Creation: When Art and Science Collide - ACS Publications

Chapter 1

“Creation”: When Art and Science Collide Downloaded by DUESSELDORF LIBRARIES on January 18, 2014 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 3, 2013 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2013-1139.ch001

Natalia Reagan and Jon Amiel* *E-mail:

[email protected]

Science and art are oftentimes presented as two distinct fields with very little overlap. But the anatomist and the artist, scientist and storyteller, have far more in common than meets the eye. Upon further investigation, it is clear that science and art cannot exist without the other; they are co-constitutive. Scientists must think creatively in order to form theories (the Earth is round, it circles the Sun) that often appear outlandish not only to laymen but even to their own colleagues. The theory of evolution, presented by Charles Darwin in “On The Origin of Species,” required creativity that was then supported by the evidence-revealed empirical analysis. Essentially, it took Darwin’s right brain to creatively form the question and his left brain to try and refute the question using the scientific method. Similarly, art requires the brain to function in ways that would not be possible without science. For instance, writing music is highly reliant on mathematics, sculpting the human figure requires a basic understanding of our anatomy and physiology, and the technology used in cinema would be not be possible without the leaps made by scientists and engineers during the last century. In this chapter, writer/director Jon Amiel discusses his film “Creation” with anthropologist Natalia Reagan. Their aim—to explore just how deeply science and art are intertwined within the process and the product of film-making.

© 2013 American Chemical Society In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

Downloaded by DUESSELDORF LIBRARIES on January 18, 2014 | http://pubs.acs.org Publication Date (Web): September 3, 2013 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2013-1139.ch001

Jon Amiel’s Preamble What follows this introduction is the (mercifully!) condensed account of several conversations I had with Natalia Reagan over a six-month segment of this year, from spring through autumn. Initially conceived of as a straightforward interview in which she’d ask and I’d talk about my film of Charles Darwin’s life, Creation, we found instead that the movie became the spindle of a pin-wheeling conversation about the convergences of art and science, fact and fiction, scientific academia and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Our backgrounds could hardly be more different. Natalia is a burgeoning force of nature who’s currently breaking down the barriers between scientific enquiry and populist entertainment. She’s that rarest of poly-hyphenates, an anthropologist/primatologist/actor/comedienne/writer. I myself am a more humdrum species—the common or garden feature film director. I am however one who’s been lucky enough to have a career spanning thirty or so years of theater, film and television from the Singing Detective, through Copycat, Sommersby, The Core, Creation, and Entrapment. What set us on this collision course was our own set of convergences—she’s a scientist with a passionate involvement in the expressive arts, I’m an artist with a lifelong love of science. Our conversations revealed to us connections that spanned gender, generation and background and gave us both deeper insights into the shared DNA of the creative and the scientific mind. If this account gives you a fraction of the pleasure it gave us, we shall consider our time well spent.

Natalia Reagan’s Preamble The Art of Creating pro·cre·ate verb \-ˌāt\ transitive verb : to beget or bring forth (offspring) : propagate Science and art may appear to be two disparate fields that share few connections to one another, however this could not be further from the truth. Science and art, on the contrary, are two entangled fields that are integral to one another. The film Creation is an excellent example of this hypothesis, that science and art are co-constituted. In the film, Charles Darwin wrestles with his internal discourse about whether he should publish his groundbreaking scientific findings at the risk of outraging those with strict religious convictions—including his wife. Creation is a beautiful piece of art that richly depicts the unraveling of a man before he published his prolific On the Origin of Species. Similarly, the production of a film is much like a living and breathing organism—its biology is not dissimilar to that of a siphonophore. Like the Portuguese Man of War, a film is a colonial organism made up of many zooid components, writers, cinematographers, cast and crew. Unlike the Man of War 4 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


however, a film must have a “brain”—one central prism through which the potentially divergent creative energies of this multi-cellular organism are focused. For the profoundly beautiful feature film Creation, director Jon Amiel was that prism. Amiel puts it slightly differently: “I view myself as the conductor. Not just in the musical sense—though I do certainly conduct the orchestra that’s often playing someone else’s composition—but also in the electrical sense. I serve as the lightning rod to conduct the collective energies of hundreds of people into a single channeling purpose.” If God breathed life into the clay that was Adam, it was Amiel who breathed life into the man who turned the scientific community on its ear. As Charles Darwin took great care to present his findings, Amiel was equally as mindful—and even reluctant to—direct a film about arguably the most influential man in the past twohundred-years. I had the honor of sitting down with Amiel—director, writer, and fiercely brilliant interlocutor—whose great love of science and respect for the art of creation is clear in his words and his work. Science and Art Collide…Over Brunch Natalia Reagan: Just as Darwin was influenced by his peers and predecessors like Lamarck and Linnaeus, who influenced you most as you were growing up? Jon Amiel: Everybody has someone outside of their parents that is transformative in their lives. He wasn’t exactly Lamarck or Linnaeus but he was my mad uncle David. Uncle David was a fitness instructor in the army and a pugilist in life’s great boxing ring. He swore like a trooper, had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and would encourage all forms of bad behavior in his nephew. He was an autodidact who loved fact and despised fiction. When other kids were getting comic books and (later) thumbed copies of Playboy from their Bad Uncles—mine would thrust copies of Scientific American and New Scientist at me. I’d feverishly wade through densely incomprehensible articles in the hope of grasping a few key concepts that I could wield in a discussion with him. Paradoxically, my Uncle David not only gave me an abiding affection for cantankerous people who need to engage through intellectual combat—he also fostered in me a fascination for all things scientific. NR: Uncle David sounds like a man after my own heart. Isn’t it funny that some of the most cantankerous people in our lives so often have soft underbellies beneath those curmudgeonly carapaces? JA: Indeed. And what about your upbringing led you to being this unique poly-hyphenate? Isn’t your mother a professor? NR: Yes, and actually my parents are a great example of art and science colliding! My mother is a professor with a PhD in psychology, my father is an art director who is also a very talented musician and artist. They were a great case of opposites attracting! It was a fun household to grow up in—lots of musical 5 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

instruments and books. They both instilled in me a love of scientific inquiry and the arts—I feel fortunate to have had that in my life. National Geographic, the late great Omni magazine and Architectural Digest were magazines I would thumb through as a kid. Because of Nat Geo, really, I became quite fascinated with primates—nonhuman primates to be exact. Well, Nat Geo and recurring King Kong nightmares!


JA: Really? Well that’s a terrifying mix. NR: Yes it was! But even though King Kong was the antagonist in my dreams I still was drawn to him and gorillas. It’s interesting how such a film—a piece of art—created a burning love of primates and science. JA: Yes, it’s fascinating how many scientists acknowledge a movie as the germinating factor in their interest in their field. In the work I’ve done for the Science & Entertainment Exchange, I’ve met a number of eminent scientists who have talked about films as diverse as Star Trek, Fantastic Voyage, Contact and even The Core—my attempt to bring a little science to a geophysical disaster movie—as inspirations. NR: So, I’m curious—given that Creation deals with Darwin’s conflict between his scientific insights and his religious beliefs—were you raised in a religious household? JA: Hardly! My parents were lifelong members of the Communist Party. I was raised a devout atheist and have so continued to be. To be honest with you, I’ve never been deeply exercised by whether God exists. It’s always felt to me axiomatic that man created God in his own image. Unlike Darwin, I’ve led a life relatively untroubled by doubts on that topic. NR: So if not his struggles with the idea of an omnipotent, omniscient deity, what then was it that drew you to Darwin’s story? JA: Initially—nothing! When my friend John Collee called me from Australia he told me he’d been sent Randal Keynes’ book on Darwin for adaptation to film and asked if I wanted to work with him on it. I said: “Absolutely not!” NR: Because you didn’t want to do a biopic about the most prolific scientific mind of the 19th century? JA: Aaah the dread B-word! Exactly! There’s a reason why most so-called biopics are poor movies. A great life doth not a great movie make. Chronology is not plot. Plot is a Newton’s Cradle of consequences, one event caroming onto the other and setting it in motion. A life is usually a series of events loosely ordered by chronology—what I call an “and then, and then” narrative. Take away the epic spectacle of Gandhi for instance and you have a series of incidents loosely yoked together by history and glued together by a great performance. Not a great film. 6 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


