Filming Eugene O’Neill When the Elements (and Investors) Don’t Cooperate (NY TIMES)

(Cont’d.)

Then he factored in current events that coincided, like the opioid epidemic and the coronavirus lockdown. “Here are these four, addicted not just to drugs and alcohol, but to each other, endlessly going over the past, the missed opportunities and failure, trapped in a house by the sea,” he said. “Somehow it felt resonant.”

Lange said that she and Kent first talked about a film version during the Broadway run. “I immediately thought, yes!” she said, adding that Mary Tyrone “gets under your skin like no other character I have ever played; you never come to the end of it. And because of the nature of filmmaking, there is so much more subtlety that can be brought to light: the expression in the eyes, the subtle shift in the voice.”

Tana first heard about the idea when the actor Ralph Fiennes, a friend of Kent’s, asked her to help with the project, which is scheduled for release this fall. She was intrigued and engaged the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire — his “Good People” had been directed by Kent — to adapt the drama, which needed to shrink from an almost-four-hour theatrical event to an under-two-hour film.

“There was never an agenda of ‘Let’s improve this,’” Lindsay-Abaire said in a video call from New York, adding that there isn’t a word of text in the film that wasn’t written by O’Neill. “It was the opposite: Let’s maintain what we love while telling the story in a different medium. It wasn’t using a machete as much as a scalpel. We took the dramatic Hippocratic oath: Do no harm to O’Neill!”

Film, he pointed out, has communication tools that the stage doesn’t have. “You can sometimes replace four lines with a close-up,” he said. “We kept asking, does the character need to say that, or can they just act it?” He and Kent also discussed ways to make the drama more cinematic, by withholding some information that O’Neill reveals early. “Ghosts, hauntings, what is Mary doing up there? We wanted to lean into some mystery, to hint at things and reveal them more slowly,” Lindsay-Abaire said.

Gabriel Byrne, who had starred opposite Lange onstage, was slated to reprise the role, but he fell out due to scheduling conflicts. Tana emailed Ed Harris, who had appeared with Lange in the movie “Sweet Dreams” almost 40 years earlier. He said yes immediately. “As tough as it was when the money fell out, it was the most rewarding film acting experience I’ve had in quite a while,” Harris said. Kent, he added, “gave us the freedom to just be those people — that it wasn’t a sacred text, that this was about human beings, not a dried-up historical piece.”

Kent said that he had considered updating the 1912 setting, but had decided that too many fundamental details would have to be altered. Still, “to the designer’s chagrin, I asked that the costumes not be too ‘period,’” he said. “Whatever the setting, the text makes it a living, contemporary thing.”

(Cont’d.)

Two weeks of rehearsal before the start of the shoot allowed the four main actors to begin to build a family dynamic. “I immediately fell head over heels for my parents,” Foster said, adding that he had brought some foraged greenery from the actual Monte Cristo cottage as a talisman.

“The rehearsal time was all about finding out what might work for character,” Morgan said. “A director who isn’t as theater-versed as Jonathan might work out camera angles first, then what the character does within. But I think the best directors work so that the camera is actor-led, and that’s how Jonathan approached it.”

Then, almost immediately, came the hiatus and a roller coaster of emotions. “The bonding of that time was actually wonderful,” Foster said. “Historically I don’t socialize a lot with fellow actors. But in this case, it really did become a family.”

The difficulty of making the film, Tana said, is indicative of the changing cinematic landscape. “It’s really hard now to make this kind of literary, straightforward, old-school independent movie,” she said. “There is so much value to this: these great, great actors doing a great American play that every kid studying literature will be able to watch. But it’s a sea change moment in our field in the way we access content, how it is monetized, where the resources are.”

Kent agreed that the film goes against the current grain, but added: “We all have mothers, fathers, our terrible sense of failures and disappointments and guilt. I think what we crave from film or theater is truth about our human experience. There is an audience for that.”

The house:

The patriarch and matriarch:

The offspring:

The director:

Oh my......O'Neill obviously thought the character needed to "say it."

Who asked for this? Who wants this? Who thinks it will be any good?

Why don't they just update it and give everyone a cell phone and let one of the sons be a tranny? Then at least it might get a 90% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

This needed a second thread?

This will lose a ton of money. Nobody gives a shit about this.

[quote] Starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris, Jonathan Kent’s adaptation of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”

The ham actors

Ham is being SERVED!

Excellent narrative building. If it’s good—it seems it turned into a passion project for all involved—the film’s production trajectory will only bolster its awards prospects.

Apparently, it’s getting a fall release.

R7 Cutting, i.e., truly adapting, the play for film is certainly a risk that could go either way. Still, I think this has the potential to be great, especially with the added velocity potentially contemporizing it *just* enough. We’ll see.

[quote]This will lose a ton of money. Nobody gives a shit about this.

This was made for a very niche audience. Those who enjoy classic American drama and literary masterpieces. Not everybody wants to watch yet another superhero blockbuster or sensational biopic on a serial killer.

The producers kept the budget low so they can turn a profit in streaming video, tv broadcasts, video sales, sales for school broadcasts, etc.

A junkie, an alcoholic and a dying victim of medical malpractice? It’s plenty woke already, hon.

Jessica HAS to be better than Katherine Hepburn was.

