E-mail a friendMarc Forster
airdate December 6, 2007
Marc Forster saw his first film at age 12 and went on to become an acclaimed Hollywood director. He earned a Golden Globe nomination for Finding Neverland, and his work on Monster's Ball received two Oscar nods. Forster grew up in Switzerland and, after seeing the film, Apocalypse Now, decided to make movies for a living. He studied film at NYU and made a name for himself with his first film, Loungers. Forster's latest release is The Kite Runner. He's also signed onto the next James Bond film, Bond 22.
Marc Forster
Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Marc Forster back to this program. The acclaimed director's resume includes films like "Monster's Ball," "Finding Neverland," and "Stranger than Fiction." His latest project is the film adaptation of one of the biggest-selling books of the past decade, "The Kite Runner." The movie is based on the acclaimed novel by Khaled Hosseini and opens December 14th in New York and Los Angeles. Here now, a scene from "The Kite Runner."
[Clip]
Tavis: Marc, good to see you again.
Marc Forster: Good to see you, Tavis, thanks for having me.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you on. We were talking before we came on the air, this is filmed - "The Kite Runner," one of the, again, most read books of the past decade, and Khalid has been a guest on this program before - you filmed this in China?
Forster: Yeah, western China, basically, in the Xinjiang province, right on the border of Afghanistan-Pakistan.
Tavis: And you were there for, like, six months.
Forster: Yeah, pre-production and production, yeah.
Tavis: Yeah. What's it like to be on - everybody goes on location, but what's it like to be in a place like China for six months?
Forster: On that remote location it was really hard. Logistically you have to bring everything in and you have several languages going on, so you always have, like, translator, and it gets so lost in translation, the whole experience.
Tavis: Yeah, yeah. The film is shot in a couple different languages, huh?
Forster: Yeah, it's shot in English and in Dari.
Tavis: As a director - I want to go back to being on location, to your point, in a remote area like this. This is kind of inside baseball, but I'm curious about it, at least. How do you keep yourself focused on the work, given that the surroundings are barren, but moreover, how do you keep the talent? How do you keep the actors focused, energized, upbeat, when they're away from their family, they're away from friends, they're in a remote area for months at a time. How does a director get the best performance out of your crew?
Forster: It's pretty much I sort of always see the film in my head; it's playing over and over and over again. And it helped, like, we were in this remote place, there's not much to do. All we could do is focus on the film. And we all stayed in the same hotel. There was this incredible, like, family spirit and bonding, and we all, like, loved the story and we're passionate about telling that story because we felt it's an important story.
And we felt like we had this huge responsibility because the book sold eight million copies worldwide, and there's this pressure on you, you can't ruin the book. So to make sure you get it right. So I had definitely 100 percent focus, and it was the most challenging project I ever did, by far.
Tavis: What makes it - that begs the obvious question follow-up, what made it the most ambitious project ever, challenging?
Forster: I directed a film mostly in a different language, and dealing with a culture I didn't know anything about, and trying to honor a book which is so beloved worldwide. So there are all these challenges. And also, being in such a remote place, as you mentioned before, and it's emotionally challenging because you're dealing with these different cultures, you're not dealing only with the culture you're telling the story about, you're also dealing with the Chinese culture and the (unintelligible) culture in the part of the world where we're shooting at.
Tavis: See, being a talk show host is what I do. I do this on radio every day; I do it on television every day. And yet even though I do it pretty regularly, there are certain conversations that I - I guess intimidated is not an inaccurate word. If not intimidated, certainly there are conversations that challenge me for any number of reasons. I don't know if I'm up to the challenge of trying to pull the best out of the person that I'm interviewing.
I only raise that because I wonder, even though you are a director and an award-winning director, whether or not there are projects that you decide to take on that are yet so ambitious, so challenging, you wonder as a director (unintelligible) signed on whether or not you can pull this thing off.
Forster: Definitely when I read the book of "Kite Runner" I just loved the story. I said, it humanizes, gives a face and a voice to Afghanistan which has been forgotten for the last 30 years. It's such an important story to tell and to share. And it's the first time we're meeting a character from that part of the world in a family story, not villainized or as a Taliban figure or anything else.
Because once you think about Afghanistan, we think you're related to Osama bin Laden or the Taliban. And this story was a true family story, so I thought I have to tell the story. But then once I started getting further and further into it, I though oh my God, this is so complex, so challenging (laughter), what did I get myself into?
But the driving force, always, the really what pulled me through is the constant belief that I felt that the story deals with such important subject matters about healing and forgiveness and putting a voice and a face to this country that I felt like it's really important to share the story, like how Khaled Hosseini shared his book with the rest of the world.