Another problem with the biopic is the reverence trap. Reverence is the worst attitude with which to embark on an examination of someone else’s life. Respect them, sure. Love them, absolutely. But never revere them! Biographical drama at its best is the unflinching examination not only of the facts but the emotional shadow lines of somebody’s life. The greater the life, the more beloved the Great Man or Woman, the more difficult the biographer’s act becomes. If the subject has any living descendants who are likely to be offended by a warts-and-all account, the job becomes still more difficult. If you’re treating an intellectual giant like Darwin, you’re certain to stir a hornet’s nest of fervent ideologues. And God forbid you should tackle a religious figure like Mohammed or Jesus! Martin Scorsese’s Last Temptation of Christ was savaged by the zealots; yet his Raging Bull totally transcends the biopic genre for two reasons—firstly, he finds the dramatic spine of the story—the relationship of the two brothers—secondly, he’s completely unencumbered by reverence! And that was only the first reason I said no to my friend John Collee! The most important was that I had no real emotional connection to Darwin. To me, he was as remotely forbidding as one of those statues on Mount Rushmore. The scale of those characters is so massively dwarfing of us mere mortals it’s impossible to imagine any emotional connection with them. NR: They certainly create a buffer…some distance… JA: Yes. And then there was the age thing. It seemed to me that Darwin was old. He must surely always have been old. The only image I had of him was the one most of us have—it’s the one which graces the back of our British ten-pound note: a prematurely aged man with a forbidding Victorian beard and haunted hollow eyes. The eyebrows seemed to have grown over the eyes, throwing them into even deeper protective shadow, like bushes concealing the mouth of a cave…Imagine trying to get an actor to emote from behind all that latex and prosthetic hair… Impossible! NR: All right, so I’ll ask the obvious question! What changed your mind? JA: Collee persuaded med to at least read the first 100 pages of the book—it was called Annie’s Box and Randal Keynes had an inside track on his subject—he’s a great, great grandson of the Great Man. After a lot of material contextualizing the intellectual landscape of Darwin’s times, I came to the core segment of the book. It describes through letters, journal entries and contemporary accounts the gradual and unbearably sad death of Darwin’s favorite daughter, Annie. She was ten. Fortunately the Victorians were relentless chroniclers, journal-keepers and letter-writers. After his death, all of the Darwin archive was zealously preserved by Emma and Darwin’s second favorite daughter, Ettie. Randal Keynes was going through an old chest of drawers that had belonged to his great aunt when he discovered a small wooden box hidden away in the back of one of the drawers. It turned out to be Annie’s little reliquary of special treasures—a small wooden time-capsule of memories put away by her grieving parents after her death. 7 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


