Well, it's nice to see we have some adventures and souls down here in the front because in
this theater there's this vast middle that you can't see anything in.
One day we're going to take up an offering to get some better lighting for the audience.
Just a mic check.
I just want to make sure Curtis is your mic working.
I believe it's not.
Is it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You want to hand me?
In the cheap seats?
That's right.
The best seats.
Susan?
I know.
Oh, very good.
But you could actually use your voice anyway, so.
Project without the mic.
You know, I'm going to start by doing a few true or false yes or no questions.
I have three quotes from Peter Greenaway, and I'd like you to get your reactions.
This whole thing is everyone can speak up and join in on different points because you
all lived a very remarkable period of lifetime together.
I like to say that every 10 years you do something that makes you think you want to continue
to do this silly business for at least another 10 years.
Ironically, it was at the beginning of your careers that you had that first 10-year cycle,
so it's worth probably for 20 years just that, hoping you'll have that moment again.
But three things Mr. Guine said.
One, my cinema continues to provoke and irritate.
True or false?
Yes or no?
True.
Definitely true.
Yes.
Okay.
The second one is his films are a singular vision and made without compromise.
Absolutely.
Completely correct.
I'm afraid so.
And the third I find the most amusing, I do not take myself seriously.
Yes or no?
Yeah, that's a mixed review from me.
Yes, got to agree with that too, definitely mixed, yes, because he was very, very exacting.
Yeah, very good.
So I'm going to start, Curtis, how does a young man from Houston, Texas, end up in
the middle of Great Britain to make Mr. Greenaway's first full-length narrative film?
How did you become involved in this?
Well, I went to film school in London.
The London Film School graduated, started shooting very early on in my time there.
Did some work for the BFI, met Peter.
We were completely opposite ends of the BFI spectrum.
He was doing his experimental avant-garde movies.
I was doing dramatized documentaries, but we shared a similar aesthetic in many ways
and got to become, we became pretty good friends, and he had this secret project that
he was working on.
And one day he came in with this very, very thick script called The Draftsman's Contract,
plunked it down and said, why don't you have a read, see what you think.
You might want to shoot this.
So I looked at this, and I read it, and it was just remarkable.
The dialogue was just unbelievable, and the possibilities were extraordinary.
So how could I say anything but yes.
All right, just a mic check.
Can you all hear, Curtis?
Okay.
Try to, just do a test on to it.
Test, test, test.
All right, well, I'll pass my mic over, because we often have problems with mics here and
just this point.
Oh, well, you could just speak.
Talk louder.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
That thespian voice.
I'll leave that to Susie.
Another Peter Greenaway quote, which brings me back to you.
I have an aversion.
This is Peter Greenaway.
I have an aversion to the camera making itself known.
The camera should be in organic, non-subjective eyes.
One not obvious to the viewer.
Yes.
I mean, all the images were very carefully composed and actually pre-planned.
There was very little, there was no improvisation in terms of camera coverage.
So the, what we shot was exactly what he wanted to see happen.
And the references we had were painterly references, paintings, Caravaggio, Rembrandt.
Vermeer.
Vermeer, Georges de la Tour for the candlelight paintings in particular.
So they were not other movies where they were references to paintings.
So the compositions, which were largely static except for a few tracking shots, which were
very carefully placed, and had a tremendous impact in the momentum of the narrative because
they were tracking shots.
And the camera didn't, otherwise did not move.
Had a tremendous impact, I think, on the discipline that we used in being able to do visual storytelling
with the narrative that he wanted to, that he'd created.
I know you said to me, there, and it was clear in watching.
There are few internal cuts in the scenes.
Makes for very long and carefully staged, captured sequences.
Which of those were the most challenging for you to?
All of them.
We didn't have video assist.
So we did it, we really shot the old fashioned way.
Prior to video assist, we didn't, we certainly didn't have it.
And everything was photochemical finished.
There was no digital intermediate.
