Colin Firth and Tom Ford
Forget about thinking about "A Single Man" as a "gay movie." It’s a story about love and grief told from the perspective of man who just happens to be gay. Based on the Christopher Isherwood novel of the same title, "A Single Man" is the feature-film directorial debut of Tom Ford, the celebrated fashion designer. The movie has been garnering rave reviews and awards-show nominations, with "A Single Man" star Colin Firth frequently being singled out for his outstanding performance.
In "A Single Man," set in 1962 Los Angeles, Firth plays George Falconer, a British college professor who is depressed over the loss of his longtime lover, Jim (played in flashbacks by Matthew Goode), who tragically died in a car accident. As George contemplates suicide, the film shows a day in his life, when George encounters people who may change his state of mind — including his closest female friend, Charley (played by Julianne Moore) and one of his students named Kenny (played by Nicholas Hoult), who takes a personal interest in George outside of school.
"A Single Man" had its North American premiere at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where it was quickly picked up for distribution by the Weinstein Company. The day after the film’s TIFF premiere, Firth and Ford sat down for a press conference in Toronto to talk about their experience making the film, including how it was relatively easy for Ford to get Firth to do the movie, why Ford considers "A Single Man" to be part of his own spiritual reawakening, and who has a special cameo in the movie.
Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Tom, is "A Single Man" a one-time-only movie for you? Is it the kind of movie where you thought, "If I make only one movie in my life, it has to be this one"?
Ford: It’s not going to be the only movie I ever make in my life.
Did you expand your range of activity toward cinema?
Ford: I don’t think of it as expanding my range of activity. I’ve always wanted to make a movie. I’m passionate about film. It’s been something that I’ve loved for years. When I left Gucci a few years ago, I was at a certain stage in my life where I realized, "Now was the time." I started looking for the right project.
I think a lot of people know me from my work as a fashion designer, which is very different than what I wanted to say as a filmmaker. I know what I’m about as a fashion designer. It took me a while to figure out, "Why would anyone want to see a Tom Ford movie? What do I have to say?" I think that films should challenge you and make you think. I don’t know if I answered your question. I could keep rambling, but I’ll stop there.
Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Tom, was there anything about the transition from fashion to making films that you didn’t expect?
Ford: I don’t want to sound egotistical at all, but it was a very smooth transition for me. There is a certain similarity in the way one works in fashion and you work in film. You have to have a vision. You have to work with a group of technicians. Fashion is much more collaborative than one would imagine. You have to work with a group of technicians who can help you realize you vision. You have to encourage them. You have to give them freedom. You have to get the very best out of them, but at the same time, you have to guide them toward your vision. So in that way, there were a lot of similarities in having worked with image for a long time, and understanding the power of image and the power to tell a story with image. That also helped.
I’m not going to say there weren’t moments when I thought, "God, am I doing this the right way?" But I had a terrific team of people. You know, when you work with great actors, that takes a tremendous amount of the weight off. Colin, you just have to put a camera on him. He performs. I had every advantage that one could have. I feel very lucky and fortunate to have had that.
Colin Firth at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Colin, did you have any trepidation about working with a first-time film director?
Firth: Never trepidation. It couldn’t have been further from trepidation. Those were never the kind of doubts. The thing that Tom explained, making use of the sensibilities that you might have, in terms of your vision in fashion, the way it can be converted into your vision in a narrative [film], I completely understand that sort of thing. There are a million different ways that you can be a wonderful director. If you are working with a highly imaginative, highly intelligent person with an extraordinary set of skills, which are far beyond just the pure visual I think Tom had already established, you are combing that with a very, very interesting and actually quite unique story to tell, it was nothing but intrigue from the beginning, really.
I didn’t know Tom well enough to understand how he might want to tell the story. But I started to get a very clear idea of that at our very first meeting. And for me, it was a day or two into shooting that I realized that I think we had connected and harmonized in a way, in terms of what we were wanting to do, which meant there really wasn’t much of a tussle.
