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The first thing you notice about Jodie Foster when you are introduced to her is just how petite, maybe even downright tiny, the Academy Award-winning actress and acclaimed director is. The second thing you notice is just how polite, quick-witted and intelligent she is, the way she looks you straight in the eye when she answers a question making you feel like you’re the only person in the room that matters.
I was sitting in a suite at the downtown Seattle Fairmont Olympic for a small roundtable discussion with Foster to talk about her third directorial effort The Beaver staring Mel Gibson, Anton Yelchin and Winter’s Bone Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence. Although our time was brief, the conversation was a lively one, moving quickly from topic to topic with nary a moment between question and answer. Here are some of the highlights:
Roundtable: I was curious, how is that you actually go about choosing the films you want to direct? They’re sadly so few and far between at this point, so what does it take for you to say this is the script I want to move forward with, this is the one I want to direct?
Jodie Foster: I think when you read thousands of scripts when you read one, or you develop one like I did with Home for the Holidays, you know instantly what obsesses you and makes you wake up in the middle of the night and want to talk about it. You see references in all sorts of things and you see the movie happen in front of your eyes, you can visualize it.
I then spend a lot of my time downloading my own personal feelings about that and in some ways changing the characters so that they are fully rounded in a way that I understand intimately. That takes a long time, too. Now that I’ve had more of a pattern, I tend to make movies about people in spiritual crisis and trying to find a way through this spiritual crisis that allows them to come out the other side reasonable well adjusted and okay. They’re not people who go through a crisis and then turn bad and then kill everybody in a 7-11, they’re people who by virtue of attacking this crisis head-on, by not running away from it, are able to come out the other side.
Roundtable: So what was it then about this specific script that had that resonance for you? It’s about depression, and it’s not like Walter is facing a spiritual crisis so much that it is he’s sick.
Jodie Foster: He is, yeah, but those two things are combined. We have two stories, so we have sort of a broad spectrum of what depression is. You have clinical chemical depression which means there is no talk therapy that is going to help you get through that, you have to take drugs and [maybe] go to a sanitarium but also connect with people and talk and communicate about things.
On the other end of the spectrum is sadness, which is sort of a universal phenomenon as you get older. You’re parents age and you’re friends die at 25 and your children disappoint you. What do you do with all that grief? How do you handle it?
Interestingly, the answers are the same. You don’t have to be alone, and in some ways it is the aloneness and believing that nobody else can understand, that you’re alone in this quagmire, that’s the thing that’s most secluding about it, and the way to get help is to connect with people. That’s something I find in every film I do, and even if I didn’t see it at the beginning I see it by the time I’m seeing it in the cutting room.
The script preceded me. I would say the film was slightly skewed more comedicly when I got it, and I think everybody expected it to go in that direction. If there is one thing that I did it was to twist it much more towards drama, to work backwards and say this is where I want to get to, a true traumatic movie that is touching and moving. [I] then have to work backwards to make sure that I don’t start off the film like a black comedy and then jump off a cliff, it’s a transition [comedy to drama] that has to happen rather delicately.
Roundtable: Talk about acting in the film. How hard is it to keep focused on everything as a director while also delivering what you need to as an actress?
Jodie Foster: It is hard. It’s crazy. Mel and I talk about that a lot because he directed himself in his first film [The Man Without a Face] and after he finished that I said to him don’t ever do that again and he said to me he would never do that again and then he went off and did Braveheart. I think you do it [act and direct in the same movie] because there is some sort of tangible reason to do it. One being that you can’t get your movie financed any other way, which is what was true for Braveheart.
But in the case of this film, for me, I was looking for somebody to anchor [it] dramatically, to be the eyes and ears of the audience in a way that Walter Black and The Beaver could not be. We know that Walter is crazy, as a protagonist he’s unstable, so he can’t really function as the eyes and ears of the audience and I just had to find an actress who was age appropriate and that I knew you’d really believe [she and Mel] had been together for a really long time and I was just like, why don’t I just do it.
I knew [Mel] was easy to direct having worked with him before, and I knew he wouldn’t have trouble going back and forth with me as an actor and as a director. Some actors do. Some actors have a really tough time being bossed around by the person playing opposite them. Mel doesn’t have that problem.
Roundtable: It’s almost like the ending is not a happy one because it takes so much trauma to get there. The film takes an unusual route I didn’t expect.
Jodie Foster: Yeah, but there is a joy to the ending, sort of an embracing of that rollercoaster saying that there is tragedy and there is comedy and that life is hard and it can be heavy. That it isn’t fair, and as joyful as [the ending] is it is as also as dark and as horrible as it is. But if you don’t have one you can’t have the other; you have to risk both.
Roundtable: Do you have people who have inspired you as a director? Who are your inspirations?
Jodie Foster: Sure, of course, they’re the directors that I’ve worked with. Half the reason I’ve made the movies that I have as an actor over the last ten to 15 years is to work with directors that I admire and to look over their shoulders and go, wow, how did they do that? Whether it is Spike Lee or Alan Parker or Martin Scorsese or David Fincher – I learned a lot from David Fincher – or Neil Jordan, that’s been an incredible film school just looking over their shoulders.
