Sara Michelle Fetters: I don’t know what I expected when I sat down to watch Peter Hujar’s Day, but I do know I did not anticipate being overwhelmed by tears by the end of it. What was your reaction when you first encountered Linda Rosenkranz’s book — it’s barely 37 pages — and when did you know you wanted to make it into a feature film? What was that process like?

Ira Sachs: I found the last page of the book incredibly moving, and specifically the image that Peter shares of himself in the middle of the night, standing in the corner of his apartment at Second Avenue and 12th Street in the East Village in 1974, listening to the sex workers talking about their trade. To me, that was a purely cinematic image and also a very emotional one. It had to do with the indelible and the ephemeral, and … the beauty of everyday life.

That he was able to do that was the power of Peter as a storyteller. It’s not what he’s known for — unless you consider his portraits a form of storytelling — but he was actually an exceptional storyteller. The richness of his language and the detail of his narration is not normal. It appears normal, because it appears so relaxed and casual, but it is not for most of us.
I immediately decided after I put the book down that I wanted to make the movie with Ben Whishaw, who I was currently working with on Passages. What happened was, about a year later, when were about six weeks out from shooting, I realized I had no idea how to make the film. [laughs] The boundaries of this conversation seemed so limiting.

What freed me up was the realization that I wasn’t going to shoot the film in real time and that I was going to create my own sense of movement by building like 23 scenes in the course of these two having a simple conversation. Suddenly it became about the passing of a day, it becomes about the different ways that friendship realizes itself in different intimate spaces, whether it be a couch or a terrace or a bed, and whether it be day or night. There [were] all these different ways I could invoke the intimacy of the film and the intimacy of their relationship.

SMF: I’m glad you use that word, because that’s one of the words highlighted in my notes: intimacy. The intimacy that Rebecca and Ben, or Linda and Peter, share throughout this day is so natural. Was it difficult for them to be able to slip into that? It felt so pure and effortless on their part. 

IS: The talent is pure, but I do think there was initially a lot of stress between the three of us. We didn’t know what the film was going to be, but they still gave it everything. They didn’t know each other before the movie. They’re also British people playing American characters. So nothing is real, but everything is authentic. It’s all genuine.

Have you seen the ending of Suddenly, Last Summer? I think the ending, where Elizabeth Taylor narrates what happened suddenly last summer, is kind of the mood of [our] film, specifically that ending. The last bit of that film, it is both real and unreal at the same time. Nothing is more real than what Elizabeth Taylor describes, and yet, it is through the language of Tennessee Williams and director Joseph L. Mankiewicz that it all becomes realer than real.

That’s something that is new to me: to achieve something that is beyond the real yet maybe still touch on things that are essentially human.

SMF: When you have talents like Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall working on a film like this, something that is based on real people, what sort of freedom do you give them to build their own characters? To do their own research? Or do you give them instruction on what they need to go look at before filming or, in the case of Rebecca, do you tell her to go talk to Rosenkranz to get a better idea of what the actual interview may have been like?

IS: I was kind of their mentor, maybe, with the period, the story, Linda, and Peter. That being said, Ben Whishaw lives with a portrait of Peter Hujar hanging in his house, so he was very familiar with [him]. [laughs]

But, there are like fifty-some people who are described in the transcripts and in the film. I did some somewhat cursory research, not the deepest research, but I wanted to give them enough to know who they were talking about. It was like a Wikipedia-stye breakdown of the cast of characters who were being mentioned. But Ben’s ability to bring all of them alive as Peter and to make those characters real is all in how he utilized and ingested that material. It’s all him.

That was what I wasn’t certain of. I didn’t know if he could make every word and every image and every person so vivid in his delivery. That was the surprise for me: how alive he made this story.

With Rebecca, Linda is still with us and very much a part of this project, and [Rebecca] spent a lot of time talking to her. But what Rebecca understood and made visible was the deep love that Linda has for Peter even today, and she did that even without words. Ben does a lot with words, and Rebecca does so much without them.

