photorealist - one hour photo director mark romanek shows robin williams just how good it is to be bad
by chris lee



08.02

robin williams is behaving strangely. amid the pastel froufrou and geriatric affluence of the san francisco ritz-carlton's terrace dining room, one of america's most manic funnymen is not acting at all like himself. infamous for 60-jokes-per-minute jay leno appearances and whirling-dervish free-association skills, williams appears quietly modulated — subdued, even. something's wrong with this picture.

in the past 16 months, he has wrapped a trifecta of offbeat and disquieting films: death to smooch, insomnia and one hour photo, which comes out in august. each in its own way serves to undermine the loveable, mad-libbing character-type he has spent a career cementing. "i'm nasty in smoochy, despicable in insomnia," deadpans williams. "and i'm disturbing in one hour photo."

seated beside him is music video visionary mark romanek, who wrote and directed photo and elicited from the actor what could be a career-changing performance. "you didn't know what to make of the character, romanek says of williams's latest incarnation. "the reason robin was great for this was i needed someone to carry the movie but play a forgettable man. that's a total contradiction in terms. but he made it oddly compelling.

an earlier trio of films, jakob the liar, bicentennial man and most notably, patch adams, signaled a different career evolution for the actor: away from broad comedy toward mawkishly sentimental, if not downright unwatchable, characterizations. but after 40 movies, a best supporting actor oscar and more than a billion dollars in box office returns to his credit, williams's performance in one hour photo could trigger the most significant image overhaul since travolta traded up from look who's talking to pulp fiction.

this afternoon, williams is in a reflective mood. "i can't distance myself from patch or any of those roles i've done," he says. "critically, they got the shit kicked ou;t of them, but people love them. the object for me, hitting 50, is to keep doing interesting characters. keep people guessing.

in photo, he plays sy parrish, a photo technician at a suburban strip mall sav-mart — a dangerously introverted perfectionist with a predilection for polyester. he forms an obsessive imaginary bond with the yorkins, a suburban family whose snapshots he develops. but his idealized relationship is unpended when he sees revealing photos that expose the yorkins as less than the perfect familial unit they appear to be. suddenly, sy becomes capable of seemingly limitless violence — especially toward the ones he loves most.

gone is robin williams the simpering simpatico, the guy whose offbeat wisdom amuses while inspiring self-realization in others. in his place is a bland nowhere man with a huge hunting knife and just enough desperation to use it. under romanek's direction, williams taps into the obsessive energy that has always underpinned his need to please, and refocuses it into the barely-supressed desparation and evil that drives the movie. "seeing robin so contained when we know how uncontained he can be creates an incredible tension," explains romanek. adds williams: "this was an odd, potentially interesting risk. it was a hard process, but worth it."

it was not an obvious casting choice. and neither does romanek, 42, seem a likely candidate to deliver a performance-driven character piece as his feature debut. over the past 11 years, he has been responsible for many of the most visually sophisticated videos to ever hit heavy rotation on mtv — most notoriously, nine inch nails' 1994 clip, "closer," which was censored by the network for its violent imagery of a monkey being crucified. most video-turned-feature directors with similar résumés try to seduce moviegoers with quick-cut eye candy — video-whiz tarsem singh's visually stunning jennifer lopez vehicle the cell being a prime example — often at the expense of multi-dimensional characterization and depper plotting.

williams and romanek's modestly budgeted psycho thriller represents a conscious choice by both men to defy expectations. "music video has gotten a bad rap — it's equivalent to saying superficial and vapid," says romanek. "and just because you've made a bunch of music videos is no reason for you to think you can jump into the middle of a $60 million dollar studio franchise and come away unscathed. i just wanted to be smart."

and williams wanted to surprise. "the most gratifying thing is that audiences see ma as another person, " he says of his performance in photo. "they go, 'oh, that's not him. that's not robin williams, that kooky guy.' i was able to watch a character versus watching myself, which is a weird, uncomfortable thing. i want to continue to create these characters where i lose myself.

williams was not among romanek's frontrunners to portray sy. "it wasn't so much a question of was he right for the part," the director says. "i just didn't have those kind of ambitions at that point. my reaction was, 'we're just a little indie movie. we're never gonna get a guy like that.'"

it was up to williams to be the aggressor. he got hold of a copy of romanek's original screenplay — which had built buzz among hollywood character actors — and lobbied vigorously for the part. as williams tells it, he just wanted to flout conventional casting wisdom and show audiences a new side of himself. "that's the number one reason to do it," he says, "because nobody will be expecting it." but there are other likely reasons: bicentennial man and jakob the liar had garnered withering reviews and lackluster box office takes. it may have been time for a new direction.

williams, however, denies that any career restructuring sparked his interest in photo. "was that the choice?" he asks, "no. it was more, 'why spend time doing things you've done before?" he says he had been looking for new challenges; "weird" characters: "and then all of a sudden three of them show up. hey, ya bastards!"

hollywood insiders figure williams knew what he was doing. "people got tired of his schtick," says one industry vetran. "it was certainly a conscious decision. you don't go from mrs. doubtfire to playing a serial killer without thinking about it." says another observer: "the public puts you in a box, and starts to have expectations abou;what theyr'e going to get when they see you in a film. that's not necessarily the most creative place to be. i think it's smart for him to break out of the box."

after a meeting with romanek ("robin wanted to make sure i wasn't an asshole"), williams agreed to sign on to the $12 million film for scale — the minimum wage dictated by the screeen actors guild — a massive pay-cut. "financially, am i worried?" williams asks rhetorically. "i never looked at it like a gamble. better to try characters that may not be great financial choices, whereas an agent will go, 'oh jesus!'"