So we had to be extremely careful how we shot the scenes that we shot, because whatever
was on that negative is what we had to live with.
And we did plenty of tests.
I mercifully had Lois doing the makeup, because one of the biggest challenges that we had
was wanting to shoot in candlelight, which we did.
But without the redness of the flesh tones you normally get with candlelight, with normal
flesh tones.
Lois created some white makeup, which was phenomenal.
We did extensive tests with the actors to make sure that it was working all right.
And most importantly, gave me extra luminance value of the flesh tones, so my exposures
were more effective at low light level.
Because most of those night scenes with candlelight were shot at 1.3, 1.3 T stop.
It was all available light, right?
No.
Nope.
Not all, it was all the light that was available.
But the candles were very, very...
The candles actually did a lot of the lighting, but they were also important for the geometric
composition of the frames.
So I had to find the right combination of placing the candles where they were the most
effective compositionally, and then also doing some effective lighting.
And having supplemental lighting with supplemental candlelight bounced back into the image to
give it more of a feeling of a glow.
But without that, we couldn't have done it properly.
Another quote of his is, form and structure is everything, would you agree?
Form and structure also create the content and influence its evolution and its narrative.
So yes, I would say that is true.
The assessment, a couple of other Mr. Greenaway quotes, as one is, actors are loose cannons.
And then the follow-up, which is what Curtis was saying, is, my scripts are highly detailed
with no room for improvisation.
So as an actor, being given this thick text...
Oh yeah, the script was absolutely extraordinary.
In fact, I'm sure Kurt will agree that we shot about four hours' worth of stuff, and
I mean the complexity of the story was like every bit ten times Agatha Christie.
I think it's because Peter spent a while at the central office of information, and he
had a fascination with anything and everything, and quirky stories, quirky tales, anything
to do with form and art, and just an extraordinary brain, and the script really reflected that.
We used to think that at one point we would actually tour it as a production in the theatre,
because it was so dense, and very unusual, I now discover, as this was like the second
feature I'd ever made, or shot been in, to have such a wordy script.
But it was a pure joy from an acting point of view, and I speak for all of the actors
in it, to say that.
There's another Peter quote, which is, most of my characters are mediocre people.
People struggling to find some significance for themselves, and for the most part they
fail and ultimately die.
Well, that sounds very like Peter.
Well, that's where I got it.
Maybe he had that opinion of everybody.
I don't know.
What do you think, Kurtis?
Well, I mean, I think that there's a truth to that, which you're saying, I don't question
that.
Well, they didn't all die in the Draftsman's contract.
No.
It was the Draftsman, unfortunately, it was the one that was the victim.
So we never really understood who did the murder, because the Draftsman was our subjective
character throughout the entire film.
Wasn't the Gardener?
I don't know.
He never told you?
Well, it wasn't the primary issue.
No, I know.
It was just part of the narrative, formal structure that created the story.
It was Peter's first feature film, as well as my first theatrical narrative feature film.
So we were exploring these things with great intensity, and it was an amazing experience
because we had creative freedom.
Nobody was interfering from the finance side of what we did.
When we got the green light, as it were, between British Film Institute and Channel
4, they called us in for a meeting.
I was there with Peter, and they said, we want you to promise us that you will be able
to complete principal photography in 48 days, because that's what was budgeted.
You can have a week of pickup shots, because I know you're going to need them, but you
have to complete principal photography in 48 days, which we did, without adult supervision.
But didn't you say there was a little bit of white neckling in terms of the finances?
There was times where you were wondering if you were going to be able to complete.
I mean, I think, Lois, you guys were talking about that at dinner.
Well, yes, there were.
I mean, it was an extraordinary film to work on in so many ways, and one of them was actually
the set up of the filmmaking process, because everyone was paid the same.
So whether you were Janet Sussman, or myself, or Curtis, we were all paid £175 a week.
So it was favourite nations.
1981.
And we didn't have adult supervision as such, but there was very little in the budget.
