Tavernier and the fraught story of "In The Electric Mist"

John Goodman and Tommy Lee Jones, In The Electric Mist, Tavernier, 2009.

Bertrand Tavernier, who died today at age 79 (“So young,” gasped this 61-year-old) had a long, dis­tin­guished, and hon­or­able career, one dif­fi­cult to sum up quickly, in no small part because a good deal of his sub­stan­tial filmo­graphy is unjustly obscure in the States. I met and inter­viewed him in 2011, when he was in New York pro­mot­ing his excep­tion­al, vivid his­tor­ic­al film The Princess of Montpensier. By now you’ve prob­ably read this before, but he was a great inter­view, warm, eru­dite, good-humored, always eager to talk cinema. 

Aside from Montpensier, we dis­cussed his pri­or pic­ture, one of his infre­quent English-language pic­tures, In the Electric Mist. When word got out in 2007 or so that Tavernier was mak­ing it, cinephiles and fans of hard-boiled lit­er­at­ure were pretty excited, as I men­tion below. The U.S. release of the movie befuddled more than a few view­ers. So, for fea­ture pack­age the inter­view yiel­ded — this was for a e‑magazine star­tup named Nomad (you remem­ber star­tups) for which I was the edit­or of the movie organ, called “Wide Screen,” I wrote a piece com­par­ing the U.S. cut with Tavernier’s own ver­sion of the movie, which he put togeth­er in France sur­repti­tiously, and which was put out on French DVD.

In Bertrand’s memory, I repro­duce the piece below. And after that, as he is no longer with us and no longer bound by whatever egre­gious con­trac­tu­al enjoin­ment pre­ven­ted him from talk­ing about the film on the record, I include a sec­tion of the tran­script of our con­ver­sa­tion, lightly edited. 

When it was announced a few years back that the French dir­ect­or Bertrand Tavernier would be return­ing to English-language film­mak­ing with an adapt­a­tion of James Lee Burke’s crime nov­el In The Electric Mist With The Confederate Dead, sev­er­al dif­fer­ent breeds of enthu­si­asts star­ted drool­ing. Fans of the crime writer Burke had to be stoked that one of his works was about to be tackled by Tavernier had to have been excited that their man was get­ting a film treat­ment from a dir­ect­or who clearly appre­ci­ated genre material—Tavernier’s ter­rif­ic Coup de Torchon was an excel­lent trans­pos­i­tion of a nov­el by Jim Thompson, one of Burke’s acknow­ledged ante­cedents. Fans of Tavernier were tickled by the notion of the dir­ect­or work­ing in the U.S. for the first time since his very well regarded Round Midnight. Fans of act­or Tommy Lee Jones were excited that the act­or was going to be embody­ing Burke’s recovering-alcoholic-lawman Dave Robicheaux. (The char­ac­ter was last por­trayed on film by Alec Baldwin, in the not-entirely suc­cess­ful Burke adapt­a­tion Heaven’s Prisoners, dir­ec­ted by Phil Joanou.) Especially com­ing after Jones’ superb por­tray­al of Texas law­man Ed Tom Bell in the Coen broth­ers’ 2007 No Country For Old Men. In the Electric Mist, as the title was shortened to, looked like it had a shot at being a very worthy quasi-successor to that excel­lent film.

But the pic­ture didn’t even wind up hav­ing a the­at­ric­al release in the United States, com­ing out straight to DVD in spring of 2009. Hardly an event pic­ture, as it hap­pens. What happened? As Chris Mosey explains in an inter­view with Tavernier that was a web exclus­ive for Cineaste magazine in the 2010,  “Tavernier and both his American pro­du­cer, Michael Fitzgerald, and edit­or, Roberto Silvi [had a con­flict] con­cern­ing the cut­ting of the movie. When their dis­agree­ments proved impossible to resolve, the only solu­tion was to release two ver­sions of the same film, one for either side of the Atlantic. Fitzgerald, head of Ithaca Pictures, super­vised Silvi on the cut­ting of the short­er, faster-paced film for the U.S. mar­ket. Tavernier, with the help of edit­or Thierry Derocles, com­pleted his own cut.” If you are lucky enough to own a multi-region DVD play­er (foreign-manufactured DVDs are often embed­ded with a “region code” that makes them impossible to play on domest­ic machines), it’s pos­sible to make a com­par­is­on between the two versions.

