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Features
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Marber's Morally Ambiguous World
British playwright Patrick Marber has not necessarily lived out all the drama that careens across Closer. But he might have said some of it, and had some of it said to him.
Thursday, December 2, 2004
By Brett Buckalew
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Lester Cohen/Wireimage.com
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Former stand-up Marber
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For some playwrights who attempt to adapt their writing to the medium of film, the experience can be the sort of hell on earth depicted by Joel and Ethan Coen in Barton Fink, where the fear of selling out, or reverting to Hollywood formula, can be a creatively paralyzing force.
But for lucky, privileged others, there is filmmaker Mike Nichols. Having started his directing career on Broadway, Nichols segued to cinema, and, for about 40 years, has made a legendary career out of bringing a respect for the written word more commonly associated with the theatre to the medium, while still embracing its visual capabilities. Among the playwrights whose brilliant work Nichols has brought to the screen are Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge), Neil Simon (Biloxi Blues), Margaret Edson (Wit), and, most recently, Tony Kushner (last year’s Emmy powerhouse Angels in America).
Now, British playwright Patrick Marber gets to join the elite group of Nichols collaborators, with his own screenplay adaptation of his 1997 play Closer having been filmed by the veteran director, and opening in theatres this weekend. But to hear Marber tell it, there’s something undeniably intimidating about following in the footsteps of such estimable wordsmiths.
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Christina Radish/Agency Photos
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A playwright's best friend
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“I don’t fit very well in that company,” Marber confides sheepishly in a recent phone interview with FilmStew. “I think I’m the anomaly.”
However, Marber’s modest self-deprecation is hardly necessary. While the work he’s written for the stage - only four plays thus far - may still show more than a few traces of his influences (some of his masculine characters are tragically self-absorbed, recalling the male protagonists of Arthur Miller and David Mamet), he’s undeniably honing his own, very strong voice. It’s no coincidence that his very first play, first staged in 1995, is called Dealer’s Choice, for every one of his works dives into the psyches of people who compulsively gamble, either literally (as in Dealer’s Choice) or metaphorically (as in his 2001 play Howard Katz, about a talent agent who realizes too late in life his tendency to put his soul on the table).
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Steve Granitz/Wireimage.com
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Took over for Cate Blanchett
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In Closer, which won awards in its stage incarnation (the London Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, the New York Critics Circle Award for Best Foreign Play) before making the transition to film, four characters gamble with the people they love, often to disastrous results. Dan (Jude Law), an obituaries writer who pens a failed novel, cheats on his girlfriend, former stripper Alice (Natalie Portman), with a photographer named Anna (Julia Roberts). And Anna keeps seeing Dan even after she marries Larry (Clive Owen), a dermatologist who she does love.
A work of tricky emotional ambiguities, Closer never spells out why these four characters take chances that they know will sabotage the happiness of their romantic relationships, but in dialogue such as the following exchange, Marber nails the inescapable insecurities that plague someone deeply in love:
Alice: Dan…can I still see you?
Dan: I can’t see you. If I see you, I’ll never leave you.
Alice: What will you do if I find someone else?
Dan: Be jealous.
Refreshingly candid, Marber reveals that what draws him as a writer to exploring flawed characters is the opportunity to explore what he calls his own underbelly. “I’m very interested in writing about people who I suppose are a bit like me,” he reveals, “people who are slightly morally dubious and don’t always behave impeccably, because those are the characters I enjoy writing dialogue for.”
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Christina Radish/Agency Photos
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Standout Clive Owen
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When asked, then, if writing Closer, with its witty but sad look at the strain of long-term relationships, provoked painful reflection, Marber insists, “No, it was painful to live it, but it wasn’t painful to write about it. It was quite cathartic and purging to put it on paper.”
“But I didn’t obviously live all of it,” he continues, “but some of it I might have said, or had said to me.”
Marber also realizes that tapping into his own dark side makes for the kind of drama that indulges the human need to gossip. “We like to gossip about the misbehavior of our friends rather than the impeccable behavior,” he observes. “I mean, who ever gossips about your friend who donates a thousand dollars to charity? There is no good gossip there. You gossip about the friend who embezzled a thousand pounds from charity.”
Another base desire that Marber is proud to fulfill is the viewer’s fascination with stunningly beautiful actors, as the cast of the film version of Closerso ably proves. Roberts, Law, Owen, and Portman make for one marvelously photogenic quartet.
“They are gorgeous,” Marber agrees, “and I said that to Mike. I said, ‘These are four very, very beautiful people.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s what movies are. Movies are beautiful people suffering.’”
It’s in that suffering that the cast of Closer reveals some image-twisting surprises. For instance, Marber points out how People’s latest Sexiest Man Alive, Law, threw all vanity out the window in a scene where a rain-soaked Dan confronts Larry. “He looks like a drowned rat, and it’s fantastic,” the writer gushes.
Marber also thinks the film similarly reveals a new side to box-office queen Roberts. “The thing about Julia that surprised me was how vulnerable she is, and broken, and soulful really. I’ve never quite seen it at that level with her before.”
“I think she’s gonna surprise and shock a lot of people with her performance,” he predicts.
Marber gives credit to Nichols for unearthing such honesty from the performers. “He’s just one of those guys who’s a legend - he’s seen it all, he’s done it all, he’s worked with everyone,” he explains. “And so I think actors just feel very safe, and that’s a very good place to start.”
| But Nichols and Marber may have to worry about making skittish audience members feel safe. It’s been over 30 years since Nichols and writer Jules Feiffer galvanized adult moviegoers with the sexual frankness of the dialogue in Carnal Knowledge. But that was the ‘70s, a period of cultural openness to sexuality in the media. It’s hard to think what a nation that gasps at the suggested nudity of Nicolette Sheridan on TV’s Monday Night Football and the chaste male hugging of Alexander will make of certain scenes of Closer, like the one in which Anna vividly describes giving oral sex to Dan. Or the one in which Dan, pretending to be Anna, engages in a hilariously explicit bout of cybersex with Larry.
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“I’m bracing myself for a slightly bumpy ride,” Marber confesses when asked about the possibility of a prudish backlash against the film. “But I’ll be back in London. I won’t really know about it. And they’ll fax me the nice reviews rather than the nasty ones.”
For his dry wit, Marber can thank his background in stand-up comedy, and in writing for the cult British TV hit Knowing Me, Knowing You, which featured the beloved Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge. (Coogan has since gained indie cred in America with roles in 24 Hour Party People and Coffee and Cigarettes.)
Gaining perspective on his career, Marber says, “the great fear, if you make the transition from being a comedian to a playwright, is that you’ll be forever known as comedian-turned-playwright. And now I’m considered playwright, who is an ex-comedian, and that’s nice.”
| Having made that leap successfully, as well as the jump from stage to film, it’s tempting to think that one day Marber will truly believe himself worthy of mention alongside names like Albee, Feiffer, and Kushner. |
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