James Mangold on the set of 3:10 to Yuma
From his award-winning feature debut Heavy — described by the writer-director as “a movie about a fat guy who doesn’t say much” — James Mangold has been defying odds and breaking rules. He picked up a Super 8 camera as a child, attained his undergraduate education at California Institute of the Arts, and grabbed attention immediately upon graduation when Michael Eisner himself hired Mangold into the Disney fold as a 21-year-old upstart. While he was quickly disillusioned with the major studio system and retreated to Columbia University for a Masters degree in film, Mangold drew inspiration from the blatant commercialism he faced at Disney and decided from then on to do what he wanted in his own way.
The results have been all over the board in genre, period, place, and success (box office or critical). While unpredictable, each step has been inarguably daring. There was the gritty drama Cop Land, giving Mangold a dream roster of Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, and Sylvester Stallone; the time-travelling romantic comedy Kate and Leopold with Meg Ryan and Hugh Jackman; helping Angelina Jolie win an Oscar® with Girl, Interrupted; the dark murder mystery Identity, which reunited Mangold with Heavy star Pruitt Taylor Vince alongside John Cusack, Alfred Molina, and Rebecca DeMornay; Johnny Cash’s Oscar®-winning biopic Walk the Line featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon doing their own vocals (gasp!); and now, an updated adaptation of the Elmore Leonard story 3:10 to Yuma, featuring Christian Bale and Russell Crowe in a quintessential good vs. evil battle set in the Old West.
Mangold never second-guessed his desire to bring what he felt was an extraordinary story up-to-date. Once again, his appreciation for a unique, solid tale drove him to conquer yet another setting, another group of skilled actors, and another genre entirely — even when no studio would back the project financially despite the success of Walk the Line. Here, Mangold discusses why there are no guarantees, monetary or otherwise, and why great things can happen when you trust your own vision.
You’ve successfully juggled the writer-director duality despite so many diverse projects. What kind of background prepared you for this and why you have persisted in doing both when many other filmmakers would take on directing for hire or give up directing their own scripts?
Well, even the movies that I haven’t gotten writing credit on I’ve written, so there isn’t a single movie I’ve made that I haven’t written on. Up till now, I’m not going to get writing credit on Yuma, but I wrote extensively on it, and I didn’t on Identity but I wrote a lot on it. The rest I did get credit for writing. For me, I started making movies when I was 12, so the act of making a movie was the act of making up a story, building a set, lighting, shooting, finding actors, and then editing. The fact that I’m still writing my films is only common sense. It isn’t that it fits in a tradition or doesn’t; to me, it’s all part of making my movie. I’m not ever fond of compartmentalization of moviemaking; I think it’s very sad in a way how fraternal organizations and unions and other ways of dividing people have made it like the writers versus the directors versus the producers versus the actors. Because the reality on a movie set is that actors are writing, the editor is writing — even as you’re cutting you’re doing another draft on the screenplay. So I just never really recognized that one division of labor stops and the other starts; everything is really blended. A well-directed film is a well-written film and a well-written film is a well-directed film and a well-edited film is a well-directed film. Each discipline can only be strong dependent upon the execution of the other.
Full collaboration the way that it’s idealized in filmmaking.
Well, fully collaborative — but again, that word implies it’s different people. I mean that there has to be a unity of vision. It’s not a car; it’s not a Chevy Impala with the department of dashboards doing their part and the department of seats doing another. At some point, it has to become an Impala.
I think an attitude like that really helps to bolster the argument that cinema is art and not product.
Yeah! And just because I’m working in the Hollywood world doesn’t mean I feel that I’m making a product. I feel like I’m lonely in that pursuit; I think that if you look at most studio slates right now they’re mostly “product” and, in fact, so literally product that they’re promoting a product or based upon a product. But that’s not the way I feel about my movies and the team that I work with on them doesn’t feel that way, either.
