BRIAN FORMO

The Cutting Room: An Unused and In-Depth Interview from the London Set of Xavier Dolan’s The Death & Life of John F. Donovan

I was handpicked by Dolan to fly to London for a week to report on his upcoming film, to be timed to the TIFF premiere a year later. However, a year later I no longer worked at Collider, there were new press agents, the film had entirely changed (in fact the only thing I saw that was included in the film was the Florence and the Machine montage; the above scene, which introduces magic into the film and was the largest and longest set-up, was part of the cuts that also excised Jessica Chastain’s character entirely. Below is the article that I had written up, including quotes from Dolan, Natalie Portman, and Jacob Tremblay, from my visit. The strikethroughs and bold italicized notes are from Dolan himself to fact check/quote check now that his movie had changed so drastically.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to express yourself without risking offending people, for your choices, your behaviors, your expressions to be mistaken and misinterpreted,” Dolan told me in the lobby of his London hotel in May 2017, where we had a lengthy discussion in the lounge during an off day of shooting his English-language debut, The Death and Life of John F. Donovan.

I was invited by Dolan to visit the London set of John F. Donovan and we kicked off with a lengthy and very friendly conversation at his hotel; it involved personal stories of his early obsessions with WB dramas and his passionate defense of the merits of Mrs. Doubtfire and Batman Returns, and those various quotes will be sprinkled in below, with extra comments from Natalie Portman and Jacob Tremblay, the central mother-son relationship in the film. Being the only journalist on set for one week, and frequently folded into viewing set-ups and scenes and eating meals with the crew was a unique experience as a journalist; I was not sheltered amongst other writers like most set visits, but I was treated like a part of the crew for a week. It was also hugely revealing to see Dolan interact with the actors—placing Portman’s scarf in a specific way on her coat so that it’d flutter in the wind just so—and tearing up grass in glee when he achieved the shot he wanted after the lengthy set-up and previously failed attempts. Still, on set Dolan would make light of his neurotic and hyperactive tendencies if he thought they needed that extra-explanation, seemingly always aware of when he was being observed.

Perhaps that extra awareness that kicks in when Dolan thinks someone can poke holes isn’t a defense mechanism but is just an offshoot of his meticulous nature. “He really takes his time to make every small decision perfectly,” Portman told me. And the shoot of John F. Donovan has required a lot of time.

Dolan's English Language Debut

The production has stopped and started over the course of one and a half years. Donovan has filmed in four different countries, all determined by the availability of the necessary members of the stellar cast during each shooting block (Kit Harington, Jessica Chastain, Susan Sarandon, Thandiwe Newton, Kathy Bates, Ben Schnetzer, Sarah Gadon, and Michael Gambon and Bella Thorne (she played Jessica’s character's intern, so she’s not in the film anymore either) all co-star in addition to Portman and Tremblay). Before that ace cast was fully assembled, Dolan had finished three films after he’d written the script for John F. Donovan.

Dolan frequently works with built-in breaks for weather or to edit sections of a film before reconvening, but Donovan was a script that came out of a desire to not complete another project. “I called (co-writer) Jacob Tierney and I said, ‘Listen, I’m stuck on editing Tom at the Farm. I need a mental break from this. I need to create something new,” Dolan said. “And we just enclosed ourselves in my apartment and wrote every day—with breaks for SNL skits and cat videos—but we wrote it from Christmas 2012 until the very beginning of 2013.” Dolan knew that this script—involving a globally famous actor, John F. Donovan (Harington) and the public fallout from his pen-pal relationship with a young fan (Tremblay)—needed to be his English-language debut.

Although Dolan was nervous of his ability to write in English and thus sought a writing partner in Tierney, Portman—who has starred in the English-language debut of three major international directors (Luc Besson, Wong Kar-Wai, Pablo Larraín) previous to teaming with Dolan—was vastly impressed. “Xavier is more articulate than any English speaker I know,” she said. “Film language is universal, so it doesn’t factor into anything as long as the director can communicate well.”

The Influence of WB Television

Dolan attributes much of his English-language knowledge to television. “Growing up in Quebec we got our shows from France because I would watch everything dubbed in French, so we got them like three years after the actual broadcast. I would watch all the WB shows.

