IN FOCUS

Top of His Game

By Kelly McCarthy

"I'm always thinking of transitions in every scene that I shoot. I'm always thinking of what comes before and what goes after and graphically what's going to be the connective tissue."
-- James Foley

As the title of his latest film suggests James Foley has an innate sense of "confidence" behind the lens that results in some of the tightest, most economical transitions in cinema today. There's no wasted verbiage either. His style is clean, smooth and direct.

In Confidence (2003) Foley teams up once again with cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia who he worked with on both At Close Range (1986) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). This time out, Foley and Anchia have given the concept of economy a whole new meaning: sparse, an influence that has its roots in modern day media. The film is cut in fast moving frames.

"Like everyone else's attention span I'm very conscious of becoming a news junkie," says Foley. "I watch MSNBC and CNN and it's been a very dramatic evolution on those shows in terms of the amount of information on the screen. I'm sure you've seen it when they have not just the person giving information but there's a scroll at the bottom and something off to the side showing something else. Everything is cut very quickly and I for one am stimulated by that and I'm sure that unconsciously becomes part of one's editorial decision."

The montage of frames tells the story in the clearest possible way. The acting style too is straightforward. Foley has put together a more than capable list of players. Just as he's proven in At Close Range (1986), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and The Chamber (1996) he has a talent for choosing the right cast and then supporting them in making the most honest choices.

In Confidence (2003) Edward Burns plays Jake Vig, setting the tone with his smooth charm. A grifter, he gives you every opportunity to despise him, yet you find yourself guiltily rooting him on through the ever-changing story of a professional con man playing his game. Foley's examination of group dynamics is the thread that pulls the action together. The overall tone is smart. Attention must be paid to the details.

Insiders of street lingo will get the significance of the name, Vig, a moniker given to the guy who makes payments to a loan shark. The flow of Confidence with its now you see it now you don't at its underbelly pulls you into the game. Jake Vig is in control throughout. However, the pawns leave you speculating as to who will end up with the trump card.

The film is a perfect vehicle for actor/director Burns, best known for his directorial debut, The Brothers McMullin (1995) and his turn in Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) alongside heavy weights Tom Hanks, and Matt Damon. Here, Burns proves he's ready for more leading man roles.

"He (Burns) is self confident, smooth and attractive and can be believable as an investment person in a suit," says Foley. "He wears suits through most of the movie. Nothing about him says criminal. Yet, he's got a silver tongue and charm. He's really intelligent, has a great sense of humor and is really comfortable exercising that part of him that can convince people of anything."

The rest of the cast isn't too shabby either: two-time Oscar winner Dustin Hoffman plays a grimy, gum chewing scumbag. However he manages to give a fresh turn on low life character. The cast is rounded out by Andy Garcia and Rachel Weisz. Confidence had its West Coast premiere at the 2003 Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

Editor Kelly McCarthy had the chance to speak with James Foley before he headed east where on April 3rd Confidence was the opening night film at the 12th Annual Philadelphia Film Festival.

Q&A Text:

Kelly McCarthy: What first comes to my mind when I think about your work is that there's an economy in your directing and you have such tight transitions.

James Foley: I'm always thinking of transitions in every scene that I shoot. I'm always thinking of what comes before and what goes after and graphically what's going to be the connective tissue. So of the transitions and the storytelling in Confidence I'm pretty proud.

McCarthy: Do you see the editing process in your mind?

Foley: Oh yeah. I think that's something you've got to do. You've got to have essentially this movie in your head. It's like an automatic process. For me I start out reading the script, then go on location scouts and find locations and cast the movie. All the while there's this transition that happens where you're aware of the story in the script and it actually turns into a movie in your head that eventually finds its way onto the screen. So I think the director stands alone in that responsibility of when you start a scene. And of course you are shooting out of continuity, you've already got to have a clear image of how it's going to fit in between two other pieces.

McCarthy: Even when you have this preconceived idea of how things are going to transition or link together are there different times in the shooting that it changes from how you thought it was going to be?

Foley: Yeah, it changes all the time. It evolves. I have a general idea but then I'm somebody who likes to get inspired at the moment and get inspired by the location. So like I'll know what shot I want to be the first shot of the scene and then you look around at locations to see how to design that shot and you have to ask yourself, are there buildings there? Are there faces? How are you going to connect it? Whatever is available the raw materials of the location of course influences what that transition is going to be. Then you get into the editing room. You might not end up using the shot that you'd planned as the transition and using a different shot. And then you've got to invent transitions in the editing room, which is also part of that process. Now more than ever there are so many options digitally to create transitions. So let's say there's a scene in Confidence where the actors go in one direction and the camera goes into the side of a black building and then the next scene you want to come out of that black and go into a new scene. So you've got to start that next scene in some black thing and come off of the black onto the new scene. But maybe you want to go to a shot that you didn't do that with but digitally you can put the black building in and still have the same transition.

