Written Interview: Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell (“Get Low”)
Today’s written interview is with Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell, writers of the new movie Get Low. Some background from the interview at WGA.org:
Get Low, the new film starring Robert Duvall as a fearsome, foul-tempered hermit who comes in from the cold, is a special movie for many reasons — story, character and performances (Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek are award-worthy in supporting roles). Even the cinematography is lush beyond most indie films (first-time feature director Aaron Schneider has worked principally as a cinematographer, though his short film, Two Soldiers, won an Oscar in ’04). But all those things are subjective. One objective indicator of the film’s magnetism is that two screenwriters who did not work together directly on the script — one wrote scores of drafts to get it produced and the other drafted it to a shooting script — came together quite peaceably to speak to the Writers Guild of America, West Web site about a project they both love.
Chris Provenzano developed the script for Get Low for nearly a decade while C. Gaby Mitchell was called in by Schneider to take a fresh pass before shooting. Based loosely on a real-life Southern hermit, the film centers on Felix Bush (Duvall) who exits 40 years of cranky hibernation to hold his own mock funeral and tell everyone who’s ever supposed what a monster he is, what actually drove him to his self-imposed woodland exile. Happy to help stage the event and take Bush’s squirreled away wads of cash is a lovably slimy, desperately broke local funeral director (Murray). Conscience, heart, and the folly of community gossip are all themes in this story, which culminates in Bush’s valediction to the thousands that gather for his living memorial.
Some excerpts from the interview:
Even though this film is a character-driven drama, given the laconic nature of the Felix Bush, it’s kind of a perfect lesson on how the screenwriter is often better off using less words.
Chris Provenzano: The first thing that comes to mind is that he’s a hermit. I think the notion was always that he would not say much. A person cut off from society could act one of two ways: he could either be really chatty, or he could be very reticent or, like you said, laconic.
Knowing that this was going to be an older character, and that there was a huge mystery around who he was and why he did what he did, for me, it seemed like he would not say more than needed to be said, and he certainly wouldn’t reveal anything about himself until forces were so great that he had no choice. It was always the idea that, in the quintessential, iconic American sense, this is not a guy who talks a lot — the way that Clint Eastwood wouldn’t. There’s just power to the words.
Obviously being laconic is apropos of this type of character, but often that principle, in a larger sense, is true of scripts. They tend to gain power when you learn to get out of their way and not overwrite.
C. Gaby Mitchell: That was one of the first things that attracted me to the material. I felt like Chris had done a great job of being very spare and creating a lot of space for characters and things to happen. I thought he did a really great job with that. Picking up from that place was great for me because that’s how I like to write, too. We have a real commonality there.
Having the guts to say less?
C. Gaby Mitchell: Yup.
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Another interesting facet of this script is how the whole story rests dramatically on this one moment when Bush finally tells his tale, that monologue at the end of the film. You both wrote different versions, but for each of you, how hard was that — getting the right tone, not overwriting or underwriting?
Chris Provenzano: I’d say it was definitely a well worked over part of the script. We didn’t always know — at one point there was a flashback in one of the versions. But I think more often than not we knew this was not a film that was going to end with a gigantic set piece.
We always knew what the content of the speech would be, because we always knew what the “crime” was. It was a matter of knowing how you portray that. How do you get inside the head of a person who went through these things and doesn’t want to tell you all the gory details, but also wants to tell them?
I recall working on it very hard, ultimately knowing it was going to make or break the movie.
It’s rare you get a movie that is that reliant on a speech at the end.
C. Gaby Mitchell: I think I had a very similar experience as Chris because you know how important it is, not only for the story, but for the fulfillment of this character. It’s everything. I struggled with it as well. It was after a trip to Mr. Duvall’s farm, we were sitting out on the screen porch of his house, and we were talking, and he was asking really hard questions about this confession…
Like what? Can you give me an example?
C. Gaby Mitchell: He was questioning what had he really done wrong. Mr. Duvall’s like that. He’s like a laser when it comes to character stuff, and he really makes you focus… I didn’t have all the answers. When I got home, I started looking at that speech in a different way too.
For me, my part of the writing of that, I was in tears all the way through. I had to get up from my desk two or three times and walk away. It just all flowed out in about an hour.
This was after the Duvall visit?
C. Gaby Mitchell: Right.
What had he really done wrong? A critical question to ask of a character if the story builds to a final scene centering around that character’s confession. Equally important, what Bush had done wrong would most certainly be a defining aspect at the core of that character’s being. These are precisely the type of questions we, as writers, must ask of our characters because that’s the only way we can understand the central dynamics at work in who they are and what they are to become over the course of the story.
Here is a trailer for Get Low:
