OSCAR NOMINEE JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY: The Hollywood Interview

A Conversation with John Patrick Shanley on the making of Doubt, the origins of Moonstruck, and the dire fate of his first novel.

By Terry Keefe

[Note: This article will appear in this month's issue of Venice Magazine.]

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 21 years since John Patrick Shanley’s screenplay for Moonstruck made a whole generation of moviegoers want to move to Little Italy, marry Cher or Nicolas Cage, Danny Aiello even, and look for the mythical Cosmo’s Moon. The young Shanley had already been having a good career run at that point, with a number of successful Off-Broadway plays, along with another produced 1987 film, Five Corners, which starred Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins, and John Turturro. But the capper for him during that period was undoubtedly his win at the 1988 Oscars for the Best Original Screenplay for Moonstruck. From there, he went on to continue his career as one of America’s top playwrights, with notable works such as “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” and “Four Dogs and a Bone.” He also directed the feature film Joe Versus the Volcano, which starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, in 1990. A near decade and a half later, in 2004, he found his greatest success as a playwright to date, at least as far as awards and ticket sales go, for his original play “Doubt,” which swept all the major theater awards, including a Tony for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. “Doubt” also brought Shanley back to the film director’s chair for the first time in almost two decades with his adaptation of the play, which will hit theaters this December.

Doubt takes place in the St. Nicholas Catholic School in the Bronx, in 1964, a time when the winds of change were coming to not just the United States, but the Catholic Church, an institution known to embrace change warily. The Vatican II proclamations by Pope John XXIII two years prior were designed to make the church more open, diverse, and modern. Embodying the spirit of Vatican II, in his outward manner at least, is the young Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman), while Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is an older nun who prefers the more rigid traditions to stay exactly as they are. The major mystery upon which the plot hinges is sparked by the observations of the young nun, Sister James (Amy Adams), who informs Sister Aloysius that she suspects an improper relationship of some sort between Father Flynn and a young student named Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II), the school’s first African-American pupil. (Note: There are considerable SPOILERS ahead.) Sister Aloysius, who sees the world in strict right and wrong terms, is certain that Father Flynn is guilty, although the actual proof is sketchy, and makes it her goal to force his resignation. Thematically underlying the story is the conflict alluded to in the title, of certainty versus doubt, and the primal question of whether we can ever really know the truth of an event which we did not see with our own eyes. Sister Aloysius is forced to confront her own morality of purpose when she meets Donald’s mother, Mrs. Miller [Viola Davis - read our interview here], who reveals that she believes her son to be gay, and that because of an abusive father and the fact that no other school wants her son, she feels that staying at St. Nicholas might actually be the best thing for Donald. While the plot of Doubt certainly comes to a conclusion, the mystery of what happened between Father Flynn and Donald Miller is left hanging for the audience to resolve themselves, or not. Shanley’s great achievement here is that he has managed to craft what is, on one level, a mystery, and on another level, he has created a platform to discuss the impenetrability of that same mystery.

Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius in DOUBT.

Shanley grew up in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, and attended Catholic School himself. We met in late November of this year.

What was the initial kernel of inspiration that got your writing of “Doubt” the play started? Was it wanting to write a story about the concept of doubt itself, or were there specific plot elements that propelled the writing?

John Patrick Shanley: Well, when I wrote the play, we were living in a time of great “certainty” in our country, leading up to the Iraq War, and I didn’t feel certain. And the culture around me seemed to be sending me the message that I didn’t feel certain because I was weak. I didn’t agree with that. So, that germ of an idea, about certainty and doubt, was there. But, it’s not something that I would have written about just by itself. And then I thought about the black mother, and I thought that was an interesting story. That’s when things started to get interesting. Because in all of my experiences of life, people have their reasons for doing things, and there are rarely very specific reasons why people do things. It’s usually a fairly complicated tale. And I wanted to tell that tale. So, I wrote the play. And [producer] Scott Rudin came to me and said that he thought it should be a film and that I should direct it. I said that I agreed, but I hadn’t directed in 18 years. It was very daunting because the play only has a few characters and a couple of locations, and I was wondering how I was going to open up this thing cinematically in a way that is meaningful, you know?

