Movies Features

Jodie Foster talks The Beaver

By Anne Brodie Apr 30, 2011, 14:46 GMT

Two-time Academy Award winner Jodie Foster directs and co-stars with two-time Academy Award winner Mel Gibson in THE BEAVER - an emotional story about a man on a journey to re-discover his family and re-start his life. Plagued by his own demons, Walter Black was once a successful toy executive and family man who now suffers from depression. No matter what he tries, Walter can\'t seem to get himself back on ...more

Jodie Foster has dealt with plenty of road blocks to the release of her film The Beaver.  Number one – it’s about depression, a tough sell, number two – the lead character speaks through a hand puppet, and number three – that lead character is played by Mel Gibson who isn’t exactly the world’s most beloved man at this point. 

But he does sensational work as a man suffering from severe chemical depression.  He tries everything to “fix” himself and nothing works. He becomes suicidal. And as fate would have it, he finds the answer just as he’s about to end it all – a beaver hand puppet. Walter adopts the beaver as a surrogate self, and assertive version of himself that helps lift the old Walter out of the slough of despond. 

His unconventional self-therapy disturbs his family but he won’t give him up just for appearance’ sake.  Jodie Foster, the director and co-star, presented the film in Toronto last night and spoke about its journey.

How did you find the story?

Foster: The script was at the top of the “Black List” which is a list of unproduced plays gathered by the end of the year and people say “This is the best unproduced screenplay that will never see the light of day!” You’re able to read them. Everyone was excited about it but they knew it was such a challenge.

What attracted you to it?

Foster: I love movies about spiritual crisis and find myself back at that same topic there people trying to find their way by hitting it head-on, instead of running away from it, to come out the other side, really just the themes of loneliness and this moment in your life and feeling like you have a death and life sentence- what do you do? Is that the only choice you have? Finding survival tools to get through it. It’s all very personal.

Did you always plan to star in it?

Foster: I never planned to star in the movie. I acted and directed my first film, I said I would never do that again, Mel and I laughed about that lot.  He said the same thing after Man Without a Face and then he did Braveheart. 

I decided to act after I cast around and wondering who I could bring abroad, I realized I needed someone who would ground it and be the anchor and the voice and eyes of the audience, Walter is unstable, he can’t be the eyes and voice of the audience. 

You need some person to bring you through the process, as time went would understand the absurdity.  Her attitude changes just as the audiences do.

How do you direct and act in the same film?

Foster: It’s not as hard as you think, I can compartmentalize pretty easily and I don’t have a neurotic process an as an actor and everything you do to understand the filmmaker and director is just wonderful for the actor.  There are a couple of problems, your relationship with the other actors, if you’re working with someone who is neurotic.

Mel isn’t and I knew he wouldn’t be threatened by it at all. The other problem is that you tend to get the performance you hope for and anticipated but you don’t get a lot of choices. Every time I edit I see that I don’t have a lot of choices.

How did you approach the character of the Beaver, the hand puppet who speaks for Walter?

Foster: I wanted the beaver to be believable.  Many different directors could have taken his film in any way.  For me it was always a drama and the story of a man’s struggle and it was always about Walter’s depression, decisions along the road must confirm your point of view. 

I wanted people to be aware this was a prop, not CGI that would transport into the real thing.  The beaver very slowly does take on a life of its own; it really is only one moment when Walter’s psyche is having a meltdown where there is some confusion about it being real. We should never forget it’s an inanimate object.

I always saw it as a drama, I understood this man, yes this man has everything, he had a house, a business, a wife who loves him, and why does he feel that every breath he takes it like knives?  That he can’t contain anymore and he can’t sleep.

He is in the grips of chemical depression, what we know is that as a medical con, its diff to connect and communicate. They really can’t just jump out of it.  It takes a miraculous set of hands, real survival tools to survive and get away from it.

There aren’t that many films made about depression. Why?

