Edward Norton multitasks to make ‘Motherless Brooklyn’
NEW YORK — When you are the producer, screenwriter and star, as Edward Norton is with Friday’s “Motherless Brooklyn,” do you really want to direct as well?
For this Boston native that was a real concern.
“Honestly, after I wrote the script,” Norton, 50, said, “there were times when I really just thought maybe I should focus completely on the performance.”
As screenwriter, Norton took Jonathan Lethem’s bestselling 1999 novel and radically revised it. Norton set “Brooklyn” in the ’50s, not the ’90s. And he invented three major supporting characters — Willem Dafoe’s activist architect, Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s community activist and Alec Baldwin as Moses Randolph, New York City’s ruthless power broker.
“Jonathan is a cinephile and he said, ‘I don’t think faithful adaptations tend to be very good. Springboard off. Do something wild.’
“I felt very liberated (to add) the socio-political history of what happened in New York in the ’50s.”
Norton found Lethem’s main character irresistible: Lionel Essrog, a private investigator with Tourette’s syndrome.
“I was very taken with Lionel, this hot mess who’s funny, touching and sympathetic. You realize, I’ll go anywhere with this guy.”
While still unsure if he should direct, Norton spoke with Warren Beatty, who as star-writer-director and producer made “Reds” against the odds.
“Warren said, ‘Look man, people told me nobody wants to see a three-hour movie about American socialism with documentary footage from that era. I said, ‘I want to see it. It matters to me. It’s like I think it has something to say about who we are and I’m going to do it.’
“That helped me,” Norton confessed. “You say, ‘People I admire went through that emotional experience of uncertainty and the dare of it. And they got somewhere really interesting. So what else am I doing?’
“I felt it was all do-able. The thing I had the most anxiety about was my negative impact on the quality of my ‘dance’ with other actors.”
His solution? “Go specifically to actors who I knew would show up with fully realized performances.”
“It was very intimate,” agreed Mbatha-Raw. “Edward, wearing so many hats, was able to give us the notes and steer the scene. It felt very collaborative.”
Added Dafoe, “The truth is the director is right there with you. It’s immediate, it’s urgent and also efficient because this is an ambitious project. But he’s there with that vision and that helps focus you.”
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2NlGw7T
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