You did find a lot of ways to open up the story for film. How did those ideas come about?

I realized that as a playwright I had sort of hypnotized myself into coming up with a way of telling a complicated story, with limited characters, and in fact, that was highly artificial. And if I were to lose my self-hypnosis, I’d see that it was only natural to show the kids, the congregation, and the nuns in their convent. That there were lots of aspects that I could include which were organic, and would only enrich the story. The first big challenge I had in the adaptation was with the opening sermon. I thought, “What am I going to do? This guy talks for a long time. At a certain point, this is just not cinematic.” Then I realized that this movie is partially about the joining in combat of these two characters, the priest and the nun. So, I decided to introduce her during the sermon, and that would make it cinematic. Because then there would be her major entrance, which was non-verbal, up against his major entrance, which was verbal. And then the cutaway shots would have real significance, rather than just busying it up by trying to put various reaction shots and such. I also realized then how difficult this was going to be. I’ve written a lot of screenplays, and this was the hardest one for me. It was going to be trench warfare as a writer. I was going to have solve the problem of how to shoot it, page-by-page. There wasn’t going to be any overarching solution. I was going to have to exploit and investigate the physical world and environment that these people lived in, and how it affected them, and I was going to have to do that repeatedly. I came up with this idea, in my head, for Sister Aloysius, that she was kind of a submarine commander, of an old, broken-down submarine. She kept plugging leaks, and lights would blow out, and she was trying to keep this vessel going, but eventually, it was going to sink [laughs]. The future was going to come but she was trying to keep it out. There was a thing in the play about a windstorm, which you don’t see in the play, you hear the wind. And I came up with the idea that the wind could be a character of sorts in the film. That it could be strangely cinematic. So, piece by piece, light bulbs blowing out, window blinds being shut, the mouse, and the cat…I put it together. Lots of little solutions to the problem of opening things up. But I always wanted to make sure that those little solutions did a few things: they propelled the story forward; they propelled character; and they motivated camera moves. So if I had two or three people talking for an extended period of time in a room, these small events propel the action of the scene. The intercom ringing makes Sister Aloysius get up to answer it, and then the camera moves to deal with that. The small events become part of the larger story and have a purpose. Then, there were, of course, things that happened [in dialogue] in the play, that you had to show on-screen. In the play, they just say, “Father Flynn left.” Well, you can’t do that in the film! [laughs] You have to show the guy leaving! And that became a natural new scene, with the farewell sermon, and in that scene, I could let a few other stories play out.

While writing the piece, did you keep in your head your own version of what truly happened between Father Flynn and Donald Miller?

Let me put it to you this way - you never know what’s going on in somebody else’s head. You never know what’s going on in somebody else’s heart. A lot of time is spent coming up with a conclusion in this story, but it’s like life, you don’t get to know for sure what really happened. You don’t get to know for certain. I feel like the narrative form, because of television to some degree, has boiled down to posing a question and, at the end, answering that question. And that form has become the standard, but it’s a little different than what the experience of life is. In life, you don’t get to know everything. You get to know that you think you know, maybe. You receive a lot of information, or a little information, and you reach your conclusions from that. And yet, life is sweet, and life is provocative, and life is gripping…and why can’t you have all that in a story? I didn’t want to pull a parlor trick, or a puzzle, that’s not what the story is about. I wanted to have a fierce dialectic and invite the audience to continue the conversation after the movie, about whatever topics they chose to.

Did you find that postproduction was particularly challenging, because you really could sway the audience ‘s perception of Father Flynn’s guilt by the way the film is cut?

No question, this was a very difficult film to cut, because you have to leave just the right amount of space for the audience. And [editor] Dylan Tichenor was a great asset. The “Final Confrontation Scene” between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius, along with the scene between Mrs. Miller and Sister Aloysius, were the most difficult scenes to cut. We thought the “Tea Scene” [between Father Flynn, Sister Aloysius, and Amy Adams] would be the most difficult, but Dylan just went through that quickly and did a beautiful cut right away. But we suffered over the Final Confrontation Scene. It was complicated scene because of the constant shifting between the two actors. I don’t even remember how many days we shot it, but we did endless coverage.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams in DOUBT.

