Creation, seen from all sides - In 'The Nines,' director John August steps into the mirrored world of imagination.
In the living room of writer-director John August's Hancock Park home, Hope Davis has just finished singing Peggy Lee's existentialist lament "Is That All There Is?" She has recounted a series of life experiences that have left her cold -- watching her family's house burn down, attending a circus, falling in love for the first time. Davis' character has explained that the only reason she doesn't commit suicide is because she's "in no hurry for that final disappointment."
But that isn't all there is to August's feature directorial debut, "The Nines," due for release from Newmarket Films on Friday. Today's scene -- in which Davis plays Sarah, the oversexed mom next door who is on the verge of seducing Gary (Ryan Reynolds), an actor under house arrest and the watchful eye of his crisis publicist (Melissa McCarthy) -- is only a tiny piece of one of the film's three segments. Filmed partly in August's home, each features the three main actors in roles that explore the relationship between creator and creation, among writer and actor and character.
"Not being a religious person, I was really interested in the parallels between what I do on a daily basis versus what a creator of the universe would be doing on a daily basis," says August, the 37-year-old screenwriter behind such films as "Go," the "Charlie's Angels" movies, "Big Fish" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." "To the characters I'm creating in my stories, I must seem like a god because I can do anything in their world. As a writer, I'm all the characters until actors are cast, and then they take over the mantle. I feel like writers and actors are co-creators in finding a character."
The film's largely improvised Part 2, a making-of documentary about a fictitious television pilot titled "Knowing," allowed August and his actors to co-write characters in the most immediate and collaborative way possible. August even posed questions to the actors as the pseudo-documentary's off-camera interviewer.
"John's questions are very leading, and that's intentional," says Reynolds. "In fact, I can pick up on that instinct when I'm listening to him or when he's off-camera, and I can actually go to a place that he's hoping I'll go to simply by the question."
Adds August, "It was like being able to mold the clay right in front of yourself and not have to make a plan for it but to see what's there and to shape it into the right form."
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