Among the treasures was a piece of paper in Darwin’s unmistakable handwriting, minutely listing the medications, the dates given and their effects. It became suddenly obvious to Randal that Darwin had been much more intimately involved with his daughter than had been previously imagined. Increasingly, he began to explore the effect Annie’s death had on Darwin’s creative journey towards writing Origin… Reading the letters that Emma and Charles wrote to each other during that time was like listening to the voices of any contemporary parent going through the unthinkable horror of losing a child. They reached across the intervening void of a hundred and fifty years and utterly gripped my heart. Suddenly I found that a picture was emerging, of a person completely different from the one I had imagined. Someone to whom I would not only relate but could connect to with a force that quite surprised me. Someone, astonishingly, I even came to love. NR: It sounds like this book- this piece of art, if you will—made you fall in love with this relatable character who just happens to be father of evolutionary science. It’s amazing how these figures of history seems so foreign until you imagine them as the doting and goofy father and loving husband. And seeing their flaws, whether they are self-doubt, greed, or fear, also allows these historical figures to seem relatable. Darwin, in particular, came to life in the film through the portrayal of his comfortable and playful relationship with his children. I feel like your own life may have influenced the focus on Darwin’s role of a father in Creation. As an anthropologist I enjoyed this aspect since reproductive success, whether we are aware of it or not, is the goal of individuals. Speaking of reproductive success, you told me earlier you had four kids. So you started to connect to him first as a father? JA: Yes. Paul Zak has made a very interesting study (funded by DARPA slightly worryingly) of the neuro-chemistry of storytelling… NR: His TED talk focused on the discovery of the moral molecule, right? And he discussed how women were nicer than men—he attributed it to all that extra oxytocin women naturally have! JA: Exactly. And testosterone inhibits the production of oxytocin, the caring sharing hormone. It’s not our fault we’re crass insensitive creatures compared to you gals!! It’s our hormones! In his work on storytelling, Zak shows how the story of a dad going shopping with his daughter produces no change in our blood chemistry. Tell that same individual the story of a father who knows his daughter is going to die and fights hard against loving her because the pain of losing her will be too great… The listener shows elevated levels of cortisol (emotional stress and attention) and oxytocin (bonding and empathy). People who came away from that story were much more likely to give generously to charity because they were awash with oxytocin.

8 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


NR: So I see where you’re going with this. It was the relatability of Keyne’s account that released all that cortisol and oxytocin in you and made you much more charitable to poor Chuck Darwin? JA: My point exactly. And in telling this story on film I’m seeking to generate the same chemical responses in my audience. Darwin was an exceptionally contemporary kind of dad. The opposite of the stern Victorian father, he was intensely playful with his kids, who seemed to be allowed to run around in happy Bohemian disarray. When the kids toddled into his study, Darwin was always delighted for the distraction, happy to peer up from the microscope, sit them on a knee, and involve them in his experiments. At one point he had all his kids chasing bumblebees round the Sandwalk and trying to figure out how they marked their territories. Annie was his special love, his oldest daughter, the one he shared most with, his hope for his old age. That she, the most robustly energetic and loving of his kids, should be the one to die, was unbearable. So, after all my initial reluctance I found myself completely drawn into this man at this very specific point in his life. Not so much his adolescence, nor so much his old age... But at this moment—this very specific juncture in his life, the years leading up to the publication in 1851 of his masterwork. He’s a man in his early forties. He’s a doting father who has a dying child, he’s married to a woman who’s his childhood sweetheart and best friend but who also holds religious views deeply and diametrically opposed to his, he’s on the threshold of giving birth to an Idea that disturbs him so profoundly it’s literally making him ill… I found myself connecting to him as a father, and as a husband and—in my own poor way—as a creative artist. That’s why Collee and I settled on the title. Creation was not only a poke at the Genesis nuts, it spoke to the mysteries of childbirth and parenthood, and it spoke to the travails of the creative artist. NR: And Randal Keynes’ thesis was that in a sense the death of his daughter was a transforming event, it was really a fulcrum point. The point where the balance of his belief in God versus his beliefs in a world dictated by laws that had nothing to do with God swung irrevocably. JA: Exactly. And that fulcrum point gave us the spine of our drama. The father-daughter relationship became the center of our story as the brother relationship became the center of Scorsese’s story. It gave us a human and deeply emotional hook on which to hang some of the other central dilemmas of Darwin’s life—his relationship with his wife and his relationship with his god. With Annie’s death, any attenuated belief that Darwin might have retained in a deity who organizes the world according to some grand benevolent design went out the window. To use the techno-babble of film story structure, Annie’s death was the inciting incident of a story that culminates with the birth of Origin… In other words, I could see the starting point of a film that wasn’t a biopic! Collee and I very quickly decided that we wouldn’t do a soup-to-nuts story that started with childhood and ended in death. We wouldn’t make a reverential account of a great life. We started out instead to create a portrait of a great mind 9 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


