At the beginning of the millennium, it appeared as the new promise of American cinema. Two movies: In the Bedroomwith Sissy Spacek (2001, five Oscar nominations), and LittleChildren, with Kate Winslet (2006, three Oscar nominations). And then, nothing. Todd Field had disappeared. Registered from then on in the mysterious pantheon of erratic directors, such as Terrence Malick and others, it will have taken seventeen years to reappear with Tar.
“I miss my family, it’s a snowy day today, and my son, as of now, is home from school…” Behind his computer, Todd Field sips his morning coffee. He’s in Los Angeles, we’re in Paris, and his real life is in Rockland, Maine. Mystery of erasure: depression, agoraphobia, bankruptcy? He laughs, none of that. Seventeen years ago, while on tour for the release of LittleChildrenhis wife announces to him that she is pregnant. “We already had three children. And we spent our youth running around trying to keep the lights on. I thought it would be a good idea to stay home to watch this one grow and have a bit more of an active part in it. »
The voice – young, joyful, detached – does not fit with the image that we find of him on the Internet. A 58-year-old man with a half-moon face, circumflex mustache, thick black hair under a felt hat or baseball cap. Todd Field apologizes: his computer is blind, the camera doesn’t work anymore, it will be a “video” without seeing… You don’t hang up on a ghost, especially if he’s friendly.
” Tar is a film that comes from afar, I’ve been thinking about this character for more than ten years. But, to be able to write a screenplay, you need four or five months without having to think about anything else or work to earn money. I have quite a large family and not such a large bank account”, explains the director, who for seventeen years has lived by making commercials or working for others on scripts. However, at the start of confinement, Focus studios (a subsidiary of Universal) offered him to write a film without imposing a subject on him. “They offered me a blank page. It’s very rare. »
A sniper
Todd Field was only 19 when he arrived in New York to become an actor. In Portland, Oregon, where he grew up, he who benefited from a scholarship to study music branches off to the theater option to follow a girlfriend, then, pushed by a teacher, decides to try his luck on the East Coast. We could see it in Radio Days (1987), by Woody Allen, as a pianist in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), by Stanley Kubrick… But it was always, he explains, for “get closer to a camera”. The same reason which pushed him, student, to play in one of these educational films which one shows in the colleges. The title : Self Esteem: It’s Up to You! (“self-esteem is your business”). Todd Field bursts out laughing: “I don’t know if it was prophetic, or pathetic! »
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