‘The Eichmann Show’ Q&A

‘The Eichmann Show’
Q&A at the Ritzy Cinema, 20^th Jan 2015
Director Paul Williams, Writer Simon Block and Producers Ken Marshall and Laurence Bowen.
Hosted by Jay Glennie.

Q&A at The Ritzy

Jay: Why this particular story, to draw us into the holocaust, why the story of Eichmann?

LAURENCE: Well I'd always known a little bit about Eichmann myself but not a lot really. When I was growing up as a child in London, he was still the sort of bogeyman figure in the playground and I can just remember his name. I think most people don't really know who he was today. So, I was just doing a little bit of research into it and I thought it was interesting, that people just didn’t know who he was….he disappeared from culture.

And I stumbled across the story of the producer Milton Fruchtman, who Martin Freeman plays, by accident really. Because you don’t really think of the people who film these trials, you really just think about the content, what's on the screen. The more I sort of looked into him and the less I could find online, the more intriguing he became and the more excited I became about telling the story through his and the director’s point of view.

haaretz.com - The control room

I discovered quite early on that he was still alive which was wonderful, he was 88 and living in California and still producing, amazingly. So I made contact with him and we spent 6 months talking about the trial and details of it and he told me the extraordinary story of how he’d hired Leo Hurwitz, who was played by Anthony LaPaglia and how, Leo had been blacklisted for 11years in America and had had his passport confiscated. But before that, had been America’s top documentary filmmaker. He’d been the most celebrated film-maker in America but because he was a communist, he had been deprived of his living and could only work unofficially. And this was his first job for 11 years and the first time he’d ever left the country because he’d had no passport. So he flew into Jerusalem with those 11 years of unemployment behind him and I just thought well that’s just such a great, dramatic beginning for a film.

And then the other thing that was really important was watching a lot of the witness testimonies on YouTube and I’d never seen them before, and they were quite the most emotionally effecting thing I’d ever seen about the holocaust, which I thought I knew about. But it’s only really watching the testimonies that I realized that I’d intellectually understood it, but not emotionally. So I was very keen to find a way to represent those testimonies on screen, and started working with Simon Block, very closely, who I sort of passed the baton over to really and you went to America to do the research didn’t you?

continuo.wordpress.com - Leo Hurwitz

Jay: I believe you spent time with Leo’s family?
SIMON: I spoke to Milton with Laurence on the telephone a couple of times…but Laurence spoke to him mainly.

Leo, as you saw, has one son and I went to America for 10 days to read all of his letters that he wrote, from Jerusalem, back home, more or less every day. Separate letters to his wife and son, almost every day. And we spent, I went with my wife and we spent, I think a whole day with Tom, basically trying to get him to tell us all about his father.  We obviously knew about his work coz we could look that up but we didn’t know about the man. We wanted to try and get as accurate as possible.

Jay: What did he say his father was like? I mean I’ve tried to find out about him and there’s not a lot out there is there?

SIMON: There’s not a huge amount I mean there’s a lot about his work, he’s very celebrated. But the thing about Leo is that he was incredibly bright. He won a scholarship to Harvard, to do philosophy and came top of his year when he got his degree and he was a perfectionist as a film-maker and, quite a difficult character in his own right. BUT Tom had a huge amount of evidence for him and said he was a very, very good father just very difficult to work with. He tried to work for him and then he lasted around a week. He just drove everyone, very very hard.

raindance.org

Jay: His son’s now a cameraman?

His son’s now a very celebrated cinematographer yeh.

Jay: When did Paul and Ken come into play?

LAURENCE: Paul. I’d seen Paul’s first feature film called ‘London to Brighton’ which I thought was one of the best films I’d ever seen. And secretly I wanted to work with him for some time

PAUL: Ten years, my life

LAURENCE: Yes, all his life. And I’d never met him. So, I sent the script to his agent and then literally the next morning, Paul called and was heading off for holiday that afternoon and we met very quickly didn’t we. What do you, what you thought, when you saw the script?

