'Peter Hujar's Day' director Ira Sachs and stars Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall stop by THR's studio in Park City to talk all about their new film.
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00:00I think my father was working with Maurice Sendak in some capacity and many, many, many years later
00:08I stumbled across a copy, my copy clearly, of Higgledy Piggledy Pop from when I was a child
00:14and I opened it up thinking I should read this to my daughter and there was a drawing of a sheep
00:18dog inside it and it said, Rebecca, I hope you enjoy this, Maurice Sendak. And then I felt very
00:27starstruck in that moment knowing that I would have met Maurice Sendak at two years old and he
00:31had drew like little wild things. Oh my god. Is it on your wall? Yeah, no, it's not. I mean the book is in a case.
00:44In 1974 there was a conversation between a woman named Linda Rosencrantz and her friend,
00:50the photographer Peter Hujar. She had an idea to write a book about artist's daily life and
00:55she invited a number of artists over to speak to her about what they did yesterday and she
01:01recorded those conversations and then she proceeded to lose the audiotapes of all the
01:07conversations but this particular one she had transcribed and typed and then it
01:13disappeared. 50 years later it was found in the Peter Hujar archive at the Morgan Library
01:19by a young archivist and historian and it was published as a book called Peter Hujar's Day
01:25and I read the book while I was working with Ben in Paris on passages and thought in a really like
01:34on the last page I was like we should make this as a movie. It was as one, like that Ben and I
01:39should make a movie of this material and we share I would say a love and interest in Peter's work
01:47and also in queer life and queer creation in New York in the 70s and 80s which for me has been very
01:53inspiring as I try to continue like to see what those artists did and what they did
02:00during that time and how they did it with a certain kind of freedom and risk-taking
02:06has been very inspiring to me. Peter had no money that we definitely know he was when he died he
02:13was really penniless everyone was kind of horrified that he had really nothing at all
02:18so that's obviously not good but I think there's a freedom that comes with
02:24the situation that they were working in and a kind of radical radicality that was possible
02:31and it's mixed I would say yeah. It's one thing I'm thinking as you talk is the nice
02:40thing about being together is you actually learn from like as you're describing Peter I think I
02:45need to keep this in mind for myself that not having money for creative things is positive
02:51that it gives you actually attention and yeah that's a beautiful way to describe it. I sort
02:56of always thought that it would be a good idea to actually you know write to a filmmaker when
03:03you enjoy a film and say I really love that film but I often sort of chicken out of it because I'm
03:08like oh I know that seems I don't know too much why would they want it I don't know but in this
03:12instance I did it and I was like more than write to Iris X I'm gonna I'm gonna set up a breakfast
03:18in New York City and did and was able to just express what a fan I was of him like he said he
03:28did offer me a job and I was actually very disappointed I couldn't take that job because
03:31of scheduling reasons at the time and I just wanted to sort of know him and be in his orbit
03:37and have an opportunity to work with him so when this came up when he suggested this it was really
03:42exciting to me for all the reasons that you said you know I live in New York I have done actually
03:47for many many years now and I also have a fascination with that era I think a lot of
03:53people do but there's something there is it's easy yes to romanticize it but I think there
03:59is a good way to romanticize it in the sense that there was a sort of there was a community
04:06and there was a sense of striving to create and stick it to the man I guess that I think is is
04:14very different to the place that artists find themselves in now where you know that there isn't
04:20really any counterculture in a way there is only culture which is good and bad but the sort of
04:26sense that there's no that these that these were people who were just creating art for art's sake
04:33and not thinking about the commerce angle or the yes they needed money desperately that they that
04:38wasn't their sort of they weren't thinking about how to do something that could be have integrity
04:43to them and make money or be a brand or whatever and I think for me what was interesting about the
04:50text and what I imagined and what has sort of developed with these two is is also a story of
04:57a friendship and I think that is really the unexpected part of the film and the part that
05:02makes it actually seem in the present like you try to make a film that is maybe a period film
05:07but you want that period nature to disappear and I think that's what happens because of
05:12kind of the emotional life between these two people Bette and Rebecca and also through these
05:18two characters Peter and Linda.