BEGINNERS EEN FILM VAN MIKE MILLS WILD BUNCH HAARLEMMERDIJK 159 - 1013 KH – AMSTERDAM WWW.WILDBUNCH.NL [email protected] WILDBUNCHblx BEGINNERS – MIKE MILLS PROJECT SUMMARY EEN PRODUCTIE VAN FOCUS FEATURES INTERNATIONAL TAAL ENGELS LENGTE 104 MINUTEN GENRE DRAMA LAND VAN HERKOMST ENGELAND FILMMAKER MIKE MILLS HOOFDROLLEN EWAN MC GREGOR CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER MÉLANIE LAURENT RELEASEDATUM 13 OKTOBER 2011 FESTIVALS TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILMFESTIVAL KIJKWIJZER SYNOPSIS Oliver heeft er na enkele teleurstellende relaties en een heleboel ex-vriendinnen inmiddels wel genoeg van. Wanneer zijn 75-jarige vader uit de kast komt en met volle teugen van zijn nieuwe leven geniet, wordt het er voor Oliver niet echt makkelijker op. Eenzaamheid ligt op de loer, maar dan ontmoet hij de betoverende Anna. CAST OLIVER EWAN MCGREGOR HAL CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER ANNA MÉLANIE LAURENT ANDY GORAN VISNJIC YOUNG OLIVER KEEGAN BOOS ARTHUR COSMO CREW WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY MIKE MILLS PRODUCED BY LESLIE URDANG, DEAN VANECH, MIRANDA de PENCIER JAY VAN HOY, LARS KNUDSEN FRAN GIBLIN CO-PRODUCERS GEOFF LINVILLE DIRECTOR OF KASPER TUXEN PHOTOGRAPHY PRODUCTION DESIGNER SHANE VALENTINO FILM EDITOR OLIVIER BUGGE COUTTÉ COSTUME DESIGNER JENNIFER JOHNSON ROGER NEILL, MUSIC BY DAVID PALMER, BRIAN REITZELL MUSIC SUPERVISOR ROBIN URDANG CASTING BY COURTNEY BRIGHT and NICOLE DANIELS BEGINNERS – MIKE MILLS DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT BEGINNERS started when my father came out of the closet. He was 75 years old, and had been married to my mother for 45 years. His hunger to completely change his life was confusing, painful, very funny, and deeply inspiring. Change, honesty, and openness can happen when it seems least likely. Even as he passed away 5 years later to cancer he was energized, reaching out; he wasn’t in any way finished. This script was developed with the belief that something this personal can become universal. The concrete details of my father’s life, the real struggles, and all the real humor gave the film an authenticity that I hope will make it more powerful and more emotional for all kinds of people. The historical sections of the script connect these characters to our larger shared history. The basic action is like a two-way street: Hal is teaching Oliver how to love Anna, and Oliver's love with Anna is showing him things he never understood about Hal. Hal's story is very modernist, the obstacles are big and external: 1950s conservatism, homophobia, old age, and cancer. Oliver and Anna are post-1960s children and their love story is truly contemporary. Their obstacles are internal; they are haunted by the contracts, compromises, and the hidden sadness, of their parents. To Hal, hiding his real sexuality behind the mask of a traditional marriage was acceptable and necessary to combat the external obstacles of his historical moment. To Oliver, the negatives of this agreement - its toll on love, and the abandoning of what’s true for his parents – are unbearable. Ultimately, Hal teaches Oliver how to undo the locks and lies that he himself created. The experience I'm most trying to communicate with BEGINNERS is that of an adventure. The feeling of breaking something open. While this film has illness and death, it’s about beginnings, change, and how deeply funny life can be in its most serious moments. While this story is specific, I did not approach it as a “small” film, and definitely not a “quirky” film or even an “indie” film. I only get to tell this story once, so I wanted it to be bighearted, for a big audience, progressive and innovative, and like my father – deeply wanting to connect with people. I wrote letters to Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer asking them to be in the movie. On the following page are a little from each of those letters. BEGINNERS – MIKE MILLS [TO CHRISTOPHER;] Having hidden from the gay world for his whole life, he was at 75, like a teenager: anxious and excited to join, naive about all the cues of gay culture, and very susceptible to the emotional upheavals of new love. While he was very shy as a young person, and he was deferring and self- sacrificing through his adult life, he exposed himself to risk over and over at the end – he risked by coming out to me, my sisters and his friends; by trying to catch up with the contemporary gay social scene; and, most of all, by falling in love. While his illness came only five years later, he’d tire all of us out with all the things he wanted