Cinematography

When people praise The Elephant King, they often start with the film's look. I was lucky to work with Director of Photography Diego Quemada Diez, whom I'd met on the set of NYU classmate Zeina Durra's thesis film, The Seventh Dog. Diego's patience and work ethic impressed me, and his work as camera operator and B-unit DP on films from 21 Grams to the Constant Gardener demonstrated a keen instinct for hand-held work and an eagerness for adventure.

The Elephant King was Diego's first feature film as Director of Photography. Soon after we decided to work together, we went to New York's MOMA with Production Designer Lee Yaniv to look at paintings and photographs and ensure that we had a common vocabulary, and also to steal good ideas. We all found ourselves drawn to the color palette of Gauguin's Tahitian paintings, as well as the compositions and use of light in Nan Goldin's photographs. (One shot in the film is an "homage" to the cover photo of Goldin's "Ballad of Sexual Dependency.")

Diego writes of his experience on the film: "In regards to the camera work and lighting, we wanted to flow with the actors, make them feel free to go wherever they wanted to. Seth, the actors, Lee, the production designer and I had a great collaboration."

Diego also happens to be a good-looking guy, and his presence proved distracting for many of the women and a few of the men on set. I'll never forget the producer's Bangkok nanny confiding, when Diego came to Thailand for color correction, that she couldn't be in the same room with him because his eyes would melt her.

Ellen Burstyn

Working with Ellen Burstyn was one of the best parts of directing The Elephant King. I first became aware of Ellen when I saw Requiem for a Dream, and I was astounded by her performance. Even as I wrote the script for Elephant King, she was always my first choice to play Diana Hunt, the mother whose role, though not the main role, formed the moral core of the story. She represents domestic morality, which Jake and then Oliver escape in their flight to Thailand, and to which they ultimately must return, as mother's morality remains indestructibly within them despite their libertine peregrinations.

In fact, we were already shooting the movie in Chiang Mai while we were trying to get Ellen onboard the project. I remember one night I had to wake up at 3 am to call her, and we had a long conversation about the script and about the character. Ellen seemed to understand "Diana Hunt" better than I did. At the end of our conversation, she asked if I had any questions for her. "So will you be in the movie?" I asked. "Sure," she answered. I was so excited I couldn't get back to sleep. I felt like I'd won the lottery. I would get to work with Ellen Burstyn!

My first meeting with Ellen took place in her house in upstate New York, a big beautiful house on the water, full of art and various items of religious iconography (and an Oscar in the bathroom.) I went with Tate Ellington, who plays her son, and Karen Yan, the costume designer. For a few hours, we read through some scenes and talked them over. At one point, Tate was petting Ellen's male Persian cat and her female dog jumped up on his lap and began humping the cat. Ellen was okay with it. She accepted that sometimes love knows no
gender and species boundaries.

As I read Ellen's memoirs, Lessons in Becoming Myself, my admiration for her and all that she's been through grew exponentially. I highly recommend this book for anyone who chooses a career in the arts. Ellen remains for me an example of someone who lives her life as a deliberate search for meaning, both in the world's spiritual traditions (she is a Sufi) and through psychoanalysis, and who integrates the search for meaning into her chosen profession, acting.

I'm working on a new script now, and I hope I'll be able to work with Ellen again. Below is a little video I cut together, by way of homage.