Rebecca Miller » Films

Pippa is about to come out in the States on November 27th. Feeling hopeful.

rebecca — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:50:42 +0000

First of all I want to thank those of you who are writing to me about Pippa. It’s so heartening to see that people –at least a few people–are “getting” the film. I just came back to Ireland from 8 days in the States promoting Pippa, first in LA then NYC. I think maybe in Pippa I have stumbled on a character and a story that larger numbers of people can identify with than usually happens with my films. I have been described as a filmmaker who makes up characters it’s hard to love or even like (I have no problem with this, I think in general film is over-obsessed with making characters likeable, I don’t understand that– and anyway I like flawed people, being one myself), however Pippa seems to be another story–she is such a dear soul. A lot of women seem to see themselves in her, and older men seem happy with the story, maybe because Alan Arkin gets to be a real human being still making romantic mistakes and not just an old man. I did Q and A’s for different types of audiences, one for Screen Actors Guild members, of course mostly actors. They were very appreciative of Robin Wright’s performance. I did that Q and A with Robin, and I learned things from her that night. Someone asked her what was the most important thing, in our year of preparation, that brought the character together for her–and she said, when she understood how to play a person who doesn’t judge other people. She was saying she is quite judgemental as a person (most of us are) and that it was hard, making that leap, but once she did, she had found Pippa. I asked her, also, when we were doing the DVD commentary, about a certain scene, in which she wakes up in the convenience store where Chris/Keanu Reeves works, and she has a certain very visceral reaction, and I asked her if she had used nausea at all for that moment,and she said, no, she had used her breath, not being able to breathe, and I asked if she used breath a lot for the character, and she said she used shallow breath high in her chest –until later in the story when Pippa is coming into herself. I thought that was so interesting, because, when I was directing her, just as she heard “roll camera” she would close her eyes and breath in, and when she breathed out again, Pippa was there. Robin had shaken off whatever got between her and the character, cleared her system. It was amazing to watch. And it shows just how much a director does not control. In other words, though we decide how things are shot, and nudge a performance one way or another, we directors are still forced to stand at the lip of an actor’s soul, peering in; what happens inside, the mysterious alchemical shifts necessary to create a character, belong to the actor alone. We directors are so dependent on that magic.

The premiere, by the way, was a lot of fun, Robin,Blake, Keanu, and Julianne were all there, and sweetly Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz and Billy Crudup and Billy Connelly turned up, none of whom I know, I mean I have met some of them, so it was especially kind of them to come, because I know the last thing well known people want to do is go to a premiere, but they were there to see Robin’s performance and support the film. And my Daniel was there which made me so happy, and my dear friends from New York. It was a funny little theater, with air conditioning blasting noisily out of enormous ducts (in November). My hands were like blocks of ice by the end of the film.

So The Private Lives of Pippa Lee comes out on the 27th of November, there isn’t much more to be done. The actors have been so supportive, done lots of interviews, Blake is even hosting Saturday Night Live on December 5th, which will be hilarious I am sure because she is so relaxed and game for self-parody. Now we just sit on our hands and hope that the film finds an audience. Whatever happens, we know we did our best.

What happened to Pippa at the Toronto Film Festival

rebecca — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:11:51 +0000

Toronto turned out to be one of those shards of light that illuminate the days around them, before and after. I wasn’t expecting much, because there are so many films in Toronto, I figured the audience was a little tired by the 15th of September, it had gone well in Deauville, and…I don’t know, I always arm myself against indifference or plain old rejection in any screening. But the response to the film was very strong. The audience of 2000 got all the laughs, from the beginning, and they seemed to take such delight in the performances. All the risks in tone change and performance–especially on the part of Winona and Maria Bello, who needed to hit the biggest notes– seemed to pay off. So it worked with that audience, anyway–there was a long standing ovation at the end, and I got reports of people being moved. Two days later, there was a smaller, daytime screening, and, though the spirit of the screening was calmer, the laughs were in the same places, and people came up and told me it meant something to them personally. The main thing, to me, is that Robin’s sublime performance is beginning to get the attention it deserves. I really think that she has done something so rare, she has somehow infused a characterization with a soul. You look at Pippa and you see her spirit flickering in there…

My First Blog

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:02:01 +0000

This is my first blog. It’s very exciting. I think of my audience as a series of individuals rather than a mass, maybe because relatively speaking I have always had a pretty small audience. Somehow this feels like a somewhat personal way of reaching you, whoever you are.

The next months will be exciting and hard. The cycle of work that is The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is coming to final fruition–there was the novel, the screenplay, making the film, and now at last, the film is coming out–and the book is emerging in paperback in the US. It’s been 8 years since I started thinking about Pippa as a character and five years since I started writing in earnest.

The film will be a limited release initially, New York and LA, and I have a feeling a lot of the audience may be women in the south or midwest. So we–Screen Media (distributor), me, Lemore Syvan, Dede Gardner (producers) are going to struggle to reach them by whatever means we can.

It’s doing pretty well in England–been out for more than a month, anyway, and in Greece, inexplicably, it opened number three, ahead of Transformers, and behind the Hangover and IceAge. What I wonder is, how did the Greek distributors sell it?