I look at actor-directors now that I feel they have the career I wished that I’d had like Robert Redford or
Clint Eastwood or even Mel, to that extent, people who had a strong identity as a mainstream A-list actor but haven’t really chosen that path as directors, they’ve chosen a far more auteur style of filmmaking. They weren’t tempted into becoming less of an auteur because they already had an identity as actors.
I see it in younger directors coming up. If you’re the new flavor of the month guy, if you’re Tom Hooper or whomever, and somebody says how about directing the next Poltergeist or something like that, some franchise movie, you’re like I’ve never tried to do that, I’ve never tried to do a romantic comedy, Miss Congeniality 5, sure, why not? You can see how because they don’t have an identity strong somewhere else they’re trying to do it all, and the truth is I think it is smarter to stay on your path and have a signature, to make movies that come out of your soul.
Mel’s movies, I mean, here’s guy who starred in Lethal Weapon and did all of those films, but his films as a director are really provocative, are really who he is. Epic filmmaking. Virtually wordless. Somebody who’s able to tell a story, loves to tell a story, almost entirely visually with almost not access to dialogue and that’s extraordinary.
Roundtable: With that in mind, has there been a genre you’ve never been asked to star in or direct that you’ve always wanted to do?
Jodie Foster: Not for directing, I feel like I know what I do and what I don’t do. I would like to apply what I do to a different genre, to apply what I do and make a family movie that is a thriller.
But as an actor? Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff that people don’t consider me for as much, I think, and I think I’m a good bad guy, and I tend to play good guys all the time. I’d like to do a movie, and I’ve felt like this for a long time, where I would have to take six months and learn something, learn to be a javelin thrower or to play guitar or speak Romanian or some weird thing that I learn to master and take me six months to do and then I’d start the film. I’ve always wanted to do that and nobody has ever asked me.
Roundtable: Did you know immediately that Mel would be able to tackle this character?
Jodie Foster: I did. I know both sides of [Mel], and I know he can play the witty side which you do need, you need someone who can handle the lightness and the wit and a little bit of that comedic edge while being both affable and charming, but who would understand the craft of descending and could really bring something to [Walter’s] struggle. I’m just so proud of the performance. I’m just so grateful that he trusted me enough to really give that much of himself to it.
One of the reasons I think he can do that is that there really is no reason for [Mel] to act anymore accept that he’s moved [by the material]. There’s no other reason. He doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. He’s done everything in that arena that anybody can do as an actor and he’s done it 25-hundred times. So, really, the only reason for him to act is because it’s good for him.
Roundtable: Talk about the casting of Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence. Both of them seem to have hot careers right now.
Jodie Foster: They do. Anton has actually been around for a long time, he started as a child actor, but he was always my first choice. I met a few other guys but I was never serious about anybody but him. I think he just has the right combination of being light and charming which makes it much easier for him to play this dark, brooding pouting guy. I think if you have somebody dark, brooding and pouting play a dark, brooding and pouting person you just want to smack them.
Jennifer Lawrence, I looked at hundreds and hundreds of girls to play this character, and all of them were fantastic, and I see them now in movies and on T.V. shows. But it wasn’t right. We were very close to shooting, and she auditioned and she was pretty good, and I went to see her in a couple of scenes in Winter’s Bone and came out and said that is the girl that I want; now we have to rewrite the whole script for her. I realized that it was really the script that was wrong and wasn’t working, it was forcing the actors to play things that weren’t right for the character, so we had to go back in and really retool her part and make it specific for her strengths.
Roundtable: Really quick, speaking of Anton, were you ever worried that the character he plays in this film was too similar to the one he played in Charlie Bartlett?
Jodie Foster: Really, in Charlie Bartlett, he’s more like Mel’s character, right? He borderline insane and he takes all these drugs and he becomes manic, besides nobody saw Charlie Bartlett save apparently you and I as it is anyhow [laughs]. But he’s so great in that movie that I thought I needed this guy, that guy is great, and that’s like his only 100-percent starring role save for what he’s done after making The Beaver.
But he’s a really interesting guy. He would send me reams and reams of memos and he reads big books on Kierkegaard and he’s working all weekend thinking about the character. He’s very young that way. He’s smart. Really smart.
Roundtable: What do you hope the audience takes away after watching The Beaver?
Jodie Foster: Well, it’s a big experience, and I do make movies where people really have to pay attention. They’re lean, and there’s no waste whatsoever, you go from thing to thing to thing and they all resonate and then come back together again. I realize now that’s my style of filmmaking. The one thing that I think brings everything together is something [Jennifer] says in the graduation speech, this idea that despite the fact there is heaviness and sadness and tragedy, you do grieve and you’re not okay, but the one thing that is consistent is that you do not have to be alone.
If there was one message I wished I would have had when I was 18, 19, 25, 32, throughout all of my spiritual crises, it would be that. My screensaver is to be solitary and not to connect, and the only way for me to connect is to make movies about it because it is too difficult for me to share. That’s what art is; it’s connection and recognizing that you don’t have to be alone.
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