A Talk with Victor Nuñez of "Ulees’s Gold"

iW: I guess your sense of place and environment give you an added measure of control?

Nuñez: The biggest measure of control comes from having budgets so low that basically there's no reason not to let you make the movie. I think what's interesting-- and again this comes out of the Italian Neo-Realist view of how films should be made-- but character, place, and story are inextricably linked. Hollywood's tradition is characters and hardware... The Italian Neo-Realists felt that you could tell a story like Ulee Jackson in Maine or Greece, but it would be a different story because getting to the bee hives is different. It wouldn't be Tupelo. It would be something else. Every time I'd come back from one of the bee yards something happened out there that would change things and would show that something wasn't quite right [with the script] and it had to be resolved. So that's the type of benefit you get from working this way.

iW: Tell me about the team of producers [Jonathan Demme/ John Sloss] you worked with on the film.

Nuñez: Jonathan Demme's company [Clinica Estetico] is infused with his spirit. We had a couple of approaches and scales of budgets to make this picture. I was determined to keep my independence. We initially had a budget of around $900,000, which is basically the "Ruby" budget with a little inflation adjustment thrown in. And when the Clinica people came on they said what every filmmaker wishes could be said, which is we love your project and we want to be a part of getting it made. We went out with that notion and John Sloss came on; we'd talked for years about working together. He'd also talked for years about working with the Clinica people. So it was a pretty high-powered team, but no money at that point.

Ed Saxon, the head of Clinica and Jonathan Demme's right hand man was having lunch with Lynn White of Orion Pictures about some other business. And as they were leaving he said, "And we're also doing this other project, a film in Florida, and we all really love it." Lynn White said well if you guys love it then lets do it. And in that one luncheon we suddenly had the resources... It got to the point where it was easier and the options were better to accept doing a 2.7 million dollar movie than to risk not being able to raise $900,000 and keep it completely to ourselves.

iW: Music seems to be a key element in your films. Yet you manage to use it not as many filmmakers do; to establish sort of an emotional bed for the rest of the elements in a scene. Where does your music sensibility come from?

Nuñez: Music is the last thing you put in. When you've been living with the film from the script and the shooting, you have a sense of the rhythm and flow of your project and where it's supposed to go. That said, on all four of these movies I've worked with the same composer... It's a very intense, very focused stage in the process because there is a very fine, but significant, line between traditional underscoring and the kind of way that music can really contribute to the storytelling. In one case, and this relates to Peter [Fonda], one of the decisions that was made fairly early in the music process was to go for a more traditional classic feeling, as I was aware that Peter had a kind of Hollywood quality. And again I think it's very much a part of what's working in this film, and gives perhaps a classical feeling to the film.

iW: You always seem to have these instances in your films that are sort of dialogue-free zones. How do you develop those kinds of moments? For you does that come out of the moment and working with the actors, or is it specifically scripted?

Nuñez: Well it's in the script, and it's in the way Peter does it. One of the things about writing this script was that if the characters are moving and the situation is moving then you understand what they are doing and what they are about. It's amazing sometimes how little has to happen for something moving to occur. It's almost one of those Kuleshav things. You cut there and everyone who has heard Penny tell Helen knows what he's feeling, almost without seeing him. Some people may even argue that maybe I should have shown him from the back of his head. Peter certainly understood as an actor exactly what Ulee was feeling.

One of the nice things about being a writer-director, and there are a lot of things that aren't nice, but one of the nice things is that your best direction is what you put in the script. That's direction that the actor is able to absorb personally, immediately, directly. It becomes part of their sense of character. They enrich that and bring what they are going to bring. Then on the set you just have to get what you both know needs to be gotten.