yeah, Clark Johnson, he was a prince. I loved that. I loved working with him, you know, and plus, you know, he's a hero. He's, he's the guy who did the first, directed the first two episodes of The Wire. And then he, of course, he acted in the fifth season. And, and one of the stars of Homicide. Sure. You know, and he's got that beautiful moment when he goes to Willem's house, because he wants to go to the reading, and there's just a close-up of him, and he's like, can I come? And he's kind of like a child at that moment. There's something very touching about it. We're aware of Saksberger walking through doors to get into these different worlds.

16:47I wanted to ask you about that because that's very specific. There are lots of doorways in this movie. He's going from one place to another, and that's an interesting visual motif to me. I mean, it brings Ozu to mind. That's interesting. It's almost like walking in this, and by extension, walking in and out of doors is almost to this movie what driving is to Diane. These doorways are kind of magical in this sort of found way, because each door he passes into takes them into a very different place. In that way, the sort of, Schnitzler plays with sort of the conscious and the subconscious. I felt like that was kind of a visual correlative to that.

17:26Obviously, Schnitzler has it, you know, this is the guy who wrote a dream story, you know, Traum Novella, you know, which Eyes Wide Shut was based on. So it's like he's very preoccupied with that. He was a contemporary of Freud. And, you know, that was a major preoccupation of his. And it's definitely present in this. You know, it's not overt. It's just that it's the whole story feels like a tale, a kind of a magical tale that's that's visited upon this guy and he enters into this new world. And you're right about that. And you've given me something to really ponder, you know, to think about. It's kind of cool to hear things that get you thinking about something in your movie that you hadn't really thought of explicitly.

18:13But then, you know, there are all kinds of things that happen not explicitly when you're making a movie. This is a question that I have for you then, Kent, because you are someone who spent a lot of time looking at movies and analyzing what the artists and the artisans who make them have brought to bear. And I wonder if you're finding for you in making, being a filmmaker now, how much of your subconscious makes its way into these stories that you're telling you. You do these things because you sit for a long time. So these patterns have to be something that you want to touch on. And I wonder what it's like for you to sort of see this happening in your own work after analyzing it in the work of others.

18:54Part of the reason that I took my time before I made narrative films, you know, and I got very close in the past a couple of times. And, you know, I'm glad that I didn't make the films that I would have made when I was in my 20s. Really? Yeah, because they would have been like homage movies, you know what I mean? But then on the other hand, I would have had more, as Fincher calls it, at bats. so you know I would have changed along the way but the thing is that when I'm making a movie like I'm not into showing movies by other people to actors that's not my thing for some people it's very you know it's part of the practice and you know I get it it is for Marty Scorsese for instance you know but for me not so much what you say by the way I do I've Marty and I well I mean you know it's been 35 years working together on various endeavors in various capacities.

19:52And it's just, you know, and he's one of my closest friends in the world. But I think that, like, for me, it's important to let things come alive. You know, as a director, you've got to do two things at the same time. You've got to maintain the idea and keep everything in focus. And then at the same time, you've got to let things come alive and surprise you in the shooting that hadn't really presented themselves beforehand. It's not about like, here's the script, let's enact it. You know, that's not the way it is. You know, Sammy Burch's script, the beauty of a great script is that, you know, it's solid as a rock, as a structure.

20:30And that gives you something to really build on. And, you know, Sammy and I worked really well together. I loved every minute of it. But I think it's important to just let yourself to drop preconceptions and, you know, frozen ideas and just let things come alive. And as you put it, your subconscious, my subconscious, that's quite real. Well, we're out of time, but it's a terrific film, I guess. This is Ken Jones's new film as director is late fame. Thanks so much for doing this. Thanks, man. This has been great. It's been great talking to you.

21:19The lives of Kent Jones have taken him from working as a film critic, as director of the New York Film Festival, and now a feature film director. His works include the documentary Hitchcock Truffaut and the fiction film Diane. And Olam Defoe stars in Kent's newest film, Late Fame. Previous conversations with authors who also direct, such as Quentin Tarantino, at the archive, kcrw.com slash thetreatment. kcrw.com slash thetreat is where you can find our series on talent discussing their sources of inspiration. The newest is from actor Will Poulter, who's touring with his new film in the areas in which it is set.

22:07Nothing is set here. We keep it moving. With Rebecca Mooney, who produces and edits the show, and Katie Gilchrist, who mixes. To better days, everyone, I'm Elvis Mitchell. It's The Treatment.

22:30Bye, Johnny. Why are you so wrong?