Interview: James Schamus On His Directorial Debut in Indignation

Writer, Producer and CEO of Focus Features. That’s what you think of when you hear the name James Schamus. After exiting Focus, Schamus has turned to directing. For his debut, Schamus chose Indignation, a Philip Roth novel that he discovered at an airport, read in one sitting and turned it into a feature. In a summer season where we mostly see action blockbusters, sequels and more blockbusters, Indignation is everything but.  It was shot in 24 days, on a small budget, there were no big trailers on set. Just actors and crew. Set in the 1950’s, Indignation stars Logan Lerman, Tracy Letts and Sarah Gadon and tells the story of a young man, Marcus (Lerman) who falls for a young woman (Gadon) and clashes with the Dean of his school (Letts).

There’s something rather pleasurable about talking to Schamus about his transition from studio head to director. He’s in great spirits when we catch up to discuss the film which is released today.  Read how he dissects an important scene in the film, what made him take the step for directing Indigation, and how it was to be at Sundance showing a film rather than as a studio chief buying films.

Awards Daily: You know, I saw the film earlier this week and it’s still something I’ve been thinking about ever since.

James Schamus: Thank you. It’s been pretty gratifying having people sublimely depressed at the end of my movie as a rule. [laughs].

AD: Actually, that’s the reaction my wife had, she said, “I loved the movie, but I feel emotional, a bit sad and depressed.”

JS: [laughs] She fulfilled my wildest dream of the effect of the audience. It goes back in terms of making an aesthetic object was the appropriate response to something like this. I always go back to the late Middle Ages and this concept of white melancholy. People got depressed and they got sad, but there’s a real philosophy behind acknowledging that sadness is a very productive human experience and that you can own it, and you can learn from it. It also allows you to empathize and relate to people in ways that are not available to you if you’re constantly happy.

AD: So, when did you first come across the book?

JS: I came across it at an airport.

AD: As always. [laughs]

JS: Bizarrely, it was a mass-market paperback. It was in large type and a few pages, and I’m a slow reader, and I finished it on a flight from New York to LA. I finished it in one sitting. It’s a late book by (Phillip) Roth. It’s a very elegiac, yearning feeling that I connected with. I fell in love with all the characters.

AD: Those characters are memorable. I feel it’s one that sticks with you for a long time, and even though it’s a tragic romance, it remains with you.

JS: Romance, to work, the emotional stakes have to be there. Otherwise, you’re swiping right.

AD: Well, also we don’t associate Phillip with romance, at least not typically. So, what else made you want to do this?

JS: For me, Olivia leapt off the page in a way that hit me very hard. I understood that Roth is returning to a time in his life, in 1951 when he’s a freshman at Bucknell University, and clearly had a counterpart that is somewhat similar to what we see depicted in the book and the movie. He’s going back as an older man to acknowledge the utter incomprehension his younger self had in the face of what this woman was going through, but to acknowledge that and to give a nod to her in old age, in memory. It allows the full trauma and depth of what she’s experiencing to shine through. That really had a big impact on me.

AD: At what stage did you go from reading the book, where Olivia is jumping off the pages to direct this?

JS: That decision was made much easier for me by the fact that I got fired from my studio gig running Focus Features. [laughs]. Those are liberating moments as they can be. There are many ways, one can handle those mountains and valleys. I was very happy to feel the unburdening of running companies. It was also a good moment, my youngest was off to college, so I didn’t have anybody at home to debate what constitutes a clean kitchen.
I had originally optioned the book at Focus as a potential project for Ang Lee. Then he started going off making gigantic 3D spectacles, one of which I hope I’ll be producing with Jeff Ruben. That’s still happening.

AD: Well, you’ve also got Thrilla in Manilla with Ang. That fight was one of my favorite childhood fights growing up.

JS: Oh wow. Fight fan?

AD: I watched it when I was really young, and it’s such an iconic fight in the boxing world. Also my parents are from the Philippines, so, it was almost essential viewing.

JS: Wow! That’s amazing. The history of boxing over there is extraordinary, but The Thrilla in Manila itself is a fight and this is one of the things I hope we will be able to bring to the screen in the next year. The narrative of that fight, why it was 14 rounds and not 15, the true story of what could have been the 15th round is unbelievable. It will blow your mind. I’ve been working on it, on and off for over four years now. I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to pull it off next year.

AD: Fingers and toes crossed. So, was directing everything you imagined it would be. You’ve gone from running a film studio, the writing, the producing before.

JS: I guess my imagination must be more limited than I thought because I tried not to impose some kind of existential transformational status to the experience of directing. I’m just being honest, and it’s not meant to reduce the burden or stresses of it, but it is a job. It happens to be a great job by the way. So, my primary relationship to taking on a job was gratitude. Every day I was getting up and we were making it for very little money in New York. I’d take the subway to set many days. I’d be going through my script, shot list and notes, gathering the mindfulness that you need when doing it. The train would roll over the bridge into Brooklyn and think, “I’m a really lucky guy, I get to do this.”

You’ll notice I don’t take a “film by” credit, which is not any critique of those who do. The auteur theory has put my daughter through college, and I have nothing against the auteur theory and auteurs. I thought the job was a privilege enough for me.

