CraveOnline: Was the fight between the medical industry and the AIDS patients interesting to explore dramatically? The big picture goal is for a cure, but anyone with AIDS can’t wait for those official procedures, they just want something to help them live right now.
Jean-Marc Vallée: Well, that was the fight in the ‘80s. That’s why there were so many AIDS activists. If you look at the documentary How to Survive a Plague, that’s exactly it. They weren’t in sync so these guys were dying and these guys were trying to help them but they had rules and protocols, trying to find the right thing so they won’t get sued. Then the pharmaceutical companies had their agenda so it took time before they all became in sync and worked together to find the therapy that made the difference.
At the time, the period, it wasn’t black and white. We were in a gray zone. They all wanted to do right. I didn’t want to portray the FDA and the medical doctors in the film as the bad guys. They were humans trying to do the right thing and they were convinced they were doing the right thing. They just weren’t in sync. Some were dying and they thought they were helping but at their own rhythm, they wanted to test scientific results to help the trials and everything.
That’s what’s such juicy drama, the needs of the many versus the needs of the few. The many that need a cure for the future and the few that need relief right now. It’s a historical medical story and also an emotional story. How did you approach balancing those two sides?
Number one, my priority is to be at the service of the emotional content, the emotional journey that I’ll give to the audience, that we’re all trying to give the audience. Of course now we had something that happened in real life and that existed, so we did our homework and we wanted the facts to be true and to be faithful to the period as I said earlier. The screenwriters did their job and came up with this story and those characters. It was on the page already, already balanced I believe.
How do you know when to get out of an emotional scene, when it’s time to cut and move on?
Instinct. It’s an instinctive thing. I don’t want to go too far, I don’t want to go too long, I don’t want to go too tight. You’ve got to trust your instincts, your judgment and trust the storytelling that came before and the quality of the acting with the emotion. As a director, try to be humble and not to overdo it, not overcoverage and over covering the scene. When you read a script and you’re on page 60, no actors acted yet and no director did anything and you can cry just by reading, just by what’s on the page. If you cry there, our job is to just respect what’s there and not to kill it and try to do too much.
Just film what’s there, trust what came before, one hour before, and make it easy. That’s how we know how to get in and get out, when to start going into the emotion and when we feel it at the same time. You’re in the cutting room, you’re on the set and you got the thing going on in front of you, it’s touching, then you cry and it’s nice also to add a moment of laughter and contrast these moments to sometimes free the tear.
Was it important that this movie also be fun, because Ron was a hustler?
Yeah, a hustler, an underdog, a son of a gun. It was fun. It was serious so just find the right balance between the thinking, the emotion, the tears, the laughs and yesterday it was nice to hear a crowd had some laughing moments, some funny moments. I think there’s no vanity, there’s no seriousness of oh my God, we’re making a film telling a story about a serious subject matter. We’ve got to be serious and dark. Life is everything. Life goes everywhere. Even in dramatic situations you can find this and it’s nice when in two hours you can have both and give the audience something to think about, something that will touch them and something they can get out of there with wow, I laughed too. That was so funny, this guy was so funny.
What was your take on the documentary approach to filming without overdoing it with the handheld camera?
Well, my thinking was to be humble and tell the story through his point of view and with a camera that is close to this guy. What he sees is what the audience sees. What he hears is what the audience hears. There’s a way of filming where you can get rid of the vanity and of trying to make something beautiful. Although we weren’t trying to, there’s always this intention of making a film and making great images with the light that we have. It’s nice to frame something, a beautiful face or an odd face of a special face or just a face in that context and how are you going to film it? What lens and what light are you using?
So the idea was to try to give the audience something that looks real, acting-wise, set-up wise, the art department, the locations, the light. The light was available light. For instance if we were coming here, it would be this room with the light that we have and that’s it. Yeah, it has the feel of documentary and when the character starts to walk and then we walk with him, we follow him so it’s not like a fluid dolly on tracks, but it gives a sense of realism I think. It gives a sense of authenticity and the actors, since they don’t have the heat of spotlights when they’re on a big set with a lot of lamps and electric crew and grip crew, they have marks, they have to step over the dolly, they feel the heat, they feel the light and the gobo and the reflector. It’s impossible to create this kind of film with this kind of setup.
I was alone with the DP and the focus puller. Everybody out of the set. Then we were looking for a thing and as we were looking, we were shooting. Rehearsal number one was take one. Sometimes it was so bad that we’ve got to do rehearsal two because we were just trying and I wasn’t saying a lot at the beginning. Often they were like, “Where do we go, Jean-Marc? What do we do?” I don’t know. Let’s find out. The camera’s there. Do what you want to do. Do what you gotta do. You know your lines? Okay, so they know the space, they look at the space and bang, action. You do it, then it’s happening.
Sometimes it was perfect, sometimes it was wow, and other times it was just oh my God, not at all, rehearsal two. Rehearsal two, not that good either. Rehearsal three. So rehearsal one, two, three, those were the first three takes. They’re not good at all and can’t serve anything because starting rehearsal four, it was good. Then rehearsal five became take two, so sometimes it took more time but always trying to be true.
Another good point was you weren’t trying to make it uglier. You weren’t trying to make it beautiful, but you weren’t trying to make it uglier than it needed to be either.
Yeah, we had a desire to show something raw and trash but a desire to give a good show and touch the soul and the heart of the people.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