I mean, you can imagine.
And what that meant was that, obviously, we bought things to supply the run of the film,
rather than, as the carpenter explained to Peter Sainsbury, I seem to remember, I don't
go out and buy a 2x4 when I need it.
I tend to buy 2x4s, put them to one side, and then anything that isn't used gets returned.
And that was exactly the same, whether it was made cup or whatever.
And a lot of the frocks, when you look at them, they look splendid, and they were splendid
in the flesh.
But they were actually made from curtain lining, I remember going into Sue Blaine's workshop,
and they were made from curtain lining, literally, and the fringing, you get round lampshades,
because it was cheaper.
And they were calico, and not silk, until you got to the black, which needed to be silk,
or the top coats.
The wigs were nylon, and some hair, because it should be horse hair anyway.
So it was a real tight corners, and everyone worked to that degree.
But yes, at one point it looked as if we'd run out of the money that the BFI were prepared
to spend on the film.
And for whatever reason, I wasn't party to all that conversation.
We on a Friday night really wondered if we'd all be there on the Monday.
But it was really a kind of Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland moment, because we had the actors,
everyone was there.
We had the frocks, we had the film, we had the crew, so we were carried on filming.
And it was wonderful.
I mean, we didn't have ADs, we didn't have, you know, like the assistant directors to
run the call or manage the floor.
It was absolutely collaborative.
Everyone was a good sport.
And we all thought, I don't know about the others, I'm blobbing on now, sorry.
But I mean, I don't know about the others, but I definitely thought that this is the
life for me.
This is filmmaking.
This is wonderful.
You know, you can come up with an idea and you're filming it tomorrow at 11 o'clock
by the wall, you know, whatever it happens to be.
Because very rarely, if ever, have I had that experience.
Well, as you were saying, the sun was your shooting schedule, right?
You were shooting to the sun?
Well, yes, because we had to be in the right time of day when we were shooting the scenes
the draftsman was drawing.
So if it was 4 p.m., we would be there at 4 p.m.
We would trot up that mountain and we would set up and shoot it at the right time of day.
And if the light weren't, the light wasn't right, then we wouldn't shoot it.
We would do an interior.
And the fact is that we had all the cast there all the time so we could make those decisions
in the morning.
So if we had something scheduled but the weather turned inappropriate, then we had a fallback
position with the interiors.
Because the costumes didn't really change.
The makeup, except for daylight and candlelight, that would be the only change that Lois would
have to deal with.
Because the white makeup that we used, that she created for the candlelight scenes, would
not be used for the daylight scenes, obviously, so they would be more normalized makeup.
But we needed to do that because I was wondering if we could shoot it in 48 days.
We needed that flexibility and to have the perfection of the weather that needed to be
for each of those specific exterior shots, including foggy mornings.
I was going to say, because you can't plan on a foggy morning, or can you?
You can try.
But the chances of actually achieving it are pretty slim to none.
And when the cloud moves over your shot, you just keep going?
Well, that was interesting because I got very worried about that.
I bet you did.
When the sun started, it really was changing weather.
And we did have the clouds as you can see in the sky, whereas the previous shots, there
were no clouds.
And this was the changing weather of the autumnal feeling setting in.
And I remember doing that scene when they started walking off into the distance.
This is after the draftsman's return.
And I was just holding my breath that the light would hold long enough for them to exit.
But what I couldn't possibly have anticipated, but we knew when we got it, it was just amazing,
is if a curtain had descended and the shadow followed them off to the left of the image
as they exited the frame.
And that was the take.
And the wonderful thing was that the actors were so consistent that it really could have
been any take that we wanted to use for photographic reasons.
And we did.
So without having found Groombridge Place, where we shot in Groombridge Kent, without
finding the interiors.
That was everything.
Was that the one location?
It had to be.
Everything was inside and out.
All the gardens.
And you all had trailers and stuff, of course, right?