How do much direction do you give actors of the caliber of Phil and Meryl?

Well, what you do is…if what they’re doing is true and it takes the scene where it’s got to get to, then it’s valid. If it’s interesting. And most of the time, they’re interesting. But if you see something that isn’t grounded, which most of the time you don’t…there was a time when we were rehearsing the Confrontation Scene and Phil came over and asked, “How was that?” And I said, “It was good. It was very good. There was that one part that was a little maudlin by the window…” And he said, [quickly] “Let’s go over that!” That’s what he’s looking for with direction. It’s “Tell me when I jump the rails. Please, before it’s too late!” And then, if I see somebody do something and think, “Okay, that may well be over the top,” then I go back and say, “Okay, let’s take it down a bit.” There was a time in the confrontation scene where Meryl got very sarcastic, and I said, “Okay, do it again, but this time, take the high road.” And she then did a beautiful and quite different performance, and that was all the direction I gave her [laughs]. She was so impressive. And then, once in awhile, when someone knocks it out of the park, you stop a minute and say to them, “You knocked it out of the park.” Because they need to hear that. It gives them the juice to get to the next part.

You went to Catholic school. When you started researching this for the preproduction on the look of the film, what memories that came back did you find the most surprising?

I didn’t have to do any research [laughs]. Not for this one. I remember [costume designer] Ann Roth showed me the costumes for the kids, the jackets for the boys. I said, “You can’t use these. They’re all going to be in the same jackets.” She said, “But that will be visually boring.” And I said, “But that will be true!” [laughs] We had some wonderful fights, Ann and I. She’s very strong-willed, but she couldn’t tell me the kids should have different colored shoes on. They all have the same colored shoes on! She was like, “Give me a break!” [laughs] I said, “It’s wintertime. You can do it with the overcoats. They all have different colored overcoats on.” I have a good memory for this era, and we shot at the same school I actually went to. So, when the guys are playing in the street, it’s the same street I grew up on. When the woman cuts the pillow on the rooftop, that’s the rooftop I used to play on. The alleyway, the same thing. And I hired Sister James [whose name the Amy Adams character shares], my first grade teacher from that school, as my technical advisor. She was the one who told us things like that we had to put the rosary over the belt in this way, or it’s wrong.

Did Sister James get to see the play?

Oh yeah, Sister James saw the play in previews. I was in previews and I got this email from somebody which said, “I’m from the Bronx and I saw the play, and I know Sister James, and she’s really excited about this play, and she’s coming to visit.” I thought, “I thought she was dead!” I had no idea the woman was alive. None. I hadn’t seen her since I was six. And now she was en route to see my show. So, I rushed over to the theater and I sat with her, and I watched the play. She was now 70. She had been 21 when she was my teacher. I was in the first class she had ever taught. Now, here we were, 49 years later, sitting watching the play together. The designer had gotten a photograph of the school and rebuilt the school on stage. So, these two people who hadn’t seen each other in so long, we were sitting there looking back in time to this stage. It was very powerful. Afterwards, she was very enthusiastic and really liked the play, and she’d come with another nun. And then, I knew she liked it, because she came back with a whole bunch of nuns [laughs] ! And all of the nuns loved the play. They said, “Anything you need, you come to us!” And indeed, we ended up shooting in the College of Mount Saint Vincent, which is owned by the Sisters of Charity.

Shanley directs Meryl Streep in DOUBT.

The scene with Mrs. Miller and Sister Aloysius, when they discuss her son’s possibly improper relationship with Father Flynn, seems like it would be one of the hardest to write, because it is filled with so many emotions, with also a great deal of ambiguity in regards to how Mrs. Miller feels about the situation. Lots of drafts?