From Charmed to Roswell to Smallville to Buffy to Angel, I watched them all,” Dolan said. “Roswell was the big one for me. It was hard for me to be sent to boarding school, but watching Roswell and other shows was something I really held on to survive being far away from home.” Dolan described how TV not only helped him cope with not living at home but also gave him a firm grasp of English. “I had permission to sneak into the dormitory when everyone was actually downstairs, because we’d only go back to the dorm rooms to go to bed, but I’d be able to go there around 7pm and have the TV all to myself. I would record all those shows, then transfer them to my computer, then I would burn them to discs. It was so dorky, I feel like I’ll never have sex again now that I’ve told you this. And then I brought those discs to my English teacher, because I wanted to speak English, and we’d watch them together and she’d stop for every word that I didn’t understand, she’d write it down, tell me what it meant, and to this day, I remember when I say a word or use an idiomatic expression, I remember what show, what character, what movie taught me that word or phrase.”

Dolan enthusiastically showed me a clip from the made-up WB-esque TV show that John F. Donovan became famous four, Hellsome High. It featured an obviously thirtysomething Donovan sporting a curly hairdo and lamenting his supernatural powers because he’s “just 17” and being a teen is hard enough without being a supernatural teen. The setting for the scene was the perfect early 2000s teen diner and the credit sequence featured spooky things/teen things happening set to a Blink 182 song and it all ends with a hero pose for Sarah Gadon, who plays the main character on Hellsome High. Viewing that world built for a credit sequence made Dolan smile widely and cover his mouth, hiding his chuckles.

“I understand fanaticism around TV because you commit hours and hours to worlds and emotions,” Dolan said, happy to have an ode to Roswell in a film that’s already very personal for him. “Additionally, I fantasized about many of the leading men and I’m sure regardless of sexual orientation TV stars also helped awaken the sexual life of many young people. I realized that I spent all of my childhood, all of my teenage years, living in the world of Roswell, Buffy and Harry Potter and I’ve spent my early adult years living the worlds that I made for myself, which were worlds that were far less esoteric or extraterrestrial, but I’m starting to lean more into that formative side of myself.”

Embracing a More "Commercial" Style

During our conversations in London, Dolan frequently discussed how John F. Donovan would be entirely different than his other films, and not just because it was in English but he’s embracing the basic things that he loves: earnest commercial filmmaking. “It’s the story of a child who worships an actor, a hero, and the movie itself is built around the tropes of American cinema such as a superhero and a villain, Jessica Chastain is a pure villain. Her character is sheer evil, and that was part of a desire to really tell the story as a superhero tale. “ Dolan expanded, “the superhero owes his public, must save them from evil, or in this case from the truth, and has to live by his façade and wear this mask, which in this case is his sexuality.  (it’s not in the film anymore)The story might not be commercial in itself, but the storytelling and the tropes and the cinematography are. We’re still talking about a child worshipping a public figure, a hero in his eyes, and when Rupert (Tremblay) moves from America to England, makes him realize that he’s invented an imaginary friend out of this actor he’s started a correspondence with.”

“My background is vastly commercial. Culturally speaking, I come from a very mainstream, not niche, not artistic, but a really mainstream cinema education. I never really had a special relationship with a more intellectual aunt or an artistic uncle. I had a period in my life where, in my early 20s, I would resent and reject and condescend every possible mainstream reference, thinking it was shit, just because it wasn’t The Piano Teacher and at a certain point you either stay there or you go somewhere else. Where I decided to go (for John F. Donovan) was closer to where I came from, I guess, and where I come from are all these family movies from the 90s. I’m aware that my instincts, my manners, my codes and my standards are more in commercial storytelling than in a cold, academic style. I mean, I only have a high school diploma, I never directed any shorts and there are plenty of films that I haven’t seen.”

Dolan had an interesting choice for the type of family film that he misses from his youth. “Mrs. Doubtfire is just the most incredible movie. Seriously, let’s try to name one broad entertainment nowadays that can tackle divorce so intelligently and with such humor and grace,” he said. “I feel like we don’t bring smart stakes in broad entertainment anymore. Mrs. Doubtfire really is about divorce. It’s about the grief from the family model being obsolete. Instead most broad entertainment involves leaving breakfast to save the world, leaving the wife and daughter and son behind.”

“I find it super interesting that Xavier’s influences are Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter and Titanic,” Portman said. “He certainly does not cultivate any film snobbery that you might expect from someone who has been so praised on the film festival circuit. Most of us who weren’t born into film families have a similar experience that those are the movies we got to see in our suburban multiplexes and that shaped our worldview. I feel like he is able, with John F. Donovan, to incorporate that big movie feeling into a storyline that would probably be made into a niche film by another filmmaker.”