Actually, no.
They had the house, the basement of the rooms we weren't shooting at.
Now, did the family move out while you were there?
Yeah.
Oh, that was wise.
It was just an elderly woman who lived there on her own.
Yes.
There was Mrs. Mountain and, in fact, you know, the tea section at the end when the
draftsman returns and you see all that lovely blue china.
That was real Delft China from the 1680s, because she had the most fabulous collection
of things.
And more than that, she'd just say, oh, use this deer, you know, and loan it to the art
department.
There was a silver cloud Rolls Royce in a barn with sheets over it.
I mean, it was an exceptional place.
And the peacocks were just there.
Yeah.
And they stayed there.
So you can imagine trying to find a house that was built no later than 1694, it had to
be before that.
And that had the right architectural features without any modernization or any changes,
both interior and exterior.
The wood paneling.
There's no digital removal back then.
Absolutely none whatsoever.
You got what you got.
And to be able to do that, compose the shots we did, have the compositions with the lighting
through windows, have the composition with wood paneling and the way we structured everything.
Without that house, we couldn't have made the film without a house like that.
So it was essential that we found a place.
And we did.
Well, the house was a character.
Fortunately, the woman who owned it was extremely sympathetic and very generous.
And knew when to leave.
Right.
Just take care of the daughter.
She's flattered about what we were doing about her.
We were using her house.
Susan, especially because of these long takes and watching it again now and being just struck
as...
Because it really, in a way, is written as a stage play, and not that it's a stagey.
It's not.
It's real exchange and dialogue.
As we're saying, it's probably his strongest narrative.
He threw grenades at narratives ever since and has done his own thing, which is fantastic.
But this was really the most traditional.
He had a sense of continuity with the narrative, and it wasn't just constantly...
It was elliptical in many ways, but it was also very linear in other aspects.
But what I'm getting at is those long takes require a great deal of discipline apart of
the actors, because just one flub, and then that's a lot of film that's been...
Did you guys see dailies at all, ever, or was...
Peter had a steenback on location.
I mean, there was no projection.
So what happened is we shot six days a week, six days.
On the seventh day, which was the Sunday, I would take all the print dailies, drive them
back to London, sit and watch the entire week's dailies.
Actually, in a theater.
In a theater, and then drive back.
He never accompanied me.
He said, you go and have a look and make sure it's photographically okay.
That's trust.
Yeah.
Well, he was seeing composition and whatnot with the steenback.
But it was quite a remarkable experience, because I literally spent the whole of Sunday
watching the week's work with the print dailies that we had.
Back to my question, Susan, there was an enormous amount of discipline that you all guys have
to really be...
You really have to have digested the script to be able to do those long interchanges and
takes.
What was that like?
Was there any fear or white-neckling there, or was it just craft took you through it?
Well, I go back to the script, actually, because the script was so incredibly well written.
When you perform Shakespeare, I mean, in Britain, we do a lot of theater and tend to do a lot
of classical Shakespeare or Marlowe.
I think that we all just fell into, because I say that the script was so well written,
using our actorly skills.
It was a dream to do, actually, to be honest, Tom.
Peter would say things like, okay, this is the scene, and this, and this, and this, and
this, and this is what's happened, and this, and this, and this is about to happen, and
we're at this point in the story.
Any questions, and you sort of go, okay, well, am I this, am I that, but more to do with
the character, am I angry, sad, that kind of basic thing.
Usually it was, well, just say the words, love.
No, I mean, he'd never say that, because he was like 100% invested in the script, as we
all were.
Of course, you concentrate, but then in a play, when you're doing a play, you don't
say, sorry, you've got to stop and do that again, and then inevitably we did make mistakes,
and then we just stop and start again, but they were long takes, but actually, I hadn't
even thought about that until you mentioned it earlier, but watching it tonight, which
is the first time I've seen it for about 20 years, I was surprised at how long each take
was.
On a 400, well, we shot in Super 16, so it was 400 foot mags.