in a great state of turmoil at a singular point in his life. We decided to make it a subjective account rather than an objective one—an account in which the stories he told to his children, his dreams and nightmares, had as important a role to play as the “facts” of his life. A feature film isn’t a medium that lends itself well to the exposition of abstracts—if you want an account of Darwin’s ideas, read his book or watch a PBS special. We tried instead to allow his ideas to percolate through the confrontations of characters and through the language of the film’s imagery. We strove, in other words, for the art that conceals art, the science that conceals science. Taking Creative License NR: So did this influence your decision to write the film using Darwin’s daughter, Annie, as his embattled inner monologue? She’s so perfectly woven into the story as Darwin toils over his decision to publish his theory. She seems to be both a source of joy and pain for the tormented Darwin. Losing Annie drove a wedge between Darwin and his wife and nearly pushed him over the edge. Annie was his creation and now she was gone… JA: …which presented us with one of the great challenges of telling this story. In reality, Darwin spent nine years between her death and the publication of Origin—mostly dissecting barnacles. Not exactly the stuff of cinematic legend! And yet the events were deeply inter-connected. Freeing ourselves from the tyranny of chronology and allowing the narrative to be emotionally rather than chronologically driven allowed us to get to the core emotional truths. The clinching idea was the notion (possible in a non-biopic account) that Annie’s spirit should become his companion, interlocutor and the voice of his creative conscience. NR: Which of course ruffled so many neo-Darwinist feathers—all those fervent ideologues you were talking about. JA: Yes. We were in the happy situation of offending two opposing groups of fervent ideologues almost equally! The Creationists were of course deeply offended that we should dare depict one of their great ideological Satans as a warm sympathetic human being. Equally, a number of entrenched Darwinists were outraged that we should dare show one of the greatest scientific minds of all time unhinged to the extent of talking to an empty room. NR: Every year the Sloane Foundation gives a prize to the outstanding science-oriented film of the year. In my view, yours was surely that film. Yet they chose not to give it to you. Do you think they were part of that offended group of ideologues? JA: Oh…probably! Perhaps our film was not ‘scientific” enough for them or perhaps they considered that we had taken too many liberties with the facts. I don’t think we did. Is there factual evidence to prove Darwin talked to his dead 10 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


daughter? No, of course not. Even if that evidence had existed in a letter or journal entry, it’s likely that the zealously protective Ettie would have expunged it from history’s record. The biographer’s duty is to the known and attestable facts, but the filmmaker’s is to responsible and imaginative surmise. And I think we made a number of responsible and imaginative surmises about Darwin—all of them supported by Randal Keynes, by the way. For instance we know that when Annie died, Darwin wrote a four-page in memoriam about her, a deeply affecting account of his wonderful child. He then folded it up, put it in a drawer and never looked at it again. A perfect paradigm of repressed memory! We know Annie was barely talked about in the house, and we know Darwin became physically and psychologically more and more severely afflicted in the years following her death. He essentially had what we would now call a nervous breakdown, suffering from a series of physical ailments, which we’re increasingly coming to believe were psychogenic in origin. When his closest friend, Hooker’s daughter, died, Darwin wrote a beautiful letter to him saying that not a day passed when he didn’t see Annie’s little face and hear her voice. Is it therefore so unlikely that Darwin “communed” with his dead daughter? I don’t think so. There’s also speculation that some of Darwin’s symptoms were caused by withdrawal from the large quantities of laudanum (a tincture of opium) that he took to control his symptoms. Read between the lines of Darwin’s letters and you’ll find much evidence that this great rationalist’s mind was capable of acting irrationally. NR: So in a way your film owes more to A Beautiful Mind than to Gandhi. JA: Yes. And a great deal both in terms of style and content to a series I made for the BBC many years ago—Dennis Potter’s brilliant Singing Detective. NR: No songs in this one though! JA: No songs, sadly. But the same stylistic collision of anecdotes and dark dreams, the same sense of a beautiful mind unraveling, even the same character—the shrink who may or may not be a quack but who provides our hero with the key to unlocking the door of an old deep trauma and begin to heal. Just in case anyone missed that point—I had him played by the same actor—the wonderful Bill Patterson. NR: Talking of anecdotes….The astonishingly affecting account of Jenny the orangutan and the way in which that story connects with the story of the Fuegan children and ideas of children’s vulnerability and mortality…Talk about what those meant to you. JA: From very early on we knew that these were stories that didn’t just need to be told but visualized. Visualizing them through the eyes of a child allowed us to pull this sort of fabliau-like quality from the stories, to give them a condensed and extracted narrative and visual quality. Telling the stories in this fashion allowed us to conceal any didactic intent and still get to the heart of some of Darwin’s ideas 11 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.