Let’s talk about the team and the way that you wrangle them in this constant writing and creating process. Do you openly encourage your actors to change things in the script and improvise? How do you work with the rest of your team to get to this singular vision?
What I’ve often said to actors is, “You can try anything you want as long as I can kill it.” At the level that I’m fortunate enough to be working, if you have an actor like Russell Crowe or Christian Bale or Angelina Jolie or Robert De Niro or John Cusack, et al, working with you, the last thing you want is to be somehow tying them up in a way that their brains and their talent are not flying. So you have to find a way to both let them sprint with the material and at the same time steer them toward the goal that you want. In the end, it requires respect and trust on both sides. Most people talk about actors in the sense that they’re some kind of threat and the truth is that it’s more often that they are threatened by what we do behind the scenes. A badly-edited scene or a badly-written scene or a badly-directed scene or a badly-lit scene can make them look stupid even if they’re doing good work. So they’re incredibly vulnerable to the people working with them and, in fact, they lose the ability to control the film once production stops and become incredibly vulnerable to how we are going to push and pull on their performances.
I always feel honored that any actor working with me is entrusting me with their likeness — with their choices, with their performance, with their passion — to bring it to screen in a way that not only makes me happy, but makes them proud. Usually, you know in three days on a movie set — this is my theory — whether the actor feels the director is helping them go to places that are interesting or actually the opposite, which is somehow constraining them.
The point is that I don’t feel like it happens that often for me because I don’t feel like I make actors worse. I mean, I’m listening to them and I’m watching them. There’s a lot about filmmaking that is highly subjective; there are some things that aren’t. We all know a great performance when we see it. It’s not like people will watch the same take of a scene and half will go, “That sucked,” and half will go, “That was great!” People might say that about a story or art direction or a piece of music, but they there’s something palpably, primitively, primevally true or false about a performance and when it’s good, it really hits everybody...everybody except the mentally insane or people coming in with an incredible agenda of their own that is blinding.
And so the bottom line becomes the actors know when they’re on and they learn very quickly whether you’ve got an eye for when it’s on. Let me translate: If I’m an actor and I do a performance where I know I was razor-sharp and the director goes another 30 takes, I know as an actor that he wasn’t sensitive in my own mind to that moment that I had 28 takes ago. However, if the director comes up to me and says, “I think we got this, this, and this, but I’m still looking for this moment when we blah-blah-blah,” then they understand that they’re not just in a fishing expedition and that the director appreciates something magical they left behind and will remember it, but there’s something else they’re still looking for. An actor like any other creative person is always just looking for someone who respects the work — and that means paying attention when something amazing happens.
But there are a lot of other things, simple things...like you can destroy an artistic process through praise as much as you can through criticism. Meaning one of the worst things that can happen on a movie, to me, is like when an actor does something amazing on the set one day and someone in the crew says, “That was fuckin’ amazing!” Then, two days later the actor’s working and where’s that crew member now? Suddenly the actor feels kinda shitty thinking, “Wow, what’s wrong with what I’m doing today? It’s not fucking amazing?” You have to be really careful because praise can also create a sense, just like when it’s not there, that suddenly you’re really displeased. So sometimes — and I find with really good actors this is true — less said is better when you’re on target. Suddenly an actor who got a lot of praise one day with everybody in the crew saying, “That was amazing!” is suddenly trying to do that same kind of performance every day, when in fact the role only called for it in that scene. So controlling and shaping a very responsible, creative atmosphere is a big job. Having a shorthand with my editor and my DP and AD and obviously producing partner, we all understand and speak the same language, so there’s a kind of unity of voice.
You brought up trust and building a singular vision, so how do you get to the point where you’re trusting yourself and able to get past other people’s concerns, other people’s criticisms, about taking on the story of Johnny Cash or a previously-made film like 3:10 to Yuma? There’s a whole series of doubts and crucifixions that come with tackling somebody’s life story or a remake of a revered film. So how do you get to the point where you trust yourself, then get other people to trust you?