I couldn't get two takes on one mag, because the scenes would be running like five minutes,
some of them.
So the challenge to the actors to be able to achieve the performance, and the remarkable
consistency of the performances in the film is just incredible, because there were very
few retakes.
Yeah, I don't remember there being that many, and what's the matter?
No.
I remember when we were doing the tracking shots, the dinner scenes, and the complex
timing of when we would pass over somebody's dialogue and then pick up a reaction and end
up going into the table and make our way back.
All that was carefully pre-planned and choreographed, as you know, but if something went wrong in
the last minute, 30 seconds of the take, then that whole take was null and void.
Because he refused to have any kind of coverage that would allow him to use part of one take
and then add it to another part of another take and join them together with the intercut.
So it was absolutely intense pressure, particularly with the camera moves, to make sure that we
were where we needed to be at the right time.
Again, no video assist.
No video assist, yeah.
So there was a trust factor that we actually got it.
So somebody was like the old-fashioned way when the director turns to the operator and
says, did we get it?
Then you had to have a decision made that you did or didn't, and you had to go again
or not.
Were the stage directions meticulous in the script and that thick script you got?
I can't honestly remember, but I still don't remember.
Because the script came before you found the location so that you could adapt?
Right.
Because it consisted of the dialogue, the screenplay.
Lois, because this was early in your career, so how did you come to be attached to it?
Well, there was another BFI film.
In fact, it was a second film I worked on, the first film being Gregory's Girl.
But in between, I was asked by the BFI to join, it was sort of like a composite piece
about with six directors all having a go at a 10-minute version of a story around a monkey
puzzle tree.
One of the directors was Peter Greenway, and that's how we met.
Very good.
Your credit is the makeup artist, but from our conversations, it sounds like you were
kind of the jack of all trades going, popping in and out of scenes and costume.
We'll talk about your hydrodynamic engineering in a minute.
There's another Peter Greenway quote, which I quite like, it's called, I think there is
a way to treat the human body in a serious, warm way without being over-demonstrative
or emphasizing its sexuality.
Well, I'm not going to try and break that down for you, but I'm curious actually with,
I mean, obviously you had to kind of recreate certain makeup for the camera purposes, but
also to be true to the period.
But you also did body makeup and this statue, and what was that journey like to discover
those things?
And you were doing them all kind of on the fly, you were doing them in the field.
You weren't back at a wonderful studio where you had all the supplies and the resources.
It was just like going to the market, right?
Absolutely.
In fact, remind me to tell you a funny story about going to the market, because it's just
popped into my head that the visits of the local chemist, pharmacy, sorry, in Grimbridge
because it was amusing.
Well, at least I hope it's amusing, I'm going to tell it.
The research was this, I mean, with anything, with any period film to be perfectly honest,
and I suppose that was my first, which it was, that you find out as much information
about the period as is possible.
And then because it's Peter Greenway, you're going to stylize it, but you have to know
what the actuality is and the truth of it is to be able to stylize.
And that was definitely part of Sue Blaine, Bob Ringwood, everyone's, you know, remit
and feeling was to do that.
So the fontages weren't ever, were taller than any real fontage would have been historically.
And for the restoration makeup, when you think of restoration makeup, you're thinking of
lead-based foundations.
So obviously I'm not going to rush out and buy a tonne of lead and poison half the cast.
So it was an amalgam of what was technically required to help Curtis and being a bit of
well, maybe a bit of this and a liquidizer, which was absolutely true, with baby lotions
and pigments.
So let's see how that works out, put it in a Tupperware, leave it in the fridge overnight
and hope for the best.
And that's basically the basis of a lot of that makeup.
I know that makes it sound that hot.
And then combine with some, you know, commercial powders that you could actually buy that had
iridescence, that kind of thing.
So that's really how it came about.
The statue, in fact, was going to play by Michael Feast, who I came to know extremely
well.
