Focus : Production Notes


What would it be like to wake up one day and find that you have become your enemy, to really get the chance to live in his shoes, to experience his most chilling fears, to take his blows? The stirring consequences of just such a transformation lie at the heart of Focus, a riveting and distinctly American tale of love and hate, silence and crime, insidious intolerance and unexpected redemption.

Based on legendary playwright Arthur Miller's first controversial novel, Focus is a story about what it is like to have the way you see the world radically shifted by how others see you. It is a fable of mistaken identity. It is a hero's journey. But most of all it is a deeply human drama about the dangers of not speaking the truth - and allowing fear to take root.

Focus brings the always probing, vastly entertaining storytelling talents of Pulitzer Prize winner Arthur Miller together with first-time director (and acclaimed still photography artist) Neal Slavin, who devoted equal passion to bringing his favorite novel to the screen. The priority for both men: to re-focus this classic American look at identity, appearances and human nature into a starkly stylish, suspenseful and provocative experience for contemporary film audiences.

Oscar nominee William H. Macy stars in the moving role of Lawrence Newman, an ordinary man who does not want to stand out in a dangerous world. Even when a woman is attacked outside his Brooklyn window, he remains quiet about what he saw, unwilling to makes waves and so fearful, indulging his sight to question what he truly saw.

But, then unassuming Newman and his sexy, outspoken newlywed wife (Oscar nominee Laura Dern) become caught up in a case of mistaken identity. Suddenly the unwitting focus of his neighbors' prejudice, Newman is faced with a choice: to go down as a coward or take a long shot at becoming the unlikeliest of heroes - and tell the truth.
Focus is directed by Neal Slavin from a screenplay by Kendrew Lascelles from the novel of the same name by Arthur Miller. Michael Bloomberg executive produces and Robert A. Miller produces. Tariq Anwar (American Beauty) is editor, Vlasta Svoboda is production designer, the cinematographer is Juan Ruiz Anchia and the costume designer is Vicki Graef. Original music is written by Mark Adler. The film stars an ensemble of Oscar-nominated and highly acclaimed actors including William H. Macy, Laura Dern, David Paymer and Michael Lee Aday.

Coming Into Focus: Updating Arthur Miller's Classic Tale of
Love Triumphing Over Hate

In 1940s Brooklyn, in a rapidly changing world at war, prejudice and fear were rampant. As one of the country's leading writers, thinkers and social observers, Arthur Miller - who would in short order change and recharge American theater with such provocative works as The Crucible and Death of a Salesman - felt there was an urgent need to explore this atmosphere of mistrust and unfounded terror.

In 1932, Miller clerked in an auto-parts warehouse, where he had his first shocking, personal experiences with intolerance in America. "There was a very loud and vicious movement in New York that I had run up against," recalls Miller. "I saw that people always need a scapegoat, than they always need someone to blame. " With an anguished conscience, Miller decided to explore what would happen to a man who thinks he is the same as his neighbors when he suddenly becomes their unwitting scapegoat and enemy.

The result was Miller's first novel, Focus, the story of ordinary office worker Lawrence Newman, whose fateful decision to buy a pair of glasses changes the way the entire the world sees him - and ultimately how he sees the world. Part stirring romance, part gritty portrait of war-time Brooklyn and part unflinching inquiry into the wages of racial bias of any kind, Focus dared to address America's largely unexamined dark side and lit controversy among readers.

Decades later, a young art student named Neal Slavin was just as fiercely moved by Focus. Times had changed and intolerance had become much less overt across urban America. But Slavin saw Focus as a timely and vital parable about the ongoing battle between tolerance and hatred in American communities, many of which remain torn by deep-seated suspicions based on race, religion and lifestyle.

Slavin also saw the story of Lawrence Newman as a mesmerizing study in human courage - as he moves from tacit narrow-mindedness to bold rebellion. He wanted to capture visually and viscerally how Newman opens up as a human being as his own dark secrets are exposed - an inner journey that becomes profoundly emotional.

"I read Focus when I was in college, and immediately said someday I'll make this as a movie," says Slavin. "It struck me even then on an intensely visual and emotional level. Over the next 30 years, I read the book over and over again. It kept staying with me and growing with me. In the mid-90s, I pulled the book off the shelf, and I knew it was time. "

"I always saw it as a profoundly personal story," he adds, "about a man we fall in love with and for whom we root for because, ultimately, we identify with him in his moment of deepest moral crisis. "

But how does a first-time director approach one of America's master writers? Slavin's highly original and searingly modern vision is what won over Miller and particularly his son, Robert Miller, who was so impressed he wanted to help get the film made. "When I met Neal, I expressed my doubts about translating my father's novel to the screen, but Neal's compassion, enthusiasm and conviction were completely compelling," Robert Miller says.

