WORDS Sarah Lennon Galavan
When it comes to awards contender August: Osage County, one man’s name is on everyone’s lips. Unfortunately for director John Wells, it’s not him. For the best part of a decade, Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and the Weinstein Company, distributors of August: Osage County, have played a major role in the Oscar race. Despite two consecutive best picture wins (for The King’s Speech and The Artist) and a string of commercial successes, public opinion has soured. In countless articles, it has been claimed that a Weinstein Company picture is not so much an artistic statement as calculated product tailored to appeal to the tastes of the Academy and the white middle class. They’ve discovered a formula that has repeatedly assured critical and commercial success — pleasing visuals but nothing threateningly “arty”; big name recognition and a familiar plot. August: Osage County seems to conform to the established paradigm. Based on Tracey Lett’s acclaimed play and with a star-studded cast (Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewen McGregor to name but a few), there’s no graphic lesbian sex or extended whipping scenes here. So where does John Wells fit in? Is his role akin to that of the journeyman director working under the studio system, obligated to conform to already established stylistic conventions? Or does his passion for the material run deeper than Weinstein’s detractors would have you assume?
As Wells tells it, Weinstein looms large in August: Osage County’s journey from stage to screen. Indeed, his involvement in the project stemmed from a lunch meeting with the producer. “I’m with Harvey Weinstein and he asked me about an actor … He said ‘He’d be wonderful in August: Osage County and you should direct it.’ And then we went onto something else as Harvey often says things like that. I get back to my office and my agent called and said ‘So you’re directing August: Osage County?’” he recalls. “That’s Harvey. He has instincts about things and he follows those instincts so I was glad I was on the receiving end of it.” Speaking with the quiet confidence of a Hollywood insider there’s no doubt Wells knows how to play the game, having played it for over 25 years. While he made his directorial debut in 2010 with The Company Men, Wells is best known as a television producer whose credits include ER, The West Wing and the US remake of Shameless. When asked whether his background in production affects his role as director, he is candid, pre-empting a few critical barbs that have been launched at him since the film premiered. “I occasionally get to be what I call ‘the good boy director’, where I’m more concerned with getting the day [shot].”
While it’s clear that Wells is at home in the realm of money men, he is also concerned about the art. Exhibiting an almost reverential devotion to preserving the emotional power of the play, he and Letts spent 18 months adapting it and constantly revised the screenplay during filming. It’s the story of a dysfunctional Midwestern family who are forced to come together in the home of shrewish matriarch Streep after the disappearance of her husband. When asked about the experience of shooting on location in Osage County, he expressed a desire to capture the specificity of the often overlooked state. “There’s a desolate beauty to Oklahoma that is rugged and austere and isolating,” he remarks, “[The actors] interacted with people who lived there and heard the language, the way people speak which is not really Southern. It’s much more Midwestern and individualistic. I think that was all essential to building this sense of place . . . and giving the audience the sense of going somewhere they hadn’t gone before.”
You think you’re one thing and you walk through the door and you’re suddenly that person you were when you were 13, 14 years old, expected to sit in the same chair at the table.
An integral component of Lett’s play is the family house itself, an imposing two-storey set that looms large on the Broadway stage. The 100 year old house used as the main location similarly became the centre of the film, both on and off camera. “It allowed us to have this place that came to be the home for the family, that we all felt was the home,” he explains. “The actors actually drove every day towards this house so it’s like returning home.” While Wells generally speaks of the stellar cast as an ensemble, Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts are the clear stand-outs, their portrayal of the central mother/daughter conflict having garnered them both Oscar nominations. “The language is dense and complicated.” he admits. “There’s no day you can come to set and have it be an easy day. They brought craft and professionalism.”
So what does Wells see as the defining statement being made by August: Osage County? “The basic fabric of the piece is about family. . . For generations people had lived in one place and there was a societal way in which everyone took care of each other; the children took care of the parents and the grandparents, and that has collapsed in the United States,” he explains. “When events happen in the family, you’re suddenly confronted with these questions of who is going to look after the parents and how can we work together as siblings when we haven’t been around each other for years. You think you’re one thing and you walk through the door and you’re suddenly that person you were when you were 13, 14 years old, expected to sit in the same chair at the table.”
In his emphases of the socio-economic underpinning of the narrative, Wells reveals his firm grounding in the material, a quality both admirable and damming. Blame it on auteur theory; we’re used to seeing directors as grand visionaries who occupy a ephemeral sphere removed from the specificities of film production. Wells was able to recall the exact cost of the Oklahoma house that features so prominently in his film. Yet, there’s something very refreshing about his lack of pretension and genuine gratitude for the opportunities he has been afforded. The composition of directorial fraternity is not unlike the crowded dinner table that features prominently in August: Osage County in that it features many distinct individuals united by a common purpose. With the support of Weinstein, there’s nothing stopping John Wells from pulling up a chair.