about the ways in which natural selection could work to the brutal detriment of the young and the vulnerable. The sequence in which the fledgling falls out of the nest, dies, decomposes and feeds the ongoing cycle of life, equally served triple duty. It was a visual illustration of the famous meadow bank passage in Origin, it was a third piece in the interlocking triptych of stories about the young in jeopardy, and it served to address another element of our story—a sort of unasked question: how must it feel to be a naturalist, accustomed to see the young of many species predated on by others, then to pass these observations through the experiential prism of losing a child? NR: Yes, people don’t go to two-hour movies to be lectured, they want to be entertained. There has got to be a payoff. As well as the more somber elements of his personality, I loved the way you caught Darwin’s playfulness, especially between him and Annie. You took a scientific figure who had been placed on a pedestal and who was revered to the point where they’ve been stripped of humanlike qualities and you infused him with humanity…. Which brings me to my next question: what was behind your decision to cast Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin? Casting is often seen as an ‘art,’ but was there any science to your casting of the film? JA: Yes, the casting process is indeed multilayered. There is the artistic/aesthetic aspect of casting—you want the actor to somewhat resemble the character being portrayed. But beyond that, there is a scientific component to casting; looks alone are not enough. There also needs to be a degree of complexity and intelligence embodied by the actor. Finding the perfect actor for the part is much like a chemistry experiment. What the actor looks like is the physics part, what he/she makes you feel is the chemistry. Casting is like titrimetry. You’re looking for an actor who can make you feel a certain range of emotions—whether you realize it or not, you’re titrating, quantitatively analyzing the concentrations of emotions in those actors. So both of these artistic and scientific aspects were great considerations of mine when casting this film. There’s a famous portrait of Darwin by George Richmond. It depicts a Darwin that was close to the age of the man in our movie. He looks just like Paul Bettany. I certainly wanted an actor who could look like Darwin without intervening layers of latex. I also wanted one who could convey his physicality. Darwin was 6’2,” very tall for those days, and clearly awkward in his own body. Darwin, like Bettany, had this high domed forehead with an early receding hairline and a quick-to-color sandy English complexion. As I said, it was also very important to cast an actor of intelligence. I consider myself a good director of actors but there are three things I think it’s impossible to direct an actor into: a sense of irony, a sense of humor—and intelligence. You can put a pair of glasses on a thirty year-old TV actor and pretend he’s a Nobel Prizewinning nuclear physicist, but the sad fact is you can tell by closely scrutinizing their face and body that they’re saying the words but not having the thoughts. Real intelligence, of the kind that Paul Bettany has in spades, is a rare commodity, especially amongst the younger male segment of our acting community. 12 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

NR: I have no idea what you’re talking about. Aren’t they precious? JA: Bless their little six-packed, gym-built hearts! So many of our young leading boys (leading men are oddly in short supply) are much better at doing than thinking. They have a thinking look, which essentially involves furrowing their brow, and looking as though they’re trying to pass a rather stiff motion. It’s this intensely constipated look that’s supposed to pass for deep thought. Couldn’t have one of those guys playing Charles Darwin!


