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Ray Pride

By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com

Posted Sunday, February 19th, 2006 - Comments Off on Let's move on: Nick Cave and John Hillcoat on The Proposition
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Let's move on: Nick Cave and John Hillcoat on The Proposition

In the March Sight & Sound, director John Hillcoat and writer Nick Cave talk about their brilliant, brooding 18th century Western, The Proposition, to Nick Roddick. “The real theatre on which The Proposition is played out is the Australian landscape, lovingly captured by French cinematographer Benoi�t Delhomme [who] has responded to the light of the outback – harsh, unfiltered, almost horizontal – like many a northern DoP before him discovering the special properties of the southern hemisphere… The Proposition‘s aim is not to place its characters against a beautiful backdrop but to link them directly to the land’s Darwinian indifference. “These were brutal times,” says Hillcoat, “but the land also had a great beauty to it. I think it’s a metaphor for the whole thing. In the middle of the day it’s so harsh and oppressive yet when the sunsets come it’s stunningly beautiful. It goes from one extreme to another.” … proposition_132897087457.jpg“From my point of view,” says Cave, “we weren’t putting the film forward as truthful: we were looking for truth more at a poetic level – with, of course, the amount of research Johnny always does to keep things on track.” … “I think [Peckinpah] was doing something very radical that we have since absorbed and regurgitated to the point where it has become banal,” [Hillcoat] says. “I think a lot of people confuse violence: content gets muddled with intent. Personally I think Peckinpah’s films are very honest, in an uncomfortable way, about heroic male action in extreme conflict.” [The Proposition] is really fucking violent!” [Hillcoat continues]. “That it’s very much a part of the actual time. The violence is brutal and very real but it’s buried in the thrust of the story, which is why a lot of people don’t have a problem with it.” “There’s no ritualistic violence, there’s no fetishistic violence. There’s no slow-motion,” mutters Cave. “Let’s move on.”

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon