Oscar Roundtable: Prize Fighters

By Sean Smith and David Ansen, Newsweek

They made the most moving, provocative films of the year. In our annual roundtable, five directors (one of whom sidelines as an actor) talk about passion, fear, politics, Oscar ads and crying at the movies.

Feb. 6, 2006 issue - We were a little worried at first that Bennett Miller might not recover.  As directors Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Ang Lee and Paul Haggis stood in the hallway outside a photo studio in Los Angeles, it wasn't Spielberg's political lightning rod, "Munich," or Haggis's incendiary racism drama, "Crash," that got them all talking.  Nor was it Clooney and his stylish paean to Edward R. Murrow, "Good Night, and Good Luck," or Lee and his mournful love story, " Brokeback Mountain ," that generated the most praise.  It was 38-year-old Miller, the youngest and least experienced member of the group, who found himself the center of attention as the others raved about the quiet, assured power of his feature-film debut, "Capote."  As Spielberg regaled the group with a tale about meeting Truman Capote years ago, Miller remained so still and silent, we feared that underneath the placid surface he was seriously freaking out.  We shouldn't have.  By the time the five auteurs sat down together with their lattes for NEWSWEEK's ninth annual roundtable discussion, Miller was sparring with Clooney like a pro and asking Spielberg about "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

None of these filmmakers played it safe this year, taking risks with stories that were radical, controversial and divisive.  Critics often groan that modern movies pander to middlebrow sensibilities, and fret that smart movies are being killed by candy-coated kid fare.  These men prove them wrong. During a funny, fascinating two-hour conversation, these directors were as uncensored as their films, taking on the Middle East, explaining why President Bush has been good for filmmaking and opening up about everything from their worst reviews to the importance of keeping actors nervous. Excerpts:

Q: Your movies this year tackled racism, terrorism, same-sex love, governmental intimidation and the ethics of journalism. It feels like we're in the 1970s again.

GEORGE CLOONEY: People who get mad at us like to say that we lead society—that we're pushing it—but in general we reflect it. If you look at the issues in these movies, they were the issues we were talking about two years ago.

ANG LEE: Though it also feels like the culture has caught up this year. All of these projects had battles. " Brokeback Mountain " took eight years to get made.

STEVEN SPIELBERG: " Munich " took six.

LEE: So it's almost like fate. It looks like we planned it, but we didn't.

CLOONEY: It's not like the studios all sit there and go, "Let's do this."

Q: In fact, the studios don't want you to make these kinds of movies.

SPIELBERG: With the exception of my film, none of these other films were part of the conventional studio system. They were all maverick productions that dared to challenge audiences with things that they feel very private about.

CLOONEY: But in general you still need the studio to distribute the films, so I'm not bashing studios. I think they've actually taken some chances this year. It costs so much to distribute even the little movies. Bennett, how much did your film cost to make?

BENNETT MILLER: $7 million.

CLOONEY: And it probably cost $20 million to distribute.

MILLER: No way. It was more like $10 million.

CLOONEY: But now, with the [Oscar campaign] ads, I imagine it's more.

PAUL HAGGIS: I wonder how much influence those ads actually have.

SPIELBERG: I never look at the ads, because it's just too much to read. And everybody here has gotten so many kudos. Especially Ang's movie.

CLOONEY: Yeah. I don't read an ad unless it says " Brokeback Mountain " across the top. [Laughter; Lee smiles and hides his face in his hands.]

SPIELBERG: My family was actually planning to take a trip next summer to Brokeback Mountain . It sounded like a nice place to spend a week. [Laughter]

HAGGIS: But the studios are afraid that if you don't have the ads, people will think you're no longer in the running.

SPIELBERG: Audiences are very smart. We never give them enough credit for being able to have a kind of radar that makes them, without a single ad in the newspaper, suddenly say, "I'm interested in seeing 'The Squid and the Whale'." There's just something in the air.

CLOONEY: But on the other hand, I'll wager that every one of our films, when you first tested it with an audience, tested much lower than after it was reviewed. Sometimes people need reviews to explain what a film is, to put it into some sort of perspective.

