The Making of
THE INNER LIFE OF MARTIN FROST

CELINE CURIOL* You already wrote part of Martin Frost's story in The Book of Illusions. Why go back to it, expand it, and turn it into a screenplay?

PAUL AUSTER The Inner Life of Martin Frost has had a rather complicated history. In 1999, I was approached by a German producer to make a thirty-minute film for a series she was putting together of twelve short films by twelve different directors on the subject of men and women, so-called 'Erotic Tales'. I was intrigued by the proposal and decided to take the plunge. It was early in the year, I remember, February or March, and I sat down and wrote my little script, which came to about thirty pages. Since the budget was going to be low, I confined myself to just two actors and one location - an isolated house in the country. The story of Martin Frost, a writer, and a mysterious woman who turns out to be his muse. A fantastical story, really, more or less in the spirit of Nathaniel Hawthorne. But Claire isn't a traditional muse. She's an embodiment of the story Martin is writing, and the more he writes, the weaker she becomes - until, when he comes to the last word of the text, she dies. He finally figures out what has been happening and burns the manuscript in order to bring her back to life. That's where the short version ended - with Martin bringing Claire back to life.

What was the response from the German producer?

Very positive. Everyone liked the script, and I went ahead and began making preparations to shoot the film. Willem Dafoe and Kate Valk - the great actress from the Wooster Group - were going to be my cast. Peter Newman, the producer of all the previous films I'd worked on, was again going to produce. We made an itemized budget and were starting to look for a house to film in when negotiations with the German company broke down. They wanted to release the money to us in three stages: one-third on signing the contract, one-third when we started shooting, and one-third when we were finished - and they approved the film. This last point worried me. What if they didn't like what I did and rejected the results? One-third of the budget would be lacking, and suddenly Peter would be in the position of having to pay off tens of thousands of dollars from his own pocket. I didn't want to put him at risk like that, and so I backed out of the project. The thing that clinched it for me was a conversation I had with Hal Hartley. He had just finished shooting one of the twelve films for the series, and lo and behold, the German producer was insisting that he make changes, putting Hal in exactly the same mess I was afraid of getting us into. His advice to me was to pull out, and that's what I did. In the end, it was probably all for the best. For the fact was that not long after I finished writing the short version of Martin Frost, I began thinking I should extend it into a full-length feature film. Martin brings Claire back to life - and then what? That's where the story would start to get even more interesting, I felt. So I sketched out a plan for the rest of the film - nothing definite yet, but a stack of notes to mull over for the future. Then I put it all away and started writing The Book of Illusions, which had been brewing inside me for a long time, close to ten years. That was the summer of 1999, and I finished the manuscript two years later, exactly one month before the attack on the World Trade Center. Toward the end of the book, David Zimmer, the narrator, gets to see one of Hector Mann's late films shot in the New Mexico desert. For numerous reasons, The Inner Life of Martin Frost seemed to be the perfect story to use at this point in the novel, so I adapted the short version of the script and put it in.

Did you make many changes?

Nothing essential, really. The action had to be shifted to 1946, for example. The location had to move to Hector's house in New Mexico. The film had to be shot in black and white, and I had to abandon the scenario form and describe the film in prose. Quite a challenge, I might add. Those changes aside, however, the film in the book is very close to the original screenplay.

Why didn't you incorporate the longer version into the novel?

I was tempted, but I decided it would take too many pages to do it right, and in the process I would throw off the balance of the narrative.

Why did it take you three years to go back to Martin Frost after you finished the novel?

There were other books I wanted to write, books I had been thinking about for many years, and I was reluctant to leave my room . Now that I think about it, September eleventh probably had something to do with it as well. It hit me very hard, watching it happen from the window of my house in Brooklyn, and the idea of making another film lost its attraction for a while. I wanted to be alone, to think my own thoughts. Directing a film means giving up a good two years of your life, and except for the writing of the screenplay, you're working with other people all the time. I just wasn't in the mood for that.

What changed your mind?

The Brooklyn Follies was the fourth novel I'd written in six years, and I think I was feeling a little burned out, not ready to start writing another work of fiction. And Martin Frost was still on my mind. I hadn't been able to get rid of the story, and so one fine day I decided to take a crack at finishing it.

The entire movie takes place out in the countryside, in a very isolated house. What was the appeal of that isolation and what importance does it have in the film?

To be very blunt, it was largely a question of money. If I was going to get a chance to make another film, I knew it would have to be done on a small scale, with an extremely limited budget. That's why I wrote it for just four actors and used just three locations: the house and the grounds of the house; the empty road; and for three days at the end of production, a sound stage, where we filmed the dream sequences and the shots of the spinning typewriter. I was trying to be realistic. I'm proud of Lulu on the Bridge, but it turned out to be a commercial failure, and I understood how difficult it would be for me to raise money for a new project. So, to quote a line from Fortunato in the film, I forced myself to 'think small'. But when it comes to the isolation of the setting - to answer your question at last - I wanted to create an other-worldly ambience, a place that could be anywhere, a place that felt as if it existed outside time. The action unfolds in Martin's head, after all, and by choosing the house I did, a little domain cut off from the rest of the world, I felt I would be enhancing the interiority of the story.

Why did you shoot in Portugal?

Because the producer of the film, Paulo Branco, is Portuguese. I met Paulo fourteen or fifteen years ago in Berlin - through Wim Wenders, a mutual friend - and we've stayed in touch ever since. After Lulu on the Bridge, he told me that if I ever wanted to make another film, all I had to do was call him, and he would produce it. When the script for Martin Frost was finished, I called. We explored the possibility of shooting here in America, but we simply couldn't find enough money to do it. Paulo has made close to two hundred movies all over Europe, but Portugal is his home base, and he has all the means at his disposal to work inexpensively there - access to equipment, labs, crew, the whole works - and so we decided to go there. You watch the finished film, and you don't really know where you are. To me, it looks like northern California. And all the props in the movie are American: the brown grocery bag, the house keys, the yellow legal pad, the eight-and-a-half-by-eleven typing paper, the license plates, the books on the shelves, everything.

You put together quite an ensemble of actors. How did you go about casting the film?

In November 2004, just when I was about to start writing the screenplay, I went to France to give a reading tour in five or six cities. In each theater, I would read a couple of paragraphs in English, and then a French actor would read the same passage in translation - and back and forth we'd go until the reading was finished. When my French publisher asked me which French actor I'd like to work with, I suggested Irène Jacob. I had met Irène in 1998 when I went to the Cannes Film Festival with Lulu on the Bridge. One afternoon, we wound up sitting next to each other at lunch, and we had a very good talk. When you see her act in a film like Red or The Double Life of Véronique, her talent and presence on screen are remarkable, but I found her just as remarkable in life. There's a special quality to Irène, something I've never seen in anyone else. A kindness, a goodness, a tenderness - I don't know what to call it - along with a terrific sense of humor and a startling lack of egoism, which is almost unheard of in an actor. In short, she's an exceptional person, and I wanted her to read with me. She happened to be eight months pregnant with her second child at the time, which meant she couldn't go on the tour, but we did the reading in Paris together. A couple of nights later, she invited me to a play she was performing in (yes, acting while eight months pregnant!), and after the play we went out for a drink with some friends. It was raining that night, and she offered to drive me back to my hotel in her car. That...