Interview: Leave it to Weaver

Last year's Woman of the Year, Sigourney Weaver recently made a trip to Boston to discuss her new film, A Map of the World. An adaptation of Jane Hamilton's bestseller, the film is dominated by Sigourney's layered performance which recently garnered a Golden Globe .

THC: But A Map of the World isn't strictly drama. The comedy is less frequent, but definitely more intense.

SW: I've been to a couple of festivals and I've seen the film with an audience, and it always makes me so happy when people laugh during the important scenes. Then I know that they're with the film. It's a cathartic laugh. I think it shows how people truly cope. They don't break down, they're just like us.

THC: Could this part only have been played by someone who knows what it is to be a mother?

SW: Well I think that was really the linchpin for me. I'm not often cast as a mother, on earth, with small children, and I am a mother on earth with small children. And that is so much a part of my life, if I were a pie that would be like 80 percent of it. So it was wonderful for me to be able to flow into this part, into something I feel so strongly about, and that was one of the easiest parts of the movie for me because I didn't have to research or anything, all I had to do was show up, basically. My own feelings and impulses worked, and the kids were so great, we were like a little unit, and when I had to go off for a scene without them I really did miss them. I was missing my own daughter at the time too, so I felt like Alice in the movie, where you don't want to look at the picture because it makes them seem further away.

THC: Jane Hamilton's book, of course, was a phenomenal success. Did you have a chance to read the book before committing to the film?

SW: I was sent the screenplay, which I read first, and then I read the novel. It's interesting, for instance on The Ice Storm [1997], I started reading the novel and it was so different, I could tell that Ang Lee's concept of our story was going to be somewhat austere, and also somewhat a comedy of manners. The book was just so detailed, I actually didn't wind up reading it. But with A Map of the World I just couldn't put it down, it was just so gripping.

THC: [to Sigourney Weaver] Year after year, many female actresses complain about the lack of complex roles. How do you manage to find challenging work?

SW: I think I'm just really lucky. I can't believe my good fortune, getting A Map of the World and Galaxy Quest both in the same year. I actually think things are getting better for actors and actresses. I think there are a lot of different stories out there. We were at the National Board of Review awards last night and a lot of people were saying they couldn't remember a year with so many interesting films, so I actually think the industry must be pretty healthy.

SE: There's a hunger for good stories. A lot of the movies I see I just zone out, because I don't get gripped. Everything has gotten so technical for awhile, you wind up just out-technicaling yourself, you know, until the point where you can't go anywhere, where you're stopped by technology in a lot of ways. I think there is a great hunger for stories about people, and the idea of empathizing with characters has kind of gone away. Traveling around with this movie, I've heard lots of people actually empathize with the characters in the story. Parents or friends find something in the film to latch onto, and I think there is a need for that and people really do want it. We've spoonfed the masses these kind of technological movies where you can go in, be wowed by technology, eat your popcorn and not think.

THC: How did a small studio like First Look manage to secure the rights to such a popular book - and how was the decision made to ultimately cast Sigourney?

SE: It started with Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall [two of the producers], they had auctioned the book awhile ago, and were trying to kind of get it going. They became familiar with my work in the theater, and they gave me the book, and I just loved it. When we were putting it together, we made a decision, because it was my first movie and because it's a complex movie, they afforded me the opportunity to tell the movie the way I wanted to tell it. First Look has a branch called Overseas Film Group, and they're financiers. So Overseas and First Look are really one and the same, they financed the film, so they're distributing the film. Because Europeans are so much more open about material, they're not on directors about making it more for the mass audience or anything like that. It was a really fortunate thing that it happened this way because it afforded me the opportunity to tell the story that I wanted to tell. So that's how it happened. Sigourney wasn't attached to the book or anything, casting was actually the last thing we did. It's an art film. I mean it has the potential maybe, god willing, for people to come see it because the book has gotten so much attention, and Sigouney is amazing, and Julianne and David, it's like I was blessed.

