The Three Faces of Ivan

 

Since I witnessed my own mother's death by cancer about 20 years ago, the reality you three created was instantly recognizable right down the line.

Thank you. There are things you wouldn't know if you hadn't been through it. Bernard originally had all this sort of suspenseful stuff in the script about many different visits to the doctor and so on, but I said, "No no no. If you want me onboard, I am not going to make a bullshit movie about somebody who has cancer. This is what happens: You get the call. A call that says, 'Bring somebody with you.' And you know right then that the news is not good. After that, it's just a series of boring doctor visits that we don't have to go into."

 

Your scenes with Danny are so natural. You'd never mistake the film for a documentary, but there's a hand-held immediacy.

That's what I was interested in. To make a film that gave the feeling of being a fly on the wall. As soon as I realized that Bernard and even Danny weren't afraid of that, that they were eager to go out and make a film with their bare hands, I was really excited. In conventional moviemaking, by the time all the pink ribbons are in place and all the T's are crossed, everybody's lost their energy for the story. Whereas Bernard produced a draft May 17, 1999, and we started shooting just a couple of weeks later, in June. I just called up a few people who I knew would come up with the money. It was a really, really strong script. A lot of times now when we appear on panels, we'll hear people say, "Wow, it seemed really improvised!" Believe me, you can't improvise that kind of dramatic structure.

 

Ivan Beckman is such a believable character. Authentically an agent, but universal too. It's a nice irony that in Tolstoy's novel, Ivan Ilyich is a civil judge in czarist Russia -- and that in the film he's a top Hollywood agent. It makes you see the film industry as a nightmare twin of life under the czar, a world of self-immolating intriguers all dying behind their pasted-on smiles.

It really is a universal movie. Anybody who has to wear a suit and force a big smile is going to relate. We would often get asked, "Won't people be confused by all the Hollywood stuff? Will they know what 'coverage' is?" The old will-it-play-in-Peoria line. And I'm like, "Come on -- I'm from the Midwest. What do you think people do out there? They read, they think, they pay attention."