BOUNCING BACK AFTER A SETBACK

The Determination to Begin Again

►An Interview With Isabel Coixet

Isabel Coixet has twenty-six directing credits to her name, sixteen of which she wrote herself. She won Best Director at the Barcelona Film Awards for My Life Without Me (2003), starring Sarah Polley, and for The Secret Life of Words (2005), starring Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins. She also won the Guild of German Art House Cinemas prize at the Berlinale for My Life Without Me. Her most recent film, Nobody Wants the Night (2015), was nominated for the top award at the Berlin International Film Festival, the Golden Bear, and her film Map of the Sounds of Tokyo (2009) was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

Isabel Coixet

Photo by Gabriela García—Pixie Light Writer Photography

Her upcoming film The Bookshop (2017) is currently in preproduction, due to star Bill Nighy, Emily Mortimer, and Patricia Clarkson. Coixet has directed Clarkson in several films over the years, and in addition to working with Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins, she has directed numerous award-winning actors such as Juliette Binoche, Gabriel Byrne, Ben Kingsley, Penélope Cruz, Andrew McCarthy, Lili Taylor, Leslie Mann, and Seymour Cassel.

Coixet knows what it means to bounce back after a fall. There’s a seven-year gap on her IMDb page between her first feature and those that followed. In fact, her getting started story is actually a story of starting again.

You’ve mentioned that you felt your first film was a failure, and it took you seven years to try again. What do you think finally gave you the courage to start again after seven years, and why did it take that long?
I think I was just too young when I did my first movie. I was more in love with the idea of being a director than actually telling stories. I had this image in my mind about the person in charge—the person who calls the shots, who says “action” and “cut.” So my first film isn’t very good in the end, because it’s more about posing than reality.

I realized that very soon, and it made me feel ashamed. It made me want to live more and know more about human nature and hard work. That’s why it took seven years to try again. I had the idea that the people in the film business, they just let me in for about five minutes—being a director—and then they took it away from me. I know it’s a dramatic way to think about it, but that was how I felt at the time.

Meaning you felt you weren’t allowed to participate after your first film?
I was so naive. I mean, I’m still naive, still innocent, but I was so naive that I thought you have the aspiration to be a director, and then boom, that’s it. If you fail, it’s over. But if you really want to be a director, it’s more about what you think about the world, what kind of landscape you create for your actors. I needed more experience, and I needed practice being humble. So this seven years, they were a good lesson in humility.

How old were you when you shot your first film?
I was 25.

You say that you felt ashamed. What did that shame look like? How did it play out in your life?
Every time I passed by a movie theater, I cried. Any time there was a mention of the films I had seen as a teenager—of Bergman or Truffaut, these people who were my inspiration—that was hard for me. And also, I guess the fact that I’m a woman, this made a difference, too. Men are never ashamed. I don’t know any male filmmaker saying, “Okay, that was a mistake,” or “I wasn’t prepared,” or “My first film wasn’t any good.” Never. But you can see women saying that, because we internalize everything, and we elaborate about our past. So that’s where the shame comes from.

How did you hold onto the dream that you could be a director when you felt that you’d failed?
I worked a lot. I did a million commercials. And thanks to commercials, I traveled around the world. I worked in Texas, in India, in Germany, in Japan, in Australia, in Buenos Aires. So I just submerged myself in commercials.

During that period of time, did you continue to believe you could be a feature director? Or did you give it up for a while?
Every time I was on one of those expensive commercials with a huge crew, in the sun on a Miami beach, for instance, I would think, “Well, this is okay. It’s not what I want, but it’s okay.” But finally, I decided not to give up so easily. There was a moment when I reminded myself this was my dream.

Seven years later.
Yes, seven years later. I went to Oregon, and I started writing a script called Things I Never Told You, and I used the money I earned making commercials to make this film. I didn’t have financiers or producers, because I thought they wouldn’t like it since my first movie was a disaster.

So you fully funded it yourself.
Yes, I did. Not a good idea.

Why Portland? What took you to Portland to write?
I love Portland, and they have this amazing bookstore, Powell’s. I used to be there at all times. Plus, I had friends there. So I started watching movies again, and I felt inspired by Portland. And I wrote my little story, and we shot it in St. Helen’s, about three miles away.

