Tribeca 08′ Interview: Joshua Seftel (War, Inc.)

John Cusack’s latest film, War, Inc., is rife with political commentary on corporate greed, unregulated military privatization, and the bewildering US “democratization” of the Middle East.  It is such a terrifying look into a possible near future that thankfully its creators have made it a comedy.  Tanks roam the landscape advertising Popeye’s Chicken to impoverished civilians before blowing them up.  The former Vice President, played by Dan Aykroyd, rules Turaqistan as CEO of the private security force Tamerlane (whose logo is twin sister to the red and white HALIBURTON). It’s hilarious, as long as you’re not a Neo-Conservative.

Although this is director Joshua Seftel’s first narrative feature, he is a veteran of politically ambitious documentary filmmaking.  His feature documentary Taking On The Kennedys as well as his Emmy nominated Lost and Found gave him a stepping off point for the fiction of War Inc.  He seemed unfazed being on a multi-million dollar set with Hollywood stars, hundreds of extras and pyrotechnics. After all, he had been around the globe documenting real war torn countries, politicians and pop stars.

I spoke with him at the Tribeca press office about the creative process and how he joined forces with the prolific John Cusack.

Laura Newman:  It’s a really political film and as an activist and someone who reads Naomi Klein, etc. what do you hope people will take away from the film that have never explored that stuff or don’t know the controversy around Halliburton. The film is going to have fans, it’s going to alienate people and it’s going to educate people and it’s going to do all these different things depending on where you stand politically.  So, for me I see the film and I’m like, “Right on!”  But then I think about people who are maybe, Hillary Duff fans and what do you hope they will take away?
Joshua Seftel: Well, first of all, don’t knock Hillary Duff fans. [laughter] I’m sure a lot of Hillary Duff fans are politically savvy.  And I love Hillary, she is so great, and I have to say that her choice to take on this part was really bold.  I loved working with her.  She was so prepared and worked hard.  It was funny because we were trying to tramp her up to make her look really skanky and no matter how much makeup we put on her she still looked cute.  So, we kept adding more makeup and more purple hair extensions.  It just kept getting absorbed by her cuteness. Finally, we got her to a point where she looked trampy.  Of course, there is a point to that.  I was really impressed that she made this choice in her career.  She could have made an album that was trampy but instead she chose to lampoon that.

But to answer your question, I think this film is provocative and you’re right, some people are going to love it and some are going to hate it.  Depending on where they stand politically or even aesthetically.  I think that’s great.  I just want people to feel something.  Then I know we’ve done something interesting.  If it gets people reading more about this, more about what’s going on over there [in the Middle East], learning more and educating themselves, that would be great.

LN:  Now that you’ve directed a major narrative feature and many feature documentaries, do you have any idea which direction you want to continue in?
JS:  I like both.  I wouldn’t want to have to choose. That’s like choosing one child over another.  I feel like I want to continue to do both.  They are really different.  I still love documentary and I always will.  I feel a loyalty and a passion for it.  Feature films are really fun and exciting and it takes a totally different mindset.  I like using both of those parts of my brain. The way I describe it is: when you make a documentary, you have to pretend you know nothing; when you make a feature film, you have to pretend you know everything.  It’s just a matter of changing that mindset.  When you make a documentary, you have to be small, you have to be a fly on the wall, you have to be naive.  You have to get people to open up and be able to completely trust you and not be threatened by you in any way.  When you make a feature, you need to be in charge; you need to make people feel comfortable that you know where you are steering the ship at all times.  You need to make the actors and crew feel that.  You need to know exactly what’s going to happen and where you’re going and how everything is going to turn out, even if you don’t,  because no one can know all those things.  I feel like that’s part of the difference.  You have to pretend in both situations, but it’s a very different kind of pretending.

LN: I get the sense that there is a lot collaboration in the film.  You’ve got 3 writers. One of the writers, John Cusack, staring in and producing it and then you stepping in as a director with a writing background.  So, tell me about the collaborative process and your part in it.
JS: There were 3 writers and I think those guys had a great time writing that screenplay.  You can just picture them in a room saying, “What if we…” because there is so much absurdity and so many ideas thrown in there.  It was fun for me to get that material and read it and find that there was so much that was familiar to me, things that I’ve experienced in my documentary work:  traveling the world, going to war zones, following campaign politics, working as a journalist, covering Pop Stars.  There were all these things that were so true.  They were absurd, but so true.  I immediately felt that I had three co-conspirators.

LN: On set, how much did the script change?
JS: It was constantly changing.  A lot of times the writers were on the set and we would try things different ways.  This film was an experiment in many ways.  If I asked you, “What genre is this film?”

LN: I can’t answer that.
JS:  You can’t answer that question, right? It’s totally genre bending.  We were experimenting.  We were trying new things.  We were improvising.  We were adding lines here and there, shooting as much as we could, as much as we had time for.  Some things worked, some things didn’t.  Almost everyone I cast, outside of the lead people, were improv comedians.  I love doing improv and I encourage everyone to do it when they wanted to, especially the Bulgarian comedian guys.  That’s what they do, so I gave them free reign.  Thinking about that, in some ways improv in fiction film is like a cousin of documentary.  It’s one step closer to reality.  It’s almost like Cinéma-Vérité, “Okay, just try something and we’ll capture it on film.”  I’ve always been comfortable with improve; I think it’s really exciting.  You don’t always get good stuff but when you do, it’s so fresh.

LN: Improv can be really difficult to film though.
JS:  I know, that’s why we do a lot of improv in rehearsal and then you can rewrite the script and know you’ll get it.

LN: Even if they stick to what they created, there is a sense that it came from them and it always comes out authentic, doesn’t it?
JS: Absolutely.  In fact in [my short] Breaking the Mold: The Kee Malesky Story it was all improv comedians who played in the film and we rehearsed the whole thing.  I rewrote the script daily.  I would say, here’s the theme, throw the script out.  Then, I’d take home the tapes from rehearsal and add new things, take out things.  We shot the script as it was [on the page] but a lot of it was from improv.  That made it better.

LN: How did you meet and connect with Cusack?  It was through the Seattle Festival, right?
JS:   Breaking the Mold screened at the One Reel at Bumbershoot and Alexander Payne saw it.  He called me and said, “I really like this film.  You should direct a feature.”  He put me in touch with some people and one of them was John Cusack.  We got to know each other and I know that John liked a couple films I made, a documentary I made called Taking on the Kennedys and Breaking The Mold which was really sharp culture satire.  It had the same kind of pace and humor as War Inc.

War Inc. is an extension of my body of work.  A lot of people say, “Oh, it’s your first movie.  It’s so different.”  I’m like, “Not to me.”  I’ve been making films about things I think are important, things that are going on in the world that I want to say something about.  This falls right in that category for me.  So, it didn’t feel like a big departure.

First Look Studios releases War, Inc. in theaters on May 23rd.