INTERVIEW WITH MIRA NAIR
HBO
How did you get involved with "Hysterical Blindness"?
MIRA NAIR
I was sent the script by my dear friend Lydia Pilcher, who's produced almost all the films I've made. She was going to produce the film. And Uma Thurman gave me a call in Bombay, where I was shooting "Monsoon Wedding," and asked me to consider directing her in it. So I read the script with great avidity. I love Uma, we've known each other for some time.
And I found it very honest, very truthful, very unflinching, and sort of the untold story that women don't speak of often, which is the lengths we go to, to feel desired, to feel loved. And sometimes it's a not quite loveless universe, but it's very difficult to love if you have not been loved before in an essential sense.
And the dialogue, the quality of the story, I hadn't quite seen it before - that attracted me. And of course the possibility of directing wonderful actors, all of whom said 'yes' to working on the film. Of course it was Uma's project, and then Juliette Lewis and Gena Rowlands, whom I have worshipped for a long time, and now love. So it became a very rich, interesting female world to explore.
HBO
Did you see the play it was based on, or had you heard of it before?
MIRA NAIR
No. I hadn't seen the play. The only thing I had seen was the script that was sent to me. And then I started to work with Laura Cahill, the wonderful writer of both the play and the screenplay, to take it to more of an emotional place than where I felt it was. Because I need to make you feel emotionally involved.
HBO
Can you describe the film? You were saying, this is about the search for love. Can you describe the characters and their dynamic?
MIRA NAIR
"Hysterical Blindness" is a working class drama, really, about the lengths we go to feel desirable. It's the story of two Jersey girls in their late twenties. One is a very highly strung, sort of neurotic character played by Uma Thurman called Debbie, who's sort of had every man in town and goes to bars to feel, you know, to find another, really. And now she's twenty-nine and wants to settle down, wants to - sees life as "there must be more to it than this". She lives with her working mother, a single woman whose father left when Debbie was thirteen. The mother is a waitress in a diner.
And it's the search, trying to find somebody who would really love her and whom she would love. But she's a woman who's sort of abused herself in this search, for a long time. And there's a wonderful sort of fearless quality in Uma's performance, a very brave quality, which I wanted and embraced, because it was really truthful, um... the particularities of this kind of character, idiosyncratic, neurotic, highly strung.
And hysterical blindness is an actual state, which is when somebody who is usually of this highly strung nature can wind themselves up to actually where sort of a film of light, you know, where darkness shuts down on them, and they get temporarily blinded. And then you have to undo that process to see again.
And it's a scary place to be, but it's also at this point where Debbie has had this condition. It's a kind of dark and funny place to be. And I try to use this motif of hysterical blindness, of seeing Debbie through these various prisms of light, through glass, through doors, all kinds of ways to signal the audience to anticipate the hysterical blindness that she's about to feel.
So it's a story, in a way, remarkably independent in its nature. You don't see American films like this where women are sort of not neatly packaged and presented in a happy way. This is a sort of unbridled neurotic young woman, who is in many ways a part of ourselves.
HBO
I thought it was interesting what you were saying, about the way you place the light.
MIRA NAIR
Yeah.
HBO
There's a shot where she's skewered, whether it's like a sunlight prism, very fluid...
MIRA NAIR
Mm-hmm.
HBO
Very soft kind of moves with the camera. You talked about that style and what you're trying to get at with the inner emotion.
MIRA NAIR
Well, you know, for me to make a film I have to be visually excited by it. I don't just make a film to join the dots of a story. I have to feel excited by it, and we all know that Bayonne, New Jersey isn't you know, sort of God's gift to visual horizons.
But there is something extraordinarily fascinating about eighties banality. It's so easy to characterize this and to make it a cartoon thing, you know, the big hair, the shoulder pads, the ugly era as I called it, but I lived through it. But it has to feel truthful. So number one is the style, the truthfulness of the film was very much the foundation.
I come also from cinema verité and documentary film, and for me that authenticity is always a treasure. And then to enjoy it, to go in for the fashion, we worked with a stunning costume designer, Kashia Myamon, who really understood the time, who didn't just make fun of it. There was a real kind of fantastic aesthetic to that cut-out era, you know, the Flashdance era.
