Digital Chumps: Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what led you to write/direct these epic Civil War movies?
Ron Maxwell: My dad, a World War Two vet, was an avid reader of literature and history. In my youth I was taken to historical sites in New Jersey and New York State, from colonial to French and Indian War and American Revolutionary periods. As soon as I could read I too was reading history, biography and literature. By the time I was in Jr High School I was writing historical dramas and producing them with my own theater company. So, in a real sense, I’ve been doing this work all my life, long before it was conceived as a career or a way to earn a living. My interest in the literary life and the imagined world of fiction, whether expressed on stage, screen or on the printed page has never waned. I can hardly keep up with the number of books I want to read, mostly in English, occasionally in my second language, French.
My interests are not confined to American History. In fact, I’ve developed screenplays and motion-picture projects set in the French Revolution, in early 15th Century France, in 19th Century Mozambique, in 16th Century Algiers and in the Soviet Union in 1945, a Western, a World War Two mystery set in Paris, to name just a few. But yes, I’ve always been captivated by the American Civil War. So that when I read Michael Shaara’s stunning novel The Killer Angels, the creative ground had already been well ploughed. The preparation exceeded the study of the War itself. It included an education and an understanding of the epic form in literature, music and drama. I chose to approach both Gettysburg and Gods&Generals as epics, taking their modest place in a long line with a continuous pedigree dating from Greek drama and through the more than two millenia to the present. This informed every decision, from the length of the movies, to their echoes of past events, to the elegiac mood, the pacing, characterization and dialogue. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Joshua Chamberlain, the professor of rhetoric from Bowdoin College, freely quotes from Lucanus’ Civili Bellum as he watches Burnside’s army cross the Rappahannock River in the winter of 1862. As the French say, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme choses.”
Digital Chumps: Gettysburg was your first film of the two, shot in 1993. Arguably it was the most well-known battle from the Civil War and one that had to be done right, if not then you face the wrath of thousands of historians. How did you approach the creation process? What type of research did you have to go through and how long did it take you before you felt like you had done the battle justice and you felt ready to start production?
Ron Maxwell: I first read The Killer Angels in 1978. The movie premiered in 1993, fifteen years later.
I worked on the screenplay until 1981 to get a first draft. Thereafter it went through multiple re-writes. From the get-go I sought out historians who read the various drafts and offered comment. These historians included Gabor Boritt, at the time the chairman of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. In addition to the half-dozen historians who vetted the script, we employed historical consultants who worked with us on the set as we filmed the movie, checking to be sure we had everything right, from big questions having to do with specific battle tactics to the smallest details having to do with military protocols or regimental insignias. This isn’t to claim we achieved perfection. That’s impossible. But we didn’t stint in our efforts to get it right and were always open to correction, improvement or change. We were making a movie, yes, but it was a movie about our collective national story – about our ancestors – so we had a big responsibility to get it right. Filmmaking is inherently about details. When it works well its like a finely crafted Swiss time-piece with the soul of a Renaissance painting. To be careless with the details, whether they are visual elements, soundscapes or emotional notes as expressed by the actors, is to ignore the incredible potential of the cinematic experience.
Digital Chumps: Were there any obstacles that got in your way during production of Gettysburg?
Ron Maxwell: It was a big production with a lot of moving parts, an exceptionally long script and a relatively tight budget ($15,000,000). We had to prepare the production and shooting schedule with meticulous care and had no room for error. We were lucky in that we had five days of rain cover and that summer (1992) it rained five days. We had to move from set-up to set-up at an intense pace. Because we had so many explosives, real cannons, muskets and bayonets, we nevertheless had to move at a controlled and deliberate pace – never rushing. To rush a set-up or a shot would have put people and horses at risk – which we never did. We had a great crew and cast. Everyone was prepared and on top of their game. We finished filming on time at the scheduled 62 days.
Digital Chumps: Gods and Generals was the prequel to Gettysburg. Many critics felt the movie brought too kind of a light on what the South was fighting for at the time; less emphasis on slavery and more on honorable values of soldiers fighting for their beliefs (and their states). For me, it felt like watching Wolfgang Petersen’s Das Boot, where you understood the sailors were fighting for Germany, but the audience got to know the men at a human level rather than a generic ‘this is a German soldier’ level.
Is this the type of thought process you were shooting for with your audience when it came to southern side of the story in the Gods and Generals? How difficult was it to properly explain the Southern view point?
Ron Maxwell: I’ve written an essay which addresses these questions in detail. It’s entitled “For the Love of Tender Kinship,” and can be found at my website, www.ronmaxwell.com It’s also published as part of the 48 page booklet which accompanies the new Extended Directors Cut of Gods and Generals. But to briefly answer your question, yes, it is a challenge. Unless like Rip Van Winkle you’ve been asleep for the past twenty years, you know that political correctness has calcified into a sclerotic, suffocating noxious cloud permeating every corner of our lives. No filmmaker can afford to allow himself or herself to be crippled or shackled by its invisible censorship. Nor could I. There is no point in telling a story about people who lived a hundred and fifty years ago, only to place them in our world. Its the exact opposite of what a filmmaker should be doing, which is to take the contemporary viewer back in time into their world.
Of course, as soon as you enter their world, with as much fidelity and honesty as possible, you confront many things that surprise, discomfort and even shock the viewer. No generation of humans has a monopoly on enlightened human behavior or can claim moral superiority over generations dead and buried or generations yet unborn. The whole notion is just plain silly, as well as arrogant.
I’m accustomed to reading film criticism. Some of it is very well informed and very well written. David Denby, David Edelstein, Richard Schickel, Pat Stoner and Leonard Maltin come to mind. And they’re not alone. But most of it is really, really dumb. I never cease to be amazed by the idiocy which poses as film criticism. The sanctimonious nonsense written about Gods and Generals from critics who took it as an opportunity to condemn Confederate soldiers like Lee and Jackson just so they could burnish their own politically correct credentials was nauseating when it wasn’t comical.
Film critics are a vanishing breed. There were never that many good ones to start with, but with the expansion of the internet their influence recedes with every passing day. I’ll always read the thoughtful reviewers whether they like my movies or not. A mature person doesn’t rate critics by how complimentary they are to your own films. But I’m not at all sad to see the blow-hards and the smart-alecks lose their prestigious publishing platforms.
Digital Chumps: Were there any obstacles that hindered the production process of Gods and Generals?
Ron Maxwell: We had financial assets available on G&G that permitted a bigger level of production than on Gettysburg. We needed the $65,000,000 budget, because unlike Gettysburg which essentially took place in open terrain and forested ridges over three days in the summer of 1863, G&G encompassed towns, multiple battlefields, all seasons and spanned three years. We also had to divide our production schedule between two base camps, one in western Maryland near Antietam battlefield, the other in the Shenandoah Valley near Lexington. We received extraordinary cooperation from the state and local governments in Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.
Digital Chumps: Finally, what’s next for Ron Maxwell?
Ron Maxwell: Working on two films, both scripted and nearing production. Belle Starr is a Western adapted from Speer Morgan’s extraordinary novel set in the Cherokee Strip of Oklahoma in the 1880s, with a tour de force role for an actress in her forties. Copperhead is a Civil War story set in New York, which explores the anti-war movement in the North. It goes to the heart of the matter, a family torn apart by the war.