Portman, herself, appreciates that she was able to shape the early worldview of both Dolan, 29, and Tremblay, 10, via her role in the Star Wars prequels. When I talked with Tremblay he consistently refers to Portman not as Natalie but as Padme (he also refers to Kit Harington as Jon Snow). While shooting in London, Dolan, Tremblay and Portman all watched the first The Last Jedi trailer together and Tremblay “almost peed my pants because I was so excited.” Tremblay beamed when talking about Padme, particularly that she posed for a picture with him for May the 4th. “Padme and me are going to win Star Wars day,” he told me in the field minutes before taking this photograph.

#Padme (aka Natalie) & I would like to wish you all a very happy #StarWarsDay! #MayThe4thBeWithYou! pic.twitter.com/4GVAA4yeSV

— Jacob Tremblay (@JacobTremblay) May 4, 2017

“It might be weird for a kid in the 21st century to say this, but I like 80s movies a lot,” Tremblay said, taking a different route than Dolan. “I like The Lost Boys, I like The Goonies, and I like Indiana Jones and all of Star Wars.”

The only time that Portman brought up an age for Dolan was in discussing Star Wars, it's his fandoms and influences that show his age, not is command on set. “It’s pretty amazing to have people like Xavier and Jacob, a group of young artists, who grew up with me as Padme,” Portman said. “I really appreciate it and feel honored that I have any part of their and other’s culture upbringing.”

“There’s a moment that you’ve lived in other people’s films and now you’re making films of your own an people from those films are coming to play with you in your sandbox. It’s not nearly as glamorous as people think, the actual creation of that, the glamor comes later after the work is done. There was a moment filming in this tiny kitchen, we’re crammed in and it’s really very hot and I have many crew members who’ve been with me since I Killed My Mother (2009) and we’re 20 people deep in something that’s the size of a walk in closet and we’re sitting on each other’s laps and knees and I’m there looking at Michael Gambon and he’s wearing a costume I’ve chosen for him, reading words I’ve written for him, and he has come all the way from England, but also all the way from my childhood, and that’s the full circle. He gave me the third Harry Potter book and wrote kind words on the front page. It’s moments like those that make me realize that I’m living my dream; I’m doing the profession that fulfills me the most but I’m also doing it with the people that I’ve admired forever, and I am being assisted by many people who’ve been with me forever.”

This glowing view of an actor for their portrayal of a formative character in one’s youth is, of course, integral to the decade plus narrative of The Death and Life of John F. Donovan. And Dolan’s earliest remembrance of being a fan was as a child actor hoping to run into Danny DeVito. “When my father brought me to Los Angeles as a kid I was stopping every time I saw a phone booth and tried to find Danny DeVito’s phone number,” he laughed.

Why? “Batman Returns was another huge reference for me,” Dolan said. “Christopher Nolan’s franchise in some ways ridicules Tim Burton’s Batman, but we have to remember that this guy is in a bat costume, right? He’s wearing a cape and he’s got pointy little ears. He jumps off buildings.” In discussing massive broad entertainment now as opposed to his youth, Dolan isn’t as enthused. “I think the risk in these billion-dollar franchises is that they take themselves so seriously. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first one to line up to go see these films, I love the boys with toys club, but there’s a new sort of aesthetic fascism to it. I have more inclination for the humor and the fantasy of Batman Returns. I just prefer the tone. Like, Michelle Pfeiffer breaking her neon lights so they don’t say “hello there” but instead say “hell here” and like, crafting this latex suit out of a biking jacket and stretching on her fire escape. That’s a property that I grew up with and I respect the direction it has taken, the codes have changed and audiences take it much more serious but I love movies that have humor and directors who love to have fun.” While wearing a black Slytherin hoodie, Dolan said, “the Harry Potter movies are more for me. There are trick shots, like someone opening a box but you see it from the camera angle of the box and people reacting to what’s inside before you see what’s in side; it’s lighthearted filmmaking that’s closer to the tone that I grew up with. And it’s probably why I include a little bit of magic in Donovan.” (I don’t anymore)

NOTE: A few seconds of this is the video above; Rupert (Tremblay) and his mother (Portman) dump all the letters he received from John F. Donovan (Harrington) into a well in a field; as they walk away the letters shoot out of the well, fill the sky, and swirl around them. Likely this would’ve been the original ending to the movie.

