NEW YORK.- In August of 1949, Life Magazine ran a banner headline that begged the question: "Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" The article pictured Pollock in a now-famous pose, wearing a worn black jacket and blue jeans, his arms crossed defiantly over his chest and one of his kinetic canvasses stretched out behind him. Already well-known in the New York art world, he had become a household name-America’s first "Art Star"-and his bold and radical style of painting continued to change the course of modern art. But the torments that had plagued the artist all of his life-perhaps the ones that drove him to paint in the first place , or that helped script his fiercely original art-continued to haunt him. As he struggled with self-doubt, engaging in a lonely tug-of-war between needing to express himself and wanting to shut the world out, Pollock began a downward spiral that would threaten to destroy the foundations of his marriage, the promise of his career, and-on one deceptively calm and balmy summer night in 1956-his life.
"Pollock" is directed by Golden Globe winner and Academy Award nominated actor Ed Harris, who makes his directorial debut, stars in the title role, and serves as a producer. The film is a look back into the life of an extraordinary man, a man who has fittingly been called "an artist dedicated to concealment, a celebrity who nobody knew."
Harris had been working ideas for "Pollock" over in his mind for nearly a decade. "During the years I spent reading and thinking and feeling about Pollock," says Harris, "and I spent time ’painting’ and trying to understand emotionally what it is to be a painter-I had to trust that something had seeped into my bones that would allow me to portray Pollock honestly. I had no difficulty in choosing an interpretation because it all has been very personal and of all that I read and heard I had to go with what touched my soul and what made sense to me both intellectually and emotionally."
"I’ve never been interested in exploiting Pollock," Harris continues. "In fact, there were times I would say to myself, ’Why are you making a movie about this guy? Let him rest in peace. But then I realized that was only a desire to leave myself in peace. It’s tricky, but I never wanted to pretend to be Pollock. I wanted to be Ed Harris using all of his tools as an actor and as a person to allow Pollock’s experience on this earth to touch me, inspire me, lead me to an honest, true performance."
In portraying Pollock, Harris made a concerted effort to accurately show Pollock’s artistic process, which was utterly revolutionary and confounded many people at the time. To accomplish this, Harris began to explore paint and painting techniques in the early 1990’s. "I’ve been painting and drawing off and on since I became committed to making this film," says Harris. "I had a little studio built so I’d have enough floor space to work on larger canvases."
"It’s preposterous to think I could ever paint as he did," Harris continues, "and yet I had to paint in the film. The most challenging part of all that was gaining enough confidence to paint for myself in the style in which he painted... to be committed first to myself as a painter, to try and keep my focus on creating art and not recreating someone else’s."
Harris believes that the need for approval motivated much of Pollock’s work. "A desperate need for approval usually forces one into doing that which is recognizable," says Harris. "To do something similar to that which has gained approval elsewhere. Pollock’s need for approval bordered on the psychopathic and yet his even deeper need to create art that had no hint of the lie about it, drove him to make art that had never been made before and was certainly fair game for ridicule and abuse. But Pollock’s toughest critic was himself and he knew that only he knew what was pure and true and real as far as his own work was concerned. He fought fiercely to be true to himself. He did not separate himself from his art. That aspect of his being: desperately needing approval and yet only offering truth to be approved-that drew me to him."
Acclaimed actress Marcia Gay Harden ("Meet Joe Black," "Miller’s Crossing") plays Lee Krasner, Pollock’s wife, whose efforts at promoting her husband’s career often stymied her own growth as an artist. "When she was first married, Lee’s main concern was pleasing Jackson," Harden explains. "She was the kind of woman who hung her hat on another man’s peg to find herself, in spite of how brilliant she was in her own right." Harden describes the Pollock-Krasner marriage as "wonderful, fabulous, and hideous." "They fed off each other in ways that weren’t always healthy," she says. "But, if they hadn’t been together, Pollock never would have become world famous and Lee wouldn’t have pushed herself to the artistic limits she did. As soon as they split apart, one of them was bound to destruct."
Like Harris, Harden, too, found herself picking up the paintbrush: "I took painting lessons as a way of exploring where Lee was coming from. Would how she put paint down on a canvas tell me something more about her? I also read everything I could. I went to museums. I met her friends and family. Finally, I studied Pollock."
On working with Harris and the cast and crew of "Pollock," Harden adds, "On everyone’s part, there was a real care about the process. Ed is an amazing director. He was constantly pushing himself and the rest of us to work harder. And he’d really done his homework-so much that it was almost embarrassing to me. He had gathered so much information that the filming process reminded me a little of one of Pollock’s paintings-all these elements layered on top of each other."
