Rebecca Miller, writer & filmmaker

Erland Josephson has died. He was a great Swedish actor of Jewish extraction. He was in Fanny and Alexander and Hour of the Wolf by Ingmar Bergman, among many other films (I think 40 collaborations, including theater). Also he was in Andre Tarkovski’s The Sacrifice. He was a great actor.

I met him when I was cast as Anya in Peter Brook’s production of The Cherry Orchard, in 1986, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. We became really close friends. He was already in his sixties. He was witty and a little bit sad and very bawdy. We went on tour with The Cherry Orchard. We went to Russia and Japan. I remember walking with Erland under a red umbrella in a Japanese garden. I remember eating sturgeon with him in Moscow, after a performance. I remember sitting on a wide purple cloth, eating a picnic with the rest of the company, in the countryside near Tibilisi, which was then in Soviet Georgia. The resident actors of the theater we were playing in, the Rustaveli (sp?) theater, invited us on the picnic. We drank wine from ceramic bowls with gold rims. The rims were stamped with little golden crosses. When we looked up we could see cliffs, and in the cliffs were little caves, and in the caves, hermits had lived. In Tokyo, people had simultaneous translators they could hold to their ears. We used to joke that every time we heard one of them clatter to the floor, an audience member had dropped off to sleep. One night, during Erland’s speech to the book case, we heard so many simultaneous translating devices clatter to the floor– Erland later said he counted nine–that I simply lost it. Luckily I was just sitting upstage, because I actually peed in my pants a little, but I hid the laughing pretty well. He was a wonderful friend.

I just read “Queer” by William Burroughs. It’s an astonishing book, a glimpse into such vulnerability, so direct. The emotional descriptions are what I liked best about it. Communicating precise feeling. Also the total transparency, the willingness to be truly seen–not that this isn’t fiction; it is of course, but you can see down through the plot, characters, words, into the man’s veins, his pulsing organs.

recently said it’s important to do something badly but in a dedicated way. I thought about this. At first I thought, I do nothing without a goal. But then I realized I have been doing yoga since I was seven, not all the time–not enough at all– but in a regular way, and I still sort of suck at it. I mean, I am limber, but I still can’t do a hand stand. My elbows jut out when I try to do a wheel. I am never going to have a beautiful practice. I suppose there is something good about this. I love yoga, I started doing it with my mother. I love it even though I am not really excellent at it. I will probably do it for the rest of my life.

yes to you who mentioned Eudora, in response to my bog about her. How when memory flows through a person the living and the dead co-mingle. I am sorry not to be able to respond more exactly to those of you who have asked me questions. I don’t know, is the truth of it, I can only blunder along and perhaps in my blundering, as I search and search like someone who has lost their favorite sweater and is frantically throwing every single piece of clothing out of her drawer to find it, as I fumble in the tangle of stuff, others might join me or be interested in the detritus I leave all over the floor as I look for my favorite thing, which is of course in reality something I have never seen before, and will never see in my life: it’s something perfect, a thing I have made, and that’s not possible, so I will just have to keep searching, like everybody else. Maybe the dead find it, the perfect thing.

This is indeed a living blog, though it has been hibernating for a while. I have been writing this book every spare second. But I will try now to write a little something more regularly. I have been teaching once a week at NYU, a course called Directing the Actor. My students are undergraduates. I am learning a lot, in fact. Each person reveals themselves when they direct. To become a better director is to become a more self aware person. The ones who stutter and over intellectualize, I have tried to help them find their center, their gravity–and their confidence. The link to the actor is intimate– it is something shared privately. Teaching them the importance of taking the actor aside. Of speaking less, waiting till they have the words. Finding the simplest way always. Sometimes it’s an image. To help them find their instincts. The class is more effective when everyone sits watching a scene in the round, as close as possible, almost on top of the actors. that’s what film is like. It’s not proscenium acting. To develop an ear for truth, and not to let fake moments get by. To prepare a scene, make sure it has hills and valleys, and yet always emphasize listening. If there is one secret, that’s it. Always bring the actors back to listening to each other and as a director always listen. the most important quality for a director of actors: empathy. To feel what the other feels. To achieve transparency.

Here is something I am excited about: Barbara Browning’s first published novel, The Correspondence Artist, is coming out in February. I think it’s a unique, deeply modern book. Also sexy. Perhaps some of you would enjoy it. My opinion goes beyond the fact that Barbara is my best friend. We met in college. She appeared in my earliest, experimental films, usually naked. With her permission I will post some of those. They are very different from what I do now; my interests are earthier now. My first impulse for making films was to actually capture dreams I’d had. For me, this was magic. Read the rest of this entry »

My son tells me a mega-Tsunami is expected to hit Manhattan and wipe it out entirely. Understandably, he finds this disconcerting. So do I. All chaos is disconcerting. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently I was told I have a choice, I can continue to make films the way I have, idiosyncratic films that are hard to describe in a sentence, or I can try to make films that have a chance of being more accessible to more people, like maybe a genre film that I put my stamp on. And if I continue the way I have, I have to accept that I may never be a popular filmmaker, according to my adviser. I don’t know if that’s true. All I know is, I do what is in me to do, and I avoid making films that I feel could also have been directed by someone else. In that case I would rather stay home and write fiction or just be with my kids. I don’t try to be obscure–I always hope I am making a film for masses of people–but I want to tell the truth as I see it. Maybe I am overly stubborn. I don’t know. Every time I read a comment from you all, I have to say it reminds me that there really are people out there who understand the films, that they mean something to you, and that’s very encouraging. Read the rest of this entry »

I am sick today. It snowed. It doesn’t snow often in Ireland so the roads are pretty much just left as they are out here where I live, and we all slide around as best we can. Someone asked in a comment about whether or not I rehearse.  The only time I really rehearsed scenes in depth was for “Angela”, when I was working with a ten year old and a six year old child. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a man from Mississippi who wants to see Pippa. Great. I wonder if there is an art house nearby where he lives? Sir? Maybe I can get a print there. It’s heartening to hear from a family man who cares about my films–not that my audiences are always female. That’s not my experience at all.

Someone asked about rehearsal. I will write about that tomorrow if I can.

A word in defense of the cliche: In Pippa, I tried driving straight into cliche’s rather than doing everything possible to avoid them. Cliche’s are often cliche’s because they are true. And they are so true they get worn out. I wanted to face certain cliches –like the one about the man who keeps leaving for younger women, or the woman with a past–and find a fresh way to organize an old story.

On another note, I saw the best Christmas movie recently. It’s called “What Would Jesus Buy.” It’s a documentary about this man called Reverend Billy who was running for Mayor of New York, and the head of the “Just Stop Shopping” party. In the film, he and his choir cross the country in a bus going to malls and trying to get the people of America to buy less crap made by underpaid children in foreign lands. You should see what happens in Disney World. It sounds didactic, but it’s a brilliant and moving film.