ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
An empathic interest in young people has been a hallmark of Gus Van Sant’s work throughout his distinguished career. In films as diverse as My Own Private Idaho, To Die For and Good Will Hunting, Van Sant has portrayed young people on the cusp of adulthood, their identities still in flux. With Elephant, Van Sant takes on the challenge of portraying the contemporary reality of high school, a reality that has been transformed
in recent years by school shootings. Between 1997 and 1999, American schools were the site of eight fatal student sprees. Van Sant began to think about addressing the issue in a movie: "American school shootings had reached an all-time high. I wanted to make something that tried to capture the atmosphere of kids going to school in that time." Elephant exposes these shootings as heart-breakingly senseless, with Van Sant declining to offer easy explanations for what, on some
level, is simply inexplicable.
He discussed his ideas with actress/filmmaker Diane Keaton and writer/producer Bill Robinson, who are partners in the company Blue Relief, Inc. Comments Robinson, "Diane and I have known Gus for several years and we have always wanted to work with him. Of course, we were fans of his work, particularly his provocative films like Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho. We thought if he had an artistic vision and wanted
to create a film about teens and violence in schools, we wanted to support him in it. We knew it could be powerful and effective if told by a fearless director like Gus. And we also thought HBO was a perfect home for Gus to have the freedom to pursue his vision." Says Keaton, "Gus has an intuitive understanding of young people. He is the perfect artist to make a film about this subject matter. I remember saying to Bill that somebody has to take a look at violence in schools
in a different way."
Van Sant had been discussing potential projects with the critically acclaimed young novelist JT LeRoy (‘Sarah’), and asked LeRoy to write a screenplay for the HBO project. After writing an initial vignette about a young girl tormented in gym class, LeRoy carried the idea of individual experiences into the screenplay. He wrote the script as interconnecting vignettes, with one character’s story leading into
another. "I interviewed kids and adults about their experiences and I wove around that," LeRoy explains.
In the meantime, Van Sant had begun making Gerry, a largely improvisational, non-narrative film. He decided to continue that approach with Elephant, working without a script while retaining some of LeRoy’s contributions. LeRoy didn’t take it amiss that his script was set aside, and continued to work on Elephant as an associate producer. "I believed in the project, and I really wanted to see it happen with Gus,"
he says. "Gus included me in what was going on, and asked for my opinion. That’s the way he is."
Elephant takes us into the world of a suburban high school, sending us through the halls and into the quad and the classrooms, the library and the cafeteria, the administration office and the locker rooms. We follow several students over the course of their day, revisiting certain moments and intersections as experienced by different characters, including: John (John Robinson); Eli (Elias McConnell), a photographer; the football
player Nate (Nathan Tyson) and his girlfriend Carrie (Carrie Finklea); Michelle (Kristen Hicks); the longtime friends Brittany, Jordan and Nicole (Brittany Mountain, Jordan Taylor, Nicole George). Then there are the two boys who have their own plans for the school day, Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen). All are part of the dynamic and nuanced high school landscape that Elephant depicts.
One film in particular served as a touchstone for Van Sant in making a film dealing with the highly charged subject of school violence: a much-admired 1989 BBC work by the late British filmmaker Alan Clarke, also titled Elephant. Clarke’s Elephant strips away narrative to depict Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence as a relentless, anonymous march of murders. Clarke titled his film after the mordant saying about
a problem that is as easy to ignore as an elephant in the living room. Van Sant decided to title his film after Clarke’s work, noting "This film was formed around the lives of kids who exist in a different, but also especially violent period in time."
Initially, Van Sant thought Clarke’s title referred to the ancient parable of the blind men and the elephant. In the story, a version of which appears in Buddhist canons dated 2 B.C., several blind men examine different parts of an elephant – ear, leg, tail, trunk, tusk, etc.
Each blind man is firmly convinced that he understands the true nature of the animal, based on that one part he felt – that the elephant is like a fan, or a tree, or a rope, or a snake or a spear. But none sees the whole. For Van Sant, the parable’s theme seemed apt in the context of school shootings. "I assumed Alan Clarke called his film Elephant because it was about a problem that was hard to identify, because
of different ways of looking at it," he says. "That was what I thought for a long time, until I read a quote where Clarke said that it was the elephant in the living room. But for us, when were making our film, it was more about the blind men."
Elephant does not presume to solve the riddle of school violence. "We didn’t want to explain anything," Van Sant acknowledges. "As soon as you explain one thing, there are five other possibilities that are somehow negated because you explained it in one way. There was also the issue of finding an explanation for something that doesn’t necessarily have an explanation."
As producer Dany Wolf describes it, "Elephant deals with an event from multiple perspectives, but not in the ‘Rashomon’ sense where you get the cause and effect. We don’t show cause and effect. And that’s daring in a sense, because it’s a subject where people want to be shown in unequivocal terms what caused it and the terrible effects."
Elephant was shot in Portland, Oregon, where Van Sant lives. By the time pre-production was to get underway, Van Sant had made the critically acclaimed Gerry, working with a minimal script and in close collaboration with actors Matt Damon and Casey Affleck and a small crew that included producer Wolf, director of photography Harris Savides and sound designer Leslie Shatz. Says Wolf, "We had such a good experience with
Gerry that Gus decided to work that way again, with a loose script and an improvisational approach." The process began with casting, and the decision was made to seek out actual high school students for the film’s student roles, including extras. An open casting call was held in Portland, and drew some 3,000 teenagers. Recalls Wolf, "The local casting director, Danny Stoltz, did a great job with flyers and radio ads – and then because it was Gus, the local TV stations
picked it up, and it just became this huge scene. It was pretty phenomenal. Gus wandered around, meeting kids and talking to them."