Rounding out the "Pollock" cast is a company of prestigious actors who characterize the friends, lovers, family, competitors, and critics that surrounded Jackson Pollock and helped shape his life and career. Jeffrey Tambor is Clement Greenberg, the art critic and personal friend, whose opinions helped propel Pollock’s career and who once told the artist, as he struggled to come to terms with his increasing fame, "I’ll let you know if you go astray." Robert Knott plays Sande Pollock, one of Jackson’s brothers, who often came to his aid when his dark moods threatened to destroy him. Amy Madigan portrays the bold and eccentric art collector Peggy Guggenheim, whose opinions could either catapult or crush careers. (It was Guggenheim who seduced the painter into creating the mural that would become a masterpiece, for her luxury New York apartment.) Bud Cort plays Howard Putzel, Peggy Guggenheim’s "eyes" when she first began showing the new American art. John Heard plays Tony Smith, an architect and a sculptor, and Pollock’s trusted friend. Val Kilmer portrays the renowned artist Willem DeKooning, a man who Pollock respected and competed with throughout his career. Matthew Sussman plays Reuben Kadish, a close friend from Pollock’s early years. Norbert Weisser is Hans Namuth, whose photographs and short film of Pollock helped create the Pollock myth. Sada Thompson plays Stella Pollock, the artist’s strong but distanced mother. And Jennifer Connelly steps in as the sultry Ruth Kligman, whose association with Pollock would change the course of his future.
"Pollock" was filmed primarily in New York City and on the Pollock/Krasner property in East Hampton, Long Island. At each location, director of photography Lisa Rinzler (winner of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival’s Best Cinematography Award for "Three Seasons"), production designer Mark Friedberg ("Runaway Bride," "The Ice Storm"), and costume designer David Robinson ("Scent of a Woman," "I Shot Andy Warhol") worked carefully to set the look and mood of the film.
"The driving force behind the photography was a need to express and help bring to life Pollock’s intensity as a man and as an artist," says Rinzler. "My strongest impression of him was that he was full of immense energy, yet at odds socially in the world and with himself. His personality, which Ed inhabited so brilliantly, was ultimately the guiding force behind the photographic style. Scene by scene, Pollock’s psychological state was the starting point for the lighting and the camera design." Rinzler also utilized many resources and worked closely with Harris in order to visualize and depict the times in which Pollock lived, "Working with Ed was an instrumental process of discovery as he was both the director and the actor. In addition, Mark Friedberg’s production design was a whole world in itself, which provided an immense base to work from."
On setting the stage of Pollock’s world, Friedberg was careful to restore the Pollock/Krasner home, the adjacent barn where Pollock painted, the general store where he bought his supplies-all to look exactly how they did in that era. He was equally adept at transforming and recreating the looks of the Greenwich Village apartments, galleries, and local haunts that serve as a backdrop for much of Pollock’s story. "The home [on Long Island] is still more or less the way he left it," says Friedberg, "but there were some renovations done that made the job of recreating it a little tricky. As for the Greenwich Village apartment, in spite of our research, which was very extensive, we could only find three pictures to go by, so we used the style of the time as a guideline." Friedberg adds that numerous paintings were created to emulate the works of Pollock and the other legendary artists represented in the film. "The most inspirational thing about the film was the art making: the paintings. Ed was committed to a great depiction of art-to the point at which he painted it himself. He really became that character. It was exciting and inspirational to see him transform into Pollock." Set in the hat-and-glove era of the forties and fifties, "Pollock" provided period-era challenges to Robinson, who was nonetheless surprised by how Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner distinguished themselves among their contemporaries. "They were completely ahead of their time," he explains. "We looked at old photographs of gallery openings and there, among all these people dressed in forties-style clothing, were Jackson and Lee looking utterly modern. Jackson was one of the first people to wear T-shirts and jeans. He was always trying to bolster his image of the West. And Lee never wore hats or jewelry or stockings. She had a sexy wardrobe that also mirrored her role as pre-feminist and wife." Robinson’s costumes run the gamut from Pollock’s casual work clothes (layered sweaters, paint-splattered jeans) to the eccentric styles of the art community that surrounded him (Peggy Guggenheim’s "lobster" dress, for example, which was reproduced from an original design by Elsa Shapperelli).
"Pollock" is a Brant-Allen Production in association with Zeke Productions and Fred Berner Films. The team includes Peter M. Brant ("Basquiat") and Joseph Allen (who are, respectively, the chairman and co-chairman of Brant-Allen Industries, Inc.), and who each serve as an executive producer. Fred Berner ("Vanya on 42nd Street," "The Great White Hype"), Ed Harris, and Jon Kilik ("Cradle Will Rock," "Dead Man Walking") are producers. Art dealer James Francis Trezza also serves as a producer. Cecilia Kate Roque ("The Last Days of Disco," "The Spanish Prisoner") is the co-producer. The screenplay, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography "Jackson Pollock: An American Saga," by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, was written by Barbara Turner ("Georgia," "Cujo") and Susan J. Emshwiller ("Dogtown," "Hole in the Day").