The ini­tial dif­fer­ence is pretty stark and imme­di­ately dis­cern­ible just by look­ing at the inform­a­tion on the respect­ive box cov­ers. My Image Entertainment domest­ic DVD lists a run­ning time of 102 minutes; the French-issued TFI  Video Blu-ray disc shows “1h57,” or 117 minutes. So we’re talk­ing about an American issue that is a full fif­teen minutes short­er than the American one.

The dif­fer­ences start at the very begin­ning. In Tavernier’s ver­sion, there are atmo­spher­ic slow-lateral-dollying shots of the tit­u­lar mist sit­ting in a gray swamp. Tommy Lee Jones’ unmis­tak­able voice comes on the soundtrack: “In the ancient world, people placed heavy stones on the graves of their dead, so their souls would not wander…” The American open­ing is a little more “on the nose,” as it were: a shot of Jones sit­ting at a bar, a bar­tender pour­ing him a shot of whis­key, and Jones get­ting up and walk­ing away without tak­ing the shot. The voi­ceover here: “My name’s Dave Robicheaux. I’m an alco­hol­ic. Sometimes I’m temp­ted to have a drink. But I nev­er do.”

This kind of encap­su­lates the essen­tial dif­fer­ence between the two ver­sions: the American cut is rather more dir­ect and lit­er­al minded, while Tavernier’s cut has more emphas­is on atmo­sphere, mood, and so on. It might there­fore fol­low that the American ver­sion is brisker, more story-driven, more con­ven­tion­ally enter­tain­ing. It actu­ally isn’t. It’s just more literal-minded, is all. As it hap­pens, Tavernier’s ver­sion, after its atmo­spher­ic begin­ning, kicks off with Robicheaux’s invest­ig­a­tion of the grisly murder of a part-time pros­ti­tute, the uneas­i­ness of the shady char­ac­ters he’s inter­rog­at­ing cre­at­ing an absorb­ing ten­sion that seeps into the film as a whole. The restruc­tur­ing imposed by Fitzgerald and American edit­or Silvi intro­duces the movie-actor char­ac­ters played by Peter Sarsgaard and Kelly MacDonald earli­er on, for no real reas­on except to maybe bring more recog­niz­able faces into the pic­ture soon­er than later. One excised scene, of Robicheaux attend­ing an AA meet­ing, doesn’t advance the story all that much, but does do a bet­ter and subtler job of enhan­cing the char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of Robicheaux than the above-cited open­ing shots and nar­ra­tion achieve. Another excised scene show­ing the malevol­ent loc­al big-shot played by John Goodman delib­er­ately bean­ing Robicheaux with a base­ball rep­res­ents an even dumber cut, as it’s a great show­case for both Goodman and Jones and it gives Goodman’s char­ac­ter more of the sin­is­ter “he’s‑not-bluffing” sense that makes the view­er even­tu­ally feel more empathy for the fix Robicheaux finds him­self in at the film’s climax.

Some of the foot­age from that excised scene does find its way into the end­ing of the American ver­sion, in a way the most egre­gious of the many egre­gious changes. A shot of Goodman swat­ting a base­ball is included in a “where are they now” mont­age, nar­rated by Jones, detail­ing the fates of all the char­ac­ters in the scen­ario. Needless to say Tavernier’s end­ing is both far more evoc­at­ive and emotionally/narratively sat­is­fy­ing, I won’t give it away here. But I will say that while Tavernier’s cut of the film DOES rep­res­ent a worthy quasi-successor to No Country For Old Men, the American cut plays like a better-than-average thing you might have caught in the wee hours on Court TV back in the day. A no doubt very frus­trat­ing state of affairs, not just for Tavernier (who I believe is con­trac­tu­ally enjoined from dis­cuss­ing the mat­ter in any detail), but for American film lov­ers as well.

And here’s a por­tion of that interview. 

WIDE SCREEN:  I want to talk a little bit about In the Electric Mist.

TAVERNIER:  Yeah.

WIDE SCREEN:  Because of work­ing in America after you worked inter­mit­tently through­out your career with American act­ors and American themes, American writers.  And I was­n’t able to read the journ­al you kept of the film, but there was an inter­est­ing thing in an art­icle about it about work­ing with an edit­or who always wanted to do trans­itions through close-ups.  And it seems inter­est­ing when you’re look­ing at your writ­ten work and look­ing at the films that inspired you and get­ting to the point where American or Hollywood film gram­mar has got­ten to the point where it’s almost split off into some­thing dif­fer­ent than what inspired you.

