I was prepared for the Telluride Film Festival with the understanding that it was not really an “interviewing” film festival. So I was very surprised to be offered the ultimate interview of the festival. Jon Stewart premiered is directorial debut Rosewater at Telluride, so I was in the right place at the right time: 10,000 ft up when Jon Stewart had a free hour.
Rosewater is the true story of Maziar Bahari, based on his book Then They Came For Me. The Iranian journalist was documenting the revolution when he was taken prisoner and interrogated by the government. Bahari had been a guest on “The Daily Show,” and his interrogators thought he was collaborating with American spies, because in their limited media access they didn’t even know it was a comedy show.
Rosewater also plays the Toronto International Film Festival and opens in theaters on November 7. So in the mountains of Telluride, CO, I broke the ice with Jon Stewart by showing him a photo from my hotel that was very relevant to his follow-up show, “The Colbert Report.”
Check Out: Telluride 2014 Review: ‘Rosewater’
Jon Stewart: [Laughs] You’ve got to be very careful. I keep thinking Herzog is going to do another documentary about a bear in a gondola. Put a bear in a gondola and see what happens.
When Stephen goes to “The Late Show,” who is going to warn America about the bear menace?
I just think he’s going to have a larger platform to do so. That’s going to be the beauty of it.
But I thought he wasn’t going to do his persona on “The Late Show.”
You know, there are parts of the actual Stephen that are also afraid of bears. Without his persona, there will still be some of the things that translate.
You’ve always been very self-deprecating about your acting in movies.
Mm-hmm. I don’t know if it’s self-deprecation as much as reality-knowing.
With directing a movie, does the nature of directing itself mean you have to be a lot more invested in the process?
I think for me it’s a language I just understand a little bit better. There’s a certain aspect of acting that is beyond my reach. I feel like I’m a much more linear individual. There’s something about acting that is so abstract and emotional at its heart, for the really good ones, it’s the way I feel I think about music or art. With comedy and writing I can generally understand how someone arrived at it.
Whereas when I watch a great actor, I watch a great painter or a musician, I can’t figure out how they got there so it seems more magical or more abstract. So the process of directing is still very similar to what we do. It’s very structured and that’s a process that is not alien to me just because it’s similar to what we do. Maybe the vocabulary is different but the inherent process is very similar.
Is the tone of Rosewater is the same as what you do on “The Daily Show,” where you can remark about the absurdity of situations but that doesn’t make it any less true?
I think probably the reality of a lot of those situations is absurdity. It can be grotesque and ridiculous at the same time. One of the things that appealed to me so much about Maziar was his ability to maintain his sense of that even while it was happening to him, which I thought was kind of remarkable. He was able to not only compartmentalize it but to use that ability to sustain himself and to save himself.
Did you feel a little guilty that his “Daily Show” appearance was used against him?
Oh, God yeah. I’ve felt guilty about a lot less than that, and obviously when he and I finally got a chance to talk, he was able to go, “Look…” So here’s a guy who had been in prison reassuring me that it was just another mark of their ridiculousness. It had nothing to do with it, but within that I think it just shows how banal, when you have a bureaucracy that is devoted to this type of activity, just how truly warped it becomes. His ability to be able to sit back and giggle at that to himself was interesting.
Did you want to let us in a little bit on the “Daily Show” process with Jason Jones playing himself?
I think it was an important part, give a little context to it so that people had a sense, also of his character, that he is somebody who is drawn to that type of silliness. That was just that small part of it.
People might not understand that “The Daily Show” is still a professional production. It’s not a total ambush. In between takes, you can make the guest feel comfortable doing it.
You talk and you goof, that’s exactly right. Jason’s a beast with that. He’s so good.
As a first time director, did you rely heavily on your director of photography, editor and other departments?
Oh God, they were brilliant. Bobby Bukowski was the cinematographer and again, it was about translating intention so that they could collaborate with me. They needed to know what I wanted before they could execute, or bring their flourish or their flair or their expertise to that, so I would say this and they would say, “How about we come at it this way, through this light?” Then we’d look and say, “Okay, but I’m really trying to give it more of an austere sense.” We would work that way.
You’ve also commented about how discourse has become so volatile it’s almost impossible to get anything done by talking about it. Is drama a more proactive way to influence change?
You know, I don’t know. I think if your objective is to influence change, you will more than likely be disappointed, but it is a way to process things. I think in some ways it’s a healthier way to process. Right now, the general discourse is incentivized towards volatility and extremity just because the crazier thing that you will stand behind in terms of what you’ll say is what gets you more jobs in that same arena.
Nobody puts quiet thoughtful people on television. They want some yelling and they want some conflicts because news is on 24 hours a day and they’ve got to find some way to get you to tune into this oddly created and constructed soap opera. I think it’s just a different method of processing the events, but it all goes together in the way that people synthesize information.
Is there any hope for the discourse, that people might catch on that sincerity and measuredness is better?
Sincerity will be the new affectation. The new falseness will be authenticity. It’s cyclical.
It’s been a long cycle though.
You know, but when you think about the way the discourse was during the time of the founders, it was vicious and partisan pamphleteers would utterly destroy their opponents and constantly use the printing press to attack and malign and belittle. I don’t know that there was ever a golden age of kind words but I do think what happens is people get wise to it. They begin to tune it out and I think understand that the discourse that you see is not necessarily the discourse that is going on behind the scenes.
Yeah, smart people always remind us that the founders were even more extreme. I guess that’s reassuring that it’s gotten better.
Oh, they were out there. I think in general, if you can remain optimistic in an overview and not to get too “this too shall pass” but people always say, “The world is the craziest.” I remember growing up late ‘60s/early ‘70s and thinking, “The world is just falling apart. The president resigned in disgrace, Vietnam, assassinations, it’s fucking bananas.”
On “The Daily Show” do you read every book when you have the author as a guest? You seem to have a cover to cover knowledge of the material.
It depends on the day. It depends on what’s going on around it. You try very hard to at least, I can cram pretty well. I can’t say that four hours after the interview I would remember much, but there are times when you’re not able to live up to that and other times when it’s more accessible. For the most part, you do your best and then always at the very least, it’s easy to bullshit for six minutes about anything.
All right, how did I do as an interviewer?
Tremendous, tremendous. Nice job.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