Eventually the applicants were winnowed down to smaller groups. Award-winning casting director Mali Finn met with students and talked with them about their lives. The subject of school shootings was approached very directly, reports Van Sant. "Mali is really great at getting people in a certain space where they start talking about their lives. We would ask things like ‘Do you feel safe in school? Does this happen?
What happens in your life?’" he remembers. "These kids are steeped in being conscious about all the school shootings, because they’re in school. So I think there’s a certain amount of anxiety and there’s a certain amount of opinion. And they are smart. For some of them it’s very hard to be in school, it’s like hell. Sometimes they use that word, ‘hell.’ For others, school is great. I think there was a similar disparity when I
went to high school."
Students were encouraged to shape their parts from their own lives, integrating their own stories and experiences. There were no scripted lines, and students essentially improvised their dialogue, though sometimes Van Sant suggested that they revisit a story or a conversation he’d heard from them before. "People were part of the process of creating their characters. Most of the kids are playing, very loosely, roles
that they would be in real life," he remarks. The exceptions to that general rule are Alex Frost and Eric Deulen, who were cast as the two boys that bring the day to a sudden close. Out of the entire cast, there are only three professional actors, all in adult roles: Timothy Bottoms as the father of one student, Matt Malloy as the school’s principal, Mr. Luce, and Ellis E. Williams as the leader of the Gay Straight Alliance.
Keaton, an Academy Award® winner for her performance in Annie Hall, applauds Van Sant’s decision to continue the improvisational techniques he had explored in Gerry. "I think it’s a fascinating way to go. It’s astonishing what can happen with actors when they’re guided by somebody with the gifts, the skill, and the insight that Gus has," she comments. "Also, Gus has an incredible knack
for spotting talent. The kids trusted him, and they just did it – and did it effortlessly."
The makers of Elephant were determined to shoot the film in a real high school. Producer Wolf was able to secure the school system’s permission to use a recently de-commissioned high school in northeast Portland. The school’s furniture and fixtures were still mostly intact. "In pretty short order we had the whole place looking like it was a normal school again. We wanted it to be as real as it could be,"
Wolf explains.
Elephant filmed for twenty days in November 2002. The film marks the third collaboration between Van Sant and acclaimed director of photography Harris Savides, who shot Van Sant’s Finding Forrester as well as Gerry, which earned Savides a 2002 Independent Spirit Award nomination. Shot in 35mm, Elephant is remarkable for its pictorial beauty and detail: the vistas of land and sky; the long tracking shots that quietly follow
the students; the patient observation of a human face. Yet it is also a very immediate and authentic portrait of an environment, and the people within it.
In arriving at the film’s visual aesthetic, Van Sant and Savides drew inspiration from the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman (Domestic Violence, The Store, High School) and the photography of William Eggleston. Says Van Sant, "Wiseman is always shooting in relatively difficult places to film, whether it’s a department store or a high school. He’s really trying to get a portrait of the situation, the
people, the place. Same with William Eggleston: he’s taking still shots of environment, but it’s also characters and people. With both Wiseman and Eggleston, you’re not exactly sure where they are, but wherever it is, it looks amazing. So we were thinking in terms of things that look great but aren’t necessarily pampered or overthought or over-worked. We used a lot of window light, or whatever light was there, really – and tried to find what was beautiful
in that."
The decision was also made to shoot the film in 1:33 ratio, rather than the wider 1:85 ratio used in most contemporary films. The format had been the industry standard until the mid 1950s, and Van Sant had used it in his early 16mm films. He was eager to use it again. "I really like the shape of that format. Also, we were going to be shooting in situations that I thought would look good in 1:33, like hallways," he
explains. Moreover, American schools showed 16mm films in 1:33 for decades, until video became the norm.
The film’s sound design, by Leslie Shatz, is of a piece with the film’s subtlety and restraint.
Music is used sparingly. There are a few passages scored to Beethoven’s "Für Elise" and Piano Symphonies Nos. 14 & 2. Like so much in Elephant, that music was an element contributed by a student actor, in this case Alex Frost. Van Sant recalls, "Alex was next to a piano and he started playing. We were going to shoot his bedroom scene the next day and so I said, ‘We should probably have a
piano in there.’ Once we did that and shot a scene where Alex does play, that started to suggest using the music in other places in the film."
Much of the film’s sound design is comprised of musique concrète, a form of electronic music developed in the late-1940s and based on natural sounds rather than conventional instruments. Observes Wolf, "It’s not a traditional sound design where it’s wall-to-wall sound, or wall-to-wall music. Just like the film itself, it’s about getting rid of artifice; you’re not telling people how
to feel or what to think with your music and sound."
Wolf notes that Van Sant also took an understated approach when it came to editing the film. "Gus doesn’t do a lot of fast editing. He doesn’t use technique to tell the audience where to look and what to feel. Gus has the confidence to not cut away, to not fill in the quiet with a noise. So the film has aspects to it where it’s very realistic but then it’s very ethereal as well, otherworldly. I
think that combination has an impact on you, as a viewer, that’s more organic."
Few are likely to leave Elephant unmoved. Says Diane Keaton, "It really makes me think about my responsibilities as an adult to try and understand what’s going on with young people. What’s striking is it’s such a pure piece. Gus didn’t try to make it anything other than what he felt high school is for some young adults. You experience what it’s like for them." |