HAGGIS: We only did one test on "Crash." I was sitting in the back of the theater, and you really can feel what the audience is feeling. But I also thought, "How could I have ever perpetrated this film on the American public?" [Laughter]

LEE: Couldn't you do a screening with just friends and family?

HAGGIS: No, because they'll lie to you.

CLOONEY: They will. I would. [Turns to Miller] I'd lie to you, man. [Pause] I like your hair. [Laughter]

Q: Most of your films this year were intended to provoke strong reactions.

HAGGIS: The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, "That was a nice movie." But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk ... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience. George, I remember walking out of your movie—

MILLER: ... in the middle ... [Laughter]

CLOONEY: He's getting me back for that hair comment.

HAGGIS: But you walk out of "Good Night, and Good Luck," and you want to go have coffee with your friends and discuss it. All these films were troubling and asked important questions.

CLOONEY: From the end of the first wave of the civil-rights movement, all the way through Watergate, people were constantly talking about what was going on in the country. Now it seems that's happening again. You can sit in a room and have people talk about politics—in Los Angeles , of all places.

LEE: There seems to be a collective social consciousness.

SPIELBERG: I think we all have been given our marching orders ... Maybe I shouldn't get into this. [Pause] I just feel that filmmakers are much more proactive since the second Bush administration. I think that everybody is trying to declare their independence and state their case for the things that we believe in. No one is really representing us, so we're now representing our own feelings, and we're trying to strike back.

Q: So Bush has been good for film?

SPIELBERG: I wouldn't just say Bush. The whole neo-conservative movement.

CLOONEY: Because it's polarizing. I'm not going to sit up and say, "This is how you should think." But let's at least acknowledge that there should be an open debate, and not be told that it's unpatriotic to ask questions. Steven, you're taking it from all sides right now.

SPIELBERG: [Laughs] I feel wildly popular.

Q: Did you expect the political reaction to " Munich " to be this heated?

SPIELBERG: I knew we were going to receive a volley from the right. I was surprised that we received a much smaller, but no less painful, volley from the left. It made me feel a little more aware of the dogma, and the Luddite position people take any time the Middle East is up for discussion.  So many fundamentalists in my own community, the Jewish community, have grown very angry at me for allowing the Palestinians simply to have dialogue and for allowing Tony Kushner to be the author of that dialogue. " Munich " never once attacks Israel , and barely criticizes Israel 's policy of counterviolence against violence. It simply asks a plethora of questions. It's the most questioning story I've ever had the honor to tell. For that, we were accused of the sin of moral equivocation. Which, of course, we didn't intend—and we're not guilty of.

Q: Ang, were you surprised that " Brokeback Mountain " hasn't raised more protest from the religious right?

LEE: I didn't know they would take a position of deliberate quietness, so that they wouldn't [inadvertently] promote the movie.

SPIELBERG: Can I give my critics your phone number? You know, there's a real similarity for me in the tone of " Brokeback Mountain " and of "Capote."

MILLER: Well, I studied Ang's movies.

CLOONEY: And stole shots from him. [Laughter]

SPIELBERG: Both of your films cast a spell on the audience, because you don't rush your scenes. You're not running to take us anywhere. You're walking, and you're appreciating every detail. It's such a beautiful rhythm.

LEE: If the movie is quiet I generally feel the audience is busy. That's when they're working. One of the most powerful moments in "Capote" is toward the end, when Capote's lying on the bed. He's doing nothing, and we do everything for him.

Q: You all worked with some amazing actors this year.

CLOONEY: They were OK.

HAGGIS: It was really all us. [Laughter]

Q: Ang, you must have gotten tired of being asked if you worried that playing gay characters would hurt Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal's careers, because at one point you were quoted saying, "I only wanted to do a good movie. I didn't care if their careers were doomed after that."

LEE: I don't think that line worked well with the Screen Actors Guild. You know, it's very hard to praise your actors, especially during awards season. So I behave like a heartless, egoistic director—it makes them seem so much more brave. [Laughter]

HAGGIS: I think we are a little heartless when it comes to getting the scene. You owe it to them. If you just joke around on the set and make things pleasant, but don't get what the scene is about, then you're doing them a terrible disservice.