You can’t make a movie without trusting yourself. I think part of your answer is how do you justify — even on an independent level — what could be several million dollars on your ideas if you don’t trust yourself? Beyond that, I truly felt — rightly or wrongly — that I was the right man to make a movie about Johnny Cash. Not the right only man or woman to do it; I didn’t feel like I was making the only film that would only be made about this or that. I just felt, “This is something I want to do,” in 1997 when I first told [Mangold’s producer/wife] Cathy [Konrad] about how I wanted to make a movie about John and June. I don’t think it out in terms of the media gauntlet and how I’ll be crucified because the second you’re doing that, it’s like an actor playing a role for what The New York Times will say. The world of moviemaking is littered with people who are thinking about results instead of the work.
Sometimes I’ll do Q&As and young filmmakers are there reading Variety and I’m like, “Why? Why not write a screenplay? What are you doing? Why are you even in this town?!” Sometimes I’ll meet people who are an assistant to an agent and they’re like, “I wanna be a director.” Then what the fuck are you assisting an agent for? Go make a movie! Get a camera and make a movie! That would be like someone saying, “I wanna be a great chef,” and they’re working for a McDonald’s executive. It’s like, “Go cook!”
So the point for me was my journey on that movie. I got to spend time with Johnny Cash at his house. And I got to spend time with June Carter at their house. I got to sing with Johnny Cash. I got to talk about songs and how they were born. I got to spend time with him; I got to talk with him on the phone every Saturday for two hours for about six months. To me, the experience and the journey of making that movie was of being in Memphis and trying to kind of create and recreate a moment when music was being made. The best example I can give you that for me was inspiring about that film was that these people didn't make music to get famous. So why would I be thinking about my plaudits or reviews on Walk the Line? What I was thinking about was the experience. They made music because they had to. And in a way I make movies because I have to and this is one I wanted to make.
The same thing is true of 3:10 to Yuma because I guess in the end you could get ripped to shreds for anything. You could get ripped to shreds for being too timid, you can get ripped to shreds for being too bold, you can get ripped to shreds for making a movie about an icon, you can be ripped to shreds for making a movie that seems like you sold out. In the end, you almost get used to the fact and say, "You know what? If I'm lucky enough to be a movie director, there are going to be people who are going to rip me to shreds." And that's the price you pay for having an opportunity that too few people get. It's like being in politics in a sense. People love to talk about movies. You can't just praise them all day, so people are going to have to rip some to shreds. But the dialogue that's most important to me is process of making it and I've seen it all different ways. I've seen movies that are hailed when they come out but disappear from history a year later and I've seen movies - some of my most favorite moviesth - at were considered turkeys when they came out.
So was the experience of making 3:10 to Yuma because you wanted to share this story with more people in this day and age, was it because you wanted to tackle that period, or was it something else entirely that motivated you?
Well, why would someone do a production of Hamlet? Did anyone ask Kenneth Branagh when he made Hamlet, "Why are you doing a remake?" Did anyone ask Lawrence Olivier why he was remaking Macbeth?
Maybe they did, I don't know.
Maybe they did. I don't think the question's illegitimate, but I'm saying I think the story is so good... In the press, there are words that have meaning and then they become wider in a kind of pejorative; for instance, "remake." I understand why that would be a word people would use as a kind of pejorative or go, "Why would you remake that?" When you're remaking one of the greatest films of all time, I guess it makes sense. I view 3:10 to Yuma the original as a wonderful, amazing film, but I also think it's dated in ways and I also think that there's another way to tackle some of the same story ideas. So for me, you can never tackle your subject with so much reverence for it that you don't see it for what it is and while I'm a huge fan of the original film, I also felt like there was plenty to explore. I think anybody who sees the film, the question answers itself.