TAVERNIER:  And from the gram­mar in Hollywood and some of the dir­ect­ors I admire.

WIDE SCREEN:  Yeah.

TAVERNIER:  I mean because when I was told that I was doing too-long takes and not enough cov­er­age I was think­ing of Otto Preminger and many, many bril­liant dir­ect­ors.  On the whole I find the con­tri­bu­tion of Tommy Lee Jones invalu­able.  I found him bril­liant, very, very respect­ful of the oth­er act­ors.  Very.  I’ve nev­er seen an act­or so polite, so respect­ful of his col­leagues.  I mean he could be…he could come on the set and not say good morn­ing to any­body.  And some people on the crew hated him.  But I mean with Levon Helm or with Ned Beatty, with John Goodman, or with Mary Steenburgen, every­body, he was always try­ing to help.  With Kelly Macdonald he was–he says, Kelly, I want to help you so we can see you bet­ter.  We’ll turn you there.  So I’ve nev­er seen some­body so refined, so attent­ive, so full of admir­a­tion for the oth­ers.  I nev­er see.  And for me the real Tommy Lee Jones is there, is not the guy who can be a bit rocky and some­times a bit dif­fi­cult, is some­body  who  — a per­son who con­trib­uted in the writ­ing, to some of the best lines of the movie.  And the best scene, the fish­ing scene, is a scene which he him­self wrote dur­ing the shoot­ing.  I thought I was miss­ing a scene between him and Bootsie [Steenburgen], and he said to me, ‘Bertrand, what the scene should be about?’  And I said, ‘About under­stand­ing.’  And two days after, he came with that scene.  On the sala­man­der, does she know she’s a sala­man­der.  And does she understand–I mean beau­ti­ful scene.  Lovely scene. 

But the prob­lem I had, I lost…I had a total moment of des­pair and I could not — I was not get­ting along with the edit­or, to a point that I did­n’t want to provide any ideas.  I was dry.  I became dead.  I just wanted to leave the edit­ing room to see my friends.  There was no pleas­ure.  That was the first time that happened in my whole life.  And then when I went to Paris and I could have an agree­ment with the pro­du­cer, Michael Fitzgerald, and I could start the edit­ing of the ver­sion that is called the French ver­sion, then sud­denly in four weeks — I mean it took very little time — and sud­denly I found enthu­si­asm.  I was work­ing with a crew which was enthu­si­ast­ic, who loved what they saw.  And all the ideas which I kept every time I was try­ing a few of them in New Orleans and I was facing a crisis and I was…I decided to fight.  I recor­ded all the voi­ceover I’d been writ­ing. I was listen­ing on the phone to Tommy Lee record­ing it.  And Tommy Lee was like that first stage.  I’ve nev­er seen some­body so good with voi­ceover.  The con­trol he has of his voice, of the music of his voice.  And that was so import­ant, the voice, because Burke’s book are told in the first per­son and they have a rhythmic melody. 

What I found dif­fi­cult in America, I found the crew are very big, I found some of the rules are so strange that it’s becom­ing embar­rass­ing.  I found that you have a hier­archy where people do not talk to each oth­er, so some­times you have a con­flict because two dif­fer­ent or two dif­fer­ent kind of people are work­ing on the same thing and they are not communicating.

But speak­ing of tal­ent, I had some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. I had the best per­son on sound, Paul Ledford, who is a geni­us of sound, has been work­ing with Stephen Soderbergh on many films. Paul is a geni­us.  And a lovely man. When they learned I was edit­ing the film in Paris they sent me hours of wild sounds for me, to help me.  And when I wanted to pay them, they said ‘No, Bertrand, because we had so much love work­ing with you, so much fun, we are giv­ing it to you’ so I had won­der­ful people.  Wonderful.  And I gave Paul a cred­it, a main cred­it, as sound mix­er. and that’s a typ­ic­al kind of thing when sud­denly becomes some­thing with the union. 

I mean for instance I wanted to to start my ver­sion with the cred­it ‘This film is ded­ic­ated to Philip Noiret who loved so much the nov­els of James Lee Burke.’  So the WGA calls me and says, ‘Bertrand, we can­not put that there; you named some­body from the WGA before your own cred­it.’  And all those calls, I was in Paris, were tak­ing place between 2 and 4 in the morn­ing.  And after 15 days I said, let’s for­get about that.  And that’s what I found rigid.  That sys­tem, very rigid.