SPIELBERG: Of all the films made this year, Paul's had the most eclectic mix of cast members, each the absolute opposite of the next, and yet all their stories inexorably are drawn together. That's where casting is absolutely essential. It was just a fantastic debut film, and I was fortunate that I got to see your early cut, a year and a half ago.

Q: How did that happen?

SPIELBERG: Paul and I were working together on a script of Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" [which Spielberg is producing].

CLOONEY: So it wasn't "Facts of Life: The Movie"?

HAGGIS: No, no, no. [Laughs]

Q: Are we missing an inside joke?

CLOONEY: I was on the series "The Facts of Life," and Paul was a writer.

HAGGIS: Three years you were on it?

CLOONEY: Two years. Two fantastic years.

SPIELBERG: The network did not want me [as executive producer] to hire George for "ER," because George had—

CLOONEY: Because of that "Tootie Drives" episode.

HAGGIS: Because I had basically destroyed his career.

SPIELBERG: Because in those days George was the albatross in getting a 23-episode order. [Executive producer] John Wells went to the front office and screamed and threatened to walk off the show unless George got the part.

CLOONEY: People love to knock sitcoms, but television is a great place to start. After hundreds of episodes of television as an actor, though, you become director-proof, because you're guarding the character. That's not an insult to television directors. Each new director wants to make the episode his "Macbeth." But on "ER" a director would come in and say, "I think this really upsets you and you would be crying here." And you're, like, "I cried the last three episodes." So I trained myself not to listen to directors, because you can't.

MILLER: How many jobs did you just lose for yourself by saying that?

CLOONEY: I know. But I've gotten better. Now I don't listen because I'm just egotistical. [Laughter]

Q: Bennett, you and Philip Seymour Hoffman have been very good friends since you were 16. What was it like to direct him?

MILLER: I think we both felt the entire time that we were in some kind of a crisis. From the outside, it probably looked kind of fierce. We were very honest and blunt with each other. Phil has an anguished and brutal process. When he did the plays "True West" and "The Seagull," he'd call me up two weeks before opening night and say, "My career is over. I can't figure this out. I'm going to be revealed for the impostor that I am." So when we worked together and that began happening, it kind of defrayed my anxiety. [Pause] A little bit. The challenge was to find a way to be with him and not comfort him too much. He was very afraid.

SPIELBERG: But fear is your ally. The minute you come onto a set and you're no longer afraid, you're in big trouble. I think the best performances—from filmmakers and from actors—have happened when there are whole stretches of tremendous instability about the process.

LEE: So do you create that fear on set because it's so workable?

CLOONEY: You do, don't you, Ang? [Laughter] You do. I just started into a sweat.

LEE: Not to scare people. I have to assure the actors that they are in good hands, but on the other hand you have to convey uncertainty, the unknown. It's like walking a tightrope.

SPIELBERG: When I create fear, it'll come in the form of a warning. I'll say to the actor, "I'm only going to do this shot maybe three times at the most."

CLOONEY: Well, that helps. As an actor, if you're working with a director who you know is going to do 40 takes no matter what, you don't even start to play ball for the first 15.

Q: Have you worked with a 40-take director?

CLOONEY: Yeah, I have, and it was because of their insecurities. They wanted to cover everything. As an actor you don't really like those kinds of filmmakers, because they're really just film collectors.

Q: Do you all storyboard your movies so that you know what all of your shots will look like before you get to the set?

LEE: I never could storyboard my movies.

SPIELBERG: What about "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? Did you story-board that?

LEE: No.

CLOONEY: Wow.

HAGGIS: Jesus.

CLOONEY: When I directed "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," I did 850 storyboards because I was afraid, on my first film, that people might not have faith in me.

MILLER: [After making the documentary "The Cruise"] I got an agent for the first time, and they sent me a lot of scripts. I never came close to doing anything, but the one script I just ached for was "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind."

CLOONEY: That was a good script.

MILLER: Not a great movie, but a great script. [Laughter]

Q: When directors get together, do you talk about things like storyboards?

