Carlo's Wake was adapted by Valerio and his wife, actress Rosie Taravella, from her one-act play Pa's Funeral. The story concerns the Torellos, a dysfunctional Italian-American family distraught over the death of their patriarch, Carlo (Martin Landau). Largely taking place in a funeral home before the burial service, the film details the Torellos' absurd family politics while also examining the selective memories of each of Carlo's children: daughters Rosalie (Taravella) and Anna (Juliet Landau), and sons Bennetto (Christopher Meloni) and Antonio (Ken Marino).
Klein reports, "When we first met, Mike and I discussed a number of films and how the camerawork supported the emotions of their stories. In general, he really likes camera movement, and he wants those moves to say something. He sought to emphasize emotions with movement, or the lack thereof."
To illustrate the specific camera language he was after, Valerio had put together a reference reel from various films, including Mean Streets, GoodFellas, Body Double and Natural Born Killers. "Since our script was based on a one-act play and had a lot of characters, I was very concerned that it would be incredibly talky and not interesting visually," Valerio says. "As a moviegoer, I tend to dislike films that are either based on plays or set in a single location. Lifeboat and Reservoir Dogs are two of my favorite exceptions. In the case of Carlo's Wake, though, I was directing a film based on a play, so this dilemma was something I was very concerned about. The reference reel tended to be more about trick shots and editing, because I wanted to hide the fact that we were going to largely be in two rooms for the entire film."
Another picture highlighted on the reel was the Howard Stern comedy Private Parts, which was photographed by Walt Lloyd. Asked how this film served as a reference, Valerio notes, "The radio station sequences had Howard and his crew in these very cramped spaces doing a lot of talking, which, onscreen, could have been very boring." The filmmakers detail that Lloyd's use of unusual camera angles lent visual interest to several potentially constrained scenes. "That impressed us with how important it was to use angles that one couldn't necessarily imagine while watching live theatre," Valerio explains. "We wanted angles that were inherently cinematic, especially scenes that were going to be covered in one or two shots due to time constraints. That often meant shooting from very high or very low."
While reviewing the reference reel with Klein, Valerio "would cue up a certain move and then ask, 'How would you do that?'" the cameraman recounts. "I'd explain that we could do it with a jib, a Steadicam on a dolly, or whatever, giving him a couple options. I don't think Mike was really so much asking 'Can you do that?', but rather, 'Do you like this?' and 'Do you want to be doing this?' And I really did."
The reference reel also "gave us a basic working language created from 20 different movies," Valerio stresses, "which was important because I had just met David and we were going be shooting our film on a schedule of just 18 days. Whenever we were in a jam, those clips gave us a starting point for our discussions."
Aiding this process was the fact that Valerio had fully storyboarded the film with artist Kyle Sullivan, though the boards were not strictly adhered to. "Sometimes we'd just do pieces of them, because on set we'd figure out how to condense certain lines or action to save time," the director says. "In other instances, what seemed like a good idea three weeks earlier, while we were sitting around my dining room table, just didn't work on stage with the actors. But again, the main reason we completely storyboarded the film was that I was paranoid about having a talky movie. I wanted to do whatever I could to make each scene different from the preceding and following scenes."
Asked to describe his lighting approach for Carlo's Wake, Klein replies, "It's a little flatter than I've been lighting lately. We did that for a number of reasons. First, we had to light large areas in the studio so we could move around quickly and give the actors plenty of space to work. I used a lot of softboxes, either hung from above or mounted on stands, which allowed us to change the lighting very quickly."
[ continued on page 3 ] © 1999 ASC