August 11, 2006
“Conversations With Other Women,” arrived in Los Angeles and New York City Friday in much the same way as do most other low-budget movies: lacking the fanfare that attends even the lamest of studio fare, but safely over the biggest hurdle faced by any picture lacking a star in the same orbit as Johnny Depp or Nicole Kidman.
Distribution is the Holy Grail of independent filmmakers, and it’s every bit as elusive. Entire film festivals unspool without a single award-winner getting a serious offer from an American company. Meanwhile, Rob Schneider and Jenny McCarthy seem never to be without one or two projects either in the can or on the runway.
Like most of their peers, Hans Canosa and Gabrielle Zevin — the director and writer of “Conversations With Other Women” — could walk down Hollywood Boulevard at the height of the daily tourist rush and not be recognized by a single soul. Under the same circumstances, a Quentin Tarantino might be required to sign an autograph or two, but not many others.
While Canosa and Zevin may not stand out in a crowd just yet, “Conversations With Other Women” won’t face the indignity of being completely ignored by the big-city media. Their good fortune in casting such recognizable stars as Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart guaranteed at least a modicum of exposure. Movies come and go, but the media’s appetite for stories and pictures about celebrities is insatiable.
Succeeding in the publicity game these days requires a bit thought more than simply rolling out a red carpet and providing free booze and sandwiches for the working press. At a time when mainstream newspapers, TV and radio outlets are struggling to keep pace with the Internet, the money spent on wining, dining and confining members of the junket press at the Four Seasons rarely guarantees box-office success, anymore.
The closest thing to a sure thing is a well-timed appearance on “Oprah,” especially if one of the stars has suddenly remembered being abused as a child. Sadly, though, Ms. Winfrey has little time for movies whose budget doesn’t exceed the cost of one of her get-away estates.
Independent, foreign and documentary films are far more dependent on reviews, word-of-mouth and the kindness of strangers in the alternative media than guest spots on “Leno.” Instead of full-blown junkets, decidedly more modest “press days” are arranged for those outlets in search of something more substantial than a sound bite or confirmation of an on-location tryst.
Apart from the more casual atmosphere and the quality of the pictures being pitched, the primary difference between junkets and press days – for reporters, anyway — comes in the decreased likelihood of being forced to relinquish interview time to a former Miss Alabama who’s realized her dream of being an “entertainment journalist.” The challenge of selling a freelance piece based on a 20-minute interview with the writer or director of a low-budget movie, however wonderful, remains formidable. We blog, therefore we are.
Carter’s Oscar nomination, in 1998, for her terrific performance in “The Wings of the Dove,” immediately qualified her for heightened attention from the mainstream and celebrity press. Aside from being a hunk, Eckhart was coming off an exceptional performance in “Thank You for Smoking,” and he’ll soon be seen again in Brian DePalma’s much-anticipated, “The Black Dahlia.”
In “Conversations With Other Women,” Eckhart and Carter play unnamed guests at a New York wedding who appear to meet as strangers, but, in fact, share a romantic past. It’s clear by their dancing around the subject that certain aspects of their failed relationship were left unresolved. Both declare ahead of time their happiness with their current partners – one of whom is back home in London, the other dancing on a Broadway stage – but neither attempts to derail the possibility of a one last hook-up for old times’ sake.
Zevin’s screenplay demands several long, uninterrupted streams of intense dialogue, which allow the characters to play catch-up, philosophize and flirt simultaneously. The action, such as it is, is confined to a pair of small, otherwise unpopulated rooms, and an elevator car. Except for one crucial visual conceit, “Conversations With Other Women” could be re-staged live and not a single beat would be missed.
This single conceit, however, distinguishes “Conversations” from the hundreds of other indies released since Mike Higgis’ “Timecode” made the leap from the festival circuit to arthouses, in 2000. Eckhart and Carter’s hit-and-run romance plays out on a screen split in two for the film’s entire 84-minute length.
The gimmick didn’t work particularly well for Higgis, who elected to juggle four interrelated storylines in separate quadrants. Canosa and Zevin’s movie is quite a bit more intimate than “Timecode,” so, audiences needn’t work nearly as hard to get into the flow of the plot and rhythm of the dialogue. If nothing else, the technique also provided ample material for discussion on press day.
Eckhart, who was holding court this day in a comfy suite at the Le Meridien, described how he and Carter were required to work in what amounted to stereo, with a pair of DV cameras capturing their actions and reactions individually and in “real time.” This strategy facilitated Canosa’s decision to assign dialogue in four- and five-minute stretches, freeing the actors to perform as if they were working live, on stage. The fancy stuff would be resolved in the post-production process.
