Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind...
All About Evening - A chat with Michael Cunningham and Lajos Koltai
Expanded Editions of 6-27-07 Windy City Times Interviews
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Evening Executive Producer and Co-Screenwriter Michael Cunningham, Meryl Streep and Vanessa Redgrave at the film's climax,
director Lajos Koltai
Among writer Michael Cunningham’s books is the Pulitzer Prize winning “The Hours,” “A Home at the End of the World” and the more
recent “Specimen Days.”  The first two were made into movies, the first winning high praise and an Oscar for Nicole Kidman, the
second, which starred Colin Farrell and Sissy Spacek, not reaching the audience it deserved.  The openly gay Cunningham is in
discussion with Julianne Moore and her husband director Bart Freudlich about a movie adaptation of “Specimen Days” and is working
on a new novel.  Cunningham first became part of a film version of
Evening five years ago – at the behest of his Hours and End of
the World producer Jeff Sharp.  
Evening is a romantic drama set in wealthy Newport, Rhode Island and travels between the present
and a fateful weekend 50 years earlier.  The movie’s stellar cast includes Vanessa Redgrave, Meryl Streep, Claire Danes, Hugh
Dancy, Patrick Wilson, Toni Collette, Natasha Richardson, and Mamie Gummer, Streep’s daughter.  Windy City Times spoke with both
Cunningham and the film’s director, Lajos Koltai, who makes his American debut with
Evening.

WINDY CITY TIMES (WCT):  What was so compelling about
Evening that made you not only want to co-adapt the novel but to also
executive produce the movie?

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM (MC):  I loved the novel to begin with.  I’ve been a huge fan of Susan Minot’s for years and I read “Evening”
when it came out.  Jeff Sharp called me like five years ago saying they had optioned it and did I want to think about adapting it.  My
mother was very ill at the time and she died about six months after I got the call and it was a coincidence too big to ignore – the
notion that I was being asked to think about finding a way to re-tell this story that was so matched up with what was happening in
my own life.  I thought, “Well, just say yes.”

WCT:  I haven’t read the book but weren’t a lot of changes made?

MC:  I very much hope that the heart and the spirit of the story is entirely unchanged but yes, a lot of the particulars are pretty
different.  The big problem in adapting Susan’s novel was really population control – there are dozens of characters in the book and
of course a movie can’t accommodate 50 characters.  You have to winnow and hone.  Maybe the biggest change I made was to give
Buddy – a character so brilliantly played by Hugh Dancy – a major promotion.  Buddy is a peripheral figure in the novel.  I just felt
attached to Buddy.  This romantic, ruined son of this wealthy family and I thought, “If he had a bigger role I bet something
dramatically interesting could happen between him and Ann and Harris.”

WCT:  For a long time I had a society band that played a lot of these WASP parties at these fancy estates and at every single event
there would be one of those married guys that would get drunk and blatantly ask myself and the other gay member, “Well, what are
you doing later?”  Do you think WASP culture is ever going to accept gay people?  Because of course the reason for Buddy’s mental
torture is because he’s gay.

MC:  I don’t really know WASP culture – I relied on Susan for that – but it’s my impression that things haven’t changed all that much
and it’s hard to say whether WASP culture is more homophobic than many other subcultures in America or if it is just more
fundamentally opposed to different and eccentricity in any form.  Gay is just a little too unusual (laughs).

WCT:  Did you write for these actors?

MC:  We didn’t write with anybody in mind.  An independent movie like this especially without a superhero in it is incredibly difficult to
get made.  It took a full five years and we were just focused on trying to write the best screenplay we possibly could.  We really
weren't thinking about actors though relatively early on.  At one point Claire Danes out of kindness agreed to read for us – twice –
and I got fixated on her as Ann Grant and I continued to rewrite with Claire in mind.

WCT:  She is wonderful.  I found the whole set up of the movie to be very familiar – the family and friends gathered as the mother
was going through the last stages of her life and the hospice person supervising.  As a middle-aged gay man that scenario of those
bittersweet nights must have resonated with you as well.

MC:  Oh absolutely.

WCT:  To me the best special effect of the summer – this is in my review – is the scene when those two acting titans, Vanessa
Redgrave and Meryl Streep, are together in that bed.

MC:  Oh my God!  Can you fucking believe that?!

WCT:  I was enthralled.  Even more so because the entire movie builds to that scene.

MC:  I know – Meryl and Vanessa in the same scene in the same bed together – how much better could it be?

WCT:  Well that must have been a wonderful scene to witness on the set and it must have been wonderful to see those titans with
their daughters.

MC:  It was astonishing though you know Meryl and Mamie (Gummer, Streep’s daughter) were never on the set together.  We shot
about three and a half weeks with the present day cast – Vanessa and Meryl and Natasha and Toni Collette and then they went away
and the other cast arrived.

WCT:  I think we’re always so drawn to things that resonate personally with us and I found that with the whole set up of the movie –
the family and friends gathered as the mother was going through the last stages of her life and the hospice person supervising.  As
a middle-aged gay man that scenario of those bittersweet nights was so familiar and that must have resonated with you.

MC:  Oh absolutely.

