20 Points Fashion Designer Tom Ford Directed Which 2016 Feature Film?
Table for Three
Tom Ford, Ben Mankiewicz and a Fashion-Film Vortex
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Tom Ford was on the job as Ben Mankiewicz took a last await at himself before the photographer got to piece of work. "Pilus looks good; stubble looks expert," Mr. Ford said. "But you need to push your jacket on camera. Every time I sentinel you on TCM, your jacket is undone."
"I don't similar buttoning information technology," replied Mr. Mankiewicz, 49, a host on the Turner Archetype Movies network. "Information technology feels so formal."
"It slims the silhouette," Mr. Ford said. And coming from the fashion designer, 55, who reinvented Gucci and presided over its explosive growth for a decade, working simultaneously equally the artistic managing director of Yves Saint Laurent for six of those years, it sounded similar the final word on the subject field. Mr. Ford started the Tom Ford label in 2006, and has won every fashion accolade there is to win.
"When Tom Ford tells you to button your jacket," Mr. Mankiewicz said, "you lot push button your jacket." Recent viewings of TCM suggest he took the advice to heart.
But information technology was picture show, not fashion, that brought the pair together recently. Mr. Ford's new picture, "Nocturnal Animals," which he wrote and directed, opened Friday. Adapted from a novel past Austin Wright, the film stars Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal in a complex film-inside-a-moving-picture show: a gritty psychological thriller tucked inside an urbane contemplation of upper-class life. It follows Mr. Ford's critically acclaimed debut, "A Unmarried Man," in 2009.
And who meliorate to join him in a discussion of movies than Mr. Mankiewicz, a film enthusiast and presenter of classic films on TCM since 2003. Before arriving at the network, he worked as a television news reporter. He also carries a sterling film lineage as a grandson of Herman Mankiewicz, the Oscar-winning screenwriter who, with Orson Welles, wrote "Citizen Kane," among other classics, and the slap-up-nephew of another Oscar winner, Joseph Mankiewicz, who wrote and directed "All Near Eve" and "Letter to Three Wives."
Over a leisurely lunch at the Tower Bar in the Sunset Tower Hotel here (a hamburger and dark-green salad for Mr. Ford, and a Cobb salad for Mr. Mankiewicz), the pair discussed their hyphenated careers, the roads that led them to film, and their short listing of favorites.
Philip Galanes: Did you lot call back for an extra five seconds about what you'd habiliment today?
Ben Mankiewicz: Five seconds? Try five hours. I have five pairs of glasses with me.
PG: Every interview with Tom starts with an aria well-nigh how nervous the writer is about his outfit.
Tom Ford: Which is weird, because I'grand only thinking of meeting Ben. TCM runs in my house, on every television, all day long. Just I go it: When y'all turn yourself into a product, as I have, there'due south the "billboard you" and the "real y'all," and when people run into you, they become nervous because they think they're meeting the billboard. And the longer it goes on, the real you starts to divorce itself from the billboard. This must happen to you lot.
BM: Probably the closest is when I'm interviewing a star or manager that everyone admires. I want to be the all-time version of myself to bring out the best in them.
PG: But a billboard is just a two-dimensional surface.
TF: A lot of people who work hard on the surface of things — like I do and the characters in my films — are doing it considering what's inside isn't so pretty. The surface is armor for me. You build a box because maybe you lot don't experience then great virtually what'southward inside. But you think, "If I can make it look perfect, if my hair is correct and my arrange is buttoned, information technology will all be O.K."
PG: Let's go straight to what you have in common.
TF: Love of film. He'south an expert.
PG: I'm not going to ask your favorite picture of all time.
TF: Skillful. That's too difficult. Nosotros all have favorites from unlike periods and different genres. But one of my favorites is "Dinner at Eight" [a 1933 flick co-written past Mr. Mankiewicz's grandfather].
BM: Oh, that is not where I thought you were going.
TF: Why not? It's so modern. It'southward hysterical; it's sad; it'south tragic. We know that Lionel Barrymore'southward character is going to dice from a heart status. And the daughter has been having an affair with an older motion-picture show star, who killed himself. She's just institute out, and now she's grabbing onto her fiancé's arm. And then, you lot've got infidelity and Jean Harlow and Billie Shush, who'southward a genius. And in the end, they all go in to dinner. It's an amazing slice of life that doesn't get tied up in a nice fiddling bow. And they express joy!
PG: Ben, you lot look and then nervous.
BM: Well, I want to give a good answer. What have I seen recently. …
TF: So, yours is going to exist gimmicky?
BM: No, I meant, what have I seen once again recently. Oh, I know! "Umberto D." [an Italian flick directed past Vittorio De Sica from 1952].
PG: Final answer?
BM: I auditioned to host that show, "Who Wants to Exist a Millionaire." I auditioned to host every show on Goggle box. No, I read that Tom loves that film, and I thought, "Allow me scout it once more." I remember liking it, merely it floored me this time.
