Asked how often someone told him, "I don't think that's a good idea" while making his first movie, "Rosewater" writer-director Jon Stewart replies with a laugh, "There were probably five a day," noting that most issues were small. He then tells a story about a sequence, during which optimistic voters in Iran lose faith in the fairness of the presidential election, involving military trucks and soldiers in black helmets running in.
"I just remember watching it in dailies and thinking, 'Oh, we're never going to be able to use this,'" the 51-year-old "Daily Show" host and first-time filmmaker says at the Park Hyatt. "It really looked like 'Apocalypse Now.' It went from the hope of the election to, 'It's Armageddon.' It looked ridiculous. Because I even had [cinematographer Bobby Bukowski] shoot it at a very slow speed. And so it just looked like we all of a sudden had turned into 'Transformers.'"
Authenticity isn't a problem in the final product of "Rosewater," opening Friday. Maziar Bahari served as production consultant for Stewart's adaptation of Bahari's book "Then They Came for Me," about the Newsweek journalist's (played in the film by Gael Garcia Bernal) experience covering the 2009 Iranian election. Bahari subsequently was imprisoned and tortured for 118 days by a man who smelled like rosewater.
Shortly before his arrest (absurdly under suspicion of being a spy), Bahari, now 47, appeared in a "Daily Show" segment, but says he never was upset with the show for what transpired. Stewart says they knew Bahari was arrested merely because, "He was swept up in a terrible crackdown by a regime that was afraid of information getting out, and so we understood our incredibly peripheral part of that." Adds Bahari, "For Jon, Jason, other people who were involved at the 'Daily Show' to feel some sort of guilt is very natural, and it is something that the Iranian government wants. Because next time if an American crew goes to Iran and wants to interview someone, they don't want to put anyone in trouble and therefore they don't talk to anyone except for the Iranian officials."
Jon, you've talked about bombing in your stand-up days and being happy with that because you put yourself out there-kind of a "go big or go home" philosophy. It would've been even bigger to put yourself in the starring role as Maziar. How would that have turned out?
Jon Stewart: That would have turned out as many of my other acting roles have turned out, which is-I believe the word is "badly." [Laughs.]
Maziar Bahari: That would only work if Adam Sandler was Rosewater.
JS: Hey! Now wait a minute. Now we might be onto something.
MB: That is Adam Sandler's next project.
JS: Now we've got ourselves box office boffo.
MB: Which is inevitably horrible.
JS: No, I think the marketplace has spoken in terms of my abilities as an actor. Spoken I think in capital letters that that's maybe something they would appreciate not happening.
A lot of your work is very beloved.
JS: Well, whenever you're the weed guy in "Half Baked," that's going to leave a mark. That's going to be a legacy.
If someone saw "Adam Sandler. Jon Stewart. The story of an Iranian journalist in prison," they would respond.
JS: I think people would go to that. I think it would be a mixture of "Yentl" and "Zohan."
MB: Especially if the film is called "Waterboy," they think it's about waterboarding.
JS: Yes! I think it's not bad. I think we've got ourselves another pitch.
"The Rosewaterboy."
MB: I think you should go back home and write the script.
JS: I like this. I like this.
A lot has changed with Evin Prison over time. By the time you got there, Maziar, they were trying to impact people with less violence. But there was a history of pulled fingernails and broken bones. How much were you wondering about that when you arrived?
JS: Maziar's father had experienced terrible torture; his sister had experienced terrible torture. I think he did have certain standing because he was considered a sort of VIP prisoner because of his international standing because he was representing [Newsweek]. There are still terrible atrocities committed in these prisons. People are killed there all the time. Some of what I think helped protect him was that sense that somebody would say something if something happened to him.
MB: And also I think people have to understand that the Iranian regime is not a sadistic regime like a group like ISIS. Torture, interrogation, brutality, psychological brutality is part of the regime's method of survival. So when they torture someone or they put them through interrogation, it's not because they're enjoying it. They want to teach a lesson to that person but also to the rest of the population. And many of the people who are in charge of the Iranian government now, they were tortured in the past. And they know that psychological torture is much more effective than physical torture. And that is true all around the world. If you are imprisoned in many countries these days, if they know what they are doing, they don't put you through physical torture because that's counterproductive because that really does not break the prisoner.
It's interesting you say that about leaders having gone through torture. It's even like fraternity pledgeship-"It happened to me, so I'm going to keep passing it on down."
JS: Well, it's a part of what they consider their survival mechanism, and it's been ingrained now in the bureaucracy of the country. It's a bureaucratic process more than it is-like Maziar said, it's not a sadistic process.
It seems you never believed the threats given to you when you were released. Are there any moments you look over your shoulder or feel like that's still weighing on you? And after spending all that time blindfolded, do you sleep with a sleep mask?
MB: No, I don't.
JS: He sleeps with a blanket over his head. That's how he sleeps on the plane. I thought I was sleeping next to a ghost.
MB: Yeah, because I have migraines, and yesterday on the plane I had a migraine so to really block the lights I had to put-
JS: A blanket over his head.