McCarthy: You've talked about Hollywood executives sitting an office looking at dailies and wanting to see the traditional wide shot and close up. Did you use some different transitional shots in Confidence?

Foley: Yes. I've never thought about approaching a scene by any kind of yardstick. I remember being in some school and the very first year there was this book about how to direct and it was written by some television director and it was laid out like, here it is. This is how you do a wide shot and then you do a medium shot, a medium two shot and then you do close-ups. And the close-ups should be just so below the neck. It was just these ridiculous rules. All you've got to do is tell the story in the clearest possible way. Like if there are three people sitting around I ask myself what do I want the audience to pay attention to? What do I want to highlight? What do I see? And often times it's not the person talking but it's maybe somebody listening and what's going on behind their eyes and they are looking at somebody and the subtext of all that.

McCarthy: How did the casting come together?

Foley: We were batting around a bunch of names and they all seemed like possibilities for Ed's character. Only when Ed's name came up did it strike me that he was perfect. I hadn't met him and to me, meeting the actor becomes the most important. I mean, I can see an actor on screen and know that they can act. But then I want to find out what kind of vibe they give off and what kind of reaction I have to that actor in person. I met up with Eddie and it really confirmed for me that he was the right guy. He was the first one who signed up.

McCarthy: What about Burns made him the right guy?

Foley: He was that character. He is that character. Once we had him I wanted to round out the rest of the gang because now we knew who they were going to play off of and we got Paul Giamatti and Brian Van Holt. Once we got the gang, we moved on to getting the girl. I met with a lot of women and nobody really made sense until Rachel Weisz walked in. And then Dustin Hoffman came in really at the last minute.

McCarthy: How difficult was it snagging Hoffman?

Foley: Originally the script was written for New York, but now it takes place in Los Angeles. Dustin's character was written as this grimy New York boxing owner with a fat beer belly. Dustin Hoffman's manager had another client in the film (the part of Eddie). He saw the part and thought that if the character was altered it could be an interesting part for Dustin. When Dustin read it he felt the same way. So the writer and I met with Dustin and we just spent a couple of afternoons hammering out how to translate the character into somebody that would be indigenous to Los Angeles. And we came off with a whole different take on it and the writer was great. He rewrote scenes and we banged them out. It worked out really well.

McCarthy: What attracted you to the script?

Foley: I liked it. A while ago I realized that was the strongest indicator of whether I should do it and not any consideration of is it going to be successful. When it's over and I reflect on it and people ask me I'll begin to recognize that there are recurring themes and issues that I seem to be attracted. Yet again, a large part of this movie is about the dynamic between a group of men. It's about the levels of hierarchy in the group and how it's a matter of the bond between them and whether they trust each other or they don't trust each other and how that works out. In this case there's a woman who comes into this gang and it's interesting to see how she effects the dynamic. There's also moral relativism, which I seem to keep on getting attracted to insofar as these groups of guys are criminals, they pull off scams but the people they pull off scams from are bad people. So you go along for the ride rooting for them even though they are ripping people off.

McCarthy: In what way does that appeal to you?

Foley: There's something that's interesting to me about that and about how money is actually at the center of the movie. It influences things. One of the things I feel good about in the movie is you don't think of our characters as being reduced or petty or obsessed with the money. They're kind of bigger than that. So it's interesting exploring those relationships and the exploration of money and people wanting to get it. Still they are not obsessed with money even though the entire plot is about them getting money.

McCarthy: In addition to the morality theme in your films there's often a violent undertone. Do you know why you are attracted to that material?

Foley: Not really, except I have always been and continue to be interested in exploring, ever more deeply, what I think is the biggest challenge in one's life, which is to navigate the tension between what is the animal nature of ourselves and what is the moral nature. How do these two interact with each other and cause enormous tensions and to be as clear as possible about that and not be confused by religion. I grew up Catholic, went to a Catholic school for twelve years and have two uncles who are Catholic priests.

McCarthy: That could explain your interest in morality issues. Do you have all of the Catholic guilt that comes with that religious upbringing?

Foley: Yes. And I continue to reflect on things that I was taught that are still in the recesses of my mind. I was taught perverse things. I was taught in grammar school when it was time to go to confession, what the possible sins were that you would confess. And I'll never forget that one of the sins was impure thoughts and just the idea that God created a person as an animal and these thoughts come up spontaneously from your own self that you have to go and ask for forgiveness for that? That's perverse to me. It's perverse and it's destructive and its ugly and I'm angry about it.

McCarthy: What directors have influenced your style?

Foley: That's a good question. I'm sure I have been influenced. I used to have favorite filmmakers. Well I still have favorite films even if the filmmaker's aren't making the films that are my favorites anymore. But the things that influenced me a lot when I really got serious in film school was the French new wave and then the American Hollywood movies of the seventies: Polanski and William Friedkin and Pete Bogdanovich and Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. So if anything a combination of those American dramas in the seventies and French new wave stuff. And Robert Altman too should be mentioned high in that list, the kinds of movies he was making in the seventies.