PAUL: Erm, when I read the script, I sort of had always been fascinated by, as ever, most people are I think, my generation. Certainly in this event. So as soon as I saw the title, I was already interested. Before I even read a page I was like, get me a meeting tomorrow. I can’t remember what I was doing but I’d only managed to read half of it by the time I got there and just thought about how I would do it and thought about the different formats and how we could make it work, to make the footage that was already there, and the stories, that people wouldn’t really want to watch and pictures that they wouldn’t want to see, to make them more accessible by making them part of a drama by making them feel, hopefully, as seamless as possible, in the actual production.

Martin & Director Paul

Jay: So with your previous films, you’d written the screenplay. So what was it like working with someone to write it?

PAUL: To be fair, it was already written, it was already there so I didn’t, I mean we had meetings. This is the second film really, I’ve done, that someone else has written. And you know, you look at it and there’s no way I’d ever be able to do, all the research and stuff that goes on in writing a script like that, it would kill me. So in a way it was very lucky to come on board to such a, rounded project.

Jay: Simon, when and how did you decide to put the witness testimonies in? Which ones did you leave out and why?

SIMON: Well there are 112, as you saw on the screen. It’s a really good question. I mean, we didn’t watch 112 testimonies, but we had to make a decision on which ones to use and with Laurence, and then I think with Ken and Paul, we chose them. I s’pose you could say we chose stand-out witnesses, they’re all stand out witnesses in their own right but we chose witnesses that would each tell a different part of the story of what happened. We knew we couldn’t put tens of witnesses on the screen so we had to try and make sure that the witnesses we did put on screen, delivered in terms of story and gave different aspects of drama.

It was just a long discussion about the ones we felt were what we needed to be included in the story.

yadvashem.org - Zivia Lubetkin gives evidence

The crew on set - Ken right

Jay: Ken, When did you come on board? You and Paul have worked together many times. When did the BBC come on board?

KEN: Well the BBC came onboard with Laurence because I think Laurence basically pitched them the idea to begin with, didn’t you, so once commissioned, had to pull together a script very quickly.

LAURENCE: Yeh, the BBC came on board quite early but they only gave us half of the money so it took quite a long time to raise the rest of it. And then when ken joined me to set the production up we weren’t quite sure where to film it. We had location managers in England, in Malta, in Lithuania, in Jerusalem and Northern Ireland, looking for this courtroom. Because, without the courtroom as a location, we wouldn’t really be able to make the film.  We obviously looked at the real courtroom that still exists in Jerusalem, but it’s now a community centre and you know, they didn’t really want us to take it over for 5 weeks. 

cbc.ca - The Courtroom

So it was a nerve-wracking period but in filming in Lithuania, because it was occupied by Russia, the soviet republic, there were lots these big soviet, imperial concrete, huge architectural structures that had been set up as sports palaces or culture palaces. And this particular building that we found the courtroom in was an old soviet party cinema where they used to screen propaganda films. Weirdly, the interior was almost identical to the real courtroom. So when we found that, we decided we should go there. Then Paul and Ken and I, met lots of Lithuanian crew to try and create a mixture of British DOPs and Lithuanian DOPs and we were just bowled over by how good it was to work there. I mean genuinely because some people go there for tax credit because it can be cheaper to work there  but actually all of our HODs and crew there were, were brilliant weren’t they. What did you both think?

PAUL: Brilliant, just a bit cheaper. Yeh no, they were great.

Jay: So what parts were shot in Malta?

PAUL: The hot parts.

KEN: Mainly, A lot of the exteriors accept for exterior of the courtroom. But anything that looked sunny and yeh.

PAUL: Malta’s still such a beautiful place and the architecture there is great. And Lithuania was, so much of it was, what one would imagine Israel to look like.

www.kinfoapdovanojimai.lt

Jay: We must touch on the cast. How did you find Adolf Eichmann?

