Interviewing Tony Kaye by phone can make you sweat, if you're not prepared for what to expect. The famously eccentric director has a noticeable stammer. Earlier in life, it was so crippling that he would pass himself off as a non-English speaker in certain situations to avoid talking, and during an interview he will wrestle to get certain words out and occasionally stop speaking completely for long stretches, before realigning himself and continuing with his thought. Just as you're about to say something to break the silence, he's back on point. I once read about him unnerving some people during a creative meeting by banging his fist on the table, but after speaking with him, it's impossible not to imagine something like that being the result of raw frustration, not anger.
Not that he's lacking in anger. This is, of course, the director who was famously ousted from Hollywood ten years ago for warring with New Line Cinema over final cut of his debut film, American History X. Unable to get anywhere with the studio, Kaye took his grievances to the press, denouncing star Edward Norton as a "narcissistic dilettante" and New Line execs as a "crew of McDonald's chefs." He eventually filed a $275 million lawsuit against New Line and the DGA, became persona non grata, and disappeared. The door that slammed in Kaye's face has opened a crack recently, however. He just finished shooting (without incident) Black Water Transit, a crime-drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans and starring Laurence Fishburne and Brittany Snow, and he's celebrating the early October release of Lake of Fire, his documentary on abortion that's over 16 years in the making.
Ryan Stewart: You're still in post for Black Water Transit, right? How's that going?
Tony Kaye: Yeah, that's my big thing right now, yeah. It's going great. I'm very excited about it.
RS: Hurricane Katrina looms large over the film, I'm sure.
TK: Yeah, it takes place about three months afterwards, so you see some of the wreckage of the city. From a sort of materialistic standpoint, you see a little bit of wreckage, but what was lost in New Orleans was tragically lost. There's a whole community that was wiped out. That's not even there now. There's no ... I didn't shoot any 'hurricane stuff'.
RS: So it's in the background.
TK: Yeah. It's a drama between certain people, a series of stories that take place with interconnecting souls. It doesn't directly relate to the hurricane. The hurricane plays a part in their stories and people comment about it occasionally, but the story itself could have taken place at any time or anywhere. It plays out in that background, obviously, a little differently.
RS: I saw Lake of Fire last week. When you were conducting the interviews for that film, did the interview subjects try to sniff out your own point of view and convert you?
TK: Yeah, that's the very nature of talking about something like this. If you go on camera to talk about your views -- your views about abortion -- you are obviously trying to convert the person you're talking to or an audience. Convert them to your way of thinking. I could never be interviewed about my personal view on abortion, because I have mixed views, you know what I mean? I don't really have a view. That's part of the zeitgeist of the movie -- one minute someone is trying to tell you to be pro-life for that reason, and the next minute someone is trying to tell you to be pro-choice for that particular reason. By the time you get to the end of the film, you've really looked at a subject you thought you knew everything about and maybe you find that you didn't know everything about it. Maybe it re-confirms what you thought about it, or maybe you have a slightly different way of looking at it, but at least if you want to look at the subject of abortion and you want to see it presented in film form, I think it does a reasonable job of that.
RS: When you're shooting some of the pro-lifers -- one woman especially, near the beginning -- you tend to push in very tight with the camera, all the way into an extreme close-up. Why do you do that?
TK: My close-ups on the human face are very close. I think filmmaking is looking into people's eyes. That's what it's all about. So whenever I do an interview, I will always come away with a very, very tight shot. I don't remember exactly the shot you mean, but it's a way that I particularly work, you know?
RS: I believe she was a congresswoman, it was right at the top of the film. It struck me as almost hostile, like you're squinting at what she's saying, or distrustful of her honesty. As she explains her viewpoint, the camera zooms in closer, closer, closer.
TK: No, no, purely framing. That's just a visual thing. I'm not commenting about anything. It's a documentary. I am not making a comment.
RS: You also shot some really gruesome abortion and post-abortion footage in this film -- how did you prepare your film crew for shooting stuff like that?
TK: Well, I work with a very small crew. I shoot my own film, you know? It was a mind-altering moment for me. I had a sound person and an assistant camera person ... there were only three of us in the room with the doctor and the patient and then with the doctor afterwards. I don't really ... everyone was aware of what we were going in to see. I didn't really say anything.
RS: Did you find that stuff shocking?
TK: It was shocking to me. I think it'd be shocking to anybody, but I'm removed -- I'm in a zone when I'm filmmaking. I focus entirely on being in the right place with the camera and making sure the sound is being recorded well, thinking about what questions I'm asking in a situation like that. The performances, the coverage, the angles ... as I say, I was in an altered state. It's a pretty shocking thing.
RS: How much footage did you shoot for this film?
TK: Oh, you know, when you shoot for as long as I shot -- not that I was shooting every day for sixteen years -- but I shoot a lot of film anyway, for anything. I shoot a lot of film even if it's in a day. Yeah, it started as a seven hour cut. I wanted to do a television piece, or do a series of DVDs.
RS: You planned for it to be on TV?
TK: I didn't plan it like that, but there's so much footage, so much interesting stuff, that it's a shame to not ever let it see the light of day, you know?
RS: I was surprised that the interview subject that grabbed me the most was Nat Hentoff, representing the pro-life liberals. No matter how defensible his position might be, it occupies such a marginal position in the greater debate.
TK: Nat Hentoff is certainly a marvelous individual voice in his own right, aside from his thinking here. He's very unique. Not only unique in the fact that he's unique, but his opinion and where he's coming from is unique, within the characters that I filmed.
RS: Right. There are lots of religious zealots in the film, though -- would you say the subject of the film is extremism, as much as it is abortion?
TK: Yeah. It's about a lot of things. It's about extremism, it's about reactionary behavior, it's about a lot of things. I don't even know half of what it's about, you know?
RS: There's a scene near the beginning, at a demonstration, where a pro-life guy is standing there preaching to his own little choir of followers. It reminded me immediately of that scene in American History X, where Norton is giving a speech to his troops. I'm sure X would have clicked in my mind even if I had no idea who was directing this documentary. I was wondering if there was an intentional relation between those two scenes.
TK: Well, I guess he looks a bit like Edward Norton, that guy. [Laughs] I don't know, I mean somebody giving a speech ... I don't know. I like long monologue kind of things anyway, but that was there to help the structure of the film. It begins as a pro-life film. He really kicks the story off, you know.
RS: I actually saw lots of parallels to American History X; extremism as a subject, the stark black and white 35mm, other similarities. Is it unfair to you to make those comparisons, since you so vehemently disowned the release cut of X?
TK: Well, I'm not really the same person now as I was when I had all the disputes over American History X. I was very reactionary. I was very reactionary in my manner and my attitudes and very egotistical. I'm not really the same person anymore. I'm very proud of my involvement in American History X. I think it could be better, but anything could be better. Lake of Fire could be better, you know? Sure, there's bound to be similarity because the director is the same person, and as I'm shooting the film as well, there's going to be even more of ... it's not only the choice of subject matter, it's the camera style. Filmmaking is really about what comes out of the camera and what you do with it afterwards. That's really what filmmaking boils down to.
RS: Are you still in the process of putting together Humpty Dumpty, the documentary about the making of American History X?
TK: Yes, Humpty Dumpty is a whole other kettle of fish. That's a very personal film about my own descent into madness. Descent into ego and madness and reactive behavior. New Line really likes it and they want to release it. In a way, Humpty Dumpty is sort of what American History X might have been. We're doing, aside from a small theatrical release on Humpty Dumpty, we're doing a DVD release of a digitally-remastered American History X. Humpty Dumpty will go in the same box.
RS: Are you doing new interviews for it?
TK: Yes. I haven't gotten an interview with Edward Norton yet. I need to get an interview with Edward Norton. But I've been shooting Humpty Dumpty for seven or eight years.
RS: What's the holdup with Norton? Do you still speak with him?
TK: No. No. It's only recently that I've become approachable, in terms of actors. Actors wouldn't come anywhere near me a couple of years ago, not only because of my antics and my behavior on American History X, but also with my Marlon Brando .... I don't know if you know anything about that.
RS: Lying for a Living.
TK: Yeah. I got off to a pretty rocky start.
RS: So you're making up for lost time now? Seems like you're eager to get back into mainstream fiction features.
TK: Absolutely. I'm happy to be fully immersed in narrative story-telling, narrative fictional film. I'm very happy to be back in the business again and to be of sound mind.
RS: And you won't lose anything by dialing down your eccentricities?
TK: No, to be honest with you, I'm not very eccentric in all honesty. A lot of it was really an act. A lot of my heroes, the directors I really admire, were all lunatics. So I just thought that, to do good work like they did, I should be a lunatic too, you know?
RS: Do you know what the next feature is, after Black Water Transit?
TK: I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do. I have a few things on the horizon. I've got something I've written, there's a project called Madness that was written by Robert McKee, the famous screenwriting teacher. He's written a script I kind of like. Then there's another film called Wild Horses with Mickey Rourke and Bob Dylan and Val Kilmer, which I'm looking at, and then there's another film called Murderer's Row, which is about capital punishment. It's written by a judge and I'm kind of intrigued by that. I'd really like to make my own stuff, but the thing that I've written is huge and I don't know if I can get the financing on that just yet, so.
RS: Is there anything you could be as passionate about as Lake of Fire -- passionate enough to spend that many years working on it?
TK: There's a couple of things. I'm doing a documentary film about the Berg family that started the Kabbalah Centre, and I'm very interested in doing a film about money as well. It would interest me because I was working for the Enron company, doing commercials for Enron just before they went bust. I shot a lot of footage of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, talking about the company and why it worked and all these kinds of things. I'd like to make a film about money, a documentary film about how money really works in the bigger picture. Industrialists and capitalists and people who don't care about money and really about being obsessed with money or not having money. Rich parts of the world, poor parts of the world -- fiscal flow. I don't know anything about money, I'm such a terrible businessman. I don't really have any money, but a lot of money's gone through my hands. I think that could be a really interesting film.
For more information visit the film's IMDB pagehere.
Not that he's lacking in anger. This is, of course, the director who was famously ousted from Hollywood ten years ago for warring with New Line Cinema over final cut of his debut film, American History X. Unable to get anywhere with the studio, Kaye took his grievances to the press, denouncing star Edward Norton as a "narcissistic dilettante" and New Line execs as a "crew of McDonald's chefs." He eventually filed a $275 million lawsuit against New Line and the DGA, became persona non grata, and disappeared. The door that slammed in Kaye's face has opened a crack recently, however. He just finished shooting (without incident) Black Water Transit, a crime-drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans and starring Laurence Fishburne and Brittany Snow, and he's celebrating the early October release of Lake of Fire, his documentary on abortion that's over 16 years in the making.
Ryan Stewart: You're still in post for Black Water Transit, right? How's that going?
Tony Kaye: Yeah, that's my big thing right now, yeah. It's going great. I'm very excited about it.
RS: Hurricane Katrina looms large over the film, I'm sure.
TK: Yeah, it takes place about three months afterwards, so you see some of the wreckage of the city. From a sort of materialistic standpoint, you see a little bit of wreckage, but what was lost in New Orleans was tragically lost. There's a whole community that was wiped out. That's not even there now. There's no ... I didn't shoot any 'hurricane stuff'.
RS: So it's in the background.
TK: Yeah. It's a drama between certain people, a series of stories that take place with interconnecting souls. It doesn't directly relate to the hurricane. The hurricane plays a part in their stories and people comment about it occasionally, but the story itself could have taken place at any time or anywhere. It plays out in that background, obviously, a little differently.
RS: I saw Lake of Fire last week. When you were conducting the interviews for that film, did the interview subjects try to sniff out your own point of view and convert you?
TK: Yeah, that's the very nature of talking about something like this. If you go on camera to talk about your views -- your views about abortion -- you are obviously trying to convert the person you're talking to or an audience. Convert them to your way of thinking. I could never be interviewed about my personal view on abortion, because I have mixed views, you know what I mean? I don't really have a view. That's part of the zeitgeist of the movie -- one minute someone is trying to tell you to be pro-life for that reason, and the next minute someone is trying to tell you to be pro-choice for that particular reason. By the time you get to the end of the film, you've really looked at a subject you thought you knew everything about and maybe you find that you didn't know everything about it. Maybe it re-confirms what you thought about it, or maybe you have a slightly different way of looking at it, but at least if you want to look at the subject of abortion and you want to see it presented in film form, I think it does a reasonable job of that.
RS: When you're shooting some of the pro-lifers -- one woman especially, near the beginning -- you tend to push in very tight with the camera, all the way into an extreme close-up. Why do you do that?
TK: My close-ups on the human face are very close. I think filmmaking is looking into people's eyes. That's what it's all about. So whenever I do an interview, I will always come away with a very, very tight shot. I don't remember exactly the shot you mean, but it's a way that I particularly work, you know?
RS: I believe she was a congresswoman, it was right at the top of the film. It struck me as almost hostile, like you're squinting at what she's saying, or distrustful of her honesty. As she explains her viewpoint, the camera zooms in closer, closer, closer.
TK: No, no, purely framing. That's just a visual thing. I'm not commenting about anything. It's a documentary. I am not making a comment.
RS: You also shot some really gruesome abortion and post-abortion footage in this film -- how did you prepare your film crew for shooting stuff like that?
TK: Well, I work with a very small crew. I shoot my own film, you know? It was a mind-altering moment for me. I had a sound person and an assistant camera person ... there were only three of us in the room with the doctor and the patient and then with the doctor afterwards. I don't really ... everyone was aware of what we were going in to see. I didn't really say anything.
RS: Did you find that stuff shocking?
TK: It was shocking to me. I think it'd be shocking to anybody, but I'm removed -- I'm in a zone when I'm filmmaking. I focus entirely on being in the right place with the camera and making sure the sound is being recorded well, thinking about what questions I'm asking in a situation like that. The performances, the coverage, the angles ... as I say, I was in an altered state. It's a pretty shocking thing.
RS: How much footage did you shoot for this film?
TK: Oh, you know, when you shoot for as long as I shot -- not that I was shooting every day for sixteen years -- but I shoot a lot of film anyway, for anything. I shoot a lot of film even if it's in a day. Yeah, it started as a seven hour cut. I wanted to do a television piece, or do a series of DVDs.
RS: You planned for it to be on TV?
TK: I didn't plan it like that, but there's so much footage, so much interesting stuff, that it's a shame to not ever let it see the light of day, you know?
RS: I was surprised that the interview subject that grabbed me the most was Nat Hentoff, representing the pro-life liberals. No matter how defensible his position might be, it occupies such a marginal position in the greater debate.
TK: Nat Hentoff is certainly a marvelous individual voice in his own right, aside from his thinking here. He's very unique. Not only unique in the fact that he's unique, but his opinion and where he's coming from is unique, within the characters that I filmed.
RS: Right. There are lots of religious zealots in the film, though -- would you say the subject of the film is extremism, as much as it is abortion?
TK: Yeah. It's about a lot of things. It's about extremism, it's about reactionary behavior, it's about a lot of things. I don't even know half of what it's about, you know?
RS: There's a scene near the beginning, at a demonstration, where a pro-life guy is standing there preaching to his own little choir of followers. It reminded me immediately of that scene in American History X, where Norton is giving a speech to his troops. I'm sure X would have clicked in my mind even if I had no idea who was directing this documentary. I was wondering if there was an intentional relation between those two scenes.
TK: Well, I guess he looks a bit like Edward Norton, that guy. [Laughs] I don't know, I mean somebody giving a speech ... I don't know. I like long monologue kind of things anyway, but that was there to help the structure of the film. It begins as a pro-life film. He really kicks the story off, you know.
RS: I actually saw lots of parallels to American History X; extremism as a subject, the stark black and white 35mm, other similarities. Is it unfair to you to make those comparisons, since you so vehemently disowned the release cut of X?
TK: Well, I'm not really the same person now as I was when I had all the disputes over American History X. I was very reactionary. I was very reactionary in my manner and my attitudes and very egotistical. I'm not really the same person anymore. I'm very proud of my involvement in American History X. I think it could be better, but anything could be better. Lake of Fire could be better, you know? Sure, there's bound to be similarity because the director is the same person, and as I'm shooting the film as well, there's going to be even more of ... it's not only the choice of subject matter, it's the camera style. Filmmaking is really about what comes out of the camera and what you do with it afterwards. That's really what filmmaking boils down to.
RS: Are you still in the process of putting together Humpty Dumpty, the documentary about the making of American History X?
TK: Yes, Humpty Dumpty is a whole other kettle of fish. That's a very personal film about my own descent into madness. Descent into ego and madness and reactive behavior. New Line really likes it and they want to release it. In a way, Humpty Dumpty is sort of what American History X might have been. We're doing, aside from a small theatrical release on Humpty Dumpty, we're doing a DVD release of a digitally-remastered American History X. Humpty Dumpty will go in the same box.
RS: Are you doing new interviews for it?
TK: Yes. I haven't gotten an interview with Edward Norton yet. I need to get an interview with Edward Norton. But I've been shooting Humpty Dumpty for seven or eight years.
RS: What's the holdup with Norton? Do you still speak with him?
TK: No. No. It's only recently that I've become approachable, in terms of actors. Actors wouldn't come anywhere near me a couple of years ago, not only because of my antics and my behavior on American History X, but also with my Marlon Brando .... I don't know if you know anything about that.
RS: Lying for a Living.
TK: Yeah. I got off to a pretty rocky start.
RS: So you're making up for lost time now? Seems like you're eager to get back into mainstream fiction features.
TK: Absolutely. I'm happy to be fully immersed in narrative story-telling, narrative fictional film. I'm very happy to be back in the business again and to be of sound mind.
RS: And you won't lose anything by dialing down your eccentricities?
TK: No, to be honest with you, I'm not very eccentric in all honesty. A lot of it was really an act. A lot of my heroes, the directors I really admire, were all lunatics. So I just thought that, to do good work like they did, I should be a lunatic too, you know?
RS: Do you know what the next feature is, after Black Water Transit?
TK: I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do. I have a few things on the horizon. I've got something I've written, there's a project called Madness that was written by Robert McKee, the famous screenwriting teacher. He's written a script I kind of like. Then there's another film called Wild Horses with Mickey Rourke and Bob Dylan and Val Kilmer, which I'm looking at, and then there's another film called Murderer's Row, which is about capital punishment. It's written by a judge and I'm kind of intrigued by that. I'd really like to make my own stuff, but the thing that I've written is huge and I don't know if I can get the financing on that just yet, so.
RS: Is there anything you could be as passionate about as Lake of Fire -- passionate enough to spend that many years working on it?
TK: There's a couple of things. I'm doing a documentary film about the Berg family that started the Kabbalah Centre, and I'm very interested in doing a film about money as well. It would interest me because I was working for the Enron company, doing commercials for Enron just before they went bust. I shot a lot of footage of Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, talking about the company and why it worked and all these kinds of things. I'd like to make a film about money, a documentary film about how money really works in the bigger picture. Industrialists and capitalists and people who don't care about money and really about being obsessed with money or not having money. Rich parts of the world, poor parts of the world -- fiscal flow. I don't know anything about money, I'm such a terrible businessman. I don't really have any money, but a lot of money's gone through my hands. I think that could be a really interesting film.
For more information visit the film's IMDB pagehere.
I did not know that stuff about Tony Kaye and I look forward to seeing his new stuff.