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Issues of race, class, religion, and national origin tend to complicate matters.
The Survivoris a nexus point for Levinsonian themes.
Shed never spoken of a brother before.
And the first night he was there, I woke up because I could hear him yelling and talking.
I think he moved to New Jersey.
And then I forgot about that, as you do when youre a kid.
Nobody ever talked about it after he left.
When I was 16, sitting around a table with my mother one day, she mentioned Simka.
And she said, You know he was in a concentration camp.
Youre carrying something dark that you cant seem to get rid of.
I thought that was an interesting story to follow, and thats how I got involved.
People are talking to each other about things other than the events of the plot.Yeah.
You add those things as you go along.
You cant just keep staying on the plot.
You want to explore other aspects.
God doesnt pay that much attention to me anyway.
I love that whole sequence for all the different things that it does.
The human race is truly flawed.
The difficulties of communicating all feed into that, along with all of our emotional oddities.
Can you talk about the language or communication aspect a bit more?
They didnt get anything about it.
And that turned out to be the saving grace forDiner.
I thought that by doing it as a series of casual talks, I could show all those issues.
In life, we have a tendency to go sideways into most issues.
And then television comes along, and its not as personal.
We look to a television family for our entertainment.
You see the drift, and then the separation.
You know, its funny.
Sometimes Ill hear things like, Oh,The Survivoris a concentration-camp movie.
And to be honest with you, I never thought of it as a concentration-camp movie.
Its interesting how the movie toys with expectations.
Hes not going to talk.You take your time revealing that this is an eloquent, thoughtful guy.
Turns out hes a guy who looks inward all the time.
Hes just not writing a novel about it.Well, that is Harry Haft.
Much of what you describe is gathered from information about him.
Tell me a little bit about the look of the film.We looked at pictures of things a lot.
We tried to build a palette for each time.
Our cinematographer George Steel was very good at rendering that color.
You know, we didnt have much time to shoot this.
We did it in 34 days.
Thats a very tight time frame for a historical epic.
During that time, Ben had an eating fest.
The physicality of it all was quite amazing.
The boxing was also complicated because Ben had to learn how to box in character as Harry.
His body is stretched out horizontally, almost like something from a Max Fleischer Popeye cartoon.
It wasnt just You got knocked down and now youre out.
There are two parts to the shot.
What can you tell me about working with Ben Foster?Ben is remarkable.
I think hes one of the great character actors of his generation.
I dont know anybody that can lose himself in one role after another the way he can.
We first worked together 20-some years ago.
I put him inLiberty Heights, which was his first feature.
Thats something Vicky Krieps does as well.
Ill give you an example.
Very late in the film, Harry is telling the story about the fact that he killed his friend.
Just sit in your chair.
Tell me a little more about Vicki Krieps.
Sometimes actors work because of what they say and thats where their strength is.
She can get a lot of attention without saying anything.
Theres a great simplicity about her.
Hes terrific both dramatically and comedically.
Some of the films that Ive done in the past, I dont think you could ever make again.
I think that time is over.
But he does it in a way thats pure Danny DeVito.
I was sitting around one day going, What did Charlie Goldman look like?
Bring me some pictures!
He said, Where are you shooting?
I said, Budapest.
He said, Im there.
I can imagine other directors saying, Wait, what are you doing?
Youre going to cause problems in the editing if you say that here.
But you didnt do that.No, I just wanted to leave it loose.
Look, theres an objective in any given scene.
I love it when it seems unpredictable.
Im happiest when it feels like we made it all up.
Why?Because human behavior isnt ordinary.
Thats why Im looking to do stuff like that!
When I sawOn the Waterfront, I was 12 years old or something like that.
I thought,Holy God, thats the most amazing thing Ive ever seen.
The moment seemed so ordinary that I was fascinated by it.
I know nothing about movies at that point.
I dont know who does what on a film set.
I dont even know what a director does.
The other important moment for me came when I was a kid watching the TV version ofMarty.
Theres this simple line when Martys friend Angie says, Whaddaya feel like doing tonight?
and Marty goes, I dont know, Angie.
What do you feel like doing?
And they go back and forth like that, asking each other Whaddya wanna do?
And I thought,That was the greatest piece of writing I ever heard in my whole life.
It sounded to me like something I might say to my friend.
To me, that said more about a friendship than anything else could.
But those two things, those two ordinary things, fromOn the WaterfrontandMarty, stayed in my mind.
I ended up making movies that make a run at have lots of those kinds of moments.