MB: And I don't like blindfolds for obvious reasons. But going back to your question, the thing is as I said this kind of government they always want to make you feel insecure, and if I let them to run my life according to their threats, then they are the winners. They have won, and I've been defeated. So the only way that I can somehow survive and be the winner is to live normally. Not to be afraid. Take my daughter to school, go for a walk, travel and all that. But at the same time when the Iranian government makes some threats you have to think about it. This is a government that has had so many extraterritorial assassinations, but I think they have more trouble these days besides thinking about this film and myself.
Jon, you said Maziar went through this, so no reason to make Gael uncomfortable doing that too.
JS: In the process of doing it.
Yeah. There have been many films that depict torture in real-life experiences. Does it say something about you as a filmmaker in terms of what violence you do and don't put on the screen? I'm not comparing these situations necessarily, but if you look at movies like "Zero Dark Thirty" or "12 Years a Slave," those movies are often hard to watch.
JS: I think you're talking about two separate things. One is the difficulty in watching it; one is the process of making it. You can make things that are really difficult to watch but are not torturous to make. They can be difficult to make but with the understanding that you yourself are not a prisoner. The actor is not a prisoner, and you don't need to manipulate their emotion or do that. But I think those are two separate issues in terms of deciding how much visceral violence to depict and to leave the violence in most instances as threat.
And I think one of the things that's disorienting about the experience is the threat of violence always being in the air sometimes creates a larger tension. Maziar talked about they've learned that physical torture is not necessarily the way because the theory behind that is people reach a threshold of physical ability to endure, and if they get through that it gives them a sense of euphoria and nirvana and they've accomplished it. If you notice in the film, the first moment where he lays his hands on Maziar is to just remind him that he brought him cucumbers. But he's blindfolded. And that threat of not knowing what the touch will be, where it's coming from, to me created a tension that we wanted to exploit in the sense of the shark in "Jaws." You know it's ever-present. You know that it could attack at any moment. By the way, in real life they beat him much more.
MB: And also I think people are just tired of torture porn. There are artful examples of torture porn, and I think showing psychological torture is much more tolerable for audiences and they can communicate more. It's scarier in a sense as well.
JS: And in some ways more authentic to the experience. We've grown accustomed to this idea that they're going to sit there and slowly peel your ear. It's not really what occurred there.
I'm never going to look at my sleep mask the same way.
JS: You really wear a sleep mask?
I do.
JS: Well, now we've learned something about you. Now, can I ask you a question? Does it have a cooling gel in it?
I wish.
JS: You gotta get yourself-my wife has one 'cause she gets headaches and you put it in the freezer-
MB: They have that?
JS: Oh, they got [them].
MB: I have this, it's like a hat. A migraine hat.
What have you learned about the interviewing process by being on the other side of the table?
JS: About having people come and interview you?
MB: How annoying it can be.
JS: [Laughs.] Yeah, I think I have an awareness now that it's probably better to know what you're talking about. Sometimes when I go into interviews and I'm clearly talking out of my ass, I realize now that that might annoy the people that I'm talking to.
This is a lesson that's just settling in now?
JS: It's just settling in now: "Oh, I should probably prepare for these. OK, now I've learned my lesson." It's only taken me 20 years.
Plus:
Stewart on whether his own limited acting ability makes directing actors more challenging:
"No. You still know what you want out of a scene, even though I myself would not be able to execute it. In other words I could not give me as an actor what I need as a director if that makes sense. So, yeah, I was very aware of that. And thankful that the people that we did get did have that ability. 'Cause if I was directing a cast of mes, we would definitely end up with something not released."
Bahari on that:
"One of the things that I heard from actors was that Jon always trusted them, and they said that's the quality of a great director is that they trust their actors. Different actors they have different methods. Kim [Bodnia, who plays Rosewater]'s method of acting was very different from Gael's. [Gael] would act in a scene, and then he would become himself and call his wife and children. Kim would stay in the character throughout the day."
If, while filming protests in Iran, Bahari thought about someone having a problem with being documented:
"You see there are moments in a person's life, in a journalist's life, that you don't think about the consequences that much. That you think that, 'This is something that I have to do. That this is a big moment and I cannot really think about consequences.' While I knew that it would anger some people, I didn't think that it would make them that angry because I thought that they would look at it in the context of my work. And they did actually. The reason they arrested me and put me through that whole ordeal was not really because of the demonstration footage. It was because of the whole scenario that they had for me."
Stewart on if it was inevitable that he'd do a project like this:
"I mean, I've always liked to work. I like to think that there's always avenues and things out there. I think it's probably a more linear progression than, let's say, a cookbook or an album of children's songs. Or perhaps a book of tasteful nudes. But it's like when we did the books for the show. We like to work. We like to explore different outlets."
Stewart when I tell them my goal is to ask fresh questions:
"I tell you what: Ask us about 'Foxcatcher.' We'll talk about other movies."
Watch Matt review the week's big new movies Fridays at 11:30 a.m. on NBC.
mpais@tribune.com
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