JOHN TURTURRO ILLUMINATED

A 1998 Talk About Directing His Film, Illuminata

This week we celebrate the Emmy nomination of John Turturro for best supporting actor in a drama series in Severance, the kind-of-creepy Apple TV+ show. Turturro has been nominated twice previously for Emmy awards, and won as outstanding guest actor in a comedy series in 2004 in the role of Ambrose Monk, the older brother of star Tony Shalhoub's Adrian in the USA cable series Monk.

Turturro, of course, is one of the most versatile actors of his or any other generation, appearing in around 60 movies, as well as numerous TV shows, and on-and-off-Broadway plays. He is best known for multiple appearances and diverse characters in the ensembles of two great filmmakers: Spike Lee (starting with Do the Right Thing and many others), and the team of Joel and Ethan Coen, in which he's played everything from the tormented screenwriter in the title role of Barton Fink to the wildman gangsta/sex offender/bowler Jesus Quintana in The Big Lebowski.

I had the opportunity to interview Turturro in his role of director, producer, co-writer, and actor in his 1998 indie film Illuminata. I was freelancing for the New York Daily News, for which I also wrote a twice-monthly column, "Thoughts On Food." The Law of Movie Star Access has a few variables: the rule is, stars will do a lot of press for movies they know, or suspect, might not be commercial or critical successes. I had one-on-one interviews for the Daily News with Hugh Grant promoting the dreadful mob comedy Mickey Blue Eyes, and Angelina Jolie, who starred with Denzel Washington in the depressing serial killer movie The Bone Collector. (Both 1999). Grant was amiable off-stage as he was on; Jolie, not so much. Not uncooperative, just not that interesting.

Turturro is a different kind of artist, nothing Hollywood about him. Illuminata is a costume farce about a turn of the 20th century theater company trying to mount a production of a play written by its staff playwright, Tucci, played by Turturro. Seductions of all kinds are required to get the play performed: producers, critics, theater owners, reluctant actors, all of whom spend the film crossing the line between art and life, considering the meaning and expression of love. There's also a great deal of unexpected physical comedy: Watch out for Leo Bassi as Beppo, way more than more or less a clown.

Illuminata can be seen streaming on Amazon Prime's free-with-commercials channel, Freevee.

For Turturro, this was a passion project, and a family affair, literally. The cast includes his wife, Katherine Borowitz, who Turturro met at Yale Drama School. (Before Yale, he attended SUNY New Paltz.) Their son, Amadeo, is in the film, as is John's cousin, Aida Turturro. Aida is best known to viewers of The Sopranos, in which she played the older sister of mob boss Tony Soprano. There are also, as Turturro said, "Some of my close friends." They include Yale classmates, actors David Thornton and Matthew Sussman, and costume designer Donna Zakowska. The cast also features an oft-hilarious Susan Sarandon as a vain, aging, sex-obsessed actress, and Christopher Walken, as the imperious, influential theater critic Bevalaqua. When I mentioned to Turturro that Walken-as-Bevalaqua looked and primped like Mick Jagger, he replied, "The critic as rock star: That was our whole image."

Here are excerpts from the interview with Turturro, edited for concision and clarity.

WR: HOW IS DIRECTING AND WRITING FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS EASIER, AND HOW IS IT HARDER?

John Turturro: You've got to learn how to work with each other when you're close, and be respectful and take advantage of the intimacy. But you also have to be able to say [especially when the star is his wife] I'm in this position, she's in that position, and how would I treat her if I didn't know her. You can tend to be shorter with people you know, but if you come to work, and come with the right set of values, and homework, you can sometimes go further, you can push them, and they trust you.

We also had people we didn't know, who we admired. So it made it a new dynamic.

WAS BEN GAZZARA ONE ACTOR WHO MAY HAVE BEEN OUTSIDE THE CLUB?

JT: We know him through his work, and it was fun to have him around, sort of the elder statesmen. The company had a lot of interaction. It was really a delight to work on, because so many of the actors are really superb actors, in theater or in film, and some of them were getting to do things they hadn't done before.

I think they understood the world, they lived it, and they understood the values, the theme of the film, which is, how do people stay together? How does love endure? How do you survive in a relationship, when you actually work together, sometime in unequal positions.

BECAUSE ALL ACTORS PLAYED ACTORS, WERE THEY ABLE TO BRING THEIR OWN EXPERIENCE TO THE ROLES?

