New York Times, NY
June 22 2005
Verse Film Pits Love Against the Clash of Cultures
By ANNETTE GRANT
Published: June 22, 2005
Sally Potter – a dancer, choreographer, actress, singer, composer,
writer, poet and filmmaker – has a new movie, “Yes,” opening on
Friday. It follows “Orlando” (1993), “The Tango Lesson” (1997) and
“The Man Who Cried” (2000) and several short films and documentaries.
“Yes,” stars Joan Allen, Simon Abkarian and Sam Neill. It is written
in verse (iambic pentameter), one of the few films to use an unusual
form of dialogue. (Two others are “Force of Evil,” 1948, in blank
verse, and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” 1964, which is sung
through.) “Yes” has two main characters, She (Ms. Allen), an
Irish-American, and He (Mr. Abkarian), an Arab from Beirut, who begin
an affair in London and end it in Havana. Mr. Neill plays She’s
husband. On a recent visit to New York, Ms. Potter talked to Annette
Grant about making “Yes.”
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The writer and director Sally Potter.
Movie Details: ‘Yes’ | Trailer
Forum: Hollywood and Movie News
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Simon Abkarian and Joan Allen, who play the main characters in “Yes,”
a new film by Sally Potter. Written in verse, the film concerns an
affair between an Irish-American, called Her, and an Arab, called
Him.
Annette Grant “Yes” was your response as an artist to 9/11?
Sally Potter It was a visceral necessity, the very next day. I wanted
to contribute something affirmative in the face of such disruption,
when it seemed that the seeds of greater destruction had been
planted. The answer I found is “Yes,” a tender, erotic love story
played out against a backdrop of the clash of fundamentalisms, East
and West.
Q How did you decide to write it in verse?
A In my 20’s I was an improvising singer and I wrote many, many
songs. And at various stages, every screenplay I’ve written has been
in verse. But they’ve all been locked away in a drawer. Somehow it
seemed like the moment had finally come to let that idea play itself
out. I wanted this film to be like a river of voice. “Yes” just came
out that way, like a long poem or song.
Q So there was no opportunity for improvisation?
A No, it had to be the words as written exactly. Of course there were
many rewrites if something wasn’t working in rehearsal. The writing
and the directing of this film were so intertwined they became
inseparable. But the mode of delivery within the structure of what
was written was very free, so the actors never felt trapped in it.
They were word perfect. It was very easy for them to memorize,
because of the rhyme.
Q What was the first part you wrote?
A The car park scene in which He breaks up with She. I made it into a
five-minute film. Rewrote it, rewrote it, rewrote it, rewrote it,
again and again – partly because the world situation kept changing.
When we went into rehearsals the United States and England had just
gone into Iraq. So the script felt extremely prophetic, or pertinent
anyway.
Q Was this a hard film to raise money for?
A Really hard because it was perceived as very, very risky. People
found it difficult to believe that it would work.
Q Did you do a lot of research?
A I went to Beirut with Simon Abkarian, who is Armenian from there.
He was involved for about a year. I talked with him a lot, listened
to him a lot, about his life growing up there and his friends. I
often find that I need to write something first and then research it
afterwards because it’s as if the research has already been done
somewhere in my imagination, based on accumulated knowledge and
experience over the years. But then I fact check everything in
whatever way is relevant for fiction. I mean, you can’t – it’s not
“fact” by definition, but to make sure that the voice is authentic.
We were going to shoot in Beirut, but when the war broke out, the
insurers would not let us go. So we decided to shoot Beirut in
Havana, while we were there shooting the Havana scenes. We had to
shoot Havana in the Dominican Republic, because as an American, Joan
Allen couldn’t travel to Cuba.
But we obviously couldn’t take all the extras into Cuba, so we went
to the Arab Union in Havana, and I think the entire Arab population
of Cuba was in one scene. But I had Simon and the two friends come to
a meeting with all the extras and tell me is this a believable face
for this situation.
Q You cast yourself in “The Tango Lesson.” Were you ever tempted to
play She, the Joan Allen role, yourself in “Yes”?
A It crossed my mind and, of course, in the early days when I was
writing it I was reading it aloud to find out how it felt in the
mouth. But I think the experience of “The Tango Lesson,” taught me
that being in a film that you also direct can kind of hijack it away
from its intention to some degree.
Q If “Yes” is poetry, the real language of that film was dance.
A But also the language of whose eyes are looking – so it’s about
filmmaking. Every filmmaker makes a film at some point about the
process of filmmaking.
Q Joan Allen describes “Yes” as an extremely emotional adventure for
her. She has talked about rehearsals at which everyone was crying.
What were these emotions arising from?
A A combination of things. The script gave permission to feel,
through the vehicle of the story, the horrors of the global
situation. In rehearsal you need to arrive at the most profound level
of emotional contact with the material, partly in order to discharge
some of it to achieve the necessary transparency to play it. So that
the viewer doesn’t see a kind of therapeutic process going on on the
screen, but sees something many, many stages beyond that. But you
have to have gone through that first.
It wasn’t just the actors who would cry in rehearsal, but I would
turn around and the crew was also crying during the shooting. And now
audiences are crying at screenings. So some nerve is getting, I
think, usefully pushed. People are being allowed to feel; feel what’s
hard to feel or is amorphous and unfocused or it’s too threatening to
feel. And precisely because the film ultimately is affirmative, and
is joyful and is a celebration of love.
Q Isn’t this what art means to do, to make people feel through it?
A Yes. And to feel therefore themselves in it. I think that’s the
key.