When director Peter Hyams got the script for ”The Presidio,” the story goes, the first thing he did was write in three chase scenes-one for the beginning, one for the middle, one for the end.
In working with Naomi Foner on the script for ”Running on Empty,”
director Sidney Lumet went in the opposite direction. In the potentially very dramatic story of `60s radicals Arthur and Annie Pope, who are still hiding out from the FBI in the `80s and dragging their kids from town to town under assumed names, Lumet cut the one scene that had any blood in it.
”It seems to me the nature of the story is really about letting go with love,” Lumet said in a recent interview. He was referring to the main conflict in the film, between Arthur Pope (Judd Hirsch) and his son, Danny
(River Phoenix), who wants to quit running and join society.
”Naomi said to me something absolutely marvelous when we were working on the set,” Lumet explained. ”She said, `The relationship of parent and child is the only love affair in which you measure the success of it by how well it breaks up.` Now, if that`s the basic emotional thrust in the movie, there`s just no room for guns, for shots being fired.”
The scene Lumet cut had another former radical, Gus (L.M. ”Kit”
Carson), coming to the Pope family for help when he gets wounded in a bank holdup. The idea was that this would prompt Arthur to realize he has to let his son go. But after shooting it, Lumet decided it was too obvious.
”There were a whole bunch of pitfalls to avoid in this,” Lumet said.
”I didn`t want a `60s (musical) score, because it`s not about the `60s. It`s about that final separation. And as soon as you`re dealing with that color of emotion, all the other colors have got to fit, and that meant a gentle movie, an unforced movie.”
Although deliberately lacking the searing drama of Lumet`s most memorable films-”Dog Day Afternoon,” ”Serpico,” ”Prince of the City”-”Running on Empty,” which opens Friday in Chicago, takes Lumet back to what he does best, mixing social and political concerns with rich characters in fully explored human dramas. He`s one of the few directors who can tackle a political theme without turning it into a one-sided tract.
The reason: Lumet puts his primary focus on the people, not the politics. It`s no surprise that Lumet has elaborate stories to tell about the lives of the Popes both before and after the time period covered in the movie. He can tell you how they met back in the `60s and what will happen to them in 10 years. (He seems sad when he says they will probably turn themselves in to the FBI and then separate.)
The choice to underplay the drama of life underground went through all phases of the film, from casting to lighting design.
Lumet`s first casting choice was Christine Lahti (”Housekeeping”), who plays Annie Pope.
”It started with the idea of keeping a lid on this, never playing the melodrama, never milking it. If you`re going to underplay something, you`ve got to have something to underplay. You need to have a tremendous accumulation of emotion underneath.”
Lahti, Lumet said, is a ”powerhouse. She comes in loaded. The feeling is up past her eyeballs.”
In lighting, meanwhile, Lumet gave cinematographer Gerry Fisher a problem to solve.
”I said: `Gerry, there`s never a complete feeling of day in this. I mean, when we`re inside the house, it`s very hard for even the light to get in.` ”
Fisher`s solution was not to use any ”top light,” Lumet said. ”He told the art director to put the ceilings in permanently, we`d only be using light from the sides. You never see a front light on a face. It was always stronger from one side. It helped in that whole feeling of suppression.”
The same went for the location, a green dream of small-town America straight out of Norman Rockwell. That was there in part to prompt Danny
(Phoenix`s character) to rebel and seek his own life. ”The town basically had to be River`s idea of a perfect American town,” Lumet said.
But the perfection is double-edged. When the still-radical Gus first appears at the Pope household, he mocks Arthur for selling out the revolution. Lumet thinks he has a point.
”When Gus comes in and attacks them, he`s not all wrong. What is this Norman Rockwell family? And all under false names, no Social Security numbers, taking paychecks in cash. The irony of it is appealing.”
It`s that kind of double-mindedness that makes Lumet`s films so rich. In
”Dog Day Afternoon,” Al Pacino plays a bank robber who is not only a sweet man, but gay. In ”Prince of the City,” Treat Williams plays a cop who`s doing a noble thing for very mixed motives. This ability to see both sides made Lumet the perfect director for ”Running on Empty.”
First, his sympathies are clearly with the `60s radicals. ”In my view, they accomplished something enormous. What`s extraordinary to me in the whole `60s movement is that a war was stopped without a revolution, without bloodshed, without overthrowing the government.”
If anything, as ”an old Jewish New Yorker brought up during the Depression,” Lumet`s criticisms of the `60s movement comes from further left- he thinks they failed on follow-through.
Yet, despite his politics, Lumet is hardly a cheering section for the Popes. From the first time he saw the script, he was attracted not because of any rah-rah leftism but because of the way it showed the pain Arthur`s idealism caused his children.
”I was, and always am, enormously moved by the consequences of anybody`s impassioned life,” Lumet explained. ”It doesn`t have to be politics-I would love to do a movie about Philipp Emanuel Bach (the composer son of Johann Sebastian Bach). It can be the son of a painter, or the daughter. The children of enormously committed people interest me, because the committed people have their own pain, but they`ve got the pleasure of their commitment, too. The people around them don`t have that pleasure.
”What I`m saying is, somebody pays for somebody else`s commitment. And that`s something I`ve been aware of for some time.”
Lumet pointed out that his career has shown consistent interest in this theme, most recently in 1983`s ”Daniel.” In that film, the children of a couple much like the atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg confront the aftermath of their parents` execution for treason.
Lumet said his interest in the theme isn`t really autobiographical, but he does see echoes in his own life. In his early 60s now, Lumet is a workhorse who has made dozens of films and hundreds of television shows.
”Like anybody who is committed to his work, you look at your kids,”
Lumet said. ”I`ve got a good life with my kids, but I know they paid for it. I`m aware of a lot of things they must have missed.”
It all comes together in the theme of love-and the responsibilities love commands.
For the purposes of the thematic structure of ”Running on Empty,” the best thing about the `60s revolution was that ”the great symbol of it all was love,” Lumet said. Arthur Pope became a revolutionary in the name of love, and in the `80s, he has to face giving up the thing he loved most of all-his family-for love.
It makes for some delicious ironies. Pope, for example, wants to hold his family together so much he becomes a kind of benevolent dictator, the patriarch of his little clan. ”The war is over,” Lumet said. ”There`s no future (for Pope). That kid is his only success.”
But Lumet laughed at the suggestion that ”Running on Empty” could be considered a put-down of `60s radicals.
”I`d be distressed if anybody got that out of the movie,” he said. ”I think the last thing (Arthur) says to his son is very true. He says to him:
`Go out there and do something. Your mother and I tried, and don`t let anybody tell you any different.` And there`s no doubt what he means about doing something.”
And what will happen 10, 20 years from the end of the movie? Is there, in the long run, ever going to be a happy ending for the Popes-and for the American Left?
”I think Danny`s going to be just swell,” Lumet said with another laugh. ”And I think he will be politically active.”
