Spotlight on... Justin Haythe '96

Author: Jason Gutierrez

The Middlebury Campus: First, what attracted you to the novel ("Revolutionary Road" by Richard Yates)?
Justin Haythe: I'd read the novel with a novelist's hat on first. Then I was approached by the BBC for an adaptation, and it is a very filmic book in certain ways. So I felt that it could be done justice because it is a great literary novel, which rarely makes a great movie, but I felt there was something cinematic and dramatic about it, inherently. There was a kind of mystery posed as to, I mean, literally in the novel the two people are by the side of the road screaming at each other about which one of them is trapped in the marriage, and the film is posing the question: which one is it that is trapped? I had a couple stipulations, I just wanted to make sure they were going to do the abortion and they were going to drink and smoke as much as they do in the book. It's a pretty unlikely piece of business in Hollywood. They don't usually crack into books that are that heavy, that dark. So I leapt at the opportunity.

TC: Can you just take me through the production and how it got started. You said you were approached by the BBC.
JH: I was approached by the BBC and I wrote a draft. Kate Winslet, who shares the same agency as I do, read the draft and became attached as an actress, which is rare, but Kate is someone with great instincts, and we, together, explored different director possibilities. Clearly she was doing what she could at home to convince Sam Mendes, her husband, to direct. He became involved and about six months later Leo (DiCaprio) became involved and then we were in production almost immediately.

TC: What was your level of involvement during production?
JH: I was at rehearsals, there were three weeks of rehearsals, and he (Mendes) really ran it like a theater company. There was a rehearsal every day, and I was on set every day, which is pretty rare. Sometimes it was thrilling and great. Sometimes not. Film sets are very charged places and in many ways the writer is useless there until he is required.

TC: I know that Sam comes from a background in theater, and in theater the playwright is paramount, so were there many changes made to the script (during the course of production)?
JH: Yeah, the difference between writing a book and writing a screenplay is that it's very much alive until the very end, that's part of the pleasure of it. And it evolves through the editing process, which is very different. You may edit a play during rehearsal but you don't edit the final product. In some ways (film) isn't a writer's medium for that reason, it's much more a director's or an editor's medium than it is a writer's or an actor's medium.

TC: What were some of the problems that you were confronted with while adapting a work that is as well respected as Revolutionary Road is?
JH: There is a devoted following, and the most common comment I got was people coming up and saying, "Whatever you do, don't f*** it up." That was their note. [Laughs] The big challenge was that you can't try and do the novel, because movies are much closer to short stories in shape than they are to novels, so I had to pick something about the novel. One of the great strengths of the novel are the interior words of these characters, it's largely what this book is about. That was a real challenge, especially finding a way to dramatize how these people miss each other, and what they wish they had said. That was the most obvious challenge.

TC: I know that your first film, The Clearing, was an original story done by you and director Pieter Jan Brugge. Can you talk about the differences between working on an original idea versus working on an adaptation?
JH: For one thing, the film business is much more comfortable with an adaptation, because there is a feeling that we can look at the object in front of us and generally agree, "We want it (the movie) to look something like that." There are different kinds of novels. Richard Yates' novel is one that you live with throughout the process, because it is so cinematic in certain ways and so well dramatized. He is a kind of master at dramatic writing, down to staging and dialog. And you use as much of it as you possibly can. But at the same time as you have a guide, there are also some constraints; whereas preparing an original story there are no constraints. You can follow the story wherever it goes. I was not going to even begin to entertain changing certain parts of this book. It's not the kind of novel where you combine characters or change the ending. It's not doable.

TC: While reflecting on both The Clearing and Revolutionary Road I felt like both films were, to a certain extent, a critique of the American dream. Was that something you were conscious of while writing the films?
JH: No, it's interesting because I think that Revolutionary Road, in many ways, missed the zeitgeist. When we began the process there weren't as many people who were dying for a dead-end corporate job and a house in the suburbs. I mean, 6,000 people a month are losing their jobs and it's a different moment. And so, I don't think it was any kind of conscious attack on the American dream. I think that there are definite similarities between the two stories in the sense that people felt that they were promised something and when they get to the finish line they find that it wasn't really the way it was described, at least it doesn't feel that way. I think class is a preoccupation of mine, especially because it's supposed to be invisible in America.