You had a great cast in that film. How did you get the script to Lili Taylor and Andrew McCarthy?
I love Lili. I’d seen every movie she’d been in, and I really thought she was perfect for the project. I had this friend, Monika Mikkelsen—and this was the first movie she did as a casting director. She was very enthusiastic. She really understood the script, and she helped me immensely. She got the script to Lili Taylor, and then to Andrew McCarthy, and Richard Edson was one of the actors.

And after that was Seymour Cassel. Seymour Cassel was very important to me, because he was an actor who had worked with one of my heroes, John Cassavetes. He was doing a show at the time in Portland, and someone told me, “This guy, he’s staying in that hotel. Why don’t you go?” And I discovered that he loved cigars, so I bought a big box of cigars and I went to the hotel and I said, “I love John Cassavetes, and I’m doing this new movie. Will you play Andrew McCarthy’s father?” And he said yes. I don’t know how, but he said yes.

Who at that time gave you feedback on your script? Did you show drafts of it to anyone?
Well, I wrote the script in English, and I sent it to some friends in Spain. But about friends—this is my advice for your readers—when too many people see a script, I don’t think that’s a good thing. When you finish a script, it’s good to just let it boil for, let’s say, a week. And then read it again. But don’t show it to so many people. All these advisor opinions, even friends’ opinions, they’re just opinions.

So you would tell people to rewrite on their own first, before showing a script to people?
Yes, and what you have to do is work from your gut. When you start intellectualizing too much, I think there’s some freshness lost. Just stay true to you. One of the things I always say when I do a master class is that the only things you have to learn in filmmaking, they’re in the Rainer Maria Rilke book, Letters to a Young Poet. Everything you need to know is there. It’s about art. It’s about poetry, staying true to you and being humble.

How would you advise a filmmaker just getting started to differentiate between feedback that’s important to listen to and feedback that maybe isn’t so useful?
You have to know what you want. You want producers to call and ask you to direct a new installment of the fourth Avengers, or do you want to do your thing? Me? I want to do my thing. I don’t care about franchises or formulas or all this. I want to do what I want to do. So if you want to do what you want to do, don’t listen to people. I’m not a person who will do a screening for my friends, no. If they want to watch a film, they’re going to watch it when it’s finished. Because they’ll say, “No-no, we can watch a rough cut or watch it with no music.” But no. The more finished the better when people see it. Otherwise you get feedback that isn’t useful.

What about the other stakeholders? What about their feedback?
Listen to your editor. This is the person to listen to. Have a really good editor, someone you can rely on and direct. As my friend said, the rest is just cheap whiskey.

What about feedback from reviewers? Can we talk about how you process the highs and lows of reviews?
Well, I’ve had amazing reviews, and I’ve had terrible reviews. So at this moment I clench my teeth and say, “Okay, they hate it. What are we going to do?” It’s painful for anyone, but there’s no way out of that. You have to suffer. And it’s not the end of the world. This is what you have to remember. You don’t have to let them define who you are. But they can make parts of your life really miserable, this is true.

The last film I did, Nobody Wants the Night, it opened at Berlin Film Festival. It was the worst reviews of my career. Did that change my impression of the film? I have to say, no. I’m really proud of the film. Whatever they say, I’m proud. I think there’s something pure and powerful about this film. But they were bored, so they decide to trash the film—and the director.

So if you’re proud of the work, then it’s less painful if you get a bad review?
Sure, because sometimes I have bad reviews for a film I wasn’t proud of for a million reasons, and then I say, “Okay, I deserve it.” Either way, it’s not nice, and it’s not easy, but this is part of the work.

It’s part of the work, but in that moment, are you ever concerned about how bad reviews will affect your future ability to produce work? It’s tough not to worry about that, I would imagine.
The thing is, those reviews will never crush me as a director. But yes, I’m also very aware that there are a million people out there—financiers, producers, for instance—and they want success. They want good reviews. They want tons of money. So it’s very clear to me they’re going to trust less in my work. I’m very aware of that, and that’s horrible. But no—I keep fighting and I keep working.

So how do you have that discussion if you’re taking a meeting with someone—a producer or a financier—and you just got a negative review?
Oh yeah, I remember the day after those horrible reviews in Berlin, I had this dinner with a very important German producer who was going to produce my next film, and I knew exactly what was going to happen. They pulled out. They didn’t invest in my movie. Two months before, they thought it was going to be the most amazing film in history. But then they changed their opinion of the script. It happens all the time. It happens to everyone.