WCT:  There’s a great deal of that for me as well in
A Home at the End of the World.

MC:  It turns out that I was making my life.  I just thought I was doing one thing and then another and it added up to that.

WCT (laughs):  Well you made my life, too.  I don’t mean to disappoint you but I think that’s the film that’s the masterpiece – over
The Hours.  When you brought in Laura Nyro to give resonance to that scene early in the movie with Sissy Spacek – well, it was just
filled with perfect moments like that.

MC:  Frankly, I am so thrilled to hear you say that.  Between us I feel the same way.  It’s just one of those things.  
The Hours was a
hit and
A Home at the End of the World in terms of audience and a lot of critics was a miss.  You’re completely surprised by these
things and you just don’t know how people are going to receive what you’ve done.  We were all of course disappointed in the
reception for
A Home at the End of the World.  It was a combination of the fact that it wasn’t very well publicized but you can’t blame
everything on your distributor.  I think at that moment people just weren’t interested in that story for whatever reason.  It’s a big
mystery.  I learned this years ago as a novelist – you can’t anticipate people’s reactions.  No one expected
The Hours – the novel or
the movie – to be any kind of hit but for some crazy reason it struck a chord.  Who knew?

WCT:  What about your latest novel “Specimen Days” – is a movie adaptation of that going to happen?

MC:  Well, I have been working with
Julianne Moore.

WCT:  Love her.

MC:  How much do we love Julianne Moore?  And her direct Bart Freundlich on an adaptation of just the final third of “Specimen Days”
– the science fiction story in which, yes, Julie will play a lizard girl from another planet.

WCT (laughs):  Good!  She’s fearless.

MC:  Yes, she’s fearless and she can do anything.  Who can play the lizard girl?  Julianne Moore.  I actually have a conference call
scheduled this week about where to take it.

WCT:  Great – and a new novel at some point?

MC:  I’ve started a new novel but it’s too early to discuss subject matter right now.  I find that in the very early phases I can’t talk
about it.

WCT:  Okay, that can be my birthday present next month – I’ll call you to discuss (laughs).

MC:  Okay, happy birthday in advance.


Windy City Times talks with Evening director Lajos Koltai.

WCT:  Is the term “chick flick” or “women’s picture” an okay label for you to describe this movie?

LAJOS KOLTAI (LK):  I don’t think so.  Not at all.  It’s not about a woman’s problem.  It’s about a problem with a human being who
tried to belong to somebody.  This is about Buddy – Buddy who is the middle of the film, like a central figure.  He’s kind of lonely
because he’s not ready yet and he tries to have everybody around him not go – Harris, Ann, and Lila – because he feels safety from
them.

WCT:  When you say “Buddy is not ready” are you implying and I hope you are because this is how you took it – that he is not ready
to come out as gay, to be who he really is because of his circumstances?

LK:  Absolutely.  So the movie is about decisions.  Everybody should go.  It’s not just for women.

WCT:  Did the sadness and regret of the material have an effect on the mood of the set?  I’ve heard that intense material usually
means a happy go lucky set.

LK:  It was a very good mood all the time because the people loved doing it and being together.  Even the crew members were
happy working on it.

WCT:  You establish the dreamlike, painterly quality of the 1950s scenes with that first shot of Buddy and Ann – his blood red jacket
against the blinding white mansion, the green grass and the blue water.

LK:  Yes, Hopper was very influential and so was Wyatt with all those beautiful paintings of blowing curtains and windows.  This is
always a part of how I work.  I grew up immersed in painters and art history in Budapest.  I had an unbelievable teacher at the film
academy in Budapest that emphasized this.  I always start with a strong image of a painting from the period.  This search is an
inspiration for the rest of the movie.

WCT:  Because Vanessa Redgrave’s character is dreaming so much the film is filled with dream imagery and having seen the picture
twice, I caught many little things I missed the first time – like Harris being with her in the boat in the beginning.

LK:  I hope everyone sees it two times at least!  I tried so many things – how you put together the house, for example.  What you
put in the house and what you figure out about this family from the inside and outside of the house.  Maybe you picked up that
everywhere self-portraits were hanging.

WCT:  The Sargent portraits, yes – all those oppressive WASPY paintings.  The interior is so claustrophobic compared to the great
expanse just outside – a sort of microcosm of that world.

LK:  Yes, yes, you see!

WCT:  I got it!  Oh good, I’m so smart (laughs).  This is a pretty impressive cast for your first Hollywood movie as a director.  Did
you offer direction to Redgrave and Streep for that scene they share?

LK:  That’s a very good question because these actors do want direction.  I was sometimes talking to Vanessa during a shot about
how to go to sleep; to go back to the dream.  She loved it and of course I went to Meryl and asked her to do things.  It was such an
intimate scene and most importantly, it was the essence of the film and the camera is so unbelievably close to them.  I asked them
if we could try different things and she said, “Yes, I will try to do that for you.”  We also talked about the scene beforehand.  You
also rely on your actors – this is the kind of situation that happens in the moment.  It was the kind of scene where you have to let
the actors have some freedom.  I really believe that finished scene is a piece of film history.  I really believe that.  Those two are
just unbelievable.