| Dan Futterman Has A Mighty Heart |
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 Dan Futterman has seen his star rise dramatically in recent years—to the point where he's now starring opposite the likes of Angelina Jolie  Futterman as Daniel Pearl and Angelina Jolie as Mariane Pearl in "A Mighty Heart"  Directed by Michael Winterbottom, "A Mighty Heart" is based on Mariane Pearl's account of the unforgettable story of her husband, "Wall Street Journal" reporter Danny Pearl's life and death  Futterman on what drew him to this role: "I was moved by this story enormously from reading Mariane’s book and also from the screenplay."  On Angelina Jolie: "I truly think this actress is one of my generation’s truly great actors... I was completely knocked out by her. It also seems with her that’s it’s the easiest thing in the world." Recently, Futterman has tackled his biggest role to date by playing the murdered reporter Daniel Pearl opposite Angelina Jolie in “A Mighty Heart.” Though Pearl was not overtly Jewish in practice or ideology, his Jewish background was a crucial element of who he was and why he died. In doing this part, Futterman had to create a presence larger than the face-time he had on screen. amightyheartmovie.comQ: How did you get involved in the film? Dan Futterman: It’s boring… I got sent the script by my agent who said that they’re coming to town and to read it and read the book. So I did and then I sat down with Michael [Winterbottom, the director] and, I don’t know... You get the feeling that Michael doesn’t meet with a ton of people, but he’s done some kind of winnowing of whatever list he had for each part, and so we talked about this script, his movies, about "Capote," which he had seen. I think that he liked the fact that I was a writer also, and had written about journalism and that felt comfortable for this part. Q: This role is so different from the comedic roles you’ve played before—what drew you to it? DF: I was moved by this story enormously from reading Mariane’s book and also from the screenplay. Also, I was thrilled to work with Michael in particular, and certainly what I think is an incredible cast of actors; I felt really honored to be a part of it. Q: Did you want to do some writing for the film or did you feel that the experience of making this film was enough? DF: When I met with Michael, I had read John Orloff’s script and thought it was fantastic. I had very little to say about changing the script; I thought it was terrific. He talked about a couple of things that he was going to work on; I didn’t see much of a need for it but that was in his mind to do. And yes, we did improvise—that’s right—but you’re working with this terrific foundation that assimilates so much information about that part of the world, that particular situation they were in as well as this relationship, this love affair that Danny and Mariane had—so you feel extremely well-supported in that and you could always turn to the script, you use a lot of it anyway. Q: When did you meet Angelina Jolie? DF: We had met in Los Angeles a couple of times; we have a friend in common, Jillian Armenante, who plays a role in the film—one of the female F.B.I. investigators, she was in "Girl, Interrupted" with Angie and then was in "Judging Amy" with me for a number of years—so I would hear about her friend Angie: "Oh, this and that," and, "oh, you both have kids, you should get together," but we never did that. But then when we met we felt like we knew people in common and it made things a bit easier. Q: Did you get your kids together when you finally did meet? DF: No, we have yet to [do so] because I have one kid who's a terrible sleeper so I'm very loathe to bring her out of her time zone. I’m afraid of what it will do for her days and my wife’s. But they travel everywhere together so we have yet to be in the same place at the same time. Q: What was it like working so intimately with Angelina? DF: Well, I truly think this actress is one of my generation’s truly great actors. I had a chance to see my friend, Phil Hoffman perform up close a couple of years ago and you think, “Okay, I’ve had that experience, I can write that one down and tell it to my kids.” And now two years later I have acted with someone who is giving that sort of utterly transformational, beautifully emotional performance who’s incredibly smart and finely tuned. I was completely knocked out by her. It also seems with her that’s it’s the easiest thing in the world and she’s improvising, and it’s in an accent that’s not her own, and she’s comfortable [with it.] You can not dare her to do anything that she’s not willing to do and it was completely a pleasure to work with her. I really loved it. Having said that, we were in a bit of a different movie from what everybody was doing, [my scenes when Danny was with Mariane.] I mean, she was in both movies, but there was that three-week desperate search for him, that’s the bulk of the movie, and then [there's] everything I shot, just about... that predated Danny’s abduction and they had a true love affair and were deeply connected. They were expecting a kid, which completely thrilled them, and they