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PG: How so?
BM: Dogs affair to me, to first with. I didn't have that affair that anybody says is going to happen when you have a child; it didn't change how I felt nearly my dog. I love my daughter more than anything; she e'er wins. Just my dog suffered no loss of stature. In the flick, this man has lost everything. He's been rejected by anybody. His one-time friends can't look to become away from him — similar an odor. But that canis familiaris sticks with him. Just the way he holds the dog when he finds it at the shelter and again at the cease. …
TF: You lot're going to make me cry simply describing it.
BM: It's this fleeting moment. He's going to be depressed again the next day. But for that moment, he didn't impale himself, and the dog is the reason why. There'due south joy in his life.
PG: Which film have you seen more times than any other?
TF: For me, that'south easy. "The Women" [George Cukor's ensemble one-act from 1939]. I mean, come on.
BM: The remake? [They laugh.]
TF: No, in fact, I warned one of the stars that she should not remake information technology. I mean the existent one. The lines come and so quick. Every time I watch, I hear a new i. Prisoner of war, pow, prisoner of war. The writing is amazing.
BM: Y'all know who loves "The Women"? Anna Kendrick. It's always nice to find a talented young moving picture star who cares about pic history.
TF: Information technology's shocking how many young stars don't. I was sitting at a table with some — in their 20s and early 30s — and a woman scratched her head, and a slice of hair extension fell out. I said, "That's and so 'Mr. Skeffington.'" Blank await. So, I said, "It's a Bette Davis moving picture." She said, "Bette Davis?" And this is a really famous actress, who often plays bitches.
BM: No way!
PG: We need names!
TF: Pitiful.
[We order; the reporter asks for a glass of wine.]
TF: Wow, a drinker in the center of the solar day. That doesn't pass in L.A. Information technology's how I learned I was an alcoholic. I don't drink anymore. Just when I first moved here, I did martinis at lunch, which is normal in England. Simply people looked at me, like: You take a drinking trouble. And it turned out I did. I'yard certain you don't.
PG: Permit me know if you meet whatsoever signs.
TF: Tin I ask a question? Why are y'all showing more contemporary films on TCM?
BM: Nosotros're non. I swear to God.
TF: It seems like I turn on now, and it'southward color from the '70s. I'chiliad thinking, "Oh, no."
BM: We've e'er shown films from the '70s. The ratio is the same, I promise.
PG: But Tom raises an interesting point. I dear boob tube, only TCM is the only aqueduct I worry about.
TF: Me, too. And PBS.
BM: Unquestionably true. There's no bigger sports fan in America than I am, only I don't care nearly ESPN. Same with HBO and AMC and Netflix. I love what they practise, simply I don't worry about them.
PG: They aren't so frail. TCM connects me to movies I watched with my mom and dad.
TF: To our childhood and our dreams.
BM: But it's more than that. Information technology's not simply seeing a movie you watched with your mom, it's instinctively knowing that this is the kind of movie my grandad watched. This is the kind of film that fabricated my dad happy. It forms a bail with the past.
PG: Permit's talk well-nigh your pasts. You lot both love film.
TF: I lived in flick. It was more existent to me than reality. I grew up in Texas and Santa Atomic number 26, and the sophisticated world that I didn't have in my day-to-day life, it was in flick. That'south 1 reason I love Los Angeles. Because even if they were just interim, people actually said those lines on film sets hither.
PG: But you didn't come up here afterward school.
TF: No, I wanted to go to Studio 54 and live this glamorous life. So, I moved to New York and acted in television commercials for about 3 years.
BM: Which commercials?
TF: I'm not going to tell y'all. And you won't find them. There was already a SAG thespian named Tom Ford, so I made an alteration to my name.
BM: But you made some money?
TF: Enough to alive on for three or four years, and so I decided I didn't like it and went into fashion.
PG: And you became a announcer like your dad, instead of going into the movies like your grandfather?
BM: Motion-picture show came much later, in higher. It was largely irrelevant to me growing upwards. We lived in Washington, D.C. My dad [the journalist Frank Mankiewicz] was Bobby Kennedy'due south press secretary and George McGovern'due south campaign manager. My dad was the biggest influence in my life by a gene of a thousand. So I became a TV journalist. But I hated it. The third time y'all knock on a mother'southward door and ask how she feels that her teenage girl was killed, you think, "How am I making anything meliorate?" But I liked being on TV, nevertheless do. So, I auditioned for the job at TCM.
Paradigm
PG: Was the Mankiewicz proper noun a large reward?
BM: Sure. But let's not kid ourselves. My name is not Ben Spielberg.
TF: Are y'all kidding? Information technology's like being a Goldwyn.
BM: Maybe it helped when I got to the last three. Simply one time I got the job, I had to do an enormous amount of catch-up work, watching and watching and watching films to endeavor to get smart well-nigh them.