That's a great point, the tendency towards being derogatory when talking about a remake. But the fact to be considered is that if somebody's going to undertake spending all of this money, the work of all of these people, the trouble and the trials and tribulations, then wouldn't it follow that they have some sort of adoration for or admiration for the original?
Exactly! It's not a hostile act. Bryan Ferry just released an album of Bob Dylan songs. Is that a remake? Is he attacking Bob Dylan? Is he suggesting we shouldn't listen to Bob Dylan? I don't think so! I think he's just living his life, his artistic life. The fact is that the original 3:10 to Yuma was so important to me that when I made Cop Land, Stallone's character is named Freddy Heflin after [original 3:10 to Yuma co-star] Van Heflin. It was a hugely important film to me; I admire the writing in it and I admired the direction of it and I just felt there was a kind of universality of the story in the way that many of the Shakespearean texts are for European or mainly Anglo-Saxon culture - core stories, mythical stories, about royalty, deceit, subterfuge. But they really speak to the European experience, the experience of castle and kings. The great Western stories speak in a mythical sense to the American experience and they are timeless. The stories themselves - which are of conflict, confrontation, right, wrong, and the many shades in between - are timeless. So for me, the concept that we somehow can't put on a new production of one of these timeless American stories seems to me to be criminal, especially if it's just because we're frightened about getting knocked about. I think the other side of this is that anyone who comes and sees our 3:10 to Yuma, the 2007 3:10 to Yuma, will not bring up the whole remake issue again. Meaning that it's clearly not coasting on some old concept. There's a lot of new material in the movie. There are some very bold decisions about the movie, about the text. There are places where we took things directly from Elmore Leonard's story that aren't in the original film and there are places where we went much further than either in terms of addressing where we are right now, making the movie more relevant to where we are right now.
The reality is that I would take a year of remakes if they were ambitious than a year of dreadful, by-the-book formulaic movies. I mean, you could think of any one of a dozen movies that are out right now that are cookie cutters of exactly what was made last year yet they aren't "remakes." And the truth is that I could name 12 directors and I could send each one of them off to remake a film and I couldn't wait to see it. For instance, The Departed is a remake. So? Did it hurt the Asian original? No!
Let's take into consideration all of the different types of films you've attempted, genre-wise, period-wise, location-wise - all of these things. Why do 3:10 to Yuma right after you've done Walk the Line after you've done Identity and Kate and Leopold and Cop Land and Heavy? They're all so different.
The only way I can make it make sense to you is that if you were me and you just finished a movie called Cop Land and you were with nine sweaty guys every day for an entire summer in New York, the world of Girl, Interrupted would seem really appealing. (Laughs) And then, after you'd spent two years with women in a mental institution, a comedy would sound really appealing. And then after you'd done a comedy, an incredibly nihilistic film in which everyone dies would sound appealing. And then after you'd done that, a really life-affirming romance about the birth of rock 'n 'roll would sound appealing!
So to me, each one as an experience is very clear how I'm seeing. And I see it way in advance, meaning 3:10 to Yuma I was developing it long before I even made Walk the Line. But to me, it's a weird psychic process because I also feel like we've just finished, in 3:10 to Yuma, a movie that Johnny Cash would've loved to have seen, having known him. There's an incredible quality of how one things feeds another.
I don't know if this is something that comes up when you're talking to actors to get them to be on a project, when you're talking to financiers or studios or distributors, but is there something about what you do that makes them trust you despite all of these different genres and periods and whatnot?