And it's wonderful how best friends amongst women, we always echo each other in dress and things that are sort of unspoken but we all recognize. And that's sort of the Juliette and Uma characters, the friends who dress alike without speaking of it, who borrow each other's clothes. That kind of subtext to the style of "Hysterical Blindness" was very enjoyable.
Similarly the sort of um... underground basement in which Debbie lives, all things that were kind of post-sixties on her walls, the kind of three-dimensional wallpaper, which also played tricks visually.
HBO
I want to talk about the high caliber cast that you have. When you're watching the film, you get this chemistry. It's like magical moment after magical moment.
MIRA NAIR
Magical moments don't just happen, they have to be created. I came to "Hysterical Blindness" not even having finished "Monsoon Wedding," which is an intimate film, about family life and a large vast extended Indian family, a very different world to "Hysterical Blindness." But I wanted the same kind of intimacy in the camera and in the characters, in the portrait capturing of these characters.
So we sort of employed the same cinematic style of "Monsoon Wedding," with "Hysterical Blindness," and Declan Quinn, the remarkable cinematographer who filmed both films. It was all totally handheld, and we were with the characters because you know, I just want every frame to pulsate with some kind of life, and that's the feeling of a very handheld camera.
Often you can get in there, you can move with the action, and I enjoy the visual world. I like the big nails and the cigarettes and pulling in and out of focus and shifting the focus of this film constantly, suggesting what it might be like for Debbie to be hysterically blinded.
We had rehearsals with Gena and Juliette and Uma, and all the characters of the film. We read the film like a play would be read first, so every character knew where they fit into the map of it. And then proceeded to have rehearsals, just like in a play, but for a few days.
But basically, you know, people get comfortable with each other, and a lot of the questioning that is done creates an atmosphere of trust. Of love, I hope, I like to think. And that really shows on the screen, what can I say?
And of course to cast Ben Gazarra with Gena Rowlands, I mean that's like wanting to preserve and to prolong a sense of great history which made so many of us independent filmmakers. You know, the history of John Cassavetes.
So it was remarkable. And the idea was just to be open to instinct and to take each person further. That was what I aspired to do. And that was what we did. We really, I think, enjoyed ourselves in the process.
HBO
I want to talk about Uma Thurman and Gena Rowlands' characters relationship, as mother and daughter.
MIRA NAIR
It's a story of a daughter who's yearning for love, and living with her mother who doesn't look for love, and unexpectedly finds it. And that balance, setting off this contention between mother and daughter, ultimately leading to some kind of deepening of their relationship. That is the story of "Hysterical Blindness."
And I really was very very invested in the older love story. Because it is so rare for older characters on the American screen to be shown in any kind of emotional and sensual fullness. It's always extremely straight-laced, let's have a cup of tea type of universe. And you know, love is love, whatever age it comes.
And I think the idea of seeing people on screen who are actually blossoming with this emotion at that time in their life, sort of the twilight of their life, where they hardly expect to find it, is really an emotional core also of "Hysterical Blindness."
It's that kind of history that Ben and Gena have, that these two characters that Laura so beautifully wrote... there is something to hope for when you see the world of "Hysterical Blindness," because these are people who trust love, and who surrender to it.
HBO
We talked a little bit about screen love, unconditional love. And you have Juliette's character as the young girl. She's looking for the love of a man as well.
MIRA NAIR
Yeah.
HBO
But she seems a little more grounded, whereas Uma's character's really searching, really empty.
MIRA NAIR
Mm-hmm.
HBO
And you have kind of this rivalry between Juliette and Uma's characters. Talk a little about that relationship.
MIRA NAIR
Juliette's character is one of those people who are born it seems with a great capacity for happiness. They'll find themselves happy pretty much wherever you put them. And there's a kind of fantastic ease about such people. Beth is that kind of person, versus Debbie who doesn't know what happiness is, and won't even recognize it if it's in front of her.
Juliette Lewis, you know, can really embody that kind of - it appears to be effortless, but it's extraordinarily thought through, her performance. But it's that embodying, that sort of lazy sensuality almost of life, you know, which she's perfect for. And the wit, the wit of her character. And yes, having had her daughter, she knows what it's like to feel, to be the significant primary other person in somebody's life. And that is something that Debbie doesn't know. She yearns, she still thinks of the first boyfriend she had.