Does that help—knowing that this is just part of the process? That it happens to everybody?
Yeah, other directors I admire, they have gone through this. Just a few months ago, I was with Wim Wenders, and Wim also had a film in the festival in Berlin. The reviews with Wim, they were saying he was too old to direct movies. I mean, come on! This guy has made amazing movies. I think especially as you get older, every critic has to mention your age and how after that success you had many years ago, now you’re a failure.

Or they talk about how you look. As a director, I don’t need to know these peoples’ opinions about my weight, or the way I dress on the red carpet. Nobody has to talk about this. Why all this?

So does age factor in, in a negative way?
Oh yes. With my film Learning to Drive [2014], I remember a guy from The Times, he asked me something, saying, “So, now you’re pushing 50, and in your film you talk about middle age. Are you planning to do your next films about middle-age problems?” I was like, what? You’re going to ask Steven Spielberg that, or Woody Allen? No. You will just ask a female director this stupid question, because a woman is defined first by her sex, and then by her age.

What about with producers? When you sit down with producers to talk about your next film, do you think your gender or age factor in during those discussions?
Well, with young producers, if you’re a woman and you’re older and you have a ton of experience, then you’re more threatening to them, so they just avoid you. Some of these people have never even been on a movie set. They come from film school and from business, so they don’t know much about film as a craft.

For people just embarking on this career, what do you think they could learn from your lessons of navigating the business of filmmaking?
My first lesson will be, never ever use your own money to make a film. That’s something I want to say. I did it twice, and I hope I will never have to do it again. It is not good.

What was the second film?
I did a film in Spain called Yesterday Never Ends [2013]. I did it entirely myself, and it was very hard. Never use your own money. That’s the most important lesson I have to give people. Don’t do it, please.

Why did you end up financing this film yourself?
Because it’s a very political film, about a specific moment of the economic crisis, and it’s very, very sad. Everybody was scared to touch the subject. So yeah, I did it. And I’m also proud of that film. Sometimes I do big films, and sometimes I do small films. This is a small film.

On a small film, any advice about partnering with people to move the project forward?
Yes, for me it’s very important to have honest, fun, and good people around me, people who are good in their skins, who aren’t afraid. I always work with very good people, amazing DPs. We’re very close. This is my family in a way.

Your crew. And what about actors? You’re always able to attract such incredible onscreen talent.
My biggest fights are always about casting, because I can’t work with actors if I’m not 100 percent convinced they can do it. So I work with the people I think are perfect for the role. But I have to say, normally I can work with the people I really want. It’s not the actors who have the problem typically. It’s not them.

You approach the actors, and they say yes. So if there’s a problem, who is that with?
People called international sales agents. These people have a list with A, B, C, and D actors. So they give you this list, saying, “We like the script, and here’s the list of actors we think will make your film sell all over the world.” And you look at this list, and it’s like what? People you respect immensely, actors you love and think will be perfect for your movie, they’re on the D list. Amazing actors, considered nothing. What they do actually is A, B, C, and then the fourth degree, it’s not D—it’s no value. Normally the actors I love are in the category of no value.

So the international sales agents, who do they work for?
They’re the financiers. They give you money, and then they have the right to sell your film in the States or the rest of the world. And so I say, “Listen, all these suggestions you have in the A list, are you trying to tell me if I cast so-and-so from the A list, then you’re going to finance my film? Even if she’s totally wrong for a part, even if the part is written for a 45-year-old woman, you’re suggesting someone in her twenties?” Yeah, that’s how it works.

So you fight that battle up front. What about on the other side of production? You’ve talked about having to fight for final cut on a film.
They were taking the film from me, right—a big American company. It was one of those cases where the big company wants a commercial film, they want a genre film, and you’re doing something completely different. And you say beforehand, I think the idea you have about this film isn’t the idea I have. You can say it a thousand times, but they don’t listen. And then they think they can fix it if they take it from you and edit it themselves. But what they’re looking for is some illusion they have in their head.

So in that case, you already gave a cut of the film that you wanted?
And they fired my editor and hired three more editors. And then they say, no-no, we’ll come back to your first cut. This is just a test. But it never happens. It was a lie.

How do you recover from something like that?
Doing a small film—like I did with my film in Spain. That’s why I used my money. It’s not a very practical way to recover, but at the time, it was my only way to recover. For me it’s refreshing when you do something on small scale. This way, you’re completely free. You can change the script that morning if you want, maybe because you realize there’s a better way to finish the film. That’s the most beautiful thing about filmmaking for me, that freedom. When I’m able to do that, I’m happy.