Speaking exclusively to Mal Simons at Blockbuster.co.uk about recent release The Illusionist and latest effort The Painted Veil, celebrated actor and occasional filmmaker Edward Norton reveals what it takes to make back-to-back period epics.
Playing a renowned stage magician in turn-of-the-century Vienna, in The Illusionist, and a shy English doctor driven by love to fight cholera in far-off China, in Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil, Edward Norton has, of late, had his work cut out for him. Best known previously for a series of exciting, commanding performances in films as diverse as
Everyone Says I Love You,
American History X,
Fight Club and
Red Dragon, Norton had dreamed of shooting an adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil for several years.
"The longer I've worked in films the more I realise as an actor you tend to get handed things when things are pretty much ready to go," explains Norton. "Sometimes you don't even know how long things have been incubating. It's more normal than people often say for things to go through a period of germination. This one was particularly long, but it was for all the reasons you might imagine: we spent a good bit of time in the beginning just developing the script and finding the financing. Even when
Naomi Watts was interested in doing it, we had a hard time finding a slot in which she and I and any director we were interested in weren't working on something else. It takes time for the pieces to click into place.
"Over the seven years we worked on it, the script went through three major evolutions," continues producer Norton. "Ron Nyswaner wrote an excellent adaptation that very directly reflected the book. But he and the original producer that he worked with, Sara Colleton, had a very difficult time finding support for that. I think in part because while the book is brilliant as a story it's extremely claustrophobic. Really if you were just to film a rendition of the book you could shoot it at Shepperton, there was really no need to go to China. And the second big phase, I would say, my contribution to it on script level was that I came in and said to Ron that it had to be inspired by the themes, and also the scope of it had to be expanded. Both emotionally, and even in terms of its view of China. There was really no point in going there otherwise.
"When director
John Curran came on board, he brought an enormous amount of new specificity and new inspiration to it and, more than Ron and I ever had, anchored it in the specific history of mid-1920s China, with the enormous wave of anti-foreign resentment that swept the country. It was a really brilliant new take that led to a deepening of the script. I think in addition to creating an even more dramatic context for the characters it opened up this whole second level to the metaphor of the film. It became much more about western people mucking around in other peoples' countries, telling them how to fix them and wondering why they're not being thanked for it. That had been unconsciously present, but I think John brought that view more clearly into it. But it never stops. The script evolved even as we were shooting the film, but those were the three big chunks."
Shooting the movie brought new challenges. "John and I were adamant that we had to go to China," continues Norton. "There was no other alternative. As it turned out, that was good on a financial level because you can stretch the money in China. We made the film for just over $20 million, which is quite modest these days. I think that in the main the trade offs and difficulties from working in China were far outweighed by the opportunity of getting down into that landscape and filming where no Chinese films had even filmed. It was a unique opportunity, and it was absolutely worth it. The Chinese crews are incredible, the film industry there is very well developed and they all work so passionately. We had nothing but great things to say about our Chinese colleagues in making the film."
Less pleasing were the interfering ways of the Chinese Government. "The Chinese Film Bureau had approval rights over the film that amazingly been granted to them by Warner Bros," details Norton. "It was a pretty singular kind of agreement, and it came to a head in some very unpleasant ways, but I think it's a total testament to John Curran and his courage, especially at this early stage in his career, that he dug his heels in resolutely and refused to let those things compromise the film. He won those debates, so that we didn't suffer this terrible incursion into the integrity of the film."
Despite the rigours of production and the protracted writing phase, producer Norton is glad he stayed the course. "Producing a film like this goes through many, many phases," he says. "Some of it's terrific and some of it is a true headache. Working with Ron Nyswaner on the script for a couple of years was great. Finding financing, that's a pain in the ass. And then working with John and Naomi, and supporting someone like John who has a very specific vision, and whose standards are very high. That's fun. Being a producer in a creative sense, really working with someone like John to sort out how we're going to get what we need to realise what he's got in his head. that's fun."
Audiences certainly seem to have been swept up by Norton's movie. "It's produced a very emotional reaction in people. We had one screening out at UCLA, part of a senior film screening series, that was a really interesting experience for me. People were coming up to us afterwards, people who had been married 40 years, saying how deeply they related to the dynamics of this couple. And the forgiveness element of it, that seemed to touch a chord with a lot of people."
Moving on to The Illusionist, a grand, romantic mystery with a plum of a part for Norton, the actor explained the project's appeal. "Two friends of mine who wrote the film
Rounders had produced [director] Neil Burger's first, very small
indie film. He had come to them with this idea and they were producing it for him also. They brought it to me a couple of years before we made it. Neil's script at that time was extremely faithful to the short story it was based on. Maybe because I have a predilection for thinking I can improve on the classics, Brian and David and I all thought that it didn't quite work. I think over some conversations we convinced Neil that the basic conceit of the film ought to be that it's a trick within a trick within a trick. That in the end the Illusionist is affecting his ultimate illusion in the service of his love."
That clears that up then, but what of the stage magic? Was it done practically, on the set, or with the modern magic of computer effects? "Part of our thinking on that was to be very, very rigorous in only performing illusions that were being performed at the time. And to be fairly strict, as strict as we could be about performing them live as opposed to using camera trickery or CGI. The only thing that I didn't do, or that we didn't use the actual mechanisms that were available at the time, were the spirit manifestations. There's a great book about the rage for spirit manifestations at the turn of the 20th Century. They were apparently really effective and sophisticated, but the techniques they used required a very darkened theatre. We couldn't do it and at the same time get it on film. So we cheated those a little bit."
Though rarely seen in period films, here's Norton presenting a pair. "That's pure coincidence," he replies, "because with The Painted Veil we've been ready to go at any moment in the last seven years. It just happened that it fell together on the heels of another period piece. I rarely step back and look at the relationship of any of these things to each other. I don't tend to make decisions about things with regard to how it fits into a larger body. I love period films, and I've looked at many of them over the years, I just don't happen to have been pulled in by them the way I was pulled in by these two."
What is it, then, that attracts Norton to a project? "I tend to prioritise work that on some level has something to say about the experience of people of my generation, or people that I know," concludes Norton. "Things that reflect what's difficult, about the times we're living in. The films that mean a lot to me - not my own but films generally - have been films that were engaged in their times. That doesn't mean that they were particularly commercial. They're just what I tend to gravitate towards. But it's fun to mix in other experiences too."
See Norton next as Dr Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk.