“The style never gets in the way of the story”: Andreas Halskov on the genius of Miloš Forman
For the book Directed by Miloš Forman author Andreas Halskov interviewed scores of people who knew or admired the late two-time Oscar winner, including such names as Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro and Courtney Love. The oral history explores Forman’s Czechoslovak origins and early films, as well as his subsequent career in the US, where for a period he was one of the most successful filmmakers in the business.
I presume that going into this whole project you already must have known quite a lot about Miloš Forman. But what do you feel were some of the main things that you learned about him in the process of doing the book?
“I knew a lot about his films, and I think I knew something about the man himself, even if he's enigmatic as a person, and his life is really full of mystery too.
“But I learned something about how he actually worked and how he was involved in the process of, for instance, editing – even if he didn't edit the films himself, of course – and how closely tied he was to the editor while working on that.
“I also learned how he would behave around actors, which is mostly a very positive thing, though to some actors some aspects were also slightly tough.
“Some of the editors speak to something of the same thing. He could be tough on the editors, from time to time, because he worked himself very hard.
“He worked long hours all day, and he would require some of that work ethic of the people around him, though I don't think he was unnecessarily tough.
“I suppose I also came to notice some of the thematic links, or stylistic links, in his work that had not been known to me to begin with.
“He wasn’t that good at English but then suddenly, within a year, he was making films.”
“Of course, I was aware of the outsider theme in his work. I had noticed how often he has protagonists that are ambiguous morally; that's part of the attraction for me.
“But I didn't think of it as a more general idea that he had, which was that he wanted to paint images in greys instead of in black and white. And that makes so much sense to me.
“I knew that he did realistic stuff and that he used amateurs in his work – most people who know about Miloš Forman would know that – but I didn't know also how much of a gregarious person he was.
“He could go from being so invested in his work, to the point where he hardly slept or ate, to suddenly being very interested in something that happened outside of work; he became a charming man who suddenly wants to go see tennis or something in the middle of a production.”
One thing that was striking to me was how some of his friends from his early days – such as Ivan Passer, Miroslav Ondříček and Václav Havel – really remained important to him throughout his life.
“I think that speaks to how much it was a community, and also I suppose there's an element of loyalty there.
“In the book, [widow] Martina Forman speaks about the fact that he became quite good at English, even if he didn't master it when he first arrived in the US.
“It was striking to me when I heard that story, as told by different people, just how incredibly courageous that was.
“He had to leave Prague, as everyone in the Czech Republic will know, for obvious reasons, and then he went to the US. He wasn’t that good at English but then suddenly, within a year, he had mastered the language to a certain degree, at least, and he was making films, which in and of itself was kind of impressive to begin with.
“But he still felt Czech in many ways, and he continued to feel Czech, even if he had defected from Czechoslovakia.
“Americans speak of him with great admiration, but some of them talk about having been a bit afraid of him.”
“And I guess he could speak Czech with Ondříček and Passer, and perhaps they also had a shorthand; they understood him, whereas some of the Americans… I also think that informs their stories.
“They speak of him with great admiration, but some of them talk about having been a bit afraid of him when he yelled at them or said, No, no, no, it's not like that, or something.
“And I think perhaps part of that is a lack of cultural knowledge [of the US]; he didn't feel the need to soften anything.
“With Miroslav Ondříček and even with Passer, not only did he have good friends that could help him, he also had a shorthand.
“Passer was all but his would-be psychologist or psychotherapist at one point, and Miroslav Ondříček is so incredibly instrumental to his work – such an impeccable, wonderful cinematographer.“
Forman was known as a master storyteller. What are your favourite stories from your interviewees about Miloš Forman?
“Passer went – as Forman – to a therapist, to ask what was wrong with him, and then he went back and relayed that information to Miloš.”
“One story that I suppose was not new in this book – but it was new to me when I first heard it, and then it was regurgitated by a number of people – is of how Forman even asked Passer to go see a psychiatrist, because he didn't know what was wrong with him.
“So Passer went – as Miloš Forman – to a therapist, to ask what was wrong with him, and then he went back and relayed that information to Miloš.
“This was upon his first arrival arriving in the US, when he was living either with Ivan Passer or at the Chelsea Hotel.
“That's a funny story, but there are many.
“The stories I got from some of his students at Columbia University, who are now big filmmakers themselves – such as Kathryn Bigelow and James Mangold – were about how Miloš Forman would be able to look at somebody's rough draft of a script and cut everything away and point to what was the heart of the story: ‘Here's what you need to focus on.’
“He was able to help later quite gifted filmmakers in that way. He sort of cut away all of the fat and reached for the centre of the story.”
Forman studied screenwriting at FAMU, but for most of his career, he was making films based on scripts written by other people. Sometimes, as in the case of, say, Ragtime, he was a director for hire. But still, you call him an auteur, meaning that he had a kind of recognisable style and he had his own vision. What, for you, makes Forman an auteur?
“Forman, to me, is a big director and writer and so many things.
“[His films are] all very good stylistically, but the style never gets in the way of the story.”
“But I feel he hasn't been as recognised as some of those people that we often call auteurs. There are millions of books about David Lynch or Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick, but there aren't that many about Miloš Forman.
“There is, of course, Turnaround [written with Jan Novák], his wonderful biography or memoir. And then there's this book that I've written and a few others, but there aren't that many.
“He didn’t perhaps make that many feature films, but they're all great. And some of them are so great that everyone will recognise them as masterpieces.
“But why don't we recognise him as an auteur? Philip Kaufman speaks to that question. We have Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski [writers of The People vs. Larry Flint, Man on the Moon] speaking to that question. Annette Insdorf [Columbia University film historian] speaks to that question.
“And I think what we arrive at is that perhaps it's because his films are not, first and foremost, identifiable by a set of visual or stylistic trademarks.
“They're all very good stylistically, but the style never gets in the way of the story.
“It's as if his trademark, his signature, is never written in such a bold font that Miloš Forman gets in the way of his own films.
“He roots for – or at least makes us root for – people that are perhaps difficult to actually like.”
“They have some very strong storytelling. They have a grey area in terms of the main character, who's morally ambiguous.
“He is often attracted to these unlikely friendships that happen between very different characters, as in the ending of Hair, for example, and the whole Claude character.
“Or as in ‘Cuckoo's Nest’ – you could call that an unlikely friendship, with an element of sacrifice too, which is a thematic undercurrent in many of his works.
‘I also think that he roots for – or at least makes us root for – people that are perhaps difficult to actually like.
“Should we root for R.P. McMurphy, who, of course, boasts about having committed statutory rape at the opening of the film? Should we root for Larry Flint? I don't know that we should.
“Should we root for the main characters in Valmont? I don't think we should.
“The first four or five minutes of all of his films are exquisite.”
“And I don't know about Black Peter. He's not a problematic character, but what is there to root for? We hardly know who he is, in a way. He's just moseying about without a clear goal.
“But Forman shows us human beings and asks us to invest in those human beings – and in doing so to understand what it means to be human – and to get an acute sense or an emotional understanding of human frailty and all the problems within humanity.
“I think that's the central thematic undercurrent in all of his work. It’s connected to how the main characters are created, and also how the story is told. His films are all traditionally narrative but they're not traditionally mainstream.
“And there’s one other element which is that they might end up tragically, they might end up with an open ending, but all of his films have this wonderfully impressive opening sequence.
“The first four or five minutes of all of his films are exquisite, immaculate.
“The opening of Amadeus is a style study in how you make an opening of a film. So is the opening of ‘Cuckoo's Nest’ and the opening of Hair up, until she sings there standing on top of it all – it's just impeccable
“And then there's the outsider theme, of course.”
Obviously a big turning point in his career was when he left Czechoslovakia for America. But many great European directors have gone to America and not succeeded. What was it about him that allowed him to make that jump with so much success?
“I've thought about that very much too.
“There isn't as big of a difference between his early Czech films and his early US films as many people tend to think.”
“In the book there are a few people who compare him to Truffaut, for example. And Truffaut actually asked for Miloš to do some of the films that he perhaps could have done, or suggested him for those jobs.
“There are also people who liken him to Antonioni. They are not alike at all stylistically, but of course Antonioni also tried to go to the US and make films – and Zabriskie Point was hardly a big success.
“Truffaut never really had any success in the US and Miloš Forman did, and I think that comes back what I said about his name not getting in the way.
“I actually think that there isn't as big of a difference between his early Czech films and his early American films as many people tend to think.
“Many people make that strict divide and they say he was making his Czech films and then he came to America and of course Taking Off was his ‘last Czech film’, made in the US – and then he made mainstream films.
‘Well, I think that's too simple. ‘Cuckoo's Nest’ is not just mainstream, it just doesn't just abide by the rules. The same with Amadeus. The same with Valmont.
“I think his name never got in the way and his personal stylistic preferences never got in the way.