No, I wrote it the first time. It’s because when I was 15, I ended up by fluke, in a lay Catholic prep school in New Hampshire. I had a heavy Bronx accent. The teachers didn’t want me very much. I was kind of violent. The kids didn’t want me that much. There was one teacher who took me under his wing, and protected me, and educated me. He was a very good English teacher. Now, he didn’t try anything. He didn’t do anything with me, but it was in the air. I didn’t admit that to myself at the time though. Now, three years or so later, I would continue to see him, because I was close to this guy and connected to him…he introduced me to another 15-year old kid and said, “This is my son.” But he didn’t have any children. And then he did it with a second kid and said, “This is my son.” I felt very strange about that. Much later, we had a 30th year reunion, when people who went there got together for a reunion. One guy pulled me aside and told me that this teacher had abused him when he went to school there. He was traumatized. And that’s when I had concrete confirmation that that’s what was happening. Then, just a few years ago, I got a letter from this teacher, and when I looked at the letter, I knew he was telling me that he was dying. I was that connected to him, just intuitively. He told me where he was and that I could come visit him. And I didn’t go. I have no regrets about that, but it’s bittersweet. So, when I wrote that scene, that’s where I was coming from. A very complex equation. This guy who was good to me. Who, in fact, saved my life, and educated me. And yet, had done terrible things. But not to me. And how do I feel about that, you know? And then I thought, “Did I, when I was a kid, know? Completely know. And use the situation to my advantage, and walk that line with him?” That’s a line that Mrs. Miller is also walking.

Did anything in particular from your life inspire the story of Moonstruck?

I was around 35-36, and I knew lots of women in their 30s, and they all had this kind of similar story. That they had some type of guy they always wanted to meet, and they had been looking for him, but they never found him. And now they were in their 30s, and they thought, “Maybe I’m never going to meet that guy.” So maybe they were going to have to make this concession to marry a real guy, as opposed to the fantasy guy. I thought, “What if you did that and the right guy shows up right then and there?” Sally Field had taken me out to lunch, and she said, “I like your writing. Why don’t you write something for me?” And I said, “I’ll write something for you. But you can’t pay me. If you like it, then you can option it. If you don’t like it, it’s okay, we were never in business.” So, I wrote Moonstruck. Sally loved the screenplay, but nobody would make it with her. And so, I sent it to Norman Jewison, but I didn’t want to option it until I talked to him. I met with Norman and I said, “Is this particular script the movie that you want to make?” Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Norman realized that he was in the first job interview he’d ever had with a screenwriter [laughs]. Because I was saying, “If you don’t want to make this, that’s fine, but I am going home. This is not the basis for a film. This is a film.” And Norman said, “Okay, let’s read it.” And he took half of the parts, and I took the other half, and we acted the whole thing out together. And in the end, he said, “Yeah, I’m making this film.” And I said, “Okay, we’re in business.” [laughs]

Cher and Nicolas Cage in 1987's MOONSTRUCK.

Moonstruck is a film that has been often imitated, never duplicated, over the years. It mixes tones so well. You’ve got a little magical realism, romantic comedy, and then the touches of absurdity, like Nic Cage’s wooden hand.

I grew up with a guy who caught his hand in a machine, it got chewed off, and he got a wooden hand. And he was always trying to pick fights with people, but people wouldn’t fight him. They’d go, “I’m not fighting you. You’ve got a wooden hand!” And he did that with me, and I knocked him to the ground [laughs]. He also stayed with me as a character.

At what point in your life did you start writing?

Grammar school. From 10 years old on. Most of it poetry, a few essays, and short stories. But a lot of it was poetry. I was pretty much exclusively a poet until I was 22 or 23. Then I got my first poems published, and I immediately stopped writing poetry [laughs]. I started writing short stories. The Paris Review said, “Not this story, but the next one.” I stopped writing short stories [laughs]. I wrote a novel for a year, and when I finished it, I burned it. Because it didn’t have a plot. And that’s when I started writing plays.

Was that the only copy of this novel?

Yes. It’s gone.

Do you regret burning it?

Never! [laughs] You’ve got a lot of bad writing to do in this life. Get it out of the way early [laughs].

John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt opens on December 12th, via Miramax Films.