Tavis: We've jumped into a conversation now for the better part of six or seven minutes, and jumped so headfirst into the conversation, for the few people who have not yet read "The Kite Runner," it just occurs to me now that we might want to back up for a second, and I'll let you, in your own way, describe what the book is and at least the part of the book that you're trying to bring to life. The storyline, that is.
Forster: It starts out in the seventies in Afghanistan, in Kabul, with the friendship of two boys. And basically then the Russians invade Afghanistan in the late seventies and the family has to escape, and those two boys are torn apart. And basically, the family moves to America and in one day it jumps through the eighties, and then one day in 2000 Amir, our lead character, has to go back to basically try to be good again.
And it's sort of - because a betrayal happened back when they were kids, and he's trying to basically make things right again. And it's ultimately a redemption story about forgiveness and atonement and healing, but it is a very, I believe, while the book was so successful because it was a very universal story. It doesn't matter where it's set, which place it takes place. It's a family story, and that's what I think is so appealing about it.
Tavis: Which raises this question for me. It's almost a crazy question to ask on one level, given that the book, again, is so universal and millions of readers around the world embrace the text who happen not to be a part of that culture, and yet the question is when you bring a story like that to life, how do you decide who to cast in those roles and what makes you, as a director, believe that you can take a story about that part of the world that we do have certain impressions of from our news media, and make it into a project that we will embrace at the box office?
Forster: Yes, no, it's basically - when I first read the novel, you read about these two kids flying kites in the seventies in Kabul, and I just couldn't see them speaking English to one another. I felt it's really key to honor that culture and honor the book, and have them speak their own language, speak Dari. So I think the first thing is when I spoke to the producers and the studio is it's important that we shoot it in Dari, and once they move to America they'll speak in English and in Dari.
Because also it wouldn't make sense if you have the characters, let's say, speak English in the seventies in Kabul and then when they move to America suddenly they would speak broken English. That wouldn't really make sense, so you have to, like, use the native language and then move to a sort of English-Dari when they move to America in the eighties.
And then basically the success of the book helped us to do that, to keep that authenticity, because the book is sort of the star. And I feel like today, people more than ever became - are so sensitive to authenticity and what's real and what's not. And I think the book is so beloved and so many people came up to me, "I hope you don't ruin the book," or "You ruined the book," that I think it was really important because your first audience is the people who love the book.
They will go and see your movie, and then hopefully recommend it and the movie can build a word of mouth and grow and grow and grow. But if you don't have that audience who loved the book and say, "Oh, the book is so much better, the movie doesn't do the book justice," I think it never can become a blockbuster, in that sense.
Tavis: In your mind, what does it mean - how would you define a director ruining a film like this relative to the book? I can talk to anybody on the street who's read "The Kite Runner" and I can pretty much guess what their answers might be about how Marc Forster or any other director might ruin a project like this, not be true to the book. For you, how do you accomplish doing this and not ruining the story for the core readers?
Forster: I think one would have probably ruined the book if you wouldn't have represented the culture in an honorable and authentic way, and you would have casted the movie with Hollywood stars and would have made the movie all in English. And I think if you would have cast the movie with famous stars, I think it would be hard because I think the appeal of the book is that you're entering a foreign world, a world you don't know.
So if you suddenly cast someone you're familiar with and has a huge track record of huge movies, you suddenly wouldn't be in unfamiliar territory anymore. You wouldn't be invited in a new culture because you already have a connection to that actor.
Tavis: That's what you mean by the book being the star here.
Forster: Yes.
Tavis: Yeah.
Forster: Yeah. And in that sense, you already have a connection with an actor you have seen in many other roles before. So it's nothing - you don't discover anything new. But if you have all unknowns and actors you haven't seen before, you sort of are on a journey, and you are discovering as they discover the book.
Tavis: And so in your pitch meetings, or in the meeting where you're talking to the studio heads and you're explaining this to them, that we're not going to cast Hollywood stars here, in a meeting like that, just take me inside the meeting right quick. How was that met by studio heads, because I can imagine they think dollar signs when they think stars in these leading roles, and you're like no, we can't do that for this project. And they say what on the other side of the table?
Forster: It's on the other side of the table you always have to figure out that you can make the movie for a budget. And you obviously try - they also understood that the book is really the star of the movie, and once I pitched it to them, they said, "Okay, give us a little time to think about it." And a little time went by and I thought oh, maybe I lost out on the job, or it's not going to happen. And then I suddenly got a phone call back that they said, "No, we agree with you. We think it's a great idea and we want to move forward."
Tavis: Well, and because they moved forward you can catch it now first in New York and L.A., and then I'm sure coming to a theater near you. The name of the book and the movie, "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini, directed now by Marc Forster. Marc, good to see you.
Forster: Good to see you, Tavis, thank you.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here again.
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