Interview: Director Robert Edwards - Land of the Blind

Opening in New York City on June 16th is the critically acclaimed ‘Land of the Blind’ helmed by American director Robert Edwards. Robert Edwards with 'Land of the Blind' editor/2d unit director and wife Ferne Pearlstein - at camera [photo: Emmanuel Kadosh]

Robert Edwards with 'Land of the Blind' editor/2d unit director and wife Ferne Pearlstein - at camera [photo: Emmanuel Kadosh]Having had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam this past January and its domestic US preem at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York this past May, the political thriller is the first fiction feature for Edwards – the script having won a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2001.His 2001 short, ‘The Voice of the Prophet’ (an interview with Rick Rescorla, a veteran of three wars and head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter who was killed on September 11th) was shown at Sundance, Toronto, Human Rights Watch, and numerous other festivals and on television around the world.In 2003 Edwards produced and edited ‘Sumo East and West,’ a feature documentary filmed and directed by his wife and partner Ferne Pearlstein (‘Imelda’), about Westerners in that ancient Japanese sport, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and aired nationally in the US on PBS.‘Land of the Blind’ is a satiric political drama about terrorism, revolution, and the power of memory.In an unnamed place and time, an idealistic soldier named Joe (Ralph Fiennes) strikes up an illicit friendship with a political prisoner named Thorne (Donald Sutherland). Through their conversations in the high-security military prison where Thorne is held, Joe slowly begins to question his allegiance to the country's brutal but clownish dictator (Tom Hollander) and his Machiavellian wife (Lara Flynn Boyle). Eventually Thorne succeeds in recruiting Joe to the revolutionary cause, culminating in a bloody coup d'etat.But in the post-revolutionary world, what Thorne asks of Joe leads the two men into bitter conflict, spiraling downward into madness until Joe's co-conspirators conclude that they must erase him from history.Director Edwards kindly consented to this exclusive interview with M&C movie editor Scott Rosenberg. Q&A follows:1. M&C: You have a fascinating life story, raised on army bases in Germany and around the USA, in Army infantry and intelligence units, in a Parachute Infantry Regiment in Iraq, worked as a telemarketer, nightclub doorman, and private detective before landing in Stanford University's Graduate Program in Documentary Film. What in the world brought you to making docos?RE: Frankly, it was an accident. I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I hadn't intended to go into documentary. But in the fall of 1993 I had just turned 30, had been out of the Army for a couple of years that I spent writing a novel that rightly went unpublished, and was at loose ends. My GREs were about to run out and I didn't want to take the test again, so I thought, "Shit, if I'm gonna go to film school I might as well go now." I had just moved to Northern California from back east and I didn't want to move again right away, so I applied to Stanford's MA film program--which was documentary only--thinking, "If I get in, I'll go and eventually work my way into fiction film. And if I don't get in, I'll apply to schools in New York and LA next year." Naturally I didn't tell the Stanford people that in the interview. But I got accepted into the program and immediately fell in love with documentary; that Stanford program was one of the best experiences of my life. So it took me almost ten years to get back around to the idea of making fiction films, and I don't regret a minute of it. I still intend to keep making documentaries as well as narrative films. 2. M&C: How different is making a documentary compared with making a feature film?RE: They're more alike than you might think, or at least more alike than I thought before I crossed over.Obviously one of the main differences is just scale: the logistics of a feature film crew are so much larger than a documentary shoot. But creatively speaking, they are just different forms of storytelling.I was especially shocked at how much the post processes are alike.I used to make my living as a documentary editor, and I assumed that editing a fiction film would be much different. After all, you have a script to follow, whereas in documentary editing is king: more often than not, you find the story and shape it almost entirely in the cutting room. (As Fred Wiseman says, the editing of a documentary is like the writing of a fiction film.)But it turned out that there was still a lot of shifting things around, subverting chronology, cobbling bits together, and so forth. Because even though you have the script, what ends up in the can is often very different than what was on paper. So my documentary background--and that of Ferne Pearlstein, my wife, who also came out of the Stanford documentary program and who edited ‘Land of the Blind’--stood me in good stead there. 3. M&C: One of the first questions asked talent in any film is “what was it like working with the director”. In your case, in ‘Land of the Blind’, what was it like working with Ralph Fiennes and Donald Sutherland – two very powerful actors?RE: They were absolutely great--total professionals, totally open to everything I wanted to try, came in with no prima donna bullshit, could do the scene twelve different ways, and did everything I asked and more. In a way, it was easy on me as a first-time director because it was like working with an all-star team.

