Barry Levinson and Denzel Washington ‘In Conversation’ at TIFF: Hollywood titans trade tales and insights

A scene from Fences, directed by and starring Denzel Washington.

By Liam Lacey

Director Barry Levinson, the acclaimed Baltimore director of Diner, Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man and the TV series, Homicide: Life on the Street, and actor-director Denzel Washington (Glory, Malcolm X, The Hurricane, Training Day) have produced enough work in film and television to create a serious library of DVDs, but, so far, they’ve never collaborated.

Their offspring have though. Earlier this summer, Sam Levinson (the HBO series, Euphoria) shot the Netflix marriage drama, Malcolm & Marie. The 16-day shoot, one of the few film productions during the COVID crisis, took place between in late June and early July in Carmel, California, starring John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) and actor-singer Zendaya (also in Euphoria) The elaborate health protocols required for shooting the film were outlined in detail in a Deadline Hollywood article in July.

And this year’s In Conversation With… was very much in the COVID shadow with all the awkwardness that entails. After a 25-minute technical delay, Levinson, Washington and moderator, Scott Feinberg, best known as a Hollywood awards columnist, came into view.

As it turned out, besides, their children, Levinson and Washington have something else in common. Washington’s Oscar-nominated 2016 film, Fences (2016) and Levinson’s upcoming drama, Harry Haft, a biopic of a Polish boxer who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, are both produced in collaboration with the British Columbia-based Bron Studios. The studio’s logo was prominent on the web page next to the viewing windows for the conversation.

Levinson described his new film as “a romance about a man finding love and getting an understanding of his past and the nightmares of that. It’s an exploration of trauma that I haven’t quite done before.”

The interview began with brief surveys of the two men’s careers, starting with Levinson, who got his start as a comedy writer for Carol Burnