Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass speaks to Goldsmiths film students
4:30pm Tuesday 17th March 2009
By Liz McMahon »
When Paul Greengrass visited Goldsmiths to talk to film students last week, Liz McMahon also went along to hear the director's stories and insights into his successful career
On March 11, Stuart Till invited Greengrass to speak at the sixth Olive Till Memorial Debate at Goldsmiths College. The annual debate is an opportunity for film students to listen to inspirational directors and ask them questions about the industry.
Last year, the guest speaker was Danny Boyle fresh from directing the Oscar-sweeping Slumdog Millionaire. This year Paul Greengrass took a break from directing his new film on post-war Iraq, Green Zone, to come and share his thoughts with the next generation of filmmakers.
Born in leafy Cheam, Surrey, raised in Gravesend and educated at Queen's College Cambridge, director Paul Greengrass could be said to have led a charmed life. Nevertheless, he could not be accused of shying away from contentious issues.
In fact, his CV reads like a potted history of events in the past 25 years which have shocked us to the core and ultimately altered society irrevocably.
He stepped into Granada in 1977 and had the good fortune to learn the art of meticulous filmmaking from John Slater.
Describing him as an “eccentrically posh prep school master”, Greengrass recalled one of the first conversations he had with him.
In the wake the of the Munich Air Crash, Greengrass had gone into Slater's office and been ignored for at least five minutes. Slater then spun round in his chair and demanded that Greengrass put his hand in the trim-bin. Greengrass' consequent quizzical expression impelled Slater to pull the trims out and throw them at him, screaming: “Unless you learn to get physical with it, feel it, live it, sleep it, shag it, you are not working with film.”
When considering his most acclaimed works: The Bourne Trilogy, United 93, Bloody Sunday and the Stephen Lawrence documentary to name but a few, it is clear how these words of wisdom stuck with Greengrass and his unique attitude to filmmaking: “Films used to be daunted by posh Hampstead people wanting to write about dinner parties. Oiks like me wanting to write about real events could get blacklisted at the BBC.”
His journey into the mainstream seems to even bemuse him. He begun to direct World in Action in the 1980s and this experience gave his work the edgy observational feel that has become his trademark. The fact that this style has started to become commercially popular is coincidental.
“My style is rooted in observational documentary pieces,” he said.
“It was an accident to make commercial pieces. Initially I was puzzled - but cinemagoers’ perception of reality is this. This is what mainstream image making is today.”
Greengrass’ success at the box office has allowed him to muster coverage for his more obscure films.
Film course lecturer Robert Smith posed several key questions to Greengrass, eliciting enlightening responses.
Do you write alone?
I had no formal training in writing screenplays. The truth is I wrote because no-one would give me a job. I don't believe that you should divide disciplines; in the US they are very good at multi-tasking. Making film a 360 degree activity. When you write a script, you don't want someone to come and take it off you.
When I think about your techniques I see edgy camera shots, multiple angles, fractured space and seamless environment. How would you describe your style?
A key question a director must ask is- how do I want to unfold reality? Do I want to know what's happening or do I want to be God? In a conventional shooting, actors will work from a crafted scene that will go through obvious steps. First it will be written and then the stage directions will be added. The example being that the vicar enters his home and confronts an axe-wielding murderer.
An alternative approach is to have the vicar outside the door but no one knows what is going to happen. By this I mean that you create a series of uncertainties. Everyone has their own private goals, the vicar's wife knows that she is going to grab something from the table for instance, but you don't know how everyone is going to react. You speak to people separately and don't tell them all the components.
When filming the Bourne Trilogy you shot in several extraordinarily busy places such as Waterloo Station and Medina, Tangier. How did you ensure the public did not disrupt the action?
First of all, the people we had arranging the sets were fantastic. Without them, nothing would have been possible. Also, although the film was undoubtedly a commercial piece, I still wanted to incorporate an anti-authority, counter-culture theme.
The Bourne Ultimatum could be seen as an exercise in making money and I wanted to stay true to my roots in some sense. This led me to construct action sequences in incredibly public places. The orthodox way of doing this is to lock down the area. If a director does this then it is very easy for the walls around them to get higher and higher and they become very insulated. I wanted to fight this kind of comfort zone.
At Waterloo the main crew were five miles away and it was literally only a handful of us that actually went to the station. We could only shoot from 10am to 4pm. We would set up a decoy at one end of the platform and then nip down to the other side until the public clocked on to the fact they had been duped. It was an entertaining game of cat and mouse.
The car chase in New York was actually much quicker to catch on with the public. On the night we had shot it, doctored versions started to appear on You Tube with various music tracks! Everyone wanted to close off the tunnel but Dan Bradley created what he and I call the 'Go-mobile' and we decided that it was fast enough to shoot with normal traffic on the road. It was frightening though. Even I was going ‘eek’ [he covers his face with his hands, laughing]
Tell us about the journey from script to editing.
There is always tension between a writer and a director. One or the other will get on top. If you want to be director, always be on top. In Britain, I think we still access films too much through script. The difference is here films are things that are written rather than things that are made. Words are getting less and less important in commercial features. A film is as much to do with what's not written as what is.
A screenplay is the first act of direction and direction is the first act of writing. They are not a separate activity and must therefore act in unison. When directing a film, the closest relationship I have is with the editor. I have always been more interested in how to put sequences together. The screenplay is only the first part of the elements that leads onto the concept.
Technology is taking us there. Writing is still fundamental but there is less of it. On an Apple mac today you can create a collage generating material. It doesn't just have to be in the written word. Theme, narrative and so on will always be important but increasingly the art of a screenwriter is going to be less about word and more about space and image.
How do you stay true to yourself?
I maintain authenticity by creating a writer's view of the event. I ensure that there are stakeholders to the drama; I try to decentralise power while retaining it all. First and foremost, I concentrate on the people about whom the drama is being made. I also need to empower the actors to play their roles with high-definition improvisational freedom.
There is also the missing element we can never understand. In Bloody Sunday it is the soldiers crossing the line; in United 93 it is what happened in the air; there is a need to recreate events that we all approve of. We use drama to unlock what ultimately can't be knowable. I know I'm staying true if I am supported by all those involved in the film. I have only ever lost Dwayne Brooks on Stephen Lawrence.
In United 93, I ensured all the variables were in place. We had 44 passengers, a professional crew and the same plane. This allowed us to make many deductions. We realised things we had assumed happened, such as something falling down the aisle, would not have actually been logistically possible.
There was a clear mission statement: there will be different messages encoded in this event. It is not told from one perspective. It does not have a 'let's roll out the troops' mentality. I wanted to reach a metaphorical truth through the stakeholders.
Lastly, what is your advice to filmmakers in 2009?
Go out and have the most fantastic bloody fun. In 1977 you couldn't just go out and make a film. Now you can make it on your phone. Next thing you know you're on You Tube every night. Make make make make. It's not about being a director or writer; it's about saying what you want to say. The hardest thing is to listen to the voice inside you and work out what you want to say. You need to focus and understand ‘all I'm going to do is solve the problems of making what I want to make’. Time, space, money and inner-will will meet in a matrix and you must solve it.
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