Director Edwards with Donald Sutherland [photo: Nick Wall]

But they were consummate pros. Ralph in particular I owe a huge debt of gratitude. He was the first actor we sent the script to, top of my list, and the fact that he read it and liked it and wanted to be in it is the whole reason that the film got made. He didn't have to do this challenging little un-commercial art film, with a first time director no less, for a tiny fraction of his usual rate; he didn't have to stick with the project for almost three years of the rollercoaster ride while we were trying to get it financed; he didn't have to shave his head or do his own stunts, or suffer the harsh conditions of a wintertime shoot in grim locations in England on a crazy tight schedule.

With Ralph Fiennes [photo: Nimi Getter]

4. M&C: How’s it going trying to get a national distributor for the film?RE: The company that financed and produced the film, Bauer Martinez, also has a distribution arm, so they will distribute it domestically in the US. They were based in London when we began the project but have now set up shop in LA. They're now in the process of selling it to various foreign distributors for the international market as well.(But that being said) Prospects for the film to play in other cities across the US hinge on its box office performance the first week in New York. If it does poorly, the distributor will yank it after a week. (That decision will be made as early as two days into its run, after the initial weekend numbers are in.)The problem is that the marketing people perceive this as a small, challenging film with politically provocative subject matter.....which it is, fair enough. (Isn’t that a compliment?) But because they don't see it as having lots of commercial potential, they don't want to put lots of money into promoting it, which needless to say risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Orphaned, the movie is in danger of running for a week in NYC with no advertising and no press, and then vanishing like Jimmy Hoffa....So if you are a fan of (in die) filmmaking, please come out and see ‘Land of the Blind’ opening weekend. And if you like it, encourage your friends to do likewise!5. M&C: Any advice for new film-makers?RE: Only to be persistent and not let anything deter you, not let people chip away at your vision. If you could only have one quality, tenacity would be the one to have. And don't pay attention to all the rulebooks and templates and Screenwriting 101 bullshit: people like to sell you formulas and programs, but art doesn't work that way.Listen to people you can trust, follow your instincts, and make up your own mind.6. M&C: These are some strange times internationally. ‘Land of the Blind’ has some interesting political messages. Tell us something about those messages.RE: The message is: Don't listen to ideologues at either end of the political spectrum. Be a skeptic, and think for yourself and draw your own conclusions. That's the only protection against the inevitable abuse of power. Some people have said that the film is pessimistic, but I think it's realistic. The fact that Joe (Ralph Fiennes' character) repeatedly gets screwed while trying to do the right thing isn't meant to say that resistance is futile. On the contrary. The point is: this is what we're up against...."we" being anyone who is fighting for justice and freedom and simple human dignity.Many people, in the US especially, see the film as a pointed comment on the Bush administration and the current political situation. But I actually wrote it in early 2001, before any of the current unpleasantness, and so that was not on my mind at all. I was trying to write a broad, fable-like story that took kinds of historical threads--a little piece from Castro's Cuba, and from Stalinist Russia, and Ulster, and Zimbabwe, and Argentina, and the Duvaliers' Haiti, and Kim Jong Il's North Korea, and Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc. etc.--and weaved them together in a surreal context. That's why I deliberately set it in a non-specific time and place. But circumstances have conspired to make the film very timely and topical, which is fine, and not entirely a coincidence--it's a function of the cyclical nature of history and the repetition of these patterns over and over, which is the very crux of the film. So if the shoe fits, wear it.7. M&C: Is there a role for film/documentaries in political discourse of a nation?RE: Yes, absolutely. Film--whether fiction or non-fiction--is just another medium for public discourse, another voice in the marketplace of ideas. And given the populist nature of film, and its ability to reach a wide audience, it's a potentially very powerful one. For good or ill.