NR: It’s funny. The list of what you need in an actor is the same list I need in a boyfriend. JA: Right? Well, Good luck. NR: Thank you. Especially, in this town [Los Angeles]. A lot of people have agendas… JA: Yes, for a town that is all about collective imaginative endeavor and creative thought, people are curiously dug in about who they are, what they want and what they think. NR: Being that dug in has got to limit you from really thinking freely. So being intensely focused on a goal can equally hold you back—in both Hollywood and science. Sometimes you have to step back and re-assess the big picture in order to find answers and opportunities. Creativity requires focus, but also needs wiggle room for adaptation and exploration. It’s difficult to explore those options when you have blinders on. I wonder if that hinders creation rather than helping it? JA: I think so. For sure. NR: This morning you sent me a very touching NPR interview that Maurice Sendak did a few years ago where he talked about how creation can hit a writer out of nowhere and that it can be one’s salvation. Sendak then said his latest book “saved him.” So maybe there is an evolutionary component in humans that selects for creativity and innovation? And creativity not only ensures survival for our species but also encourages individual growth. Do you ever feel like the creative process saves you from yourself? JA: Ah, the inexplicable of the nature of creation! I think the creative process not only helps me evolve—it keeps me alive. With apologies to Descartes, I create therefore I am—I think! Probably my greatest fear is the fear of my own mediocrity. I think that keeps me moving forward the way a shark needs to swim. William Wyler’s wife described watching her husband make a movie like “Standing on the edge of a pool and watching him swim underwater six feet below you.” It’s a beautiful simple simile that describes what it’s like to be with someone who is immersed in the creative act. I try to be as inclusive as I can to 13 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

those I love and who love me, but the fact is, it’s an intensely excluding business, creating. And thus, intensely lonely. NR: Does your family go on location with you? JA: Yes, as much for selfish reasons as any others, I always try and have my family travel with me.


NR: A lot of directors and actors don’t want to be encumbered with spouses and children. They want the freedom to immerse themselves in their “roles.” Do you think your family affects the way you direct? JA: When I first started directing I think I created my directing persona (because all directors need a persona) that would work for my family. I realized I wanted my kids to be able to come on set and not see some sort of red-faced screaming monster that they didn’t recognize as their dad. NR: So how would you define your persona? JA: I suppose its “Stern-but-Kind Father” meets “Mischievous Older Brother.” It’s one that seems to work well for me and creates the kind of working environment I most want. I’m not a screamer on set. Instead, I affect a sort of jokey relaxation that’s entirely faux. I’m not in the least bit relaxed and everybody knows it! And yet everyone gratefully participates in the deception. It’s a benevolent charade that invites—almost demands—that everyone else on set enter into it, too. The fact that I’m scared shitless and lying awake at three in the morning in the dark maw of horrible self-doubt is nobody’s business but mine. Bertrand Tavernier, the great French director, said (and I’m paraphrasing I’m sure) that when you’re a director you should act like you’re the host of a party. That’s the best advice ever. NR: Do you find it’s gotten easier for you through the years? JA: Nope. On the contrary. I think if anything it’s become slightly harder. Cortisol and norepinephrine and all those other stress hormones seem to have an accumulative effect. It’s not uncommon for great stage actors (Lawrence Olivier and Ian Holm among them) to develop stage fright in later life. Not only am I not less scared than I used to be, I’d be worried if I were. I think the fear keeps me honest. Fear of failure, the fear of mediocrity that I talked about before… The fear, which keeps me awake at three in the morning, is also I think, an essential part of the imaginative process. It’s that process, the obsessive rolling and rolling around of an idea, like a stone in a stream, until it’s as smooth and polished as an alluvial pebble, when it has a shape so perfect that you cannot imagine it having any other—that’s the thing that happens in those dark hours of the night. Great films have that quality—the sense that each image has been imagined with an almost lapidary precision. The current of that stream is fear and the compulsion that goes with it. I think that I have the résumé of an ambitious man not because 14 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

I had burning vocation to direct movies—I did not. I think it’s because at most crossroads in my life, faced with two choices, I generally did the thing that scared me more. NR: Most animals are driven by fear, too. But oftentimes it’s defying getting eaten by predators or taken down by the elements. Humans use fear in a myriad of ways—creativity being one of them.


