Series
7: The Contenders
Q&A
with Dan Minahan and Brooke Smith
interview by Elias
Savada, 9 March 2001
The cross-media satire Series 7: The Contenders blends the Survivoresque aspects of reality television, Shirley Jackson's fifty-plus-year-old New Yorker short story The Lottery, gladiator experience, and a dark, deliciously droll brand of black humor. It's a unique experience, much as my conversation with writer-director Daniel Minahan and star Brooke Smith was during their initial publicity tour for the film in early December last year. In real life, outside of their make-believe digital video, Brooke is nothing like Dawn, the determined and eight-month-pregnant champion who is on the gun for the other randomly selected contestants in Minahan's suburban Connecticut nightmare. My first, rhetorical question was whether it would be in my better interests to wear a flak jacket and an automatic pistol, aside from this being Washington, D.C., when approaching the pair. My common sense thought otherwise ["It's only a movie. It's only a movie."] and my weapons were much more docile: A pen, a pad, a smile, and a digital recorder. Actually the gracious actress probably was looking for some ammunition several times during the joint interview as their guest insisted on calling her Thorne [editorially corrected in the text below] before realizing his embarrassing blunder. ["Hi, you must be Thorne!" he greeted her cheerfully] Good grief! Thankfully he was spared injury save some well deserved scorn. Appearance-wise they make a cute couple [no, there is no hanky panky here]. They're smartly dressed. Dan's in a white shirt and dark suit. No tie. And barely any hair, the result of what looks like a razor buzz a week earlier. Brooke has a head full of dirty blonde curls and is attired in a red blouse, and smart pant suit. They are thoughtful and courtesy subjects, happy in the afterglow that Series 7 has been picked for screening at the forthcoming Sundance Film Festival.
Elias Savada:A pretty quick shoot. Twenty-one days. fifteen hours a day. six pages per day. Pretty hectic. I assumed you crashed at the end?
Dan Minahan:[Yes, because the shoot was actually] six days.
ES: Congrats on the festival. I assume that was a slam dunk?
DM: Not always. I have friends who had expected an invite and didn't get one.
ES: [to Dan] You grew up in Danbury, Connecticut. Life in Danbury? I grew up not to far from there, in Westchester New York.
Brooke Smith:What town?
ES: [who's interviewing whom here?] Harrison.
BS: Oooh [smiles with approval].
ES: But I'm down here [in the D.C. area] now.
DM: It's very cool today. I wish we had more time to see it. You're off to Boston this afternoon?
BS: [disparagingly] Yeah. We came in last night for dinner.
ES: Ah, dinner with the outgoing president?
BS: No, or with any of the incoming grunts.
ES: [trying to steer him back to his origins] Any brothers or sisters back in Danbury?
DM: Well I grew up there and left in the early '80s to New York. I'd come back for Christmas and stuff. [I get the impression he's not interested in revealing trinkets about his past].
ES: You still do?
DM: Of course [smiling, as is Brooke]. My family was around on the set [in which Danbury is fictionalized as Newbury]. My mom [Joan, who gets a "special thanks" credit] would track us down around town and "visit."
ES: Did she bring you cookies? Is she that kind of mom?
DM: [stirring his coffee and smiling over at Brooke]. Yes. We all looked forward to her visits. We'll see what she has to say when she sees the movie. She read the script, which she thought was really "pacy".
BS: She used the word "pacy"?
DM: I'm not sure of the exact word. She thought it was engaging. She saw the project as soap opera. [Of course, like most moms, she's absolutely right].
ES: About those brothers and sisters? Older? Younger? Middle
DM: Oh God, I hope he doesn't mind that I mention his name. [Dan doesn't, actually, reveal his name]. I have a younger brother who lives in the Boston area with his wife. He's a Boston College alum. And a big, Internet guy. That's it.
ES: When did you catch the filmmaking bug?
DM: In college, at SUNY, Purchase [right next door to Harrison!].
ES: [turning to Thorne, er, Brooke, I ask ] Your background? Obviously theater. And a lot of film. I was impressed by the array of directors (Sydney Pollack, Robert Altman, Steve Buscemi, Henry Jaglom, Louis Malle, Anthony Mingella, Paul Mazursky, Jonathan Demme) you have worked with. Of course, most of us remember you as Catherine Martin, the frantic kidnap victim welled up at the end of Silence of the Lambs. Regrettably, some of the smaller pictures you've been in never made it to this town, like Broken Giant or Remembering Sex, two 1998 outings.