to become sy, williams first shifted into a character physically. via photoshop computer layouts, various looks were prototyped on a mock-up of his face until a jeffrey dahmer-esque everyman appearance was agreed upon. from there, williams was dressed in a form-hugging synthetic uniform and velcro nurse shoes. then, he was rendered nearly unrecognizable by a stylist who blonded and thinned out his hair.

finally, he had to overcome his greatest hurdle: his hardwired impulse to deliver the big performance. "there can be the danger of overacting," williams explains, "and then there can be the danger of underacting, like you're doing nothing."

at romanek's urging, the actor suppressed his natural showmanship and overcame deep-seated performance insecurities to embody a more restrained character than any he had played. "i kept asking him to try to focus it up and try to do less," says romanek. "but initially, because we hadn't worked together before, he was like, 'i don't know if this is interesting enough.'"

"it was a learning experience to find you can let go and still be in control — the idea that you can do even less be even more interesting," says williams.

but that didn't mean he stayed comedically straitjacketed 100 percent of the time. in between takes, the actor reverted to the same frantically affable, frequently off-putting caricature we've seen countless times before, literally bouncing across the set, joking with castmates in multiple voices. "when it first happened, because the director is supposed to be hyper-serious, i thought, 'well he seems like he's fucking around!'" romanek says.

while the goofing may have dismayed the director, it afforded williams a much needed outlet. the crew's laughter fed what the comedian calls an "emotional vampirism" that countered the intense concentration that the role required. "i could do some wild fucking riff, and then i'd come back so relaxed," he says. "you get this post-comedic, almost post-orgasmic endorphin thing."

"then we'd shoot and zzzffft! he'd just snap back in," says romanek. "when i saw the performance, i realized it was something that relaxed him."

mark romanek knew what he was going to do for a living from an early age — 13, to be exact. stanly kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece 2001: a space odyssey inspired the self-described "film geek" to pick up an uncle's super 8 camera and begin shooting what romanek remembers as "homemade movies with precociously high production values."

by the late '70s, the teen auteur had several films in the can. but more developmentally important, he signed up for the four-year cinema program at suburban chicago's new trier east high school, immersing himself in advanced curriculum involving hands-on 16mm film production and progressive film theory. "it was a serious class," he remembers. "we were these impressionable minds being exposed to directors like kenneth anger, jean cocteau, andy warhol. as corny as it sounds, they blew our minds."

at ithaca college in new york, romanek rounded out his technical education with a dose of liberal arts. then, at 25, he directed his first mini-feature, static, a new wave music-driven short. the film became a cult hit in london and brought him to the attention of musicians such as brian eno and the the, who commissioned romanek to shoot short promotional clips for their songs — and launched his career as a video director. "i realized i could learn on the job," he says. "i figured, let me get a good enough reputation, so that when it comes time to direct a real movie, people will go, "we know who you are."

a shade over 11 years later, the plan seems to have worked. his award-winning videos for everyone from macy gray to lenny kravitz and beck to no doubt are among the most visually ambitious, technically seamless and expensive in the short history of the medium. romanek has blasted michael and janet jackson into space aboard a japanimation spaceship for their "scream" duet, and his videos for madonna's kaleidoscopic "bedtime stories" and the bondage-themed "closer" have become part of the permanent collection of new yourk's museum of modern art.

but romanek's vision has also gotten him into trouble — especially when it's borrowed. most famously, he stands accused of plagiarizing the art photography of joel-peter witkin to create the s&m-motif for "closer" and co-opting the look and subject matter of '70s south african portrait photographer malick sidibe for janet jackson's celebrated "got til it's gone" clip. "i guess it's a little bit controversial in some elitest art circles — where is the line between homage and stealing?" romanek asks. "put different music on an image and take it from one medium to another. if people want to get huffy about it being stolen imagery, i'm telling everybody!"

romanek has also rankled film purists with his defense of video. "the music video has become a pejorative," he says. "my experience is, the best of them are pure, poetic experimental short filmmaking that isn't being done anywhere else." in 1997, romanek commented that at their best, music videos surpass the vast majority of feature films in quality and represent "some of the coolest filmmaking in the last 15 years." half a decade later, he stands by his fighting words. "a lot of fellow video directors thanked me for saying that," he says.

but being music video's top gun has resulted in pressure on romanek to make studio fare far simpler than one hour photo. "i'm trying to be a bit more sophisticated than your average video maker," he explains. "but studio executives who don't look very closely at my work automatically put me on a list of 'visualist' guys. you get sent the comic book movies, the franchise movies and the '70s tv shows. those are the kind of films i don't mind spending nine bucks to see. but i don't want to spend two and a half years of my life working on them.

when one hour photo premiered at the sundance film festival in 2002, williams sat in on one of the screenings — something we'd never done before. "i was curious to know what was going through your mind," romanek asks williams of the experience. "i thought you didn't usually go and watch your own films."

"i don't," williams says. "i don't even like to look at pictures of myself. that was the first time i could watch. and i thought, 'interesting character,' because it wasn't me. i was really creeped out — and i did this."

momentarily, romanek reflects on the possible impact his film could have for the actor. "in fairness to robin, i don't know if this picture will be career-changing for him," he says. "i mean, he's done 40 films. this can't change his career."

"like mark said, 40 movies," williams says. "some worked, some didn't. you say, 'ok. whatcha gonna do now?' i get to work with great, weird material. i don't fucking know. it's too late to worry about what people think."

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