SMF: Maybe this is a strange comparison, but I’m watching this movie, and the dynamic between Linda and Peter reminded me so much of The Man Who Came to Dinner, where you have Bette Davis active-listening throughout the entire movie and having to react to everything coming out of Monte Woolley’s mouth. He, in turn, is casually spouting off name after name after name, but still makes them come alive eighty-some years after the film’s release. Watching Ben in this movie, I felt something similar. When he’s talking about Ben Ginsberg or Lauren Hutton, his words make them become flesh and blood.

IS: Yes, but not only when he’s talking about the well-known names, but also when he’s talking about the names none of us have ever heard of, including me. It’s like a Shakespearean performance. It’s really quite extraordinary how alive it is and how full, through words, to convey a world.

Ben is not an actor who seeks quality in the mainstream. A lot of things he does, including short films, experimental theater, documentary work — much of it is stuff you haven’t seen, because he lives in the whirlwind, which I think is to his advantage. He’s not trying to become something. He is something.
In that way, Ben is like some of my favorite actors I’ve ever known, particularly Isabelle Huppert and John Lithgow. They are people who seek creative experience most of all. They live a creative life. I think that’s what Peter did. I think that’s what I’m trying to do. And I think it’s what Ben already does.

SMF: As brilliant as he is, I do not think any of this works as well as it does without Rebecca. I don’t think I’ve seen a better “active-listening” performance in I don’t know how long.

IS: Silence is a beautiful state for the camera to observe. I was as interested in what Rebecca had to say in her expressions as what Ben had to say in his words. In a way, it’s like a four-hander. Not including Peter, there’s Ben and Rebecca, but then there’s also Linda and me. We’re all forms of listener-slash-observer-slash-storyteller.

Rebecca is really like me in the film. She has utter curiosity. She has a lot of empathy. She has some desire to move the story along, which is part of her role, but also, she has love. I think, as a director, I had love for both Peter and Ben, but I also had love for Linda and Rebecca, and that’s an essential element to the movie and why I think you were so moved.

SMF: Another essential element is the contributions of Alex Ashe, your cinematographer, and Stephen Phelps, your production designer. It felt like I was a little kid who had just walked into my favorite aunt’s apartment. How difficult was it to achieve that level of accuracy but still keep the visual look rapturously cinematic?

IS: It was all lovingly created. It was a world that was realized with a bit of guidance and influence of photographs that Linda had given us. But accuracy isn’t important to me. Accuracy implies the possibility that this world doesn’t exist. I’m not recreating the past, but I am relishing the text and the story of the past in a very contemporary way.

SMF: How important is it right now for us to be telling Queer stories that showcase these characters as people being people, that their Queer identity isn’t the be-all and end-all of who they are? This isn’t a film about Peter being Gay; it is a story about Peter being an artist, a person, a friend, about him living his life with all its inherent ups, downs, and in-betweens.

IS: You’re asking me how important is it for the film to be good. The opposite of what you’re describing is to be bad, as an artist, and being good is difficult enough, I shouldn’t be actively working to make it bad. I think that what is most compelling to me about the film now as an audience member is how Peter pays witness to how hard it is to be good. He’s so uncertain about the quality of his work, specifically his photograph of Allen Ginsberg, and it is his uncertainty that I find very, very familiar, and very, very touching.

SMF: After you make a film, what is the point where you become comfortable releasing it into the world? What is that experience like?

IS: I think the hardest moment is when you take it to the market and, in the case of independent films, that market is the festival circuit. Capitalism is violent, and it’s not very empathetic to humans. So that’s very hard when you interact with the economy of your field. But it is also what makes you strong and aggressive. It’s a necessary fortitude for me as an artist to engage with the culture and the economy of my field.

As it is for Peter! We can’t resist talking about money when we make art. It’s unavoidable.

SMF: What do you hope audiences take away from your film?

IS: First off, I want them to experience pleasure, because that is what movies are for me. I hope they feel some familiarity with the type of intimacy that the film depicts. I hope that they enjoy these performances and the density and beauty of friendship that they showcase. And, I guess… I guess that I hope that this leads them to explore the voice of the artist Peter Hujar in ways they might otherwise not have. 

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