PAUL: He does parties. (laughter) Basically, we were sent, there was a casting director out there and she sent photos and he was one of them,

KEN: He’s like the most, the best actor in Lithuania.

LAURENCE: He’s actually a very famous actor in Lithuania, who’s celebrated for his theatre work and we were just very lucky that he happened to look identical to Adolf Eichmann. It was one of those extraordinary coincidences.

But Paul and Simon both, you know, we didn’t really want to do a drama about a fictional Eichmann. It really was, Eichmann in the film is essentially the archive, the real Eichmann. And then we just wanted to glimpse bits of colour Eichmann around the real Eichmann to give him this feeling of existing in the present day when you’re watching the film. It brings him to life a little bit. So, we were just very lucky to have a really good actor doing essentially a lookalike part but the bits that he did do were really strong. We were lucky with that weren’t we.

Jay: And Martin and Anthony, how did they come in?

Well we made some lists didn’t we, about who we’d want to be in it and Martin was very much at the top. We were just lucky in that Martin a) was really interested in the subject matter, b) had seven weeks free, literally in 5 years, in the middle of his 5yr kind of plan. He had a few weeks free. And, he was really keen to work with Paul. So literally, three boxes that had to be empty and ticked, we were just very lucky. And in the end he really liked the script. And so he came on board.

Anthony I think was Ken’s idea originally, and he was working in Australia. He was what’s called in the trade, a long shot, but I knew some agents who worked at his agency and they read it and they loved the script. So they sent it to him in Australia and he’d been planning to come home and see his family and his daughter in Los Angeles for ages. So when he started reading the script he was actually praying that it wouldn’t be very good because he really didn’t want to let them down. And he cursed us didn’t he, when he read the script because he just thought, he had to do it. So we were just very lucky, very lucky indeed.

KEN: He actually got permission from his daughter though when she found out he was acting opposite the hobbit. She forgave him.

LAURENCE: So we were lucky, we were lucky.

bbc.co.uk - Anthony & Martin keeping warm on location

Jay: There was a screening at BAFTA last night, first time Martin had ever seen the film. And he came onstage physically shaking for the Q&A didn’t he.

LAURENCE: Yeh, no. I think, all credit to the script and to Paul but I think the performances are really tremendous in it. And I think, none of quite realized when we were making it, when you break it down and you shoot different bits on different days, how the relationship would work between Martin and Leo, between Milton and Anthony… between the two central characters. When you’re shooting and breaking down, you don’t really know if the chemistry is really there. And it was only really when we started cutting it together that, began to take shape and to manifest itself.

It’s interesting watching it. We only finished the film 10 days ago, so it’s interesting watching it with audiences because the two of them together, take in a life of their own that we weren’t completely aware of when we were filming it. And again we were lucky that worked because neither of them had worked together before, so you don’t know. I mean they’re both good actors but you have no idea how good actors individually will be together.

KEN: It was challenging because you know, normally you get a bit of rehearsal time and Paul would get to spend time with the actors but, Martin spent a little bit of time with him but Anthony was kinda like Leo. He flew from Australia to LA to see his family for 10hours and then flew to Hamburg, and flew to Vilnius. We had him for about a day before he had to be on set pretty much. It was interesting.

bbc.co.uk - Paul & Martin

Jay: How long was the shoot. It was a short shoot wasn’t it?

LAURENCE: Yh it was. I mean it’s a BBC television budget and all of us are essentially trying to make a feature film on the budget. It’s tough. I mean we were helped by the fact that it’s quite specific to certain locations but you know. I just think how it plays and looks visually is way above the money that we had to spend on it. And, this is something that Paul brought to it, but the way that our archive is intercut with our drama footage and we had this sneaky little extra layer between the real archive and the drama which is our created archive, which we shot on 16mm and on a few different mediums. We shot that in colour and in black and white and that was completely Paul wanting to find a glue that could really bind the drama to the archive and made the archive feel that it was really embedded in the drama. That all came as we were filming. But it was tough wasn’t it Paul. It was tough.