TC: One of the more interesting characters was John Givings (played by Academy Award nominee Michael Shannon). It's a brilliant performance, and the character walks a fine line between being comedic and tragic. I imagine it was one of the more difficult roles to write.
JH: Well, John Givings, more than any other character, I took as much of Yates' dialog as I possibly could. I think that, potentially, John Givings is the most creaky device in the book; the brilliant mad man who speaks the truth. In a way he speaks what the author wants to say. I think that he survives partly because of Michael Shannon's brilliant performance and Sam Mendes' direction. It can very easily seem like a device, but it doesn't. I think that top to bottom the film is unbelievably well cast. Some of the supporting players are truly amazing. Kathryn Hahn, David Harbour, Kathy Bates, Richard Easton, who plays Kathy Bates's husband is a wonderful stage actor, Zoe Kazan, Dylan Baker, who plays the hard drinking buddy at work. That's what's so great about Yates, I'm sure you know people who regale you with their drunken stories so it's all very true.
TC: I feel like now, with films like Revolutionary Road and TV shows like Mad Men, there is a desire to look back at this time period.
JH: Yeah, I wonder why that is? I wonder if it's because it was a time that felt relatively flush, as we just did until about six months ago. It's not quite the generation that made us, but this is the World War II generation. These guys went off and fought in war and had these life-defining experiences which, in many ways, feature almost not at all in both the novel and the film. Thinking back on that you realize that you would have been off fighting Germans at age 20 and everything else would feel like a pale imitation of that experience. I think maybe there's been a feeling that America has become more conformist over the last decade, more prosperous over the last decade, more consumerist over the last decade. Those are all aspects of the 1950s.

TC: One of the things that I think is interesting about the film is that its depiction of marriage is never pretty. In fact, it seems to me that the only relatively happy character is John Givings-
JH: I'd say he's pretty miserable.

TC: Really?
JH: I think he's got a dark life ahead of him.

TC: Of all the couples, though, I'm struggling to come up with a happy one amongst them.
JH: I think that's absolutely right. This is, by the way, Yates's worldview. If you read his books or any of his stories you get it over and over again, and they're terrific. Easter Parade is a wonderful novel and makes Revolutionary Road look like a happy story by comparison. I think by the end of the book, and the film is a little bit different, you check in with all the people again. And I think, at best, they're co-habiting; surviving. Not happy, but Yates' world view is that they've got it as good as you can expect to get it. Grim, huh?

TC: Well, I felt like the ending was happy in an odd way. I almost felt like Frank Wheeler was liberated by April's death.
JH: Well, that scene is different from what's in the book. At least it feels different. In the book he gives the children up for adoption to his older brother, who he doesn't like. People read that scene of him sitting in the playground with them as if he didn't do that, but he could be visiting his children. We don't know. That's the interesting thing about visual storytelling. The kids are always peripheral, in the background, out of focus. It was a very conscious decision by the filmmaker. And in the script. At the end he is sitting facing them, and that's a difference. A profound difference. I don't know if it's happy, but I think at least there's some sense that he's going to hold onto what he's got.

TC: For me, the most striking scene is the fight that April and Frank have toward the end of the film and the subsequent scene where April cooks him breakfast-
JH: It's devastating.

TC: It's really heartbreaking.
JH: Well I think Yates said it was the best thing he'd ever written, the breakfast scene. I think there's a lot of truth to that, and I think it's the most honest they ever are with each other.

TC: I think that's what I appreciated about the film were the aspects that were very subtle and very true. In any relationship, after a fight there is always a moment of quiet where you try and go back to normalcy even when going back to normalcy is almost impossible, but that's something you don't see in films very often.
JH: One thing I wanted to capture from the book was that shudder of recognition. So much of film is about empathizing with the actor. I think that's something that makes a successful screen actor is somebody who people can identify with. This is a different kind of identification, and one the audience doesn't always want.

TC: And that's especially true considering that there was a lot made of the re-pairing of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio.
JH: Absolutely, I mean you survive the boat and this is what you end up with. [Laughs] I mean look, you only get to make a film that is this dark with a certain number of actors, and Leo and Kate are among that small number. By the way, when I say the list is very short, it's short when it comes to those with ability and are also stars. And I think Leo and Kate are unbelievable in their performances. There is also a certain dialogue that the audience has growing up with these people that I don't think you ignore, and I think Sam Mendes was very conscious of this. It's something you use to your advantage in storytelling.

TC: Was that ever a concern of yours during the casting process that people's associations with the two of them would supersede their characters?
JH: No, I always thought it added something.

TC: Which came first, writing fiction or screenwriting?
JH: Fiction.

TC: And how did you get into screenwriting?
JH: Stumbled. Blindly. Accidentally. I had a friend in the business who encouraged me to give it a go.

TC: And are you happy you did?
JH: Yeah, very much.

TC: I assume there are different things that you get out of writing for screen that you don't get from writing fiction and vice versa.
JH: The pleasure of writing for screen is that it's collaborative. There's also the fact that it's so alive, from beginning to end through the editing process; the fact that you're in the world, in the sense that it's a business, which is interesting. Writing a book is much more solitary, but the satisfaction of it is that it's a writer's medium and film is not so much a writer's medium. There are more restraints on your imagination writing for film because of the practicality. You're writing a blueprint for something that has to go up on screen. A script that doesn't end up on screen isn't successful. Or it's at least a partial birth.