Ford: I think Colin was very brave, and I’m so happy he took the chance with me.
Firth: I think that sense of both having taken a leap of faith, I didn’t feel it was a huge leap of faith. I felt it was the other way around. Without having to ping-pong back to Tom, to have something that was so personal and so important to him, and to put so much of it in my hands — I’ve got all the screen time — I certainly felt the degree of trust that had been placed with me.
Tom Ford, Julianne Moore and Colin Firth at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival premiere of "A Single Man"
Tom, did you ever find that any of the actors in "A Single Man" took it one step further than you envisioned?
Ford: Oh, of course, and that’s the wonderful thing. When you have great actors, they add a dimension that you couldn’t have even imagined. Both Colin and Julianne absolutely inhabited the characters, and it was wonderful to watch. I sat on my computer running dialogue and all of a sudden, there it was and happening in a way that was even more powerful than I could’ve hoped. So that was a great feeling.
You mentioned something earlier that I wanted to mention. Fashion and film, for me, are two very different type of expression. Fashion for me is creative but it’s a commercially creative endeavor. Film, for me, is purely expressionistic form. And for me, working with film was saying something. I’m not being very articulate about it, but the two things mean very different things to me, very different creative outlets. And the film is something that is not meant to be commercial, but of course you want people to see what you do because that’s the way you communicate with them. But it really was the most expressive and personal thing I’ve ever done.
Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Tom, why was Colin Firth your first choice in casting the role of George Falconer?
Ford: Every time I’ve ever seen Colin in anything, I found him captivating in his restraint as an actor has always impressed me. He’s also got a subtle sense of sexiness which is not always so subtle — meaning that he is a very sexy guy. There were not many actors who could’ve played George who were the right age who were English. It was important to have a real English actor playing George and who could’ve played this character with a subtlety that Colin could have.
Colin was my absolute first choice. I thought of him immediately. He was tied up working. Luckily, our schedules shifted around in a way that just last August [in 2008], he became free, and our schedule moved, and I immediately sent him the screenplay got on the phone, flew to London the next day, we had dinner, convinced him, hand shook, got back on the plane, was back in America in 24 hours, we started shooting a few weeks later. It was one of those great things were everything just came together.
Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
In "A Single Man," there’s great use of changing colors in the lighting to reflect changing moods. Tom, do you have a favorite color?
Ford: There isn’t a favorite color, but the point of that was in the novel, it’s really an interior monologue of what this man is going through in a day. And you have to have certain devices to help the audience understand what he’s feeling. I don’t know how you’re feeling when you’re depressed but when I’m depressed, everything is absolutely flat. I can’t see. There is literally no color in my life.
Once this man decides that this is the last day he is going to live on this planet, he starts to look at things in a different way. The beauty of the world starts to pull at him. Colors and things and sounds and everything become really intense. And to help the audience feel what George is feeling, that was the intentions of the use of color. By the end of the film when his depression is lifted, he’s absolutely living in the moment, he’s living in Technicolor.
Colin, what’s your favorite color?
Firth: What’s my favorite color? Blue.
Colin Firth and Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Tom, some of the men in this movie are so gorgeous. Are they models? And Colin, did you feel pressure to work out because you knew you’d be next to all these buff guys?
Firth: What do you think?
Ford: I don’t know, Colin looked pretty good naked. First of all, fashion and film for me, I want to separate them. This ["A Single Man"] is not an extension of what I do as a fashion designer. Beauty and fashion and the look of something without substance behind it is meaningless, as far as film goes.
The look of the thing really came from the characters. What kind of house is George going to live in? What kind of person is he? What does he do? Who is Julianne Moore’s character? How does she live? What doe she do? Of course, she smokes pink cigarettes. She listens to Serge Gainesbourg, because living in her life, she’s vacationing in the south of France, and much more advanced than everyone else.