PG: Merely the mind-blowing pin: from mode designer to picture show managing director.
TF: This will sound crazy, but they're not and so dissimilar. The most important thing, in both, is that you have a message, something yous really demand to say. So you surround yourself with great teams and create a process for maxim it. Call up: I've been a fashion designer for 30 years. I've worked with amazing photographers: Irving Penn, Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon. I've done television commercials. I already had a sense of framing and telling stories. And I'thousand vain. I know where I demand primal lite and a little fill. If yous love film, and you're obsessive about it, you first to learn: "Oh, expect how she said that!" "Look how he walked in."
BM: I don't know a lot nigh style, just you must be using different muscles as a filmmaker. Movies are and then collaborative. And there's no style, as a offset-time director, that you lot're ordering Colin Firth and Julianne Moore around.
TF: "Ordering" is the incorrect word. Yous cast great actors, then y'all give them space. They're dying to give you amazing performances. Y'all can guide and steer. But you're non a dictator. You can just be a dictator in the editing room and, to some extent, when you're writing. It'south all perfect when information technology'southward in your head. Only I've only fabricated two movies; I'm non trying to deed like I know everything. And I still dear way.
PG: So, you're sitting at dinner i night and say, "I'm going to brand a film"?
TF: No, no, no. I'd been a successful fashion designer for a long time, and I started to feel not completely satisfied. Fashion is very quick. The first time you lot see a woman in a cute apparel — the commencement dress of its kind — it'southward like: Wow! Come across her afterwards, and it'south a pretty dress. Whatever. Later, in a museum, you tin can appreciate the apparel: amazing, so ahead of its time. But it doesn't blow you away. But if yous lookout a great flick from the '30s, you showtime crying. They're all dead: the author, the director. Even the dogs are dead. Flick is forever and ever and e'er.
PG: Your first movie, "A Single Man," was tremendously moving — especially for me, a kid whose begetter killed himself. What drew you lot to that story: a grieving, suicidal human, dragged back to life by the dazzler of the world?
TF: I suppose I was going through a midlife crisis, an booze crisis, at that moment. I had left Gucci, and I didn't quite know who I was or what I was going to do. I was a piffling bit lost. It seemed like exactly the right story to make.
BM: And you lot accomplished something rare. Ninety-8 percentage of the films that rely heavily on vocalisation-over narration are just failures of exposition. But that wasn't the example with "A Unmarried Man." I liked it a lot.
TF: You made me think of the first line of the volume [past Christopher Isherwood, on which the picture is based], which Colin [Firth] says in voice-over, "Waking upwardly is saying 'am' and 'at present.'"
PG: And "now" brings usa to "Nocturnal Animals," your new picture show, which couldn't be less like "A Single Human being," at beginning chroma. A psychological thriller set within the story of a crumbling marriage. Simply the stories keep circling dorsum on each other. What films does it remind you of?
BM: "No State for Old Men," to some extent, because of the open, Texas, violent nature of it — which is just nigh my favorite picture of this century. Just I tin can't recollect of another moving-picture show where the parallel story didn't actually happen, even so you completely forget that as you lot're watching it.
PG: Such an original structure. And withal the Amy Adams story, her aging marriage, isn't so different, emotionally, from the earth of your kickoff film.
TF: Truthful, this is a woman at a crossroads in her life. A woman who doesn't know what her future is.
BM: There's tremendous precision in it, too. To me, that'southward why you might recognize this picture show equally made by the same guy who fabricated "A Single Human."
TF: Information technology's very autobiographical — well, both of them are. I took what Christopher Isherwood did and grafted my personality onto it. Then Colin grafted his, and oddly, all iii stack up. And Amy Adams'due south character, in the new film, is not dissimilar. She's trying to structure her life and hold everything within. Trying to be what she thinks she should be. She's a victim of our culture: In that location are still a lot of people, believe it or not, who call up that women are supposed to be pretty and raise children — and that's it.
PG: Only the Jake Gyllenhaal story-inside-the-story takes information technology to another level.
TF: I like that device. Information technology'due south a moral allegory, and I love what he's saying to her: "Await what you did to me. Wait how you made me feel. Y'all thought I was weak, but await at what I did. I stuck it out and wrote the keen volume."
PG: That sounds like the existent appeal.
TF: We alive in this throwaway civilization that I, literally, helped create. I brand a stream of products that are designed to become obsolete. If your marriage isn't going well, throw it away. If someone isn't doing well at piece of work, fire them. Nosotros're not taught that you lot can have a miserable morning and a wonderful evening; nosotros're non taught that that'south normal. Well, this woman throws away her soulmate, and now she's unhappy.
BM: I couldn't terminate thinking about those people. That's how y'all know a movie got you. I pulled over to go some java on the style home, and as I sat there, I kept thinking nearly them and that piece of art that says, "Revenge." They stayed with me for a long, long time.
TF: Proficient!
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