Filmmaker Ira Sachs has had an uncommon trajectory in the American movie industry, crafting deeply personal tales by using the resources of the Hollywood system. His debut, "The Delta," was a landmark film in the new queer cinema, an audacious look at the gay subculture in the mid-'90s South. In his next two features, Sachs continued to examine the theme of deceit, harnessing both deeply respected character actors like Rip Torn and Hollywood superstars like Pierce Brosnan. The filmmaker will reflect on his career in a talk at the James M. Stewart '32 Theater at 185 Nassau St. today at 4:30 p.m. Senior writer Fareed Ben-Youssef '09 spoke with Sachs about his body of work and his cinematic philosophy.
Q: Has becoming a teacher in the MFA program at Columbia University and working with students changed or influenced your approach to filmmaking?
A: Definitely. In articulating what you do to students, you begin to understand what you've learned. You move from instinct to expression. As a graduate [student] I was already taking myself incredibly seriously - not that I didn't have a sense of humor, but I was viewing the work I was making as very important, which is something crucial in developing a career. I'll be interested to see if I find this kind of approach among Princeton students.
Q: How did your own college experiences influence your theoretical base as a filmmaker?
A: I went to college in the late '80s, a time of deconstructive theory and comparative literature and semiotics and identity politics - all things that are still important to me as a filmmaker. Twenty years later you can look back on your education and see how it was formative: At that point the distinctions between high and low art were being broken down, [and] deconstructive theory was trying to equalize different points of view. All of this stuff is still important to me in terms of how I tell a story.
Q: That leads well to my next question: Do you use the medium of cinema as a tool for socio-political enlightenment, or do you work in the medium primarily for its narrative capabilities? As a writer, what drew you to the more expansive and visual medium of film?
A: I started out as a theater director. I found that making theatrical works was a very stimulating intellectual endeavor, but less stimulating on a personal plane in the sense that I found it harder to reveal the stories I felt compelled to tell in a theatrical setting. Films allowed me an access to my past in a way, much more than theater did.
Q: I was struck while re-watching some of your films by their locality: Both "The Delta" and "Forty Shades of Blue" take place in the South, and you're originally from Memphis, Tenn. Can you talk about your vision of the South?
A: Race was very central to my growing up in Memphis, and I think both those films problematize the consequences of those [racial] differences, in a way. I was interested in trying to examine those themes particularly in "The Delta," which is about the combustible nature of these different communities and the danger of that combustion.
Q: The combustion within "The Delta" is felt most strongly in the film's final moments. Was the crescendo of that murder a meditation on how the stark divisions between cultural groups lead to these explosive meetings?
A: Even in a very realistic genre, which I think my films are in, you're always on some level dealing with metaphor, just by virtue of the choices you're making as a storyteller. So I think "The Delta" was sort of taking that metaphor to a farther point at the end. I was influenced by the fact that a lot of films have succeeded by putting a violent moment at the end that suddenly makes you question all that came before. If you look at "Nashville" by Robert Altman or "Do the Right Thing" by Spike Lee, that's taking advantage of a genre, on some level.
Q: I was struck by how your films continually vacillate between genres, either switching swiftly, like the final moments of "The Delta", or more subtly, as in "Married Life," which pairs the Hitchcockian overtones of the main plot with a period comedy. How do you approach the question of genre, and do you seek to cross expected boundaries between these different film types?
A: No. I think that genre has become part of my own memory, in a way. In the same way that I might choose a story from my childhood or something that I saw or a story someone told me, I grab from movies in the same way, and books I've read, which in a way form part of my own history. ‘Forty Shades' is a genre film made by a non-genre filmmaker, and I think that's its tension. It was done very honestly and un-self-consciously. I mean, it's not a very post-modern film. Its genre is just part of its collective imagination.