JT: Yes. When we did the play [within a play] we rehearsed the play as a play, we understood who they would be in the play, before it all falls apart. A film like this, you can be as big as you want, if you're specific. If it gets to be general, then it becomes a skit and it runs out of steam after five minutes. I think in life people can be subtle and minimalistic, and they can be grandiose and large and ridiculous. That's part of life–we all have those aspects. Not everyone uses all those parts of themselves. I made this film about a tender theme, a theme that we all understand, that love is imperfect. [Turturro wrote the screenplay with Brandon Cole, and the story is partly based on Cole's play Imperfect Love, set in 1899 and based on the love affair between the Italian actress Eleanora Duse and playwright and poet Gabriele D’Annunzio.]

THERE'S A LOT OF CONFLICT, VERBAL JOUSTING, IN THESE RELATIONSHIPS.

You're trying to provoke each other in a very honest way. I think there's a lot of my own sensibility in the whole film. There's certainly a lot of Kathleen's in her character (star actress Rachel), the woman who can be strong and delicate and intelligent, and a good sense of irony, and fairness, and fragility to it. Some of those qualities I built the film around, because they are some of her qualities.

CHRISTOPHER WALKEN GETS TO BE SO OVER THE TOP AS THE THEATER CRITIC, WHO IS GAY, POWERFUL, AND NOT SUBTLE ABOUT HIS WILLINGNESS TO BE BRIBED FOR SEXUAL FAVORS. HE IS INFATUATED WITH THE ACTOR MARCO (THE ELECTRIC AND ELASTIC BILL IRWIN). DOES HIS EGOMANIA and ATTEMPT AT LEVERAGING OF POWER REFLECT ANY OF YOUR OWN ATTITUDE ABOUT THEATER OR FILM CRITICS?

JT: Not really. I have a lot of affection for the character. I love the character. It was inspired by someone I knew personally, then I added all kinds of other things to it. I was reading about this French critic who basically wanted to make the point of the evening all about him. But it's more of a specific thing. It's not an unlikely encounter. Both Bill and Chris had been in similar situations with maybe a producer, or director, or something. Chris is a great, great actor, when he's good, in a movie that's good, he can take you places where no one else can.

YOU’VE DONE A LOT OF FILMS WITH SPIKE LEE, AND THE COEN BROTHERS. WHAT HAVE YOU TAKEN FROM THEM, AS A DIRECTOR?

With all the good directors I've worked with, you learn about preparation, learn how different people do different things. Joel and Ethan prepare a lot, and that really helped me on my first film as director [Mac, 1992]. In the end, it's your own sensibility that you have to trust.

WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE COMFORT ZONE YOU FEEL WITH THE COENS, AND WITH SPIKE?

You don't have to start from the beginning. You've got a dialogue already, a view to take chances. If you start a new job every three or four months, it's tiresome. That can be the most exhausting part of a [movie] job, finding the right chemistry, if it's there. When I get a chance to work with people who I like, who have been good to me, there is some sort of bonding. It's nice when you get those things.

IN THE BIG LEBOWSKI, YOUR CHARACTER JESUS IS A MEMORABLE, CRAZY PRESENCE. WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO HIT THE GROUND WITH THAT INTENSITY?

They talked to me about it. I'd done something like that in a play. Then there was someone they knew and were going to use some of his personality. But Joel, I think, had seen the play I was in, and was inspired by that. So we talked about it, they had a great costume, and they let me fool around. They had time to shoot it, all those little shots. That's the thing: they built the sequence beautifully. Whatever I did, came across twice as good because of how they put it together, how they scored it, and that's why I love working with them, because it always comes out as good as it can be, or better than I thought.

THE MOVIE IS FULL OF EPIGRAMS ABOUT ACTING. WHERE THE ACTOR APPEARS TO HAVE DIED ONSTAGE, AND DOMINIQUE (RUFUS SEWELL) QUIPS: "THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN ACTOR IS MISCAST." DEATH ON STAGE VERSUS REAL DEATH.

Rachel says, "someday 'I'm going to really die, and after I've done all these death scenes and done a parody of it, I wonder what my soul is going to say when that day comes.' "

I think we all act in life, if you're a teacher or salesman, or interviewing someone, when you go home it's a little different. When you talk to your kids, you don't study to be a parent--you're thrust into that position. You learn about it, then you think, maybe I should be more this way, or that way. Why do you do all these interviews, as secondary theme, you see what it takes to create something. Actors are stealing things constantly [from life] and turning it into performance. They throw back to the audience what they've taken from life. That's something people are interested in.

HOW DOES THAT MANIFEST ITSELF IN 'ILLUMINATA'?

To me this film is about what people go through in life. I wanted to make a movie where people can see a little of their own feelings resonate, are relevant. I like to see a film that has something to do with the struggle of existence, but there's no reason why something like that can't be beautiful to look at, can't be moving, and can't be funny. I'm not saying I'm successful in all of those things, but that's my aspiration.