With cinematographer Emmanuel Kadosh on the set of 'Land of the Blind' [photo: Nick Wall]

8. M&C: We understand your screenplay ‘Trust’ is being developed now – can you tell us something about it?RE: 'Trust' is about a pair of FBI counterintelligence agents in LA in the late 60s whose job is to hunt Soviet spies in the US, but it's really about the way that working in that shadowy world of lies and deception inevitably creeps into their personal lives. Neil LaBute is directing and Matthew McConaughey is starring. The script grew out of the counterintelligence training I went through as an intel officer in the Army in the early 90s. I never really did that sort of work for a living; all my intel work was at the muddy boots-level in the same kind of infantry units where I had earlier been an infantry officer.But just going through the training and learning that Secret Squirrel tradecraft got me thinking about how it surely must seep into a spy's (or counter-spy's) personal life. Originally the script was set in the present day, but I quickly realized that it worked much better as a period piece, in the more innocent pre-Watergate days when Americans were less jaded about their government, and tended to accept more readily the black-and-white us-versus-them dynamic of the Cold War.I was also attracted to doing a Cold War spy movie set in LA, which is not usually associated with that genre. But if you want to talk about a world of lies and deception, there's no better place than Los Angeles. Incidentally, I had to submit the script to the Pentagon to ensure that it contained no classified material--that was a condition of the contract I signed almost 20 years ago when I got my Top Secret clearance. But I dreaded doing so, because I could picture it disappearing into the black hole of government bureaucracy for months on end, when I was quite sure it was totally benign.So when I finished the script I called the Defense Department and said, "Look, I've got this script, it's a period piece set in 1969, I guarantee you there's nothing even remotely classified in it. Do I still need to submit it?" And they said, "We won't know if you have to submit it until you submit it." And I remembered why I left the Army in the first place....9. M&E: What can you tell us about your other two projects, ‘The Bomb in My Garden’ and ‘Burning Daylight’RE: ‘The Bomb in My Garden’ is an adaptation of a memoir by Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who was the head of Saddam Hussein's covert uranium enrichment program.For years Obeidi had traveled the world, secretly acquiring black market components for a centrifuge to enrich uranium to weapons-grade--the same technology that the West and Iran are currently embroiled in angry debate over. In 1991, when the US invaded Iraq the first time, Obeidi hid the key plans and components for the centrifuge in his backyard--buried beneath a lotus tree. They stayed there until the US invaded the second time in 2003, when Obeidi went to the US authorities and said, "Look, this is who I am, and this is the information and materials that I have. I want to give this stuff to you, but you have to get my family safely out of Iraq." At that point he was essentially a walking dead man, wanted by all sides. But as you might expect, the process of getting him out of Iraq proved much more complicated: various US intelligence agencies were competing to control him, some believed him, others didn't, some arms of the US government just wanted to throw him in prison, and so on.Finally he was able to broker his escape with the help of an American journalist named Kurt Pitzer and a former UN weapons inspector named David Albright. So the film tells the twin stories of his surreal experience as a scientist shanghaied into Saddam's crusade to get the Bomb, and his subsequent spy novel-like escape from Iraq.Mahdi's story is an amazing one, and carries a lot of subtle implications for the current political situation in the Middle East, without being some sort of polemic. Johnny Depp's company Infinitum Nihil is producing the film for Warner Bros. "Burning Daylight" is an original script that I intend to direct myself.It's about a guy in a small town in Kansas, stuck in a dead end job, who wants to make a better life for himself, but gets caught in a small-time criminal enterprise and finds himself in way over his head. It's my attempt to make a film that feels like a Springsteen song off of "Nebraska." I also like to think of it as a cross between "Mean Streets" and "Badlands." (Nothing like setting your goals at the Olympic level, right?) 10. ME: Mr. Edwards, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us. Is there anything you’d like to add in conclusion?RE: I just want to say that I feel very fortunate to have had the chance to make ‘Land of the Blind’, and to work with the people that I have.I hope audiences like the film, or at least find it interesting and challenging. As a filmmaker, that's all you can ask for. ‘Land of the Blind’ opens Friday, June 16th, 2006 in New York City. It will be playing at the AMC Loews Village VII (3d Ave at 11th Street) and the AMC Empire 25 (Times Square--234 W.42d Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue).