Anything can seem longer when anticipation is involved, whether it is the last weeks of a pregnancy or the hours before election results. So too felt the minutes before my interview with writer/director Robert Towne to discuss his latest film, "Ask the Dust."
At a marathon's end of a dim hall, I arrived at the correct Ritz Carlton suite and lightly knocked on a door: Heavy, portentous and ajar. I stepped into a living room filled with natural light and long shadows from luxury furnishings. A huge window boasted both a view of the snowy Boston Commons and the presence of the suite's deserving guest, for I caught the reflection of Mr. Towne emerging from his bedroom behind me. He shook my hand and sat down imperceptibly. He was, above all else, composed.
Then, like many great writers, he struck a match and lit a cigar. Unlike many great writers, however, he did not proceed to talk much about himself or his place in the film. Instead, through our discussion of the film itself, his passion for the story was as present as his cigar smoke in my face, which - backlit by sunrays - made me feel a little like I was in the office of "Chinatown"'s Jake Gittes or some other murky protagonist from Towne's mind.
A screenwriter whose work includes "Chinatown" (1974), "Tequila Sunrise" (1988), and the first two "Mission: Impossible" films (1996, 2000), Towne turned his efforts towards the work of writer John Fante for this film, which he also directed. "Ask the Dust" is his long-desired adaptation of Fante's 1939 autobiographical novel about a troubled writer (Colin Farrell) in Depression-era Los Angeles who falls for a Mexican waitress (Salma Hayek). I enjoyed thoughtful pauses and a tea break with this formidable storyteller.
Question: I'm curious about the Fante novel. How important was it to you to stay true to that story or to make it your own?
Robert Towne: Well, in a way, it was two different things: it was important for me to stay true to Fante and to the tone and spirit of the novel. I mean, every novel, no matter how good it is, is going to require some sort of transformation to put it onto film.
Sometimes the worst thing you can do to a novel is do it exactly the way it is in the book. For example, one of the basic themes - both in the movie and the book - is one of racial discrimination, prejudice ... that there was a time when there was no such thing. The people were very upfront with prejudices, and that was an important part of it.
And in the book, it was less of a love affair than a one-sided obsession ... Arturo [Farrell] for the Mexican waitress [Hayek]. But I felt that didn't serve a movie, nor would it serve the book very well, because in order to dramatize the racial shame that these people felt, I think it had to be on both sides, and I think it had to be in relation to one another. You know, like "You're the last person in the world I want to fall in love with," so that in their attraction, they both had similar obstacles to overcome.
Q: I'm also wondering about your treatment of L.A., of the city as kind of a character itself...
RT: Well, it is a character...
Q: Okay. Well, there's the outright talk about "dying in L.A." and some of the grittier side of it, but I was wondering what you had to say about the involvement of [famed journalist and writer H. L.] Mencken. It was interesting that [the protagonist of "Ask the Dust," rookie journalist Arturo] Bandini had that luck, where this man on top saw some merit in what he wrote. Could you talk a little about the juxtaposition of death and hope?
RT: Well, Jessica, Fante did know Mencken, and, in fact, there's a volume of their letters, although those aren't the letters in the movie...I kinda made those up. But it was his [Bandini's] one lifeline to sanity.
You know, he was a young writer: insecure, self-absorbed, narcissistic, manic-depressive, always questioning his worth as a writer and as a man. Mencken was the only thing he had to hang on to, and the only person that suggested that he might be a writer. So he was a desperately important part of his life...
There is a hope in the story. I mean, look: the whole movie, and the book, too, really, is a memoir. It's a recollection of how the book got written and why. A young writer comes to L.A. to write the great American novel and make his dream come true by being rich and famous, and he ends up writing about a city full of people who come there to make their dreams come true. And in the course of it, he comes to realize that not everybody's dreams come true, but some do. And some die in the sun.
Q: Maybe this is an annoying celebrity question, but I was wondering about the chemistry between Farrell and Hayek...
RT: Okay. Jessica, your unasked question, because you are too ladylike to ask it, is: was there something going on between Colin and Salma?
Q: Oh no no no! I was just wondering if that kind of chemistry - which it seems was so important to the film - comes naturally or how much it had to be worked at.
RT: Yeah, it was critical to the film. And yes, it did [come naturally], but not without a lot of exposure to one another ... and a mutual desire to make the movie work. Both of them took no money to do the movie; they really wanted to do the movie. And really a strong friendship formed. In the end, Camilla [Hayek's character] had taught Colin Spanish ... There was no self-consciousness about the hostility or about the lovemaking. They were friends helping each other through work that they love, and, in that sense, the chemistry formed out of that, and I think it was palpable.
Q: Some people have been calling this film a "sunny noir." Not to make you classify your own film in a genre, but would you consider this stylized enough to be called noir?
RT: Well, they certainly lead sunny lives of desperation, lives of sunny desperation - however you wanna put it ... This is, strictly speaking, not noir, but there are noir-ish aspects to the film. He [Farrell's character] has a character flaw; he has attitudes he has to overcome but he does overcome them. But in the end it's too late for both of them. But, yeah, there is some sense of this [noir], and in the sense of the city and the way the picture opens, it is suggestive of noir films.