AD: One of many scenes that sticks out is the one in the Dean’s office. Let’s deconstruct that a little. What it was like filming it? How long it took? What direction you gave the actors?

JS: We knew going in that if that scene didn’t work, the whole film didn’t work. You can’t drop a fifteen minute scene with two characters in the middle of a movie and pretend it’s another day at the job.

It was only a 24-day shoot, and we shot that scene in one day. Logan was working on preparing that scene for half a year. This guy has a work ethic. He knew going in, that live or die, and everything he had worked for and as an actor was going to pour into that scene. I could trust that.

Then you have Tracy Letts who is Tracy Letts. Pulitzer Prize. Tony Award. 6ft 4. Pretty intimidating guy for a first time director, but he made it very easy for me. Especially in a scene that absolutely had to have a grasp on its visual architecture, camera lens, the framing, everything about the blocking. I had spent weeks and weeks sweating that.

I made a decision that I didn’t share with the actors until we showed up, that I was going to shoot the scene in single takes. So, we were doing 18 minute takes again and again. I had to pretend that it wasn’t that big of a deal for my actors to do that. We were very nonchalant about it. They were so amazing and so prepared. They almost never ever flubbed a single line in any take. The crew caught on and had a holy shit moment!
We shot digitally and we ended up with over one terabyte of data.

The other thing I did, as you can tell, I’m a talker. On this day, I showed up on set, and I had walked to work, and I made a pledge that in between takes, I would only give one note to each actor. I had to think of what I could say that was specific enough that would enable them to unhinge or divert, or start on another path.

The notes were very small and technical and brief as a rule. These guys are just uncanny actors, I think after a while they could figure out what I was up to.

It meant the world to me that I could have that process of almost like cooking a reduction. Just reduce down my own intervention to give them enough faith that they could keep flying and keep going.

AD: You have such assembled such an amazing cast. How hard was it to find the perfect Marcus?

JS: Here’s the boring answer, it’s the true one. I love the Percy Jackson movies. Perks was an absurd experience watching that with my teenage daughters, and of course Fury, scene for scene. Every moment is uncannily great. So, he was the boy, and he’s a nice Jewish boy from LA.

He was also crew certified. I knew people that had worked with him and I would mention him, and they all loved him. I try not to judge or prejudge, but if I do, I will always listen to the opinions of the publicists or the crew. Logan was somebody who people said: he is what he seems, he is that great and lovely of a person.

For a first time director, I knew who I had to work with as a partner, because he’s in virtually almost every scene. We had no money, so there were no trailers, so he was going to be hanging out with us. It was a great relief to me that he read it immediately, and I flew to LA the next day, pretending that I happened to be in LA. He was on board, and that was it. He stuck with it through thick and thin.

Sarah? I’ve been a fan of forever. I’d be watching Belle, Dangerous Method, and there were moments in those movies where I wondered who that was. She’s so amazing. I thought Olivia would be my biggest challenge, but she came in, and thought that was it. It was easy.

I needed somebody who is technically gifted enough to manage the voice work. Someone who is mid-Atlantic, mid-Western, Donna Reed poise. Also, someone who could exhibit without overplaying the hand, of just the terror and trauma of what that young woman was experiencing. Remember, we have to feel and experience it. We’re also supposedly experiencing the movie through the eyes of Logan who is clueless. He doesn’t know anything. He couldn’t even imagine it. So, she has to perform it in a way that also doesn’t make him look too bad. [laughs]. If he’s not getting it, we simply have to acknowledge the limits of his consciousness and the limits of his intelligence. That limit stays through his passage.

AD: What was it like taking the film to Sundance and showing it to an audience?

JS: For decades I was there as a buyer, and I’d watch five movies a day. God forbid, I liked a movie, then we’d stay up all night in negotiations, maybe getting it, maybe not, win or lose. Then you’d stay up the next morning and do it all over again.

My experience for Sundance for so many years was that intense hothouse of anxiety, desire, and disappointments. It was fun to go as a film maker because they keep you so busy, I didn’t have time to see any other movie.

We had our world premiere at the Eccles that had 1100 seats. People were eviscerated and moved and people responded really well to the film. The narrative tension requires relief, that relief comes in the form of laughter. I wrote the script that had places where it’s funny.

We have a great distributor and they’re wonderful. They are getting smart movies to people who want to see them, and I’m very happy.

AD: This is your directorial debut. Are we going to see your style as a director emerge?

JS: The style of this film, is the style of this film. If given the opportunity to direct again, I may surprise myself by having a very different stylistic and visual vocabulary to tell whatever that story again.

I hope I get the chance to do this a couple more times, and then I can look at what was me and what was the material.

AD: We will look back in a few years time and have this conversation.

JS: Get me another director gig lined up. [laughs].

AD: Jay Wadley’s score was memorable.

JS: As you can imagine after this long in the business, I have the numbers of many fancy people who are also very good friends of mine. I refused to dial those numbers, I didn’t want to call in any favors. I knew it was going to be very low budget. I wanted to work with someone was this was where they live right now. It was so much fun. I knew he could do it. I spent more time with him than I did on set. Could I have written this script with somebody standing over my shoulder looking at the screen? No.

He was unbelievable. He’s going to have such a career.