Because there's only two of you, right?
Yes.
And you're both women in the department?
Actually, yes.
But in fact, the first statue I did with Peter King, who is credited on films now as being
Peter Sword's King, who did Lord of the Rings and was just completed, in fact, Star Wars.
But we all started, Peter Rowan, Peter King and myself knew each other through the theatre
world.
They rang the wig department at Welsh National Opera.
So that was our kind of journey.
And although they were asked independently to do the film for myself, we kind of knew
each other.
So it was Peter King and myself that first did the step away from the description of
the statue, which is based on a fact.
And that people, you know, there was a great fashion for Italian.
The garden was everything.
The garden is an allegorical statement within that period.
And it's dovetailed to, at the same time, you know, people losing their fortunes over
a tulip bulb in Amsterdam.
So it's that period for those who aren't familiar with it, Dutch bulbs.
So it was, you know, the allegory of the garden was intense.
And so it was in county life.
And rich, not rich, but kind of, you know, wanting to be wealthier than they actually
are, landowners, Peter had come across a reference of someone who had paid a servant on a high
day and a holiday when posh people were going to be visiting them, to dress as a statue
and run around the garden and pose.
So you'd be the same person, but as you sort of go along, you just, you know, sort of stand.
So there are a couple of statues that aren't in the film that I was quite sort of, you
know, disappointed by.
We did a version of the lovers persuading the two runners, who at that point were having
an affair with each other, to go in the buff and pretend to be the lovers, you know, a
version of that along the walk, but it's not in the film.
Anyway, so it was sort of based upon the fact that he was going to be kind of skin-colored
with a loincloth, and that was rather disappointing.
And we saw that lovely wall with all the algae and everything else on it, all the moss, and
came up with the idea of having a go, because that's, you know, and said we could do a statue,
you know, blending into the wall if you like it, and of course he did, and then worked
out the scene that was good, the dialogue that was going to be shot against it.
And then, of course, we ran wild with the idea, and it was, how about tomorrow he pees?
Tomorrow he's in the garden.
And that's usually the prop master's responsibility or visual effects, or special effects to create
the water, but I guess that fell to you, to engineer that?
Oh, what, the pee?
Yeah.
Yes.
Well, take two, you're in, you know, you could either wait for 20 minutes or, you know,
run a tap or force him to drink a gallon of water.
Have another beer.
I don't know what happened, so yes, it was just very fine tubing, run, obviously, where
one would expect, and down the leg, down the plinth to a bucket with water in and a foot
pump.
Very carefully disguised, but what made me giggle was that we did do a couple of takes,
I think, if I remember correctly, and what made me giggle looking at it, you know, on
the steam bed, was that of course I started to go with my foot pump, the pressure started
to build.
That's in the outtakes.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the thing is, we've all been in those situations where you have very few
resources in your own location, and there's a galvanizing spree decor that comes out of
everyone surviving an insane situation, and it seems like you guys had that in significant
amounts in this film.
It looks like it, you know, it was just, you know, a holiday, it wasn't, it was hard work,
but...
There was a strong commitment to the story, and to the project, and the possibilities
of what it could become, and I think that's what made it possible, and overcame any potential
obstacles that we had to deal with.
You know, fortunately we did not run out of money, we could actually complete it, and...
Well, didn't just, one of you say that the BFI, one of the rules was that the movie can't
make money, can't be something like that?
Well, I remember when the project was being green lit for the BFI, there were some people
on the production board who thought it was too commercial, so, but, which was, there's
an irony to that, because the film actually was commercially successful, and artistically
praised and successful as well.
So the money, they actually made money on the film, and we did get some supplementary
pay.
Oh, good.
Oh, no, that was all based on union agreement, that we would agree to work for what we did,
but that if the film made money, then we would get a supplemental payment, you know,
so it was totally egalitarian across the board, as far as I know.
Oh, well, they didn't tell you about my fee.
Oh, you had your special, right, man.
