John August


John August has had his name on the writing credits of GO, both the CHARLIE’S ANGELS films, animated sci-fi TITAN AE and three Tim Burton films – BIG FISH, CORPSE BRIDE and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. He took time off from the WGA picket line in LA to talk on the phone to SFL’s editor, Chris Patmore, about his new movie THE NINES, which he wrote and directed.

Was the film always intended to be a triptych, or was it three separate stories you had floating around that you decided you could unite into one feature?

It’s more the latter. Generally, as a writer there are a bunch of things competing for your attention, running around in your head, and these three things were especially loud. As I started to look at them I realised there were whole aspects of them that were the same question, which are what is the creator’s responsibilities to his creation. At what point are you allowed to walk away from the things you’ve made. Once I looked at it through that prism the three stories fit together pretty nicely.

There is quite a strong spiritual aspect to the story isn’t there?

There is…

As opposed to religious.

That’s a crucial distinction. Any time you are looking at the questions of what does it all mean, or how did everything come to be, there’s going to be a spiritual quality to it. Really, from a writer’s perspective, I treat these little universes that I make as if they’re real, as if those characters are real people. When I’m done with them there is that sort of post-partum depression. I wanted to take a look at that on a bigger scale of what if we are just a story someone else is telling.

Why nine, as opposed to any other number?

I really liked nine because there’s always that sense that when people talk about big philosophical issues they always tend to go to these ultimates, like the ten out of ten. I wanted to look at it from the perspective that they weren’t necessarily the ultimate answer but nine out of ten, which doesn’t preclude it from being something greater than the kind of things we are talking about. A creator or writer who seems all-powerful to the people in his story is just as fallible as everyone else.

So there wasn’t any overt numerology involved, because there is a saying that nine is divine.

There was no sort of great numerology behind it, although I do like the number nine, it’s one of those cool and unappreciated numbers.

I’m sure there will be all sorts of nerdy people who will sit down and study it to find patterns.

Well there are three main actors who play three characters each, so you get your nine that way. And I do embed number nine in it as much as possible to create the fabric of the movie.

Because of the complexity of the screenplay did you decide that you were the best person to direct it?

When I decided to write it I knew it was worthless to write it and not plan to direct it, especially the middle section of the story, that story is my story. That character is a very slightly fictionalised version of me, so being that it is so personal and that section was going to be largely improvised, parts of it are scripted and parts of it are not scripted, we shot it like a documentary. I knew I needed to be there every moment to make that happen, so it wasn’t the kind of script I could give to someone else and say, OK here’s how my brain works, I really needed to be there moment by moment.

There’s also all the little visual clues that flow into one story from another that would be very hard to put down on paper for another director to incorporate.

Absolutely. I think, as a writer, a screenwriter is writing a blueprint for how to make a movie, but it’s not simply a set of instructions. It’s not a recipe. You do need to be there to help bring it to life.

This is your first feature.

My first feature as a director. I’ve been very involved in some of the movies that I’ve written, but this is the only one where I’ve actually yelled “Cut!”

Did you enjoy it? Was it a good experience? Would you like to do it again? Or do you prefer the solitude of the writer?

I see myself as a writer who will occasionally direct. I really enjoy writing scripts for other directors, who can do things that I can’t do and can devote two years of their life, where I can’t. I think I will direct something else in the future. This got me over a lot of my fears about directing, so I wouldn’t be afraid to direct a much bigger movie down the road, with its own challenges and politics.

The bigger it gets the more responsibility you have to take. With great power…

What you do is sacrifice control for opportunity. You can do things in bigger movies that you can’t do in little movies. I had final cut on this movie, but I don’t know if I’ll ever have it again.

With a smaller movie like this you do have more control over what you do because you don’t have a studio sitting on your head, telling you what they want rather doing what you want.

Actually, that’s a crucial aspect of independent film. I think that is why you see a generation of directors come through independent film that gives them a chance to experiment. This was a movie I could have made for $20 million or $15 million, but it wouldn’t have been a better movie at that level. It would have just been bigger.

With a bigger pay cheque at the end.

Exactly. This was the right scale to make this movie.

And a bigger movie would have been less profitable.

That’s the funny thing about a little indie movie like this, on paper, will probably be the most profitable movie ever. Films like CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY will always show as making a loss because that is how studio accounting works. A little movie like this is a lot more transparent. However much money we make in the UK will show up on the books.

Like Kevin Smith’s Clerks, which was made for next to nothing yet made loads of money, for example.

Absolutely.

You’ve done a lot of screenplays for Tim Burton. Did you get to go on set and pick his brain and take any directorial tips from him?

Every director I’ve worked with… You know writers are mostly observers, so I watched to see how they do things. Tim is great at coming to set incredibly well prepared with what he wants, but he doesn’t overwhelm people with his expectations, that ‘s the actors and the whole team that he surrounds himself with figure out how to do their best work. I definitely watched to see how he did things. I watched other directors to see how they run their sets. Everyone has a different style and this was a chance for me to figure out what my style was.

So you were learning by osmosis.

Absolutely, and you recognise what a director says to an actor to help get him or her get onto the right tack, and how you have those conversations about indescribable things with a cinematographer or with a composer. That’s one of the big challenges of directing and what I enjoy.

Do you consider yourself more of an actor’s director or a visual director, who goes more for the look of the picture and lets the performers get on with it?

I think you have to change your focus during the process. During pre-production I was very much about the look and style and the technical aspects. But once you show up on the set you have to be only about the performance, getting what you need on screen. I really like actors, I think there is relationship between writers and actors which is unique in that as the writer I have already played all those characters, so I am handing off the responsibility of playing those characters to the actors. It doesn’t really go through the director. I used to live inside those characters to. You can have conversations with actors that are really direct and helpful.

Being a writer-director must be a huge difference to being a director for hire.

I can’t imagine directing something I hadn’t written because the experience of living inside those people is really personal.

Thanks for talking to us.