Hemingway

(upbeat music) -

Jeff

I'm trying and all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across to actually make it alive, so that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. (upbeat music) We've been thinking Hemingway for literally decades. You have someone who is often considered the greatest American novelist and has a outsized life. Hemingway had a tremendous impact on American literature and on literature around the world. And that's something I didn't fully appreciate, until we started working on the film. He reinvented writing in such a profound way. Have been copying him for nearly a hundred years. And they haven't succeeded in equaling what he did. What was so interesting about Hemingway is how spare it was. How seemingly lean it was, how brief it was, how short it was and yet was able to pack and convey all of the meaning that some of these more intricate and ornate and rococo writers like Faulkner and Joyce, were really putting you through your paces. -

Jeff

All you have to do is write one true sentence, write the truest sentence that you know and then go on from there. When you think of the weight that his fame must've laid on him, even when he was young and the anxiety that would produce of how can I live up to this? How can the next book be better? What is in me to make this real? It's very hard I think, to be a public person like that. And so, I think every public person, creates some kind of avatar if you will, of themselves, some holograph of themselves to present publicly, to save whatever is private in them. The problem is that eventually your avatar will consume you. Going on location for this film was a lot of fun. The most exciting place we got to go was to Hemingway's home in Cuba. It's called the Finca Vigia and it's a beautiful old farm that they restored on top of a hill outside Havana. Hemingway left in a hurry after the Castro Revolution. And it's sort of like, he went away on vacation and just shut the door behind him. And everything is the way it was the day he left. His records are there on the shelf. His toothbrush is there in the bathroom. His shoes are in the closet. All his books are on the shelves. His typewriter is there. I've hardly ever been in a house museum, where somebody lived where actually all their stuff is still there. (murmurs) We were very, very fortunate get permission from the family and his estate to film the original manuscripts which are housed at the JFK Library where the Hemingway collection is. One of the great visual challenges of the film. And one of the great gifts that he left us is that he kept everything. He edited, he typed, he re-edited, he retyped. And so it made for just a visual feast of his words. The end of "A Farewell to Arms," had apparently 40 different endings. And we found a lot of the other pieces of paper with big X's through them or lines, through every line of that paragraph. And then sometimes just a simple word put in its place and the effect of this is sort of being there at the moment of creation when art is being created. (gentle orchestral music) (water splashing) Parts of "A Farewell to Arms," could have been written by a woman. I regard that as a compliment. Hemingway might regard it as an insult, but I don't, because it is the androgyny in a man or a woman that allows them, even if briefly, not utterly to be able to put themselves inside the skin of the opposite thing. The women in his life offer him the experiences that he needs to transform into his art. And at the same time, that process also grinds them up. And that's not a pretty thing to watch. And I think in some ways, him putting himself and therefore the people in his life, particularly the women his life in harm's way may have helped his art immensely. But I can't imagine how toxic it must've been to be around him. -

Jeff

To really love two women at the same time, truly love them is the most destructive and terrible thing that can happen to a man. You do things that are impossible, when you are with one you love her and with the other, you love her and together, you love them both. You break all promises and you do everything you knew that you could never do, nor would wanna do. You lie and hate it and it destroys you and every day is more dangerous. And the strange part is that you are happy. He really did not behave well, so many times over and over again, but in working on the film and delving more deeply into his demons and his struggles, especially with mental illness, addiction, vulnerability, his self doubt. I have a much deeper appreciation for the struggles he had and the effort he put into creating art that would last, which he did. (gentle orchestral music) -

Jeff

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see, and hear, and learn and understand. And write when there is something that you know and not before and not too damned much after. (gentle orchestral music)