BS: I don't think those two were ever distributed. But what about Vanya on 42nd Street! [Smith received an IFP Spirit Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Louis Malle's final feature film].
ES: Yes, that did make it to Washington. Yet there's films like The Pickle that gets killed by the critics.
BS: Well I was in that for maybe [and thankfully] five seconds.
ES: Is there a preference for a director that you like to work with? [She points Dan and smiles, broadly. Dan laughs approval of her choice. I continue my thought ] other than one who happens to be in the same room with you?
BS: No, seriously. One of my favorite experiences was with [stage Director] André Gregory, because I worked on that [Uncle Vanya, the basis for Malle's subsequent adaptation] for four years and I am working with them [The Victory Theater] on something now with André and Wallace Shawn. All the other folks you mention were fine directors.
ES: Where did you meet Steve Buscemi? On Trees Lounge?
BS: I met him on [Robert Altman's] Kansas City when he played my husband [Johnny Flynn]. When he was doing Trees Lounge I think I literally just stopped by to visit and was thrown into the film.
ES: You've also done some television, guest starring in episodes of Homicide, The Larry Sanders Show, and Law and Order. And The Equalizer?
BS: You remember that?
DM: He was a vigilante.
BS: Yes, to right the wrongs. And I've been directing. A short film called Sheeps Meadow [which aired on the Sundance Channel] and a feature length documentary [Honky: Portrait of a Bluesman, a film about Chicago bluesman Jake La Botz].
ES: Do you and Dan compare notes?
BS: I'm going to direct Dan next.
ES: In the films you've acted in, how much directorial style have you absorbed to use in your own films?
BS: I think a lot. I pick up stuff everywhere. Even when I'm not working on films. Certainly working with Jonathan Demme [on Silence of the Lambs], which was the first big thing I did. He's a great director. For me, when I'm directing I unconsciously go back to that experience, and how well he treated everybody. He treated everyone on the set as if they were the best person for their job.
ES: I see similarities between that film and your film [pointing to Dan] because of their gritty nature. The concept of Series 7 compresses an entire television series into an eighty-five-minute compilation using every [reality television] trick in the book, obviously drawing from your background in television.
ES: The first scene you shot, in which everyone was apparently a little giddy, was the music video Love Will Tear Us Apart.
DM: [smiling at the memory]. Ah the music video! That was an actual song from the '80s.
ES: The last scene was the mall location, an agonizing sequence.
ES: [getting to my question] Did you have favorite sequence while you were shooting the film?
DM: Oh wow. [Dan puts his hand to his chin and thinks a few Moments]. That's hard [He turns to Brooke]. What did we have the most fun shooting?
BS: Well, it's interesting how, before you do it you think it's going to be one way. And then it's always surprising. I was very scared of the birthing scene. Like very scared.
DM: That was the easiest thing we shot.
BS: Yes, it was actually, amazingly easy. And then sometimes totally the opposite happens. You expect something will be a piece of cake
DM: I did love shooting the scene in the garage with [Brooke's character Dawn's] mother and sister. That was also one of the first things we shot. There was a lot of magic there.
ES: Do you folks have a cameos in the film?
DM: I think my mom's in the [home movie] wedding video. She's one of the guests.
ES: How close did the film's final cut jive with your initial vision? The script has to be extremely tight on a film of this nature [Dan nods his head in agreement]. Nearly as tight as, say, M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable. I see the same type of control in your film.
DM: You wouldn't initially recognize that because [my film] looks so sprawling.
BS: [in a win for the interviewer who calls her by the wrong name] It's interesting, because I think he's right. A lot of people have asked, "Was it a lot of improv?"
ES: I was just assuming that you were putting material in or taking it out during the rehearsals, based on input from the cast and crew. Something didn't work here or there would get jettisoned. Some directors are rather flexible with their cast, such as Christopher Guest and the zany creative members of his Best in Show. He let his stars do whatever (within reason, or close to) they wanted. Your Survivor gone crazy concept certainly is a timely offering.
DM: Yes, it's this weird sort of confluence of reality and the satire we've made.
ES: I notice that you "found" Brooke when you saw her in a play back in 1995, an off-Broadway production of Little Monsters. You eventually developed your script, developing Dawn's character with Brooke in mind. Yet it wasn't until a year later that you finally met, at which point you dropped the script in Brooke's lap. How did you feel about this?
BS: [a broad smile] I was VERY happy.