PAUL: Yeh, 23 days. So it was, that’s a short shoot on anything. But doing period and with non-English speaking extras and crew, being a bast*** cold.

KEN: I mean the post-production was almost more challenging. You know, we wrapped on this on November 7^th so pretty much two months, and then having the Christmas period in there.

PAUL: I mean everyone who worked on it, really put a maximum amount of effort in and you know, it’s one of those jobs where all the way through you’re like, I am never doing this schedule again, until next time.

radiotimes.com

Jay: Were there any influences from other films?

PAUL: I always get scared of saying influences because when you say them, they’re like it was nowhere near as good as that, and you’re like, yeh. But yeh there’s lots, anything that uses archive footage, is, is an influence. Anything that’s ever been made that does that kind of stuff. But, you know, I’m a really big fan of JFK for example, and when you realise that they had like 4 months to edit the first 12minutes, just to edit it, there’s no way you can possibly match that.

But it’s one of those things that you do with everything you’ve got, do the best you can and you know, hope that it hits an audience, that some people like it.

LAURENCE: We knew when we were starting production, that we had to get it finished in time for holocaust memorial day, which is next week. For a season that the BBC were planning. They commissioned it for, so there was no flexibility was there. Weirdly, although this might be post-rationalization, there’s something also quite positive about knowing you have to hit a deadline. Because the opposite can be equally stressful, where you’re simply in a place with no end in sight. So, there was a coming together around that, you know, deadline and crew and the way it worked in Lithuania, although it was painful and faster than you’d wanted, there was a shared goal there, which was good in some ways, even if it may not have felt like it at the time.

bbc.co.uk - Character Mrs Landau

Jay: Rebecca’s character. She spoke last night about that tattoo. Tell us about that.

LAURENCE: I mean well, Simon you wrote those scenes for that character didn’t you and they’re interesting. Because Rebecca’s character is not in it that much but she kind of frames the whole film. And the scene at the end where she talks to Leo and helps explain to him that he has done something good. We originally had it at the very end of the film but Paul tried out putting it slightly earlier, where it is now, after you’ve seen Eichmann in his cell and it just felt, so good to have there. But it’s amazing how much that scene does for just one scene. What were you thinking when you wrote it Simon? What was the aim for that scene?

SIMON: Just to reinforce and really bring home, the effect televising the trial had on the people who, who were there. I think, Leo was so obsessed with his pursuit of Eichmann, he took his eye off, to some extent, the effect it was having outside of his control room. And so his interaction with somebody who, it was based on his real landlady in Jerusalem. She was very similar to Mrs. Landau. In his letters he would write about being served dinner by her. She was quite an austere character. She would dump the food in front of him and sort of, strolled off. So, it just became interesting to try and put some scenes outside of the courtroom to reflect his growing sense of awareness of the impact his work was having worldwide.

Jay: You mentioned the word impact last night. Rebecca sad that when she got back to her trailer, she realized she still had her tattoo on her arm and scrubbed it off immediately with horror, coz it was still on her arm, which was pretty… well it shook me when I heard that.

Has Milton seen the film yet?

LAURENCE: He sees it tomorrow morning. He didn’t want to see it until it was finished. He was great actually. I think because he’s a filmmaker himself he gave us all lots of material and information about the story and the trial but he purposefully didn’t want to be too hands on. So I got an email from him saying he’s going to watch it with his wife and grandchildren tomorrow (21^st Jan) in Los Angeles. So, that’ll be interesting.

yadvashem.org - Audience member at the trial

Jay: Has anybody else got a question?

Audience: How did it affect you emotionally when you’re making it, knowing that this was real?

SIMON: From a writing point of view, you’re just aware that they’re all real so you just have a responsibility to make it as true their experiences as you can. That’s the biggest sense really, of responsibility.

