Arie Posin On Filmmaking, Fleeing and Façades

“Ed’s got the great role in this,” says Robin Williams to Arie Posin as they discuss working together on his next movie.

The acting veteran was referring to Ed Harris, who had already been cast alongside Annette Bening as the love-twisted leads. Thankfully we know Williams said yes, for the “The Face of Love” was released in 2014 on Netflix starring all three. Unfortunately, it was one of the last movies he would make. According to Posin, Williams loved what the film was trying to say and wanted to help make that happen. Ear candy for any director, surely.

 

It’s a typically sunny day in L.A. but from the director’s charming, earthy kitchen abutting an idyllic garden, things feel sunnier somehow. Off the back end of a frantically busy day, I dig out my questions, all thumbs. In contrast, Posin is composed and in possession of the correct number of thumbs. Through the preliminary chitchat, he snacks on a perfect looking banana, not before offering me one, for as I discover, he’s polite and as earthy and warm as his home.

As we sffitzz the tops off our sparkling waters, Posin shares his not so sparkling origins. The Cold War years in the Soviet Union gifted his father with 6 years in a labor camp, while father-in-law served a decade in Siberia. He was then exiled for 8 years outside of Moscow. Systematically homogenizing its citizens, the regime regarded members of the intelligentsia community like the Posins as particularly dangerous. As neighbors reported suspicions and children turned in their own parents, the Posins hosted secret, whispered meetings with other creatives. Even recurring visits from ‘plumbers’ to plant listening devices in their kitchen sink did little to deter them. Mother Posin became quite handy with a plunger it seems.

 

“I don’t know anybody who feels as strongly about anything as my parents did when they were trying to leave the Soviet Union, because they were prepared to die.”

“The big thing they passed on was that everything you do should be meaningful in a way beyond your immediate gratification,” says Posin. “They’d risk all of this so their children can grow up in freedom which is something you want to honor in whatever you do and pass on.”

The family did escape, fleeing for Israel. Little Arie Posin was born a month later and following in his father’s footsteps, became a writer and filmmaker. Unable to cross the cultural and language barrier, Posin senior never fulfilled his dream of shooting a movie in the U.S. Feeling sentimentally cheesy, I ask if this is partly for dad…

“I’ve been infected by the bug of loving movies and storytelling, and feeling there’s a purpose and meaningfulness in doing that, but that’s all I know.”

As immigrants struggling to forge a path to Hollywood, his parents would often hint at a gleaming legal or medical career but “all we ever did at home was talk about movies.” On Sundays, the family would ritually visit their local theater, digesting four movies in one sitting.

Despite a DNA that surely contains trace amounts of inherited trauma, and with 11 schools before high school, Posin seems remarkably peaceful. “On the one hand that can be really difficult but on the other, you learn to see reality quickly. When you have to make friends every year, you start to recognize the disconnect between what’s really underneath and what’s on the surface.”

 

Reflecting this disconnect is his 2005 film, “The Chumscrubber”. The comedy-drama stars Jamie Bell, Glenn Close and Ralph Fiennes as repressed members of a Wisteria Lane-type community. Each character clings to their own self-constructed façade which gives rise to some fairly bizarre behavior as the story unfolds. Things inevitably crumble sideways when the neighborhood is exposed to drug peddling, suicide, kidnapping, clashing priorities, and death.

 

Worked with any assholes?

As if sensing my move to the dark side, a remarkably, fluffy pooch bounds in to bid me an enthusiastic hello. Posin’s eyes twinkle. “Honestly, I’ve been really fortunate the principal actors I’ve worked with are so generous with their spirit and brave to reveal themselves. I think this is what makes them as good as they are,” he says, directing the fluffball back outside. “On ‘Face of Love’, there’s not a single time I ever outlasted Annette, Ed or Robin. It was always, ‘Do you want another one?’, ‘Shall we try it like this?’ or ‘Let’s do it again,’ even in the most intense, emotional scenes.”

“I don’t know how it starts but I sure as hell know how it ends!”

The conversation steers to music and Posin laughs as he recalls how his classical music-loving parents couldn’t afford the ticket price, so they would slip into the post-intermission stream to catch the second half. “For years, my joke was I’ve seen the second half to every great opera and symphony.”

Despite the portioned music ed of his youth, the filmmaker’s appreciation for the art runs deep. He hates that soundtrack can often be relegated to the back quarter of the process as it’s so important to the end result. In fact, music ideas enter as early as the writing stage, long before intermission.

There were 7 years of piano lessons and self-taught guitar “to try to meet girls” (said with a smile). On communicating ideas to composers, Posin says “there are the things you can discuss which are tangible and the things you can’t which is the magic.”

The conversation with composer Marcelo Zarvos took on a more general form as to how the score could “play with the idea of memory”. Posin fought hard to keep “The Face of Love” shoot in L.A. which “is often associated with façade but for us, there’s a real image.” He felt it important to communicate “nostalgia and old romance” while reflecting the beauty of L.A. with melody rather than atonalism or rhythm. A wind instrument would convey a sense of breath, playing solo to reflect Bening’s loneliness after losing her husband.

 

Working with James Horner on “The Chumscrubber” however, was a whole other level of stress.

On a shoestring budget, and with only four days in the studio to compose and record meant working fast on little sleep. Horner “ended up playing all the instruments on a keyboard”. Posin is laughing once again as he recalls the “pressure-cooker” situation. “You remember the scene with the moving trucks in the cul-de-sac? I had put in a Chopin Waltz because it was to me like an absurd dance. James said, ‘You know, I think we just need a Chopiniana. Let’s roll and record.’ and he made it up on the spot, one take, the perfect length. Genius.”

 

 

So what don’t you want from a composer?

“Sometimes the cues are too suggestive of what you’re looking for in the movie. You send the composer off into the unknown, and they bring something back that is familiar but different”. Posin’s energy picks up as he talks about John Williams’ brilliant, “primal” score for “Jaws” with its heartbeat and rising tension. And then for “‘Schindler’s List’, here is a guy who can absorb 2000 years of Jewish melody and come up with something that sounds like it could be sung in synagogue on a Friday night but is a completely original melody.”

It’s been over an hour but neither of us has chased down the minutes. Life’s just too astounding to process it all. But that’s what happens when you talk to Arie Posin. Honesty, openness, very little façade.

As I close my laptop, he points to my left brain-right brain cover. Coincidentally, he’s reading up on the human brain, for fun, and he’s fascinated. I’m sure if he could crank open his head to take a closer look, he would. And what a splendid idea that would be, for Arie Posin has an excellent one!