Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
38 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: (TOP) BEN KING; (BOTTOM) PHOTOFEST; (OPPOSITE) DONN JONES/ABC Q: What happens when an actor is having trouble? A: We talk about the scene. Is it the writing? Is it the approach? We work it. And then you go over schedule (laughs). You work it enough until you find a new way in or why you aren't connecting to the material. What is it that you're not connecting to? Is it that you really need to be angry instead of sad? Is the emotion the wrong emotion? Does it have to start angry then go somewhere else? It's great. You rehearse it on set. You find it. And then you roll camera. Then you get it. Q: Let's rewind a bit. You've always said that after the critical and financial disappoint- ment of Pay It Forward, you were exiled from features. A: I was at a real high point in my career, coming off of ER, Emmy wins, Peacemaker. Deep Impact made $350 million worldwide in 1998 when tickets were $8. On a non- holiday weekend, it made $41 million. It was huge. Then Pay It Forward bombed and the scripts stopped coming. It was a very dif- ficult time. I was working more than I ever had but my feature career was over. I tried to develop my own material. I directed pi- lots, six of which went to series. I also did some episodes I wasn't proud of. I felt like, "I'm not going to do this anymore." It took a while to come back from that emotionally. I felt like I lost my heart. I was hurt. I felt com- pletely defeated. Then I had some successes. Michael Mann hired me to do the finale of Luck. Q: How many years was your feature career at a standstill? A: Many years. Pay It Forward was 2000. I directed a film for Avi Lerner in 2008 with Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman when the big crash happened and Avi just sold it all overseas. He didn't need to re- lease it. That was just heartbreaking. I didn't direct another feature until 2017. Q: You directed more episodes of The Leftovers than any other director. Can you talk about the first? A: I'd only seen the pilot. I just went in there and directed the show the way I thought it needed to be directed. The material on The Leftovers spoke to me in a very deep way. It was about these grieving people, about the stories we tell ourselves so that we can get through the day. Q: One episode included a wrenching se- quence in which a woman who has taken a vow of silence is stoned to death. A: [I'd worked with the actress before], Marceline Hugot. I mean, what a face. What a wonderful actress. But I'd never seen a stoning before or shot one, and it was very challenging. First of all, we had to throw stones at her. I was terrified to shoot that. I had them make big and smaller rocks out of bean bags. Those didn't work. They hurt the actor. I had them make foam rocks. They didn't work either. They just bounced off of her and looked ridiculous. So I had a full-body dummy made of her for the wide shots. I had them throw real rocks and some bean bag rocks at the dummy. If the [stones] hit the head and the head went back, great. If not, we could adjust it. We could do CGI rocks if we needed to. Q: What about the close-ups? A: For the close-ups, I'd call out "Bam!" [claps hands together] "Bam!" [claps hands together] "Bam!" Every time a rock hit, she'd throw her head back. I kept the camera roll- ing and I'd tell the makeup guys, "Get in there! More blood! Put some on her head!" Okay, "Bam!" [claps hands together]. That's basically how I shot it. Then we put in CGI rocks hitting her. Shooting it was very dif- ferent from how you felt after it was cut. It wasn't emotional when I was shooting it. It was almost ridiculous. When we cut it to- gether, though, it was one of the most painful sequences I've ever watched. There were 13 hits in that sequence, and it was character- driven. It was the first time this character had spoken in a year when she said, "Please. Stop." The human spirit was broken at that point. It was an extraordinary thing to find with the actors. Leder works with camera operator Chris Cuevas, above right, as well as producer Damon Lindelof, left, on HBO's The Leftovers; opposite, she frames a shot on ABC's Nashville.