PAUL: I think, obviously it affects you at times but you’ve watched it so many times as a film and I’ve seen a lot of the footage in a lot of documentaries, in my life. But every now and again it catches you. Mainly when you see kids to be honest. I think that, that’s the worst bit. But yeh, it’s undoubtedly horrific to watch. You know, it sneaks up on you at times.

Host: Ken you spoke about being moved to tears.

KEN: Well, you know, I still think it’s quite a powerful watch but as we were making it, I mean it’s different. Mainly, I guess when we were filming the scenes in the control room and in the courtroom you get a sense of recreating history and then, seeing the footage, everyone, the cast and crew seen the footage briefly before the scenes and it’s horrific. And it’s very emotional but I think over the course of making the film you realise you’re just trying to make something that’s important and will hopefully stand against the time as a significant, about a significant piece of history. The edit was probably harder to watch in places than actually physically making it.

Audience: Bit of praise really and more of a comment than a question, I think that the connection between the archive and the drama was sublime. And I suppose it was there in the script, it was there in the shooting and it was there particularly in the edit. I thought that the inter-cutting between the Jewish children, and the German children dancing around was absolutely masterful. And, that’s it. Well done.

yadvashem.org - The Press Room

Audience: What do you know about the logistical task of getting the trial to 27 countries by the next day?

LAURENCE: It was the first time that anyone had ever televised a trial. It was the first time anyone in the world had heard these stories. And television was banned in Israel, so you know, quite a few problems. And really it was Milton who had to doggedly go around the world and one by one got countries to agree to show it. And once he’d got a certain number he went back to Israel, who'd said no to televising the trial originally and said, look I've got all these letters, particularly from Germany. Every broadcaster in Germany and they said they'd show it every day. And then Israel kind of had to give in and say well if that's going to happen, we'll let you film it. But they then had to work out how to transport it internationally and I think it was complicated. There were about 7 or 8 runners who would come to control room at the end of every day and there was one who was shared by all of the American networks and he was unite a shadowy figure, who I think no-one in the control room really liked because he’d occasionally have notes and things and they really didn't want his notes. So he would take a compilation of each day’s trial and that compilation would be made by an editor, in the back room we see briefly, essentially made with a razor blade and selotape, 1 inch tape. So they’d literally cut it and then selotaped it together and then copied it and sent it around the world. So, it was a big operation.

ynetnews.com - Eichmann's box

Audience: Why now, why is 2015 a good time to broadcast THIS film in particular?

PAUL: Well I mean, the thing is. That I think all time’s a good time to, to serve as a reminder. But not you know, it’s a reminder to times gone by but also, it happens now, you know. It’s not sort of, unique to one period in history. So I think that it’s something very important to sort of, show the generations as they, I mean people my age still didn’t know who Eichmann was. They didn’t know about the holocaust but when you say, he orchestrated the final solution… to what, people still say. You know, still don’t know. And obviously the genocide and racism and fascism and persecution and horrors like you saw in the film, continue to go on. And you know, they probably will continue to go on forever but I think it’s important to show the world, you know show everyone what we’re all capable of as Leo says. You know, in different periods, in different times and yeh. That’s why I think it’s relevant to be made, all times.

bbc.co.uk

Jay: Just to touch on that, the end part came very late?

LAURENCE: Yes, the last 30seconds, we put on after it was locked because we wanted to try and find one final full stop at the end that somehow philosophically sums up what the film is about. And I think our editor, we had an amazing archive researcher who you know, found all the archive for us but, I think our editor had seen it first and had sort of put it in a secret part  of his avid, which I certainly hadn’t seen before but it was really expensive to buy it basically. So we didn’t have much money. But at the very end once we’d finished that, we thought what we had was good. We thought well, we’ll just ask the BBC for a little bit more money to pay for that last piece of archive because the last piece of archive essentially, is that reporter outside the box tying in what we’ve just seen, not simply to the holocaust and the Second World War but to humanity. And of course Eichmann was convicted for crimes against humanity and in the end that feels very relevant to today with what’s happening in Paris and all around the world. So, that gives it, for me, that’s what makes it contemporary.