‘The Eichmann Show’
Q&A at the Ritzy
Cinema, 20th Jan 2015
Director Paul Williams, Writer Simon Block and
Producers Ken Marshall and Laurence Bowen.
Hosted by Jay Glennie.
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| 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.
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| 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?
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| yadvashem.org - Zivia Lubetkin gives evidence |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 7th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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 (21st Jan) in Los Angeles. So,
that’ll be interesting.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
David Clews
Short Answer: Yes, use it for learning, for
experimenting and as something to show alongside industry experience.
David Clew admitted it was unlikely that he would, as there will someone else in the pile that has the correct credentials. However, the panel agreed on the fact that in a larger research team, particularly on shows like 'This Morning', you may be given a chance. Claire maintained that they are 'horrible shows to work on' but you really learn your bread and butter and it's like 'doing your time'. Everyone will want to employ you after that.
