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| Blind director Michael Mailer with producer Jennifer Gelfer and Anne-Katrin Titze Photo: Kim of Orlin |
In the past few months, Alec Baldwin has starred with Diane Lane in Eleanor Coppola's Paris Can Wait (which has its UK première at the Edinburgh International Film Festival), had an Unbound conversation with Anna Sale at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House for the book launch of Nevertheless: A Memoir, continued to portray Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live, and is now appearing opposite Demi Moore and Dylan McDermott in Michael Mailer's Blind (with a screenplay by John Buffalo Mailer), which will shortly be seen on the big screen.
Producer Jennifer Gelfer who is currently directing her first film The Second Sun joined Michael Mailer and me at the end of last year for a Blind conversation at Cafe Orlin in New York's East Village.
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| Alec Baldwin as Bill Oakland: "Alec really trained hard. He spent time at the Lighthouse Guild for the blind." |
Anne-Katrin Titze: Eric Rohmer said that every film has a colour. I was wondering what colour Blind is. What do you think?
Michael Mailer: To me it wasn't so much about a colour, per se, as a progression of colour. At the beginning of the film we shot very muted tones because everyone is blind on some level, literally and metaphorically. And they are living within their own prisons. And as the relationship and the love affair evolves, more and more colour is added to each scene. Up to when you have a bright red rose in France.
AKT: I thought the closest colour to encompass it all would be that of Demi Moore's blindfold, that bluish green. Cyan. Let's talk about Alec Baldwin playing a blind man, partly as metaphor. The movie was 12 years in the making.
MM: At least 12. It had a number of incarnations when I was producing it, solely as a producer. When I decided that I wanted to direct, Alec was my first choice. We'd worked together on Seduced And Abandoned, the documentary about Cannes [Film Festival]. You know, I wanted somebody who had dimensions to their persona both in real life and their acting persona.
He's definitely one of those actors who can hit all those beats of comedy, of pathos, darkness, light, humor. He, in many ways, was born to play Bill Oakland. I do think he delivers a bravura level of performance.
AKT: You have him run as a blind man. Twice!
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| Alec Baldwin's Nevertheless: A Memoir at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
MM: There are different levels of blindness. Alec really trained hard. He spent time at the Lighthouse Guild for the blind. He developed very close relationships with a number of the blind people who attend that centre.
AKT: He has to run as a blind person, although, of course, we know that he is acting and can see. Before the screening at the Lycée Français, in the lobby, people were whispering to each other when Alec showed up. "There is Trump, there is Trump".
Jennifer Gelfer: Oh, really?
MM: They didn't literally think that is was Trump?
AKT: I have no idea. I hope not. The line I mostly connect with Alec Baldwin is from Glengarry Glen Ross. "Always Be Closing." Tell me a little about the music for the film. You end with a song with the lyrics "We'll always have the moon."
MM: Jen and Martin Tuchman, two of my producers, discovered that group.
AKT: So, Jen, maybe you can talk about them?
JG: We were shooting when Paris happened. The last day of shooting [in New York] on Friday the 13th, actually. And Paris happened.
AKT: The Bataclan attacks on November 13, 2015.
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| Alec Baldwin with Anna Sale at BAM's Howard Gilman Opera House Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
JG: Yes. We knew we were going to France a week later. I ended up not going, I was too afraid. He [Martin Tuchman] was listening to a lot of French music because he was so moved by what had occurred and he sent me this beautiful version of La Vie En Rose. He listened to about 140 covers of it. And he heard these two people and he saw them on video and he sent it to me. And not really thinking about it in terms of the movie, I sent it to Michael.
And Michael went "I love this. I want this for the movie." Within a week, Michael's assistant found these musicians, we flew them to France. We recorded two songs - The Moon Is Blue and La Vie En Rose. It came about just in a response to what had happened.
MM: Everybody thinks they're French but they're not. They're American.
JG: They're from Berkeley, California.
AKT: I remember the evening of that Friday very vividly. I was moderating the post-screening discussion that evening for the opening night of [Stig Björkman's] Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words, with the director and Ingrid Bergman's daughter Pia Lindstrom up at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. We were all in a slight state of shock.
JG: It was surrealistic. Actually, Martin started texting me saying what's happening and I went to Michael and he sort of was in disbelief. He thought that can't be happening as we were just about to go to France.
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| On Gay Talese with Naomi Wolf and Taki Theodoracopulos in Blind: "A great New York party has always an eclectic mix." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze |
AKT: The world is changing so rapidly. Any day something new could happen. That's why I liked the scene with the rain is pouring down outside in Blind. Because you can have all the riches in the world, you can have the most beautiful apartment overlooking whatever, it means nothing if you are in a situation like these characters.
MM: Right. It doesn't buy happiness. Not at all.
AKT: The film is called Blind. It is about the senses. Scent and perfume plays an important role. Whose perfume is lily of the valley? Muguet Des Bois?
MM: It's Muguet Des Bois which is actually the perfume that my stepmother used to wear, Norris Mailer. She loved it. As a kid I remember smelling the perfume and really digging it. Norris is John's [Buffalo Mailer] full mother and it was meaningful to him as well. And if you're blind you rely on your other senses that become somewhat more acute. Hearing and smell in particular.
My dad was a very olfactory writer. Smells are always so prevalent in his books. I think all of his kids have an acute sense of smell because it was so important to him. I thought it would be kind of cool to highlight that in the film.
AKT: Is there a special hatred for Chanel No.5?
MM: I actually had a girlfriend in college who broke my heart who used to wear Chanel No.5.
JG: It has a cheap connotation in the film.
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| Bill Oakland (Alec Baldwin) and Suzanne Dutchman (Demi Moore) in Blind |
AKT: My aunt Edith wore it, so I have no negative connotations.
MM: Had my relationship turned out better, I would have found another perfume to chastise.
AKT: Well, you juxtapose a very unknown Coty perfume from 1941 with a very famous one. Right at the beginning, Gay Talese shows his face at a party. Was Gay gung-ho to be in your film?
MM: He is an old family friend, as is Taki Theodoracopulos, the other character in that party scene. Naomi Wolf was the woman. I wanted sort of an iconic party scene, classic New York upscale party scene. For historical and cultural purpose, the three of them would be great to sort of open that. A great New York party has always an eclectic mix.
AKT: I thought you were going to say: always has Gay Talese in it.
MM: Yes. Gay is a ham and likes to be seen on screen.
Coming up - Michael Mailer and Jennifer Gelfer on Demi Moore "living in a gilded cage" in Blind, her wardrobe, Dylan McDermott's character, and what is real and what isn't.
Blind opens in the US on July 14.