were doing work that fascinated them in a part of the world that at least he loved; we were trying to create that and it was as if we were in a completely different film. Q: Because she’s improvising this one character in one set of circumstances, and then you are building the romance together, how did you two do this? DF: It was a whole separate thing but honestly, it must have been slightly schizo for her, because all of that was in sequence. But what we shot, we had to shoot in all of the specific locations so she would come out of the scene she was working on that morning and we’d spend all afternoon doing flashback stuff because we had to shoot that stuff in Poona or in Bombay. So it was much more confusing for her, certainly more than for anybody else. For me, it was just a lot of coming back and forth a lot because it was dispersed within the other shoots. Q: At what point did you meet Mariane Pearl? Before or after you began shooting; and how did that meeting change you? DF: We met in a kind of tentative way at a sort of lunch in Los Angeles; she was bringing Adam to see his grandparents—so that was the first one. But then we had a number of email exchanges and then she also came down from Paris to Marseille where we were going to shoot the wedding, and she was there a couple of days before we did that. Q: What was it like meeting Mariane? DF: I was incredibly nervous about meeting her. Presuming to portray her beloved husband, I was terrified of that and she was instantly reassuring and instantly took it upon herself to make me feel comfortable with the situation. And that speaks to her as a person. Q: Did you meet her with Angelina? DF: No, that was by myself. [Angelina and Brad] had met her before and were quite good friends. Brad had been with this project for years and had personally approached Mariane to get the rights to the book; she trusted him to shepherd it through this process and he had been with it throughout the entire development of the script. Then Angie came to it, and I think it came quickly to feel connected to her. And their kids played together. So, I met her by myself, and then later on in France we were all together—we had a couple of days in France. Q: So you met again after? DF: She was in Cannes when the film showed there, so we were able to spend some time together there, and I met Adam for the first time. No, I had met him in Marseilles but very briefly and he had been way too preoccupied playing with Maddox and the other kids. Then I properly met him in Cannes, so I got to spend a little bit of time with Mariane there and her brother as well, Sacchi, who came down from Paris to be with her. Q: When you did that wedding scene, was Mariane watching, was she there? DF: No, she made a choice not to be there. She came down, as I said, to Marseilles, before we staring shooting that. It was before Angelina had started shooting at all for the film—I had been in Pakistan before that. But she came down to sort of wish us well and to talk to us, to get together for a little bit and then she said good luck to you, feel good about this, you are the right people to do it—and I’m going to leave you to your work. I think it also would have been painful to her to watch that being filmed. She didn’t want to hang around, and being a writer herself and the creative person that she is, I’m sure that she didn’t want anyone to feel a hold from anybody and be in that position. Q: In the shooting of the movie, did you ever ask yourself if you would have had the same drive if you were in journalism, and in the same situation? Were you changed by the portrayal of this role in the film? DF: I think it’s impossible for one to know… you would like to think you would behave in a dignified, heroic way, if that is the word for it, but who knows. And I don’t pretend to be anything but an actor and writer. But I think that I’m so aware of the fact of being a father and that Danny never got a chance to meet his son, and his son is growing up without the benefit of this genuinely good man who's his dad. So I think that, I don’t know if it’s changed me, but it certainly reinforces the gratitude that I have two, thankfully, healthy children, and am able to go home and open the door and pick them up and watch them grow up. Q: What did you think of Daniel Pearl? Was he a hero, a martyr? DF: People have turned him into a lot of things and I think that he’s this iconic figure for certain groups of people. I think that in everyday ways, I don’t know if hero is the right word, but I suppose in today’s world, his genuine interest he had in learning about other cultures and immersing himself in other cultures—this bit of information that Mariane talked about (and it may have been in the book as well)—that this [was a] Jewish guy who grew up in Encino in Los Angeles and his favorite city in the world [became] Tehran, that says something about somebody. That joy, delight and genuine interest that he brought to traveling and in learning about other cultures—and then writing about it for an American audience that could [otherwise] be closed off to it. I suppose that in a small and yet important way that was heroic. |