The Converging Storylines

The converging storylines and multiple locations—Prague, New York, London and Montreal—made for a lengthy shoot in which Dolan could reshape the story in between various actors’ availability. “There’s a story that rewrites itself in the editing room. That’s true of every film, but it’s especially true with that this film had a predisposition to being re-shaped, or shift, toward something slightly different in terms of balance—because we are taking breaks between stories due to actor availability and there are many different worlds colliding,” Dolan said, expanding more on the plot. “There is the story of the title role who’s living his life in New York, there’s the life of his pen pal who lives and England and then there is the life of his pen pal twelve years later who reminisces the story and friendship he had with that man whom he never met in person. It’s impossible to tell which story holds the most importance when you set off on that journey. It’s a blessing to be able to stop and see and contemplate your mistakes and the lacks, the overabundance of this and the lack of that, and to be able to fix things or try new things. My co-editor edited the first part while I was shooting and then we stopped from September to March before picking up shooting again and that time was invaluable. It’s pretty clear to all of us that the film we would’ve had should we have shot continuously without ever stopping, would’ve been completely different.”

“The three stories are of equal importance but it became clear what would be the heart of this film.” Dolan paused, aware of the next sentence. “And I think that once again, it comes as no surprise that it would be the mother-and-son relationship. You know,” Dolan said as he reshuffled, “it doesn’t bother me. I could spend the rest of my life talking about mothers and sons and could make a different film each time.”

This pull back toward a central mother-son relationship made applied extra importance to many of Portman and Tremblay’s scenes that were saved for the very end of filming. The big scene that the whole film was building toward took us to a field in England, but describing it feels like it’d be a spoiler for the movie. It involved multiple cranes, trick shots and special effects to come; that is to say, something big and commercial. The first few set-ups weren’t working and rain clouds started rolling in.

Production had built one and a half years and needed an emotional release from this one sequence, without it Dolan felt the whole picture would suffer. To get his performers to feel a sense of awe and wonder he blasted James Newton Howard’s score to The Last Airbender while props flew all around Portman and Tremblay. At the last possible moment, the shot finally worked just before the crew had to pack everything out from that location. Dolan let out an exuberant and exhausted exclamation and high-stepped away from the monitors, giving his longtime producer, Nancy Grant a big hug. The two of them also helped clean up the practical mess that had been made from the shot, instead of leaving for their trailer. (This scene is not in the film anymore)

Most of the set-ups that I was present to see were montages of big emotional scenes. Dolan has long embraced the montage, which was perhaps the earliest indicator of his commercial leanings from previous films. But even though I wasn’t there for immense dialogue days, I could see how hands on and friendly Dolan was with his actors. I asked Tremblay how old he thought Dolan was and He thought long and hard and guessed that Xavier was 25, but Tremblay said he acts like a 13-year-old with him, chasing him after a good take, then hiding, sharing candy. “Xavier calls me ‘Monkey’,” Tremblay said. “I just call him Xavier because he’s my boss.” That’s not true! He calls me Ape! :)

Dolan, Tremblay, and Portman were all child actors. And that features into the story as Tremblay is taking an interest in acting at his new school and Portman’s Sam, who is a former actress, “wants to prevent him from getting hurt the way she was hurt.” Portman said. Parental resistance was not unfamiliar to Portman, as she noted that when she was 12, “I begged my parents to let me make Leon.”

The third part of the story of The Death and Life of John F. Donovan involves an older Rupert, who is an actor (played by Ben Schnetzer, most recently of Goat), giving an interview to a journalist (Thandiwe Newton) about his relationship with John F. Donovan. For Schnetzer, going back to language, Dolan noted, “Oddly I discovered him when I dubbed him (in French) for The Book Thief. I dubbed him again in Snowden and I cast him before seeing Goat but I’d just like to say that I love that film so much.”

When talking about Schnetzer’s work in Goat he’s struck by that film’s ability to show multiple shades of masculinity, something that even though he loves 90s film and television, that era of filmmaking didn’t really do. “In all the TV shows that I watched as a teen, I would never see myself, or I’d only see a grotesque cliché which one of the leads describe as “a fruitcake, Dolan said. And he’s shaped John F. Donovan to fill that representative void for someone else.

“It’s a story about fame, celebrity, privacy, the media and how they distort the truth; the relationship that artists have with their public, how we crave the details of their private lives, what we look for in entertainment, and how we judge (to be replaced by it shapes) how we think an artist should behave, who an artist should be in order to be famous, to be put on a pedestal, to be bankable,” Dolan said, to wrap up an interview with this journalist about the film that gives media the power to destroy in one story and heal in another. Wow! Great kicker! Amazing!