Read More

OSCAR NOMINEE VIOLA DAVIS: The Hollywood Interview

Viola Davis: Making Mrs. Miller in Doubt By Terry Keefe

[Note: This article will appear in this month's issue of Venice Magazine. Pictured above is actress Viola Davis in her role as Mrs. Miller in Doubt.]

One scene can make a star out of a rising actor, although it’s a rare occurrence. Particularly when that scene is opposite the likes of Meryl Streep, who is certainly difficult to outshine. But Viola Davis is going to attract a great deal of notice for her relatively brief appearance in Doubt, to the point where she is already being mentioned as a likely candidate for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. Davis, who plays the character of Mrs. Miller, is only in the film for an extended scene with Streep, and then makes a dialogue-free appearance in the ending. But her scene with Streep, who plays the strong-willed nun Sister Aloysius, is powerhouse acting defined, particularly so since Davis performs it throughout with a quiet intensity in which she effectively manages to scream at times without raising her voice.

Doubt, written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, who adapted from his Tony-winning play, is set in 1964, in the St. Nicholas Catholic School in the Bronx. A young, charismatic, and progressive priest named Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has come at odds with the strict traditionalist Sister Aloysius, who is opposed to change as a general concept. But change is in the air nonetheless, personified by new student Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II), the school’s first African-American boy to attend. The true battle between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius begins when a younger nun, Sister James (Amy Adams), shares with Sister Aloysius her suspicions that an improper relationship is occurring between Father Flynn and young Donald Miller. Although she has no real proof at all, Sister Aloysius becomes fully convinced that Father Flynn is guilty and sets out to destroy him. Although Father Flynn may well be innocent, Sister Aloysius has no doubt whatsoever of the moral certitude of her quest.

However, she doesn’t find the ally in Donald’s mother, Mrs. Miller, that she expected. (Note that there are SPOILERS ahead, as it is impossible to discuss this scene fully without revealing some key plot points). Mrs. Miller ultimately reveals that she believes her son may be gay, and that she also believes that the best thing for him would be to stay in the school. Donald’s father is apparently physically abusive of the boy, and if he ever found out that his son was having a relationship with the priest, Donald’s life would be in danger. As a black woman in the early 60s with little social standing, Mrs. Miller is not in a position of power with Sister Aloysius, but she must somehow convince her to leave the matter alone, because staying at the school is the lesser of two evils for her son, who she loves very much. As Mrs. Miller, Viola Davis embodies the pain of this horrible choice she must make in every gesture. The diplomatic manner she takes on to convince Sister Aloysius to back off is difficult to watch, but equally powerful.

Davis previously was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for her work in Antwone Fisher, and was also very memorable playing the housekeeper Sybil in Todd Haynes’ Douglas Sirk-inspired Far From Heaven. She has already conquered Broadway, having won a Tony for her work in August Wilson’s “King Hedley II.”

In crafting your performance, how much backstory did you create for Mrs. Miller, other than what was on the page?

Viola Davis: I created a bio that was more than 50 pages, which I wrote on her, her son Donald, and the dad. I wrote until I couldn’t write any more, because when you have just one scene in a movie….you have to come in with so much life already for that character, because, if you don’t, you’ll end up looking like you’re working too hard in that scene.

Did those 50 pages come out of research done by talking to people who had been through similar situations as Mrs. Miller?

Yep, I spoke with people who had been in similar situations. But when I say similar situations, I’m talking about women who had to be the advocate for somebody they loved, and women who were born in circumstances where they didn’t have a lot of options, where they were at the end of their rope, at the end of the road, and they basically had to beg for certain things. There were stories from my mom, which I had heard growing up. About how she was my advocate, and the advocate of my siblings.

Mrs. Miller has to push for what is right for Donald in that scene with Sister Aloysius, not so much in a rigid sense of right or wrong, but what is right relative to these particular circumstances.