Jessica who?

Ed Harris doesn’t have the necessary grandeur and charisma for that larger than life role.

R17 He’ll do something great and unexpected.

[quote] the added velocity potentially contemporizing it *just* enough.

R13 What do you mean by 'velocity'?

This did not need to be done.

She is not a fit, and neither is he. And they are too, too old.

These new people aren't as the good as the originals, I'm sure of it.

R20 She won the Tony and was the first American actress to be nominated for an Olivier for Lead Actress In a Play for her work as Mary. She’s fit, and audiences, particularly her peers, whose opinions count most in determining her and the rest of the cast’s and overall production’s awards prospects, are going to give fuck all about the leads being in their 70s. In fact, they’ll reward them for it. Moreover, the play has been adapted, so I’m sure the story has been framed with that in mind. The leads’ senescence will only add a level of poignancy to this tale that’ll make it even more impactful.

It’s getting released in the fall, so I assume MGM is confident.

R19 David Lindsay-Abaire was hired to adapt and trim the fat from the play. Moreover, Jonathan Kent noted, “This is, probably, the greatest American play, the invention of the dysfunctional family drama, and when you do it in the theater, there is a sort of reverence from the audience. I thought that perhaps with film, one could shred that reverence a bit and allow its rawness and immediacy through.”

They’re going for a more visceral experience.

[quote] This is, probably, the greatest American play,

And, of course, the script is twice as OBESELY FAT as it needs to be.

R23 It’s good as is, especially for theater, but would poorly transfer to a modern-day adaptation, even one that adheres to the time period in which the story is set. Lumet’s adaptation is sublime but of it’s time, and it’s been done. Kent’s decision to boil down the stock by half to reveal its flavor was a smart move.

We don’t need another movie version of the play. Hepburn’s performance can’t be bettered. It’s a theater piece and an acting challenge. It should be played on the stage.

R25 I disagree, but we’ll just have to wait and see. As averse as you seem to be to this adaptation, I’m sure you’ll be watching it.

[quote] Kent’s decision to boil down the stock by half

And then scoop away the solidified fat with a sieve and spoon.

R27 😂

Scooping fat

Eugene O’Neill is the most boring, repetitive, prolix, and undramatic playwright there is.

His plays are as boring and overlong as James Joyce's unreadable junk. There is no drama, no color, no movement, no climax.

I was in Mourning Becomes Electra, folks. Don't forget that.

But Rosalind, your leading man was much prettier than you!

There will be “drug scenes” and they will be explicit. 💉

Cocaine in Kates's arm?

R7 is just a bigot looking to bitch about trans people

R34 Manteca.

I remember reading Mary McCarthy’s essay “America’s Realist Playwrights” written in the 50’s and her assertion that O’Neill couldn’t write.

R37 Oh, he could write, baby.

He was verbose as Bernard Shaw. You can sleep for an hour in Acts 4 and 5 and miss nothing of the plot.

R32.....everyone knows he was a British cigarette!

R40 A very beautiful one.

The trap of playing James Tyrone is coming across as a one note drip drab bore, with a few growls to show his patriarchy. BUT FUCK ME BLIND in the hands of Larry O, the part not only came off the page but bolted out of the National Theatre and soared to theatrical majesty. I was there. And over it's 3 year run I must have clocked in about 75 performances. What made the last great role for Larry, before illness cut his stage career short, so memorable, was how he found the humor in the role, and minded the play for a sheer, enjoyable, laugh filled - yes laugh filled - 3 hour entertaining night of brilliant theatrical execution. And not just Larry, but the stellar cast. American Constance Cummings, the brilliant Denis Quilley and Ronald Pickup, and the other master that brought it all together - Michael Blackmore. Thank Gawd, there is at least a record of it, but nothing, absolutely nothing like the stage version.

^ Larry always knew how to find the inner life and colour of a character even if the author just wrote down some grey shadowy lines in the script.

.....And I have to admit, Jack Lemmon was jim dandy, and brought some life to the role...but oddly not Jason. A mystery to me.....Jeremy Iron was absolutely dreadful. Talking about a drip, drab, boring performance........Nix on that, and what a lot of bunk, as Jamie would say......(got to know O'Neill's early 20th Century American lingo) don't you know.....

It's On DVD

Larry's take on that extended monologue in the last act of the play, where Tyrone confesses his missing out on becoming a truly great actor, cause he sold out for the money on the The Count of Monte Cristo warhorse is enough to make any actor shit in his, her, they them, britches. For any young actor out there, get the fucking DVD and watch. At least, the DVD does a good job in preserving that performance. As good an actor Ed Harris is, he won't come near it. Now, a middle age Gene Hackman, circa 1980....fuck me, that would be something....

R21, for your elucidation, the "originals" of James Tyrone and Mary Tyrone were Lars Hanson and Inga Tidblad of the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Stockholm in the original 1956 production.

Fredric March and Florence Eldridge were the "orIginal" players of the parts on the American stage later in 1956. This production won the Tonys for Best Play and Best Actor (March), as well as a Pulitzer.

It's a play. The play is what came first. The filmed version was very good and I still hear Richardson's voice when I read the play. But don't, please, ignore the fact that, unlike the Disney world we live in, the play came first. The film was an adaptation.