Foster: The few films you do see about depression are depressing and that’s a problem, why is it so depressing, can’t it be uplifting?  This film has lightness to it and some darkness and has a shifting tone, it’s a fable, and it has absurdity, wit and yet asks you to think about a serious subject.

It’s not something we’re used to and in general audiences prefer a comedy or drama clearly marked; distributors too.   It’s easier to market it.  It’s a very different film and has an original tone and demands a lot.

Did the controversy with Mel make the film more difficult to release?

Foster: It’s pretty hard, we had three release dates and they were all cancelled so this is the winner. Sometimes you just have to go with it. I can’t believe I got to make the movie, I’m always amazingly grateful and in awe.

So impossible to get a film off the ground, but Mel’s performance is a gift.  I am the one person who can tell you that actors are everything.  I can direct them and guide them but I can’t change someone in twenty minutes.  He came with the performance and it is spectacular.

I am very proud of the movie it’s the wonderful thing as a director whether the film does well or not doesn’t reflect on you.  A movie has a life of its own, it walks and talks like a child does, it is there and reflects the obsession you had for two years, three years, it’s part of your soul, and that really is the point.

I had a very good career as an actor for many years and worrying about whether people see a film the first weekend, what will they tell their friends, I don’t have to worry, strangely. I know I’ve chosen a path in the films that interest me and it’s never going to be that other path.

Gibson’s character speaks and functions through the Beaver, it’s his mask.

Foster: It’s the character you have to play to have an authentic life. It should be an oxymoron. In some ways and I’ve said this many times the most truthful and intimate part of me is onscreen.  Our characters aren’t real and we are living stories onscreen that aren’t ours and they’re about survival.  These masks are these art forms, they are vitality. The beaver is art. 

There is one thing that saves you off the building is art – the possibility for creativity and vitality and the opportunity to express yourself.  I want to live I want to live.  There are two stories, Walters is depressed, crazy, and unstable but the other end of depression is just sadness. And boy, we all have that. 

Life gets heavier, your parents’ age, people die at twenty, unfair things happen to you that you’re asked to process and are impossible, what do you do. That’s the world of that affecting Anton’s struggle and the answer for both is the same. There isn’t much you can do except acknowledge it. 

It’s also about family’s trying to communicate.

Foster: The themes are more delicate than family dysfunction. It’s about how isolated people are and these isolated people trying to connect and not being able to. In some ways the people they in some ways these people in crises are these family members the people they have the most problems connecting to.

There is a strong intellectual component to the film, as in most of your work.

Foster: Choosing between brain and heart is a tangible process. It has always been a real tangible crisis for me.  I make films that are at once quite emotional and quite intellectual and I get a lot of grief for that. People say “Does it have to be so intellectual?!”

Can’t you just make more primitive, stay in the primitive area, that wouldn’t be the full experience for me.  That wouldn’t be who I am.

Do you think about what people with depression take from the film?

Foster: Obviously you want to make a film that is authentic and true, that’s what I ask myself all day long.  Is it true? Is it true?  It’s the only question I ask, a reds T-shirt or a blue T-shirt?  In terms of depression, the film speaks articulately about depression.

It doesn’t just speak about medical, chemical depression, the kind that does need drugs and talk therapy and solitude and other things, it also talks about the commoner garden variety of sadness, or obsessive ruminating, which is a word I really like.

That’s what I have, when there are people and fantastic writers and actors and director and artists and painters, they like to think about things that are hard to think about over and over again.  They continue to edit that process.

Well, if that was true, what about this, from this characters point of view, would that be true?  That type of successive rumination is what makes great art.   It doesn’t just come out of the typewriter and it’s fabulous, you do it over and over again.

Otherwise you’re not deepening into the human experience. So just those three bits of the spectrum, it’s a very wide spectrum. The good thing about the movie is it’s not a disease of the week, it’s a film about depression, it’s a fable about family, and depression enters into it.

Visit the movie database for more information.