SPIELBERG: When I met Akira Kurosawa for the first time in Tokyo , we went to a restaurant at 8 in the evening and we left at 7 in the morning. It was amazing, but I was waiting for Akira to share with me the magic that had eluded me in my career, to tell me about being a poet and a great artist. And what he was preoccupied with talking about was how many arcs [high-intensity lamps] it took to backlight the rain to make it show up in "The Seven Samurai." So we spent the whole night talking about technical things: how do you get these images?

MILLER: By the way, we're staying here until 7 in the morning. [Laughter] Steven, how did you do the control-room scene in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"? Were those real air-traffic controllers?

SPIELBERG: Every one of them, with the exception of the head of production at Columbia Studios, a friend of mine who I stuck in the movie. It was an improvisation. They had to redirect two airplanes that were coming into a conflict alert, and they had to get one plane to climb and one to descend—except that one of those airplanes happened to be a UFO. I would have hired actors if I knew that actors could be so facile with the technical talk. But "ER" hadn't come on television yet, where actors had to convince you that they could save your life if you were choking in a restaurant.

CLOONEY: You know, that actually happened. Before "ER" came out, we had done the pilot and were across the street from the studio at the Smoke House, eating. We were all in our doctor's smocks, and nobody knew who we were then. Anthony Edwards had his baby with him, and the baby starts to choke on a french fry. And all five of us, in our doctor's outfits, are going, "Somebody help us!" [Laughter]

Q: So many of your movies this year moved audiences to tears. Do you cry easily in movies?

CLOONEY: I cried at the premiere of "Batman and Robin." [Laughter] I cried for a week.

MILLER: I cry when people do good things. Like in "Schindler's List" at the end [when the survivors give him a ring]. That's the kind of thing that gets me.

LEE: It's getting harder and harder for me. It's like I deprive myself of that pleasure. When I was a kid, I used to cry so hard in movies that the whole row of people would stop crying and look at me. Now sometimes I cry just because the movie is so good.

HAGGIS: For me it was "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

CLOONEY: "Lassie Come Home."

SPIELBERG: The first real great cry I had was in "The Best Years of Our Lives." When Fredric March comes home, and his wife is in the kitchen, and some sixth sense makes her turn and she realizes that something is different. She comes out into the hallway—and that William Wyler long shot makes the hallway look like it's a mile long—and she's on one side and he's on the other, and they come and they meet in the center. That gets me every time.

LEE: What is the biggest crying movie of all time?

SPIELBERG: "Bambi." When I was a kid, I would actually get up in the middle of the night and make sure my parents were still alive.

LEE: "The Bicycle Thief." Each time I watch it, it is brutal. And the kid, at the end, after the father loses his dignity. Now I start crying even before it happens.

Q: Was there one particular movie that inspired each of you to become filmmakers?

MILLER: I like quiet movies. The first movie that I saw that made me think maybe I could make movies was Nicolas Roeg's "Walkabout," when I was 15 years old.

CLOONEY: I remember seeing "Fail-Safe" on television and then three nights later seeing "Dr. Strangelove." It scared the s--t out of me and made me laugh. It's hard to say, though, that one movie inspired me. I grew up in a great era for filmmaking: Lumet. Pakula. [Turns to Spielberg] You.

SPIELBERG: I was already making 8mm movies as a kid, but when I finally saw "Lawrence of Arabia," I decided I wouldn't do this as a hobby anymore.

HAGGIS: A lot of films made me love the movies, everything from Hitchcock to Godard. But the ones that really grabbed me were Costa-Gavras's films like "Z" and "State of Siege ."

Q: Ang, you grew up in Taiwan . Which movies inspired you?

LEE: I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I kept it a secret until I did my first movie.

SPIELBERG: You never admitted it?

LEE: No. I always felt ashamed.

Q: Because your father didn't approve?

LEE: Yes. And because of the society I came from.

SPIELBERG: What would your father have wished for you?

LEE: Anything but this, I guess. Something practical. So film was a very repressed pleasure for me. I always had scenes in my head, but "The Virgin Spring" was an epiphany for me. After that movie, you cannot move for a long time. You feel you will see life differently now. [Pause] I always wished I could do something like that on screen.

Q: Steven, you got your start in television. One of your early jobs was directing Joan Crawford in the pilot of "Night Gallery."