McCarthy: I just interviewed Robert Duvall about his directing Assassination Tango. He also mentioned Altman as a director who influenced him.

Foley: Yeah. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and so many of his films at that time really were not conventionally told in film language. Not some master shot and a bunch of close-ups. And unfortunately I think there's not many people doing that. And you have studios and the expenditure is so high, they sit in offices in Hollywood and see video tapes of dailies. They are looking for, O.K. does he have coverage? Is there a wide shot? Is there a close-up of the star? And they want it to look familiar to them. They're not editing the films themselves but they know what kind of shots you're supposed to have and if you send dailies they can't figure out, they start questioning you and you have to say don't worry about it. You'll see it all when you see the final film and it will all make sense.

McCarthy: Is there a similar pressure on independent directors who are going to festival's like Sundance where they're trying to appeal to the studio mentality in order to land a deal?

Foley: I'm conscious of that because I went to USC film school and I pay at tention what's coming out that program. There's a kind of awareness of Hollywood and grosses that people have even before they go to film school. It's an awareness of how to get a job. So even film school is infected with making films that look familiar to the studio executive and they will more likely want to hire you if you don't do doing something thatveers off the course and is different. I think there's been a standardization of film language due in a large part to what many Hollywood films have become, just so expensive. There's such a giant investment that there's a tendency to be as conservative as possible.

McCarthy: In what other ways have you been influenced?

Foley: I guess like everyone else the evolution of time and what's happened on TV and MTV and commercials and things is sort of a subconscious influence. Like everyone else's attention span I'm very conscious of becoming a news junkie and I watch MSNBC and CNN and it's been a very dramatic evolution on those shows in terms of the amount of information on the screen. I'm sure you've seen it when they have not just the person giving information but there's a scroll at the bottom and something off to the side showing something else. Everything is cut very quickly and I for one am stimulated by that and I'm sure that unconsciously becomes part of one's editorial decision. It comes to me always from what pleases me the most. So you edit a scene and I'm always pushing for the scene to be as economical as possible and there's not one frame that's there that doesn't need to be there to tell the story. I like that compression of information. It pleases me. My own guiding principle is whatever pleases me the most is what I do.

McCarthy: Since the seventies you really haven't been influenced at all really by other filmmakers. Why do you think that is?

Foley: For the most part what I think is most dispiriting is that kind of experimentation and the evolution that was going on in the seventies. The films changed dramatically from the Hollywood films of the sixties to the later end of the seventies. There was a real leap in filmmaking language and the sophistication of that language. Then it seems to have stopped. There's a whole lot of films that have been very successful and even some that have been successful in telling a story and being emotional but somehow the evolution of the technique died. There's no appreciation of it. And certainly studios are not encouraging any experimentation because they want things to be done the way they were done with something previously successful. So they wanted repetition. And even in the independent cinema there's been precious little innovation in film language.

McCarthy: In the making of Confidence what kind of challenges or pressures did you face from the studio?

Foley: I was very lucky. And I have been lucky. There was zero pressure about that. They were great. They've seen the films I've made in the past so they were happy to have me do whatever I wanted. The only pressure was time and money, which is always a pressure. It was a lower budget film by Hollywood standards but the payoff is that there is no creative pressure whatsoever and we just did whatever we felt like.

McCarthy: How many days did the film shoot?

Foley: Thirty-six.

McCarthy: Was it a smooth shoot?

Foley: We were extremely lucky in that everything that could go right did go right. The actors were always right there. There were no star trips. And the weather was perfect.

McCarthy: You've done a lot of great work in your career. One of my favorite films is Glengarry Glen Ross. Before seeing the movie I had seen several stage productions of Mamet's play. There are several major differences in the theatre version and in your film, most notably Alec Baldwin's character (Blake) who comes in and really sets up what these salesman are up against. Was it your decision to have that character added?

Foley: No. I wish I could say that. When I came onto the project Mamet had already written the script. He was paid to write it some years before we actually made the film. On his own he invented that character for the movie. It's funny now because I did see Glengarry on stage years before making the movie and now I can't remember how that hole was filled. If I were going to do a stage version I would use the screenplay and use the Alec Baldwin character.

McCarthy: Mamet's writing is so recognizable for its staccato rhythm, yet under your direction it was all very fluid.

Foley: I'm so happy you said that, to me that's what I'm most proud of. I know for a fact that sometimes in Mamet's movies he sits in on the rehearsals and sit there hitting a desk in a metronome way and that's what he was after. My approach is totally the opposite. The rhythms of how they are speaking have to come out organically from feeling the reality of what they were saying. One of my greatest moments was when (after the film was edited) we sent the film to Mamet before it opened and I was in denial of how much it mattered to me what he thought. I had put it out of my head and then I got home and on my answering machine was this ebullient message from him (Mamet). He was just over the moon. He though it was great. And it really made my day. It was gratifying.

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