to do. I have tried to make a portrait of him that is filled with love but not sentimental or afraid to show his selfishness. I do not seek to create a replica of my father, but a version of his desires and problems that is real for you and me and the other actors as we make this story real for an audience. As a director, I’m never locked into the words that I’ve written, or my preconceptions about a character or a scene. I believe in the energy of the moment and being surprised. I plan to rehearse for two weeks, and in general I’m trying to create an atmosphere of play and exploration, where we get to nuanced moments that none of us could have predicted. [TO EWAN;] When each of my parents passed the grief wasn’t all downward and heavy. There was sort of an explosion in me, an overwhelming feeling that life is quickly rolling by. All that I wanted but haven’t tasted became crucial. For me, this was to find someone, and to finally stay with someone. So, I couldn’t sleep, I needed to do everything right away, I was funnier, and meaner, I took more risks, and I was willing and able to change. -- Mike Mills 02/2011 BEGINNERS – MIKE MILLS ABOUT THE PRODUCTION ONLY TIME “When my Mom passed away, there suddenly was this new person, this new Dad.” That’s how it was, and that’s how it felt, for writer/director Mike Mills. Before there was a movie, there were those real-life events. His recently widowed 75-year old father had an announcement to make to his son; in whatever time he had left on this earth, the elder Mills wanted to live as an out homosexual man. “He just started living this explosive new life,” marvels Mills. “He became more emotionally alive than I’d ever seen him.” Mills looked on with surprise and admiration as his father dove head first into the gay culture of Santa Barbara. The elder Mills dressed, acted, and lived as a man at least 20 years younger than he in fact was. “I had so many gay friends and teachers that I admired,” says Mills. “So coming out was, I’d say, less of an issue for me than it was for him. But his gayness, this side of him, was still something mysterious to me. I found myself asking, who is my Dad? I wanted to know more. And then he was diagnosed with cancer.” As much as one might expect the disease to slow Mills’ father down, the effect was just the opposite. His father maintained what was already an active social calendar – actually hosting more parties than before; continued to see his trainer; and maintained a strict health regime. Mills senior remained aggressively positive, all but repudiating the illness that would kill him. “He told me that when they got married, my Mom took off her Jewish badge and he took off his gay badge,” remembers Mills. “When he said that, it was like a light going off in my head. I said ‘I’m writing about that.’ As it was happening, it just felt so big and real. I felt I had something to report.” Five months after his father’s passing, Mills sat down to write, motivated at how crucial it was to capture that emotional state of “a kind of a fireworks-y exhilaration. Our time here is short. It’s going to be gone fast. “You must voice it all. Whatever you’re afraid of. Whatever you haven’t done. Whatever you haven’t been honest about. Whatever you haven’t really bitten into. I felt like it was the only time to do it. I don’t know if I would have been able to write BEGINNERS if I hadn’t been in mourning.” Mills reflects, “For me a lot of grief is like running in the dark in a forest, sprinting forward, trying to get to something. I hope that’s what we captured in the movie, this mad grab for life.” MEETING IN THE MIDDLE Over the course of developing the script for BEGINNERS, many things changed, shifting in and out of focus – but one aspect remained constant; Mike Mills knew he was telling two stories, not one. One thread follows father and son – Hal and Oliver Fields – as they come to grips with Hal’s new identity and illness; the second balances Oliver’s emotional regrouping from Hal’s death and his burgeoning relationship with Anna, a vivacious French actress. BEGINNERS – MIKE MILLS Mills remarks, “I always thought of it as two stories. When someone you love has just died, the past is such a river running through you. It’s not a containable set of memories as much as it’s waves of conversation that are still alive in you. You’re always feeling it, processing and running it over in your head. I never imagined the ‘past’ as flashbacks. It was always going to play out as a simultaneous, completely contained storyline.” Ewan McGregor had been sent the completed script but had not yet read it.