“So he was able to work within a system, a system that was not conducive necessarily to really auteur-style, artsy productions.
“It's not about a very overt, artsy style – it's about human stories. And he could tell those in an American context without selling out.
“Even in the US, of course, they're interested in human stories. So he tweaked the traditional way of telling a story and he will have a slightly more interesting, slightly more ambiguous, main character.
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is an independent film made by a Czech director and it's a close cousin, I would say, to his Czech films. Because if you take his Czech films… Loves of a Blonde is not just a meandering realistic piece – it has a clear-cut structure.
“Black Peter has a clear-cut structure, but there's an element of breathing space in his work and there's an element of moral ambiguity that you don't see in many American films.
“But apart from that, they're human stories and he was not as unrelenting or uncompromising as some of those ‘auteurs’.
“I just don't think Antonioni's style was as immediately translatable to an American context as was Forman's was.”
There are many stories about actors who were considered for parts in movies but somebody else did the role. Everyone knows these stories, and that's nothing unusual. Even still, Forman seems to have been exceptional in terms of the wide net that he cast when he was casting. Could you speak to that? He really seemed to do casting for years over some projects.
“He saw casting as the most essential thing in a film, or at least half of it.
“That was something that came as a surprise to me – how broad that net you mentioned was.
“I knew he was popular and I knew people loved his work. But many of the people I ended up talking with for the book just came up in a conversation randomly with somebody else and then I thought, Geez, Philip Kaufman, I hadn't considered him central to Forman. Or Robert De Niro [at one point Forman was in the frame to shoot a version of The King of Comedy].
“Miloš Forman knew everybody and I think he was so good at casting because he was so good at seeing the human being in somebody.
“And of course back then they did casting in a way where you would actually meet him.
“In a way, he was his own casting agent.”
“This might sound problematic to today's ears, but they would meet at his place in New York; they would go to his apartment and do some small auditions, or they would just be talking.
“I think he was so good at getting to the heart of these human beings and understanding who they were. He cast in that way, and he was pretty brave, I'd say.
“He didn't want Jack Nicholson for the main part in ‘Cuckoos Nest’. He wanted Burt Reynolds, because he had ‘cheap charisma’, as he put it.
“Then of course Hal Ashby ended up suggesting Jack Nicholson, who was already a star – and became an even bigger star because of it.
“After that, you would imagine that Miloš Forman would only choose the biggest stars in Hollywood, and Hollywood would want him to do that.
“But then comes Amadeus and Mick Jagger is vying for the central part. And Mark Hamill, who was big in Star Wars, wanted that part.
“Then Miloš just says, No, no, no, no, no, no – nobody is to be believing that the Luke Spacewalker is going to play the Mozart [sic].
“And instead he cast Tom Hulce – a big surprise, not a big name at all. And more surprisingly F. Murray Abraham, who wasn't even in the running for the role of Salieri.
“They’d had a number of meetings and at one point Forman said, OK, do the old man. And then F. Murray Abraham did the old man – and there was Salieri.
“There are all these big names vying for that role – Jeremy Irons, Kenneth Branagh, all these people – and it ended up in F. Murray Abraham's lap.
“So in a way, he was his own casting agent on many of those projects. And he didn't go for big stars: he went for interesting faces and interesting personalities.”
“And I think that's what ultimately made for some unforgettable films. They could be old and not well-known, or they could be young and amateurs.
“He saw human beings, I think, and perhaps his strong sense of social connections and understandings of human beings made for a good casting agent inside that director.”
You spoke to a huge number of people. Was there much consensus among your interviewees about what was his greatest work from Czechoslovakia, and his greatest work from his American period?
“Oh, yes. Almost everyone mentions ‘Cuckoo's Nest’ and Amadeus as big, big films in the US, and I think they're also in a way kind of unavoidable.
“Then many people mention Loves of a Blonde. Most people mention that as a good introduction to the outsider theme, and that wonderful line he achieves between the humanist, the humorous and the sensitive, the emotional, the realistic and the slightly more poetic. It treads that line so neatly.
“And of course a few people mention The Firemen's Ball. I think most people mention that mainly for its very important impact and the whole context surrounding that film.
“A few mentioned Taking Off. ‘Cuckoo's Nest’ is a film that has been with me since I was a young adolescent. It's been a central film for me all my life. But I think today I would point to Taking Off as my favourite.
“And my favourite of his Czech films would be Black Peter, which I think is sort of a distant cousin to The Graduate.”