But it's just this, it's a sort of a beautiful way to show how characters like Beth and Debbie don't look beyond their universe. Their whole universe is right there, you know, around their neighborhood, and they won't leave. That's why I wanted to show so many bridges in "Hysterical Blindness," because in Bayonne, it's a city in New Jersey which is surrounded by water and bridges to everywhere else, but itself.
But these characters don't really take it upon themselves or yearn for the other side of the bridge. They like where they are. And that is also a portrait of America. America is quite insular, quite small in its view, you know.
And it was fascinating to go into it and find that people are people. But this is their vocabulary, it's Bayonne. It's the first love, it's wanting to be settled just like every other girl in the factory. Then if you have a boy with a house, oh my God, that's just extraordinary, because you're one step ahead.
That is a universe that is perfectly common and ordinary all over the world, in this country for sure. And I wanted to look at that.
HBO
I get the feeling these are not happy people, I mean they're happy in the everyday sense, but there are problems with this underlying game. Yet there's lots of little rays of hope.
MIRA NAIR
I think the problem of these human beings is that they have not really experienced love, unconditional love, in their lives.
And Debbie's life has been hugely scarred by the fact that her father abandoned them when she was thirteen years old, and this feeling of not being able to trust men, yet wanting to do everything possible to be the center of their lives, and having them in your life.
I really wanted to go into that dimension of, of Debbie's character, because that is how I saw the kind of not being able to trust love because you don't really know it, because when you thought you knew it, it was taken away.
HBO
What do you think audiences are going to take away from this film when they watch it? What do you think they'll relate to, not relate to?
MIRA NAIR
I hope they will relate to the humanity of these characters.
HBO
What do you think men will?
MIRA NAIR
My husband saw the film, and he said, you know, when I walk into a bar, I never think of those who are looking at me, of the women and what they're point of view might be of me walking into a bar. And he says it's the first time he's sort of woke up to an entirely women's perspective in a bar situation, for instance, in the male / female dating game, or dance game. That was kind of interesting, that it really captures that.
HBO
The bar's almost like a character.
MIRA NAIR
The bar is a character. The bar is the whole world of entertainment for these women, of excitement, of engagement in any kind of emotional way, obscured by alcohol constantly.
But I hope also, people of all generations can react to this film or get involved with this film, because there's as much the story of, say, Amber's world, as the young women, Beth and Debbie. And Gena Rowlands' character. So, I hope that it speaks to all kinds of ages rather than just one set.
HBO
Do you have a favorite scene?
MIRA NAIR
My favorite scene is the dancing between Gena and Ben. It's really, really a beautiful love scene. It's got demureness and love and bashfulness, and yet sort of complete experience of each other.
And it's real, it's very truthful to that whole Italian social club world that I saw so often in New Jersey. It's about another era of courtship, when we knew how to court those that we loved, unlike Debbie's character, in the eighties, that is in this day and age. We've really forgotten the rules and the rituals that make courtship such a beautiful thing. Then here are these older people who are steeped in this dance scene. That's one of my favorite scenes.
And the other, well, I think the scene when Debbie humiliates herself is just uh... it's so painful, and so extraordinary in its rawness, in its honest quality and the fearless performance that Uma delivers. So that's another one of my favorite scenes.
HBO
You're right about the rules of courtship, those rules don't exist.
MIRA NAIR
Yes, there's no grace in this contemporary world. Like the grace of Gena's character in "Hysterical Blindness."
HBO
So the experience of doing this film for HBO. Can you talk about how that has been for you?
MIRA NAIR
I think
HBO is the only independent studio in town. [LAUGHS] It's a great place for directors, because they really support you and they really work with you to make the film arrive at its fullest. I love that.
And I feel that there is a great awareness of the politics of the world at HBO, which I love, I mean it is really part of an untold dimension that you don't get sometimes even in independent film. So it was a very good experience.
And working with the usual creative team that I work with, Declan Quinn, the cinematographer, and Lydia, the producer, and of course Uma and Juliette and Gena and Ben and the whole sort of first class caliber of people who wanted to just do interesting work, and had all the skill to offer me.
It was altogether pretty, um... pushing the envelope, and playing with the, sort of the extremely truthful quality of Laura Cahill's writing.