So all of that veneer was really there to support the characters. Of course, it’s also there to be beautiful. It’s not meant to be form without substance. The only character in the film who is a model [named Jon Kortajarena] plays Carlos, the hustler. And he is my house model, who I’ve worked with for three years. I take my own pictures, and working with him, I knew he’d be a good actor. He is an absolute natural. It’s the first [movie] he’s ever done. But working in still photography with him, I can say one word to him, and he immediately just projects. And I thought he’d be great.
And the purpose of that character is that he’s a human flower. George doesn’t want to pick him, doesn’t want to have sex with him. Just as he’s seeing beautiful things all day, he encounters this absolutely stunning physical creature, and he just wants to look at him. So it was very important that that character look like and be like a human flower.
Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Can you talk about the clothes the characters wear in "A Single Man"?
Ford: The costumes are there to serve the characters. It wasn’t a costume parade for me. That’s not what it was about. I worked with a brilliant costume designer called Arianne Phillips, whom I’ve known for years, who was nominated for "Walk the Line." This was a tiny-budget film. We shot in 21 days. We had hundreds of extras to dress in costumes, as well as the principals. She did an incredible job.
Firth: Just to reiterate what Tom was saying, from the point of view of someone wearing the costume, obviously, there’s quite a lot of questions about this because people know Tom’s history. If people didn’t know Tom’s history, they’d think, "What a beautiful cinematic sensibility we’re looking at. What wonderful film grammar." It would have nothing to do with the decorative elements of these things.
Yes, it’s beautiful. But, to me, when I put George’s costume on, I didn’t feel like I was decorated by a great fashion designer, I felt this spoke of George’s desperation — this need, which is very clear and explicit at the beginning of the film, to fastidiously put on a kind of body armor, this kind of constructed character he ha dot be in order to step outside the front door. And that’s what the cuff links and the tie pin were all about. Pull one piece of that away and this man could collapse.
Colin Firth at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
And how did it feel pulling the clothing off for your nude scenes?
Firth: [He laughs.] I preferred having it on.
Ford: Are you sure you don’t work for a U.K. paper? That sounds like a U.K. question.
A woman at the screening for "A Single Man" last night said that this film isn’t really about homosexuality; it’s all about love.
Firth: I’m so glad to hear that, because that was my intention. It’s a story of love, it’s a story of romance, it’s a story of isolation, it’s a story of the small things we all go through in our day that we take for granted are the most important things. It’s really all we have. And that’s what it was about. The fact that George happens to be gay isn’t really [important]. This could’ve been his wife that died in a car accident, this could’ve been a depression that was brought on by that. We could have almost the same story.
Christopher Isherwood, one of the admirable things about him, certainly for me as a writer, were most of his things were autobiographical. The story is never about being gay. It’s just a gay character. They’re humans. Maybe I’m blind because I’ve been with the same person for 23 years of my life. If you asked me 10 things to describe myself, I guess I would say, "Oh yeah, I guess I’m gay." So it’s not meant to be a gay story. It’s meant to be a universal story. And that, for me, is what it was. So I’m happy to hear that comment.
Colin Firth at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Colin, was it difficult to shoot that scene when George gets the phone call that his lover has died in a car accident?
Firth: I find I can’t answer questions about that scene. I don’t know how it was arrived at. I do it happened the night Barack Obama was elected. It wasn’t the easiest day to be grief-stricken. I don’t know. I don’t remember.
Ford: I remember it vividly. We shot 3,000 feet [of film], because Colin just kept emoting. It was so beautiful and it was so subtle, I just couldn’t turn the camera off. I would think we had it, and you had the entire crew absolutely riveted. And I just couldn’t say, "Cut."
Firth: I noticed we were going on a long time. And actually, it was quite early on in the shoot, wasn’t it?
Ford: It was very early on.
Tom Ford at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival press conference for "A Single Man"
Firth: And I realized then what Tom had established. This is where I think people who’ve never been on a film set, the word "directing," it can be applied in all kinds of different ways. It’s never, from a good director, "Do this. Do that. Do more of that. Do less of this." That’s the realm of mediocrity and it never works. I realized at that point how much freedom we had. Not just me, but camera operators, designers, people working on that set.
For something that was being created by a man whose reputation for perfection is so wide, it was an extraordinarily exciting freedom. There wasn’t a fastidious control over things in that way at all. It was a place where imagination could flourish. And that’s really directing. And that’s really not, "We’ll have more of that and a little less of that." it’s, "I know what you’re looking for here." And you’re attuned to that and you’re just set free. And when that camera didn’t stop until the magazine ran out …
Ford: Three times!
Firth: I kind of knew where we were. And then we’d do it again. Three mags, I think. It’s awfully long what you see on the screen, but it’s only a fraction of what I think we did.
Colin Firth in "A Single Man"
And just to clarify, that scene with the phone call is also when George finds out that he won’t be allowed to go to his lover’s funeral because he’s "not family" …
Ford: But that wasn’t even the most important part of the scene. The most important is that George is finding out that his entire world is gone. The person he’s lived with for 16 years. His dogs even. Everything is just gone, all of a sudden. How many of you have had moments like that? I have. And it’s an unbelievable feeling where it’s like [he makes a gesture like a rug being pulled out from underneath something] seemingly out of nowhere. And you don’t really know how to react, which is the way Colin played that, which I thought was so beautiful.
Tom, "A Single Man" has been bought by the Weinstein Company, which will release the film. How important was it for you for this film to be picked up by a distributor and the commercial aspects of that?
Ford: Well, if you have something to say and no one sees it, you haven’t achieved your goal. So of course it was important that it was picked up, because if you spend the time, the energy and the effort and you feel that you have something that you’re very proud of, you have to have an audience. It’s like fashion. You can’t dress up and walk around a room. Well, you can, but you’re not really speaking to anyone. You’re not contributing and you don’t have a voice in contemporary culture.
Tom Ford, Julianne Moore and Colin Firth at the 2009 Venice Film Festival premiere of "A Single Man"
Can you talk about mixing art and commerce in fashion and films?
Ford: Well, in creating this, I wasn’t thinking commercially at all. I was thinking purely in terms of expression. Obviously, once you do that and you have something that you’re proud of, you want people to see it. You absolutely need distribution. So I’m incredibly happy that we have distribution for this.
Tom, "A Single Man" is also your first screenplay. How did that come about?
Ford: When I bought the rights to the book, there was a screenplay attached, written by David Scaearce. It was very much along the lines of the book. It followed it quite carefully, quite closely. It originally wasn’t my intention to write a screenplay. As I started to work on the book and I started to think about how to turn this into a film, I started to realize that I was going to have to take quite a few liberties with the story. There’s no plot in the book. It’s a beautiful book of prose, really. It’s a beautiful because it’s so beautifully written and it’s completely inside the George character’s head. Not much really happens on the outside.
So I had to create a plot, I had to create other characters that were not on the book and enhance the characters that were in the book so that we could see what George was thinking and feeling without just literally making a story with a giant voiceover. I bought final drafts, sat down at my computer, went to work at it. It took me about a year-and-a-half. I went through quite a few drafts. I had friends in the industry read it. [I] corrected it, worked on it, corrected it, worked on it. Got it to a point where I felt strong[ly] about it, and sent it off [he pats Colin Firth on the back] to a few great actors.
Tom Ford, Julianne Moore, Colin Firth, Nicholas Hoult and Matthew Goode at the 2009 Venice Film Festival
They say that there’s a third stage of writing a film, and that’s the process of film editing. Did you find yourself re-evaluating the movie in the editing room?