SPIELBERG: Yeah, that was the first thing I ever directed. I was terrified, but she made me feel like I was King Vidor. The crew was very hostile toward me because I had long hair, and in 1969 if you had long hair you were no better than Dennis Hopper in "Easy Rider." The average age of a crew member was 50 years old, and I was 21. So my defenders were the actors.

CLOONEY: Was Rod Serling around?

SPIELBERG: He was great with me also. I actually lit his cigarette.

CLOONEY: Did you really?

SPIELBERG: Yeah.

CLOONEY: You helped him die. [Laughter]

SPIELBERG: After Joan died, Lew Wasserman [the late legendary chairman of MCA] told me that when Joan met me, she immediately went over to see Lew and said, "How dare you experiment with my career, with this plebe, this amateur!" She said, "You have to replace him." And Lew said, "Joan, if the choice is between Steven Spielberg or you not being in this show, I'm going to have to side with Steven."

CLOONEY: Wow.

SPIELBERG: So I think Joan had to turn me into King Vidor to make herself feel protected and safe.

HAGGIS: George and I got to sit and watch a lot of directors in television work, and we probably absorbed a lot. Were you able to do that?

SPIELBERG: Yeah, I used to hang around sets all the time.

CLOONEY: Didn't you sneak onto the Universal lot?

SPIELBERG: Yeah, that's an old story. NEWSWEEK has printed it nine times already. [Laughter]

CLOONEY: If you did that now you'd get thrown in jail.

SPIELBERG: But back then you could do it. I'm proud to say that Hitchcock threw me off the sets of both "Torn Curtain" and "Family Plot." "Family Plot" was after "Jaws," and he still threw me off. [Laughter]

Q: You all got rave reviews this year. What's the most memorable thing a critic ever said about one of your films?

CLOONEY: It's always the worst thing, right?

SPIELBERG: I'll never forget what Rex Reed said about "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." He said the mother ship looked "like one of Mae West's earrings." [Laughter]

LEE: About "Ride With the Devil," Rex said something like "Those boys don't know how to say their lines." But he said the nicest things about "Brokeback."

SPIELBERG: And he's said great things about other movies of mine. I don't want to pick on Rex.

CLOONEY: Well, Rex trashes me as an actor. Even when he gave me a good review for "Good Night, and Good Luck," he basically said, "Unbelievably, it's a decent film for him." [Laughter] So beat up on Rex all you want. He can take it. He's a big boy.

HAGGIS: People either loved "Crash" or hated it. One of the earliest reviews said, "Paul Haggis thinks nothing has changed about race relations in Los Angeles since Rodney King." And I thought, "Well, they might be a little worse." [Laughter]

Q: If your movie is a commercial or critical failure, does it change the way you feel about it?

LEE: No.

SPIELBERG: Never.

MILLER: When we locked picture on "Capote," I watched it one last time before we showed it to people. I had my screen all to myself, and I hermetically sealed my opinion of it. I said, "This is what I feel about this experience, and no matter what happens, I'm not going to think it's any better or worse." [Pause] Having said that, I now think it's much better than I realized. [Laughter]

SPIELBERG: I love listening to you guys, because I really envy the three of you [Miller, Clooney and Haggis]. I remember what it felt like to be celebrated for the first time, to lose your virginity to people who love your work all over the world. Everybody is so hopeful now that you are going to continue the output.

CLOONEY: Oh, no. That's over. [Laughter]

SPIELBERG: You will all be recognized multiple times for great work, but I hope you're putting all that liquid love into a bottle. Put that bottle somewhere where your kids can't get at it. And every once in a while, take the cork off and smell how sweet it was.

MILLER: I've always felt kind of on the outside, and to discover that there is some kind of community—at the New York Film Festival or, my God, sitting at this table—it's like all of a sudden I don't feel like I'm fighting for myself, simply. I want to live up to the hopes of film lovers.

CLOONEY: And you will.

MILLER: As the bubble over George's head reads, "Bulls--t."

CLOONEY: I was actually being earnest. [Laughter]

Q: Gentlemen, our time is up. Thank you all for being here.

SPIELBERG: Thank you. Now, I'll be taking all these tape recorders. [Laughter]