HE FEELS “privileged” to have done “Lincoln” with Daniel Day-Lewis. RUBEN NEPALES
LOS ANGELES—Attention: Meryl Streep, Robert de Niro and Al Pacino—someone wants to work with you.
“I’d like to work with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro,” Steven Spielberg replied during our recent conversation when asked which actors he’d love to direct. “I’ve also always wanted to direct Meryl Streep.” It’s remarkable that a top director like Steven has indeed not directed three of cinema’s finest actors.
Steven clarified: “I directed Meryl for about 45 minutes in ‘A.I. Artificial Intelligence’—she was the voice of the Blue Fairy. She came over to my house. I put the tape recorder down and turned it on. She did the 35 lines and went home. I don’t call that ‘directing’ Meryl Streep. I’d like to make a movie with her. She is arguably the greatest actress this country has seen in 40 years.”
Thanks to “Lincoln,” Steven has worked with another of film’s great actors, Daniel Day-Lewis. Looking trimmer these days, the ace filmmaker talked about Daniel, who is earning rave reviews as the 16th President of the United States. “Daniel is unlike any other I’ve worked with,” Steven declared. “I often think he’s a man of mystery but he’s a very accessible gentleman with a family. He’s a real family man but he has a very quiet process based on research. He probably wound up reading more than I did about Lincoln after he accepted the part. He read dozens, if not several hundred books, about Lincoln, the presidency and the history leading up to the war.”
Unique accent
The multi-awarded filmmaker claimed, “The only thing that we provided Daniel was a little research as to how Lincoln’s accent might have been affected by being born in Illinois [and growing up] in Kentucky and Indiana. Daniel found a wonderful way of doing the accent. There are so many [accounts in history books about] people reporting how odd it was that a man 6’4” tall spoke in such a high voice.
AWARD-winning filmmaker at the press con—where’s the baseball cap? RUBEN NEPALES
“Daniel knew that if he didn’t speak in the range of a higher tenor, a lot of the historians would have said, ‘You’re being like the auto animatronic Lincoln at Disney World in Orlando.’ That one talks in a low stentorian voice. Daniel did the research. It’s reflected in his performance but the magic of his talent, his genius, how he actually found Lincoln, happened in the privacy of his own life.”
Daniel’s performance, which will likely earn him at least a best actor nomination, was also a product of his and Steven’s unusual collaboration. Steven disclosed, “Daniel and I had a very unique relationship on this because we spent a lot of time—when the whole crew and cast went home—talking about the next day’s work. That was a real privilege to be in the quiet of the sets with nobody but the two of us trying to wrestle this tiger.”
Steven said that he and the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning actor worked very closely together. “On the first day of shooting, he was Abraham Lincoln; on the last day of shooting, he was Daniel Day-Lewis.” Steven admitted that hearing the British actor as himself again affected him. “That last day of shooting was one of the saddest days of my entire life because I walked over to Daniel to say congratulations. We were in Richmond, Virginia. He spoke to me with the English accent. I burst into tears. I wasn’t ready to hear the English accent.”
Dressed for work
Steven cited that “Lincoln” was a different experience for him on many levels. “I wore a suit every day,” he said. “I never dressed up to make a movie before. I felt really stupid in jeans and my shirttails hanging out, with my baseball cap, like the way I usually direct, when everybody was in their 19th-century finery. Daniel called me the skipper or the captain of the ship. I couldn’t be the skipper without wearing a three-piece suit so for the first time ever, I dressed up to go to work.”
Steven also “had a great company of actors. A lot of them from the stage, New York City and theater companies, because I wanted a lot of people to be in this film that you’ve not seen before. I wanted good actors and where do you go for good actors? You go to the theater.”
He continued: “What was so different about this film was, I had never seen so many actors with such deep respect for a character, subject and a period in history. I always work fast because it keeps the process alive, keeps people thinking that they’re in a real place, whether it’s ‘War of the Worlds,’ ‘Indiana Jones’ or ‘Lincoln.’ I always like to shoot fast.
SPIELBERG says his star “probably read more than I did about Lincoln after he accepted the part.”
“In this case, it was amazing that the cast would not leave the set when we had to move the camera from one side of the table to the other, which sometimes took 20 minutes. These actors just sat there and, instead of talking about basketball, their next job or kids, without me instructing them or giving any rules, they just sat there in utter silence. The crew also worked in utter silence. I had never been on a set that was like the New York Public Library, where you could hear a pin drop. Everybody just brought respect for what we were doing and for the subject matter.”
Sally as Mary
Sally Field is also good as Mary Todd, Lincoln’s wife. Steven commented: “[Mary was] the engine behind Lincoln. He didn’t have ambition; she did. He didn’t have his eye on the prize, the presidency; she did. She could have married either Stephen Douglas or Abraham Lincoln. She [picked] Lincoln because she felt that he could be President.”
The director laughed when teased that there must be two Stevens based on his filmography, which consists of serious and pop entertainment fare. “I don’t take any drugs,” he quipped. “I am not on any mood stabilizers, I promise you. I have no psychotropic drugs in my system. I am not schizophrenic. My movie career seems bipolar because there’s a kind of movie that I can serve up that doesn’t require any work. Others, like ‘Schindler’s List’ and ‘Lincoln,’ do. ‘Lincoln’ requires you to pay attention and lean forward a bit more.”
Collaborators
He added: “In most of my movies, as a filmmaker, I ask you to sit back and let me take over. In this movie, I ask you to be my collaborator, to listen to the beautiful language of Tony Kushner and to watch the amazing performances. It takes a little more effort on everybody’s part because this movie is about the political process. It’s about the government but it’s also full of suspense and entertainment.”
So how does one of cinema’s most acclaimed directors unwind? “I play Angry Birds and Rummy Tile on my iPad,” he replied, chuckling again. “That’s the truth. When my kids are back from school and when they’re around, we go on field trips. We do things together, which is a lot of fun. We watch television together. I do have a lot of ways to release the pressure from the job. Mostly, that happens at home. I’m a real homebody. That’s why you don’t read about me in People or US magazine.”
He has always been a homebody. “In my early 20s, when all my friends were going to parties, I stayed home,” he related. “I need that. I need a little bit of solitude in my life because my life is filled with people. I’m interactive all day long almost seven days a week with people. I don’t consider my kids in the same breath as I do my work associations. My kids are my relief, my safe haven. I need to be home to feel a little more like a normal human being.”
We hope that, someday, Steven gets to work with Meryl, Robert and Al. Even better, how about a film with these three actors together? We imagine that one can also hear a pin drop on that movie’s set out of respect for the talents present.
Email the columnist at rvnepales_5585@yahoo.com. Follow him at https://twitter.com/ nepalesruben.