Absolutely. It’s like they say in marriage counseling, not that I’ve been in marriage counseling but I’ve seen this on a show about marriage counseling, “Do you want to be right, or do you want your relationship to work out?” And here, in this scene, it’s like, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to save your child?” Remember that this is not a progressive woman. She’s just not. She is horrified by what may be happening. She’s not happy with it. But she loves her son, and she has weighed the two options. Because she believes that if you go to your grave and you are successful at everything else, other than being a mother, than you have failed.

Your dialogue about the father is so well-written, and performed, that I can practically see him in this scene. He lingers over it, although the audience never does meet him.

And she really doesn’t say a whole lot about him either. She doesn’t talk about where he works or how he looks. It’s just one or two lines. It’s so minimalist. So, it doesn’t take a lot of words, but it does take a lot of embodiment, because if you embody that life to begin with, that’s when the language comes to life.

As a performer, you had the pressure of having your character come in half-way through the film, after we’ve already gotten to know the characters of Phil, Meryl, and Amy very well, powerhouse actors all of them, and having to carry the bulk of one of the most pivotal scenes in the story.

Yes, although that would probably be a better question for Adrian Lenox [who played the role on Broadway], because she had a harder job to do in terms of that. Because she had to sit around for a lot of the play, until her scene came along. With me, I just came in on my day to shoot. I was like my character, I came in on the day I was called to the principal’s office. And it’s not difficult if you just play the scene. See, that’s your job – just to play the scene. You can’t think of anything else. You can’t think, “Okay, I’ve got 7 minutes of screen time, so I have to make the most of it.” Or “I have to be an advocate for gay rights.” Or “I’ve got to be the black woman.” You can’t do that. You’ve got to take all of that and throw it out the window, and you’ve got to play the scene. And what the scene is about is this: she loves her son; she’s terrified she’s a bad mother; and she wants him to survive. That’s it.

Her costuming is notable in highlighting the way she had to fit into the white person’s world. Her outfit is sensible, nice, but not too flashy.

There’s a formality to it, which was great because it reminded me of how people were very aware of how they came off in those days. They were aware of being polite. It reminded me to be polite as the character, because she’s talking with a white woman who is also a nun. Because I think that if I had come in wearing jeans or something, it would have given her a casualness which had nothing to do with the scene.

She’s also very formal in how she reveals her belief that her son is gay. She makes the decision to reveal this, but it is in almost as polite a manner as the rest of the conversation. That adds a whole new layer of tension to the scene, because it’s also obvious that she’s in agony having to speak about this.

Absolutely. She has to do it that way. I think when you come in and scream and yell about something, the other person ceases to hear you. I know that when people yell at me, I put up a wall automatically. And in this scene, I have to appeal to her heart. I know this woman has the power to make or break my son.

Let’s talk about your background a bit. You were born in South Carolina, and then moved to Rhode Island.

I was born in Saint Matthews, South Carolina in my grandmother’s house. My grandmother delivered me, because the midwife was late, as my mom put it. And Central Falls, Rhode Island, was very different from South Carolina. There were not a lot of African-Americans there at the time. Today, it’s much more racially mixed. And so, we were on the periphery there for a while, sort of fighting to get in. At the same time, it was also a fantastic place with small town values. I have memories of apple-picking, and going to the reservoirs, and parks. It was idyllic, in a huge sense, and in another sense, I was very much feeling like an outsider. We grew up poor. My father groomed and trained horses at a race track. So, that was my childhood. A childhood of very much feeling like an outsider, but also having real moments of pure joy and happiness.

Recently, you worked on the new Tyler Perry film, Madea Goes to Jail.

That’s going to give me incredible street cred with my nieces and nephews [laughs]. You know, there was a woman at my dad’s funeral and she prophesied for people. She was kind of a psychic. And my mom said to me, “You have to meet her, because she has something to say to you.” And I went, “Oh no. I can’t take it. I don’t want to know my future.” Anyway, I met her and she took my hand and she said, “Tyler Perry is going to offer you a movie, and do not turn it down.” I was thinking, “Of all the things you could have said to me. [laughs] You could have told me that one day I’m going to see God, and you told me that Tyler Perry is going to offer me a movie.” And sure enough, two years later, Tyler Perry offered me a role in a movie. I didn’t turn it down.

Read More