THC: Scott, lots of stage directors like yourself have recently made the transition from theater to screen with tremendous results - like Sam Mendes with American Beauty and Julie Taymor with Titus. Was the transition jarring?

SE: It's so completely different. A lot of people ask that question, and it's a hard question to answer. Theater is so visceral, it's so in the moment and you have a picture of it all the time, the acting is all about body and language, and the language is very different. Film is about image, and what I found so beautiful is that you can be more intimate than you can on the stage. But it was challenging. The fun thing about filmmaking for me was that it didn't just use the art part of my brain but allowed me to use the other part of my brain, the common sense part. You're always thinking ahead because theater you're indoors, in a black room all day, but when you're doing a film it could rain when you have to film an outdoor scene. You have to make decisions and you're losing your time, and the kids can only work certain hours a day. It's grueling, but it was really rewarding. You can't be anything but an artist when making a film, you can't have any other life but your art.

SW: You would never think this was Scott's first film, we had such a relaxed set. Scott always knew what he wanted, he gave us such specific direction.

THC: In recent interviews, you've talked about the importance of "heightened naturalism" in making a film such as A Map of the World. What does "heightened naturalism" mean in terms of film aesthetics?

SE: I say "heightened naturalism," but it's really my version of naturalism. I say "heightened" because I've found in front of the camera that stillness passes for naturalism, that there doesn't have to be any kind of behavior, that there has to be this sort of tightness, which is a myth in my opinion. When actors open their mouths and speak and are expressive, when they use their bodies, use their faces, that is natural to me. In films, actors are often very, very still because they're afraid of moving outside the camera, or the camera has to move around them.

SW: I think they're also afraid of getting out there because usually you don't get along with the director. They [directors] are often busy with other aspects of the film. So I think part of it is that so many actors don't get enough rehearsal time, so that they're kind of afraid to make a huge role choice because they don't want to be totally wrong.

SE: We rehearsed a lot. We only had 30 days to shoot, so we had to get really prepared. So the "heightened naturalism" is really my version of naturalism. My feeling is that we're never still, as people we're always moving, we're nodding or fidgeting or doing something, so I think those things, to me, are the things which make characters on the screen "human."

THC: You've been asked about Alien for almost twenty years now. Looking back, do you feel like you can take credit for inventing a new type of heroine?

SW: I feel I should take very little credit for that. It was funny because the decision to make the character Ripley a woman was made by David Giler, Walter Hill, and Gordon Carroll [producers], who bought Dan O'Bannon's script which was all male. They basically rewrote the script, and they were looking at it and thought, wouldn't it be great if the hero winds up being this girl you don't expect. They just kind of did that because they thought it would be a good plot surprise, it was written exactly like if it was for a man. That's the biggest mistake people make, when they write the woman's part it gets all schmaltzy and stupid. If you want to write a great part for a woman, just write it for a man, without any preconceptions like, now she needs her little sympathetic moment, now she needs to show that she's emotionally fragile. I think Alien turned out the way it did because of producers who just decided to let the female character loose, and that's where it came from, not for political reasons, but because it's much more interesting.

THC: The only thing that seems to link your roles is that your characters tend to be ferocious--and not always likeable.

SW: Alice, from this film, is interesting in that way because I think we all know someone like Alice who drives you crazy, but you respect that about them, that they're always out there with their real reactions. But I think Alice was the most interesting woman I've played because her journey is just so unique, by the time she gets released so much has happened to her, inside, outside, so much has happened to her family, yet they kind of make peace with it and move on. I think it's a very stirring movie, a very amazing movie because it tells the truth.

THC: There's that great scene during the trial when Alice really wants to tell everyone how she really feels, then just overcomes herself and speaks her heart.

SW: It's a great moment, by the time she's on the stand.

SE: She has a moment's pause when she thinks for a second, right before she makes the decision to tell it like it is. She has this self-awareness that she didn't really have at the beginning of the film.