HBO
The ending of the film... it ends in an interesting way. It doesn't really sum it up. Can you just talk about that final scene.
MIRA NAIR
You know, what, what I loved about "Hysterical Blindness" was the truthfulness of it, was the fact that it had no epiphanies in it, of any discernable nature which would give us a happy ending. And yet these are characters who believe in life, who've gone through a journey in this film to come through to the other side and to look at, to accept what their life is, and to also celebrate it.
And that was what the ending needed to signify, the fact that it was about ordinary life, about a, you know, water fight in the garden as the sun came up, with everybody, your mother and your best friend and her daughter with you. It's about actually looking at Amber's dance, baton routine, and actually enjoying the fact that a young girl has progressed to such an extant to make sort of poetry in front of you.
So that's life. It's about looking at ordinary things and enjoying them. Which is what Debbie in her hysterical blindness never did.
So it signified those celebrations of ordinary things, and it signified the fact that life will carry on, and if you accept and look and enjoy, then perhaps there even could be love. That was the idea with the ending.
HBO
So is that hope-like...?
MIRA NAIR
Always there is hope, there should always be hope. Otherwise without that kind of surrendering to life, what else is there? So yes, there's hope.
HBO
I want to talk a little bit more about the experience of working with Ben Gazarra...
MIRA NAIR
Mm-hmm.
HBO
With Uma and Juliette Lewis and Gena Rowlands.
MIRA NAIR
Well, there are reasons that actors become movie stars, you know. They have great charisma, and I would say that the actors - Ben Gazarra, Gena Rowlands and Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis have that charisma.
But I see that in movie stars all over the world, it's about more like fine tuning, you know, really knowing the character and then fine tuning the elements of how far you can take it. I could ask for anything and get it from them, in the sense that they can really go in depth. As long as they feel that they are being taken care of, and of course that is what I try to do.
But it's really about knowing how to be in front of the camera, like for instance Juliette is just consummate in that kind of natural effortless quality, but it's really, really seriously a thought-through performance. And I like to enable them to just take me further, take themselves as far as they possibly can go.
And for Uma, she'd never played a character like this, she'd always been sort of imprisoned by her beauty, and her élan, and her sort of stature and so on. But with Debbie, you know, she had to plumb the depths of what it is that (made her) want to even do this role.
And that was a good sort of honest place to be, and for me to be able to mine it, in some ways.
HBO
I don't think Hollywood would cast Uma in a role like this. It's really hard to imagine her in this role, and she does it so well.
MIRA NAIR
I think the whole point was we were never going to pretend that it wasn't Uma Thurman playing Debbie, you know, I mean, I was not going to you make her unattractive, there's no way I could.
But the point of "Hysterical Blindness" is that Debbie, without knowing it, makes herself inwardly so unattractive, in her highly strung - really repulsive in some ways - nature. And, I think the pleasure of this, the challenge of "Hysterical Blindness" is that Uma made herself that way.
You know, she looks just like she looks except in an eighties way. But it's just by the depths of despair and the questioning and the inability to embrace life and to constantly impose herself on situations... that despair, that intensity, makes her unappealing.
And, in part, that's the idea of the story, it's a character study, really, this film, almost from start to finish. I think that that's the truthfulness of the performance, that no matter what you look like, you can actually really not be terribly welcome, cause you can really drive others nuts with your own neuroses.
And that happens to so many of us. I think that's where we went, as opposed to pretending it wasn't Uma Thurman, and wishing she was someone else.
The whole idea was to embrace what we had and you know, go with it.
HBO
What do you think makes this film unique from other films you've done?
MIRA NAIR
I don't think it is unique, actually. I mean, it's not unique from everything else, for me. My work seems to be really a study of human relationships, and "Hysterical Blindness," you know, like "Monsoon Wedding" or other things, is about how people live with themselves and live with each other, and how they struggle sometimes for the simplicity of happiness, and how life is difficult sometimes.
So in that sense, it is the fabric of human life. I don't see "Hysterical Blindness" in that sense because it is about really ordinary people and our struggles. And that is life, that's not unique.
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Uma Thurman
(Executive Producer, Debby)
Juliette Lewis
(Beth)
Mira Nair
Laura Cahill
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