Recalls Slavin: "Arthur's biggest concern from the beginning was how to make this story resonate with new meaning in the contemporary world. It was about one issue at the time Arthur wrote it, but today it becomes a much larger metaphor for the way people treat one another in all walks of life. The story still has a lot of fire at its center - and we wanted to find the right way to bring that to audiences. "

Thus began two years of intense artistic discussion and debate between Slavin and Arthur Miller and Robert Miller as they hammered out a 21st century approach to the movie, soon bringing in executive producer Michael Bloomberg, whose financial commitment to the project got it off the ground. When Kendrew Lascelles turned in his screenplay draft, everyone was at last convinced. "He really captured the multi-layered nature of this story," says Robert Miller. "The script was a love story, an explosive look at a community in the midst of violent tensions and an uplifting tale of transformation. "

Sums up Arthur Miller: "I was very pleased and surprised to see Focus made as a film. I wrote it over a half century ago but it's a piece of our history that still has a legacy. I'm afraid a story like this is always relevant. "

Meet Larry Newman: Ordinary, Anonymous Man . . .

Who is Lawrence Newman? This question is at the core of Focus, as Newman himself is forced to examine his own identity when he becomes the unwitting focus of his community's encroaching anger, fear and violent threats. Is he a small man just going with the flow . . . or could he become a larger-than-life hero whose courage changes the world around him?

For William H. Macy, the Oscar-nominated actor who dove deep into the rich and complex role, the answer is this: "Truth is, Newman is a lot like everyone. He's just a frightened man who feels like he doesn't belong. Who hasn't had that experience? I love that such a great story of bravery is told about such an unassuming man. "

Adds Neal Slavin: "Newman's security in life is the regularity of his lifestyle: his job, his house, coming home at the same time. He walks the same path every day. He's not a man who is particularly prejudiced or unprejudiced. He just goes along with the way things seem to be, like we all do to a certain extent, and that's where the danger arises. William H. Macy captures this side of Newman so well that his transformation is truly surprising and stunning. "

Macy, like Jimmy Stewart before him, has made an indelible mark playing Everyman characters in contemporary cinema - and he sees Lawrence Newman as firmly in that tradition. But Newman is an Ordinary Guy who comes to make an extraordinary decision, one that turns him into a very unlikely hero. "What fascinated me about Newman is that he finally stands up for what's right, even though he has every reason not to. He keeps saying this is not my fight and then one day he realizes that it is," says Macy. "That's an amazing turn around. "

Macy sees deep parallels between the prejudice on display in Focus and today's hate crimes against any minority group. "Intolerance is alive and well in America," he observes. "And it's important to understand that depending on when and where you find yourself in life, no matter who you are, by the simple toss of a dice, you could find yourself discriminated against. It makes you wonder how these things happen, whether 50 years ago or today. It makes you ask: how is it that good people allow evil to be done?"

* *
Larry's Friends and Neighbors: A Cast of Complex Characters

One of the good people who plays an influential role in Lawrence Newman's heroic stand is his new wife, Gertrude Hart, whom Newman initially rejects as a job applicant based on his own prejudicial judgments about her. Gertrude is brought to life with a gripping realism, moral complexity and sensual tenderness by Oscar nominee Laura Dern.

When Dern read the script for Focus, she found herself asking questions she hopes audiences will also ask: "What would you do in this situation? Would you be an upstanding citizen, would you defend those around you, or would you protect yourself by selling others out or becoming one of 'them'?," she asks.

Dern sees Gertrude "a brokenhearted woman looking for love. " "She's ready to feel safe," explains the actress. "She's trying desperately to find herself and she just doesn't know how to do it from a place of trust. "

Ultimately Dern feels that Focus puts the focus on how anyone can make a difference: by rejecting fear and hatred. "I think this story shows how one person can change the world by changing themselves," she says. "It reminds us of how easy it is to be swayed, how easy it is to be ruled by our fear instead of our humanity. "

One of the story's most tragic victims of fear is the corner store owner Finkelstein who becomes a target first of simple vandalism that quickly builds to threats of violence. Another Oscar nominee, David Paymer, joins the cast in the pivotal role.

Paymer sees his character as key to the intense dilemma posed by Focus. "It is Finkelstein's plight that ultimately forces Newman to confront his own feelings of prejudice and to fight against the forces of intolerance," says Paymer. "Finkelstein is not a man who's looking for a fight, but if he has to, he will, and that makes an impression on Newman. "

One of the biggest challenges for Paymer and the filmmakers was to make Finkelstein a palpably real flesh-and-blood individual without resorting to common stereotypes. "We had a lot of discussions about that," explains Paymer. "We didn't want to play into expectations of what an immigrant is. I see Finkelstein, and he sees himself I believe, as just another man trying to raise his family in America. "

Another man who thinks he's just trying to raise his family in America is Fred, Newman's friendly but bigoted neighbor, whose inability to accept differences amongst his neighbors dooms him and consequently the community. Fred is played in a compellingly dramatic turn by Michael Lee Aday.