JA: When I look at the worrisome question as to why so many great directors make bad movies later in life, I think it’s because they forgot to stay scared. To become a creative artist you have to accept fear as your constant companion. The Future of Evolution NR: In Creation there is a profound line uttered by Darwin saying that humans select for beauty but nature selects for survival—a true example of humans combining science with an artistic eye. And nowadays we are seeing people selecting the sex of the their child, genetically modifying our food, and there is a constant race to create antibiotics that can combat constantly evolving bacteria (due to our already high use of anti-biotics). Is selecting for a preferred aesthetic such a good idea? Especially since a ‘preferred aesthetic’ is far from static—our preferences are always changing, trending, and evolving. One day it’s hip to be a blonde haired, blue-eyed waif, the next week it’s all about the hourglass figure with darker features. On Monday the up-turned ‘button’ nose may be what people are pining for but by Thursday they’ve moved on to the Greek variety. It’s rather difficult to keep up and it begs the question, should we keep up or let nature take its course. Take a museum full of various pieces from the masters ranging from Renoir, to Gauguin, to Picasso, to Kandinsky, to Caravaggio—there are so many mediums, styles, and modalities on display. All pieces are striking in their own way. And yet some individuals are drawn to the array of color fancied by Kandinsky while others prefer Caravaggio’s use of light. Is the human form any different? Beauty, whether it be in the form of art or science or a melding of the two, is truly in the eye of the beholder. And those opinions are always changing! So what do you think about this idea of humans attempting, if you will, to play God by manipulating science? JA: We seem to be seeing over and over again that our attempts to play God have been about as mixed as God’s attempts to play God. If one looks at the scale of global catastrophes and the scale of man’s inhumanity to man (and man’s inhumanity to woman in the case of our Republican party) one has to ask, if this is all the product of “intelligent design”—what kind of designer is this God, and of what kind of intelligence is he/she/it possessed?! So in that respect, I can’t say we’ve done any worse than our so-called Creator. On an individual level, we’ve created many things of beauty, but our larger attempts at engineering—whether on a bio-molecular level (you talked about anti-biotics) or a grand civic level (damming rivers for hydroelectricity and destroying vast ecosystems) or a grand social level (China’s discredited 15 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

policy of allowing only one child per couple) or on an ecological level (global warming)—over and over again, our attempts to play God with our destinies end up proving catastrophic. By and large, Darwin’s natural selection has been replaced by human selection. We probably now select for more species of plant and animal than Nature. We breed livestock for meat yields, crops for pest resistance, dogs for appearance, fruits for shelf life…. Since we now control our environment, environment no longer determines selection. We have no other natural predators but disease and other humans.


NR: I can’t help feeling that we’ve outstayed our welcome at this restaurant, and well exceeded the 5,000 words allotted for our chapter… JA: And barely scratched the surface of our themes. But I do think we’ve come a little closer to understanding some of the connective tissue between the creative and scientific mind… NR: Indeed. The movie director has spoken to the anthropologist and has been understood. Though this may be just a conversation begun, I think we’ve come a good step closer to determining that science and art are truly co-constitutive. JA: Co-constitutive and co-mingled. At their very foundation, science and drama will always have these two things in common—they’re about great characters, pursuing elusive dreams, creating great stories and illuminating ever-changing truths.

16 In Hollywood Chemistry; Nelson, D., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2013.

Creation: When Art and Science Collide - ACS Publications

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