Their chance reunion at the wedding not only allows Man and Woman (as they’re referred to in the credits) to rekindle the extinguished flame, however briefly, but also to reminisce and tie up some very loose ends. Flashback sequences map the relationship of Young Man (Erik Eidem) and Young Woman (the very appealing Nora Zehetner) in better times, also in split screen.
“There were so many layers to the story that interested me,” emphasizes Eckhart, who, in person and on screen, seems far more grown up and Hollywood-handsome than most other male stars in their late thirtysomethings. “My character always wondered what happened to Helena’s character … and there’s the matter of a ‘lost baby.’ She’s gotten married and is living in London, and he hasn’t gotten past his bachelor ways.
“He seems to be intimated by her ability to move on, but there’s still tenderness and sweetness there.”
And, yet, all roads lead to the empty hotel room upstairs. If this isn’t a male fantasy, nothing is.
Of course, the idea of sharing a nightcap in a hotel room with someone who’s a dead ringer for a young Robert Redford might be the fantasy of a good many women, as well. Eckhart acknowledges, however, that not all women have forgiven him for playing world-class creeps in Neil LaBute’s corrosive anti-romances, “In the Company of Men” and “Your Friends and Neighbors.”
“Yeah, they remember … a lot of women had violent reactions to ‘In the Company of Men,’ especially,” allowed Eckhart, whose character conspired to ruin the life of an attractive but highly vulnerable office worker, who’s deaf.
And, with that response, the actor’s publicist pulled the plug. Next …
No matter, a close reading of the press notes revealed another juicy angle. This interview, blessedly would merely require a phone conversation.
Turns out, the story of Canosa’s personal journey from a missionary posting in Singapore, to New York and Hollywood, is every bit as fascinating as any picture released in the months since the last limousine carrying a freeloading celebrity rolled out of Park City, Utah. It would make a terrific movie … that is, if anyone would believe it.
The director of “Conversations With Other Women,” a film that can’t be accused of being naïve about matters of the flesh, was raised in an environment of extreme cultural deprivation. His parents, strict fundamentalist Christians (Seventh Day Adventists), forbade access to most artistic disciplines … something about the Second Commandment and its condemnation of false gods, graven images and worshiping pictures.
Canosa was living in Singapore with his parents, in a missionary community, when he took his first giant step toward depravity. He popped his cultural cherry at the age of 10, by sneaking away to attend a performance of a traditional Chinese opera. Talk about sensory overload …
He wouldn’t see a movie in a real bricks-and-mortar theater until he was 17. Among the first titles he sampled were “Citizen Kane” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” but his appetite for the cinema was huge.
“Imagine watching ‘Psycho’ with the same eyes as those of a viewer in 1960,” Canosa suggested. “It was a pure cinematic experience. I brought that same innocence to all the movies I watched back then.
“I considered all films to be holy, and I watched everything.”
As if movies weren’t evil enough, Canosa also decided to attend a secular college, Harvard. It was at this point that he was disowned by his parents, for real.
“I’d become the kind of person my parents had warned me against,” he said.
Canosa hit the ground running. While at Harvard, he directed dozens of short films, experimental videos and plays. It also was in Cambridge that he began collaborating with Zevin. Their first theatrical film, “Alma Mater,” was about a Harvard professor in the ’60s who fell in love with his male teaching assistant. It went largely unseen outside the 2002-03 festival circuit, but the hook was set.
The split-screen idea also had its genesis in his delayed exposure to the cinema.
“It seemed as if the characters only existed for me while they were up there, on the screen,” he explained. “I had a dream in which I was sitting in a theater, and, when I looked behind me, I could see the other characters. The script for this movie was written with that idea in mind …. I’d been thinking about it for years.
“The flashback scenes, which presented two separate points of view, demonstrated the unreliability of memory. The man and woman recalled the same incidents differently, even as they were playing out simultaneously on the screen.”
In this way, he added, “the audiences’ eyes participate in the experience.”
Canosa expected that viewers wouldn’t have trouble adjusting to the split screen. Unlike “The Thomas Crown Affair,” its deployment was consistent throughout, and the screen wasn’t always divided in half. Indeed, because the vertical dividing line moved from right to left and back, it served as punctuation to the emotional shifts in the characters.
It wouldn’t have succeeded at all, however, if the actors weren’t able to pull off the lengthy snatches of dialogue or read the emotional temperature of the situation. Their sexual heat is palpable throughout.
Canosa and Zevin’s next project is a “vampire love story.”
“Growing up, waiting for Jesus to return was the most important thing in my life,” he allowed. “I’m drawn to stories with immortality themes.” – G.D.

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