"This movie is about fear," says Aday. "The people who live on this block have lived there for a long time and they don't want to see change. Fred's not a bad guy. He's just grown up in a certain way. To him, apples don't grow on orange trees. "

Aday was also drawn to Focus because of its powerful relationship to some of the hottest issues facing America today. "I recall that in the area of Dallas that I lived in as a child, if an African-American moved within 15 miles of anyone, everybody knew about it," relates Aday. "Prejudice still exists for people that are different in all sorts of ways, and for the same reasons as they did when Focus takes place. It opens your eyes to how these things become accepted, and how they can be turned around. "

Refocusing 40s New York Through A 21st Century Lens

Focus was shot entirely in Toronto, Canada where Neal Slavin and his technical crew were able to recreate an authentic 1940-style Brooklyn neighborhood of neatly trimmed brownhouses, quaint storefronts and dark back alleys. From the beginning Slavin wanted to make Focus as much an exciting visual experience as an emotional one. His own background as a highly accomplished photographer provided rich inspiration for the film's starkly meaningful images, which bring a contemporary feel to the action, while capturing the essence of the old War-time New York neighborhoods.

Slavin worked closely with award-winning, innovative cinematographer Juan Ruiz Anchia to give Focus its original look. Meanwhile, production designer Vlasta Svoboda and costume designer Vicki Graef combined historical research with their own imaginations to create a crisply stylized 40s universe that seems at once palpably real and charmingly nostalgic.

When it all came together in Toronto - with the cast gathered on 40-style streets to recreate a story about candor, honor and tolerance that is just as resonant today -- Robert Miller found the experience profoundly moving. "It was a dream come true to witness this incredibly talented cast and these incredibly innovative filmmakers finally bringing this story alive," he says. "Because you care so deeply for these characters and feel part of this neighborhood, you really start to put yourself in their positions and wonder what it would be like to be a scapegoat, what it would be like to give up your fears. And that's what makes this story so exciting. "

A NOTE ABOUT ARTHUR MILLER'S AMERICA
"The American Dream is the largely unacknowledged
screen in front of which all American writing plays itself out. "

-- Arthur Miller

Throughout his extraordinary writing career, playwright, short story writer and novelist Arthur Miller has dared to probe the truth of the human condition in moving, entertaining and illuminating works that examine such subjects as prejudice, conscience and moral quandaries with uncompromising persistence and deep compassion for characters right out of real life.

Miller began writing plays at the University of Michigan, but when he returned to New York, Focus was his first published work, a searing, controversial novel about a man whose simple act of buying a pair of glasses profoundly changes the way the world sees him - and the way he sees the world. Following that, Miller went on to literally transform post World War II American theater, bringing audiences face-to-face with a brave, honest, never-before-seen picture of America's darkest secrets and most pressing and powerful dilemmas.

His first successful play, All My Sons, dealt with the emotional aftermath of World War II. Then, Miller's Death of a Salesman created a classic American tragedy about an ordinary insurance man whose deep dissatisfaction blows open the myth of American success. The play earned Miller a Pulitzer Prize, as well as a Tony Award and Drama Critics Circle Award; and it remains one of the most performed theatre works in the world.

Miller then bravely took on the era of McCarthyism with another groundbreaking classic, The Crucible, which uses the Salem witch hunts as a provocative metaphor for paranoia. Miller himself was later convicted of contempt of Congress for not cooperating with the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

In 1961, Miller wrote his first screenplay, The Misfits, based on his own haunting short story about men and women seeking freedom in the changing West. The film stars Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift and Miller's one-time wife, Marilyn Monroe. Miller's strong sense of compassion for the ordinary man's struggle, his unique insight into the cracks in the American Dream and his passion for the American vernacular continued to imbue his plays throughout the next decades, with works including: A View From the Bridge, Incident at Vichy, The Price, A Memory of Two Mondays, After The Fall, The Creation of the World and Other Business, The American Clock, the Olivier Award-winning Broken Glass and Mr. Peter's Connections.

In 1987, Miller continued his observations of America with a non-fiction memoir, Timebends: A Life, which explores his Brooklyn childhood, the political turmoil of the 1950's and the latter half of the 20th century.

Although many of Miller's plays have been seen in screen versions, Focus comes full circle to bring one of Miller's earliest - and most passionate - works to the screen. It has been said that all of Miller's writings hold up a mirror to America and what's reflected back in Focus is at once terrible and beautiful, harrowing and redemptive, another indelible image from Miller's imagination.

Author : © 2001 Paramount Classics