Q: As I was watching "Forty Shades of Blue," one theme that I saw connecting it with the much lighter "Married Life" was the theme of aging. Rip Torn seems to be losing control as he progresses deeper into senility, and Chris Cooper in "Married Life" has an existential crisis when confronted by the possibility of young love. Are you attracted to that moment when individuals reconsider their lives?
A: One thing I've realized having finished these three features is that they're a trilogy of defeat. For me that came very specifically, for better or for worse, from having grown up as a gay person and having to internalize certain extreme compartmentalizations in my romantic life and my familial life. You see this in all three of these stories. There's a lot of lying and secrets in these films, and that's what makes them, in a way, gay. They're not textually gay, but there's an underlying theme of what is hidden, and the fact that at some point those secrets tend to catch up with people. In "The Delta," the consequence of this white boy's guilt and ability to run away from the problems he's caused is what causes the crime. In the same way, Chris Cooper's inability to face his life leads him to attempt murder. So I think there's a very serious theme of the consequences of the things you keep from people.
All these films are about the tension between what people feel on the inside and what they show to the world. That was the central theme of ‘Forty Shades' and the central female character's personal awakening: a disconnect between all that is underneath and the beautiful, doll-like image that she projects to the world. Classic genre: woman's awakening. It's told in anti-classic fashion, because of the more observational nature of the camera.
Q: I was surprised by how you chose to capture the ending moments of ‘Forty Shades' with an over-the-shoulder profile shot. Even in the way you framed the shot suggested the distance of the camera from the characters' emotions.
A: I think the film vacillates between observational and subjective viewpoints. That's part of the interesting thing about teaching, trying to teach students what their vantage point is and how where they put the camera affects the audience's experiences of a film at every second. I think that what I try to do is shift between observational vantage point and film to a point where you have greater identification with the character. It's a slow build.
Q: Looking at your films, there is a sense of a positive synergy between the stars that tie your work to the mainstream and your more personal stories, which connect better with independent film. I find "Married Life" executes this rather seamlessly, so maybe that suggests that the greater elements of the Hollywood system can flow into independent cinema? Perhaps the personal art film will continue to exist?
A: I think it will exist on some level, but I don't think it will be a seamless flow. There is an effect of this merging on the stories that are told. It's not coincidental that since "The Delta" I haven't made a film that on the surface could be called a "gay film." That's not an accident. It is somewhat connected to larger social forces.
Q: "The Delta" featured a nuanced and often unromanticized view of homosexual subcultures within the mid-'90s South. When you first set out to make the film, did you want to push against the taboos of mainstream cinema?
A: No, I was just trying to tell my own story. There's something very direct about that film. It's not an autobiography, but it's emotionally very familiar to me. I made that film when I was very young, and there are parts of it that are messy, but I do like its directness. It was very personal for all of us involved, and that's what exciting about the movie for me: It seems to be documenting a place and a time and a group of people.
I felt when I finished "The Delta" that I was a young American director trying to make a German film. There's a darkness to it that I don't really connect to, and there's some imitation going on. What I've tried to do as I've developed and gotten older is to cherish what can be liked in cinema - an aesthetic lightness of filmmakers like Renoir and Hitchcock, a sense of humor that is so beautiful in even their most serious films. As an artist I've tried to access this as I've gotten older.
Q: Could you tell us about your next project, "The Goodbye People?" Do you hope to continue to work with big stars as in "Married Life?" Are you looking for another Pierce Brosnan?
A: It'll be a mixture. Because it's a period film, it's not cheap, so we need certain elements to make it attractive to financers. We're peddlers. It's an essential part of being a filmmaker, figuring the project out on all these different levels: the creative one, the artistic one, the personal one, the autobiographical one and the financial one. It's all part of what I do.
Q: Do you find that you're able to bring equal passion to all these different elements?
A: Well, yes. As a filmmaker, you're using other people's money to make works of art. You're not a poet. If you're not prepared to do that, then you'd better quit.
-Interview conducted by Fareed Ben-Youssef '09 and transcribed by Adam Tanaka '11
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