Ford: That’s the thing that I suppose surprised me the most. I had no idea what one can do in editing. You can completely change the story. You can change the scene, you can change intention, you can change an actor’s performance. I loved it! It was like Rubik’s Cube. I could get inside of it and can twist it in so many different directions. And I spent a lot longer time doing that [editing] than I intended to: I spent six months. I found it an amazing part of the process. And finally, the film settled into a place where it couldn’t have been anything other than what it was. And I knew I was finished with it.
Tom, do you have any plans for a second film?
Ford: I do, but I just finished this two weeks ago. And it wasn’t just a film for me. It was something that was really important. I don’t want to just make films. I want to make something that’s important to me and hopefully important other people. So I need to have a little time and space and distance. I’d love to have a parallel career. I would love to have the opportunity to make a film every two or three years. I hope that you’ll see more. I’m determined that you’ll see more. So at the moment, I just need a little space.
Tom Ford at the 2009 Venice Film Festival premiere of "A Single Man"
Tom, where do you get your confidence as a new filmmaker?
Ford: I don’t know. I felt very confident with that. If you have a strong vision and if you’re imaginative and creative, you can visualize what you want to say and if you surround yourself with wonderful, talented people, I’ve always been one of those people. Maybe I’m going to be wrong, maybe I am wrong, but I felt that if I really put my mind to something and had something to say and visualize it, that I could make it happen. So I felt secure going forward with that.
Tom, what made you decide to start a new career as a filmmaker?
Ford: I think you always have to do things in new in life. Otherwise, what’s the point? I love a challenge. But as I said, it’s something I always wanted to do. [Being] a fashion designer is fulfilling in a certain way. You create something that has power, but it doesn’t last very long. It’s powerful to see a woman in something beautiful that you’ve never seen before. It’s one of the most powerful things that any of us can experience if you’re a man or a woman who loves beauty. However, six months later, it’s nice still. A year later, it’s looking kind of old. After that, it’s gone. You can see it years later in a museum … but it doesn’t have that power.
If you’re a designer who likes to create, to create characters, what they do, what they say, how they live, how they die, what happens, and have it sealed forever in a bubble that 500 years from now, whatever the medium people experiencing these things are, will be able to open that world again, be right inside it, feel that emotion, live all of that. And I think, for me, that has been, and hopefully will be, one of the most satisfying things that someone who is creative can hope to achieve.
Tom Ford and Colin Firth at the 2009 Venice Film Festival
Tom, did you learn something new about yourself by directing your first film?
Ford: I don’t know if I learned something new about myself. It’s a different side of myself. I couldn’t have done this 10 years ago. I’ve been fortunate in life to have had a lot of material success, and I think maybe I lacked a bit of spirituality. And I recently have found that and reading in this book ["A Single Man"] in my 40s, I found it to be a very spiritual book. And I hope that in this film, that’s what it’s really about. I don’t know. I think we all start out in life — to use a fashion reference — as an eau de toilette and maybe we turn into parfum as we get older. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned more and more about myself, but I can’t think of any specific thing that I learned.
Tom, is there anything you learned in making your first film that will impact your fashion or photography?
Ford: I think if you keep your mind open, you can’t help but be fed by everything that you do. I hope in life we keep learning until the day we die. That’s kind of the point. That’s what George does. George has an epiphany. He understands everything that’s happened to him. He understands life. He’s learned the lessons of life. I hope all of us keep learning until the day we die. I think that’s part of the point: to grow and develop.
Tom Ford, Julianne Moore, Colin Firth at the 2009 Venice Film Festival premiere of "A Single Man"
Tom, what advice do you have for any photographers who want to become filmmakers?
Ford: Find a great story. That’s the most important thing. Something you’re passionate about. It’s all about the story. It’s all about the message. And then get great actors.
Firth: I’m available.
Tom, did you consult with Don Bachardy, who was Christopher Isherwood’s longtime lover?
Ford: I talked to Don quite a lot, because I had to veer quite substantially from the book to make sure that it was accurate and that the intention of the story was maintained. Don, I’m happy to say, loves the film and is very happy with it. Chris — he’s also in the movie, by the way — having himself written screenplays and worked other projects in Hollywood, felt that one should take something and make it their own. So I think he [Bachardy] was very happy with it.