Absolutely not. The fact is that when anyone's getting frustrated, all they have to do is think this: Walk the Line cost $25 million. We went to every single studio in town. We had Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix. We had the script and we had Johnny Cash's approval and the rights to his music. And no one wanted to make it for $25 million. Now all you have to do is look right now in the newspaper and look at all the crap that cost $40, $50, $80, $120, $225 million and go, "For basically one quarter of the effects budget on one of those movies, any one of the studios - any one of the studios in town - could've had that movie and they all said no. It was Fox who came through at the very end and was our savior, but there wasn't a single other studio in town who wanted the picture and if Fox had said no we would've been up shit creek. In relation to Yuma, try this one on for size: After making Walk the Line and with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale, every single studio in town including Fox passed. It's because when we were making Walk the Line, no one had made a movie - a rock 'n' roll biopic, a movie about country music - everyone thinks we made this movie after Ray. We didn't make this movie after Ray - Ray came out eight months before us; we had finished production, we could have even been in the same Oscar¨ year as Ray if we had finished a month sooner. But the fact is that nothing like Ray or Walk the Line in the 10 years previous so no one trusted that idea of a movie because no one felt those movies worked. By the way, Ray had gotten independent financing as well - no studio made it. The same is true of a Western - it's a genre that the studios feel is not sellable. They feel that young audiences will pay every single weekend to see the latest male star in tights running through a CG background as the world explodes but they do not feel that the same people will pay to see a Western.
And we'll see - maybe they're right. But I can't accept that. If there's anything I'm trying to do, it's like kind of a rebellion from the inside, like waking up and reminding people some of the great, classical forms that are inside Hollywood filmmaking that actually have so much integrity and so much truth to them and they've been abandoned in favor of this two-hour rock video with pop songs that are predicted to become hits and a montage in the middle and a lot of product placement and CG action sequences that you could practically know with your eyes closed what they're gonna be.
That's not my experience when I went to the movies, because when people talk about the great movies of the 70s and even 80s - you know, The Verdict was a studio picture. The Godfather was a studio picture. The French Connection was a studio picture, The Exorcist was a studio picture, Jaws was a studio picture. These movies - these edgy, intense, society-questioning movies - they didn't come up through Sundance. They came up through a system of really talented people who were working in Hollywood. And certainly when you go back in time, High Noon, Citizen Kane, The Wizard of Oz, 3:10 to Yuma et al were all studio pictures. I could keep naming them - great movies haven't only been made in independent film and in fact there's mediocrity in both worlds! To me, the thing that's interesting is to keep trying to question and to push the boundaries of what either world allows. Like the same way I can assassinate the cliched Hollywood picture and we all can like imagine it in an instant, you could go to Sundance and close your eyes and imagine the cliched independent movie now. There's a kind of predicable score, predictable social misfits banded together, a certain political agenda - I mean, it's like when I made Heavy it didn't fit in with what independent film at that moment was. It was all about Love and a .45 and Pulp Fiction. I had a movie about a fat guy who doesn't say much and there wasn't much room for it because the truth is there's doctrine in both worlds.
Anyway, I'm giving you a bunch of blather...
No, it's exactly how I wanted to end our conversation - a reminder of how what doesn't matter is outside perception and definition and categorization about what's independent, what's studio, what's free, what's commercial...
And the truth is, in the end, it's when you see a voice. When you see a voice you recognize and the voice has some measure of authenticity and ownership to it. The fact is, that's all I'm interested in. I want to sit down and feel like I'm being told a story by someone who's voice is clear and confident. And I don't care if there's a Fox logo or an N'SYNC Films or a Think Film or a Miramax logo on the front. I just wanna feel like I'm being told a story by someone and not a committee. And to me, I've seen it each way - I've seen committee kind of cookie-cutter movies in every world, so I ultimately feel like it comes down to someone's voice. And the director is - I mean, you can hear it in me - I think the job requires you to be a bit of an evangelist. That's how you hold it together. That's how you keep everyone working on the same point and that's how you avoid conflict in a sense is that you set a very clear mission. When I go out to cast a movie, the point for me isn't to try to score an actor to get a green light. The point for me is to get the right actor for the role who will work with me and then get a green light. Because, you know, I'm sure there was someone I could've put in the movie of Walk the Line that might have made it easier to finance at that moment than Joaquin, but he was the right guy. And I knew we could get it made eventually somehow.