ES: Did he tell you that he was doing this?
BS: No! I had never met him.
ES: That's really weird [Dan and Brooke look at each other and break into appreciative smiles].
DM: I don't think so. She had made a really strong impression on me [Her role in the play was as a dominatrix and a drug addict!]. I always think it's best to think of someone when you're writing. I always need to. Even when I'm reading a script I have to picture "Oh, this might be."
DM: I do a lot of "This might be so-and-so." What the voice is like. The range of the character. The kind of things they're good at.
ES: I don't know if you want to comment on how you felt when the film was pulled from last summer's Venice Film Festival and the subsequent Toronto fest. There was some criticism at the time. The producers had promised the film, but USA Films was reluctant to screen the film so far in advance [then February 2001] of its intended release. [The release later slipped to March, following the Sweeps and Survivor II season].
DM: It was really USA's decision.
ES: Hopefully you didn't bear the brunt of outrage from the festival organizers.
DM: [sympathetically] No. [Venice fest director] Albert Barbera was very complimentary. He was very upset because he thought it was a very important film. I would have liked to gone to Venice. [Who wouldn't! Brooke winces at the missed opportunity].
ES: I went to a Macintosh computer seminar this morning [Brooke admires Apple's "Knowledge is Power" note pad I'm using for our interview] where the moderator was talking about Caller ID on his computer, mimicking a fictitious conversation as his telephone rings, "It's Aunt DAWN! I'm not going to pick it up." [Brooke and Dan laugh. Brooke's eyes light up with amusement].
DM: See! These people had Caller ID.
BS: There's a play going on in New York that I just read the script of, and it's Jeff [one of the Series 7 finalists] and Dawn. There's something out there. A collective karma.
ES: Your producers [Blow Up Pictures] made Miguel Arteta's Chuck & Buck, one of my favorite films of last year.
DM: Wasn't that great! I've never seen anything like it!
ES: Well I [and others] haven't seen anything like your film, either. Taken together, both films show the progress being made toward a digital media delivery scheme. [Series 7 was first shown to the D.C. press via a EIKI Powerhouse digital projection system; the transfer to 35mm film stock preserves the film's video freshness.] What about your other digital projects?
DM: Well, I used to work in TV. Initially when I wrote Series 7 it was a movie. I had a TV show within that movie. When we decided to go digital, I realized I wouldn't be able to differentiate between the two.
ES: You even have a cute "due-to-the-nature-of-this-program" disclaimer at the beginning of the film, further blurring the boundaries. You've thrown a huge assortment of reality television techniques into the making of this project, which might end up confusing some unenlightened members of the audience. Series 7 is a very radical form of entertainment. When this film is eventually shown in television—and I know you have even more radical ideas about presenting the concept as a "show"—do you think some little old lady will assume your film as non-fiction, as in a twenty-first century version of the War of the Worlds episode that panicked radio listeners years ago? Will moviegoers take this as a variation on The Blair Witch
DM: There is no Newbury.
BS: But maybe they will start looking for it
DM: Maybe they'll look somewhere between Newtown and Danbury [two of the locations used in the film].
ES: [to Brooke] In the film's press material, Dan calls you "totally fearless."
BS: Oh good. I wondered [whispering, initially], "What did you call me?"
ES: Is that a good description? [Brooke grimaces] It was a gutsy role in this film.
ES: Picking up a gun and shooting people? I think so.
BS: Well yeah, but not that simple, though. It wasn't just picking up a gun and shooting people. I think Dawn has a morality, an incredible [reluctance to her fate? Brooke doesn't finish the sentence, merely motioning the disgust her character felt, raising her hand and turning her head away]. Because she has to do it.
ES: All the characters have their own sense of morality [Dan nods in agreement]. Some more warped than their fellow contestants. The nurse.
ES: It's Series 7, a very popular television show. I assume it's been on for that many seasons. How long has Dawn been reigning champion?
BS: [turning to her director] So how long did we decide?
DM: Two shows. On the third show you're out.
BS: Yes, if you win the third show, they let you go [alive]. I had won the fifth and sixth contests.
DM: It's as if Richard Hatch went on to Survivor II.
ES: So it's like Jeopardy, where you can retire as an undefeated champion after five shows.
DM: Yes, but with The Contenders [the original title, changed to avoid confusion with last year's The Contender] it was after the third one.
BS: If I won Series 7, I would retire.
Click here to read Elias Savada's review.