What scene is Don Bachardy in?
Ford: He’s in the faculty lounge, sitting on a long sofa with my boyfriend on one end and Don Bachardy on the other and panned past both of them. And he has a line!
Tom Ford, Julianne Moore and Colin Firth at the 2009 Venice Film Festival
And can you talk about George’s house?
Ford: In thinking about what George’s house would be — and I was thinking about this for all the characters — he should’ve had a contemporary house. He’s living in Los Angeles, and Los Angeles is the capital of contemporary architecture for residential [buildings]. But he’s English, so I wanted it to be dark. I wanted it to be made. He’s a professor. So although he might’ve been attracted to America and a new America and the freedom of America, there would’ve been a certain English quality that we got from the dark wood and the coziness of contemporary architecture. It’s a Lautner house. It’s in Glendale, California.
Tom, how did the book "A Single Man" come into your life?
Ford: It came into my life in my early 20s, when I first moved to Los Angeles. I picked it up and read it. And at that time, I didn’t understand the spirituality of it. I was kind f lonely and I fell in love with George a bit. I kind of wanted to run into him in Santa Monica, even though he was a fictional character. And then after that, I met Christopher Isherwood and became obsessed with all his writing, all of his work. It just stayed with me and then have different meaning for me later on in my life, as I think books often do. I think if you pick them up at different stages in your life, you see different things about them.
Can you elaborate on how the book "A Single Man" had a different meaning for you later in your life?
Ford: I hadn’t understood the spirituality behind it [the first time I read it]. Christopher Isherwood, in his mid-life, became very spiritual … And when you read the book, understanding that, it is a book about the true self about the false self. The book is written in the third person, and it’s written from the vantage point of someone with a bit more wisdom than the character who’s in the book going through the daily … That I found quite amazing.
Colin Firth at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival premiere of "A Single Man"
Colin, did you read the book before you were cast in the movie?
Firth: No. I didn’t know the book. I thought I knew a bit about Christopher Isherwood. I think, like a lot of people, I knew the Berlin period [another Isherwood novel]. I knew "Mr. Norris." There’s a wealth of Christopher Isherwood that I had no familiarity with, and the whole Los Angeles period was new to me.
Have you read the book since being cast in the movie?
Firth: Oh, yes. I’ve read it quite a few times, because actors forage for what they can get anywhere, if there’s a clue that might just unlock something or steal it. Interestingly, source material can be very rich and limited. A great deal of the George I was taking on was Tom. I’m not saying that literally. You can’t quantify what was what, but a lot came from Tom that was not to be found in the book at all.
The suicide conceit was not to be found in the book at all. It was absolutely critical to the story as we tell it, because this man has written his own ending — or he thinks he has — which I think changes everything about how he lives through that day. So connecting to Tom was more helpful than connecting to Christopher Isherwood on that subject.
As far as other material, there’s a wonderful documentary of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy’s life called "Chris & Don: A Love Story." I saw that a couple of times. A lot of the texture of the kind of love that exists between George and his partner, I think more can be found there. I found that extremely useful.
RELATED LINKS ON EXAMINER.COM:
Interview with Colin Firth for "Easy Virtue"
Interview with Colin Firth for "Dorian Gray"
Interview with Colin Firth for "A Christmas Carol"
Interview with Colin Firth for "A Single Man"
Interview with Tom Ford for "A Single Man"
Interview with Julianne Moore for "A Single Man"
Interview with Colin Firth for "A Single Man" (TimesTalks Q&A, part one)
Interview with Colin Firth for "A Single Man" (TimesTalks Q&A, part two)
Photo credits: Photos #1, 6, 7, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19: Getty Images. Photos #2, 3, 4: AP. Photos #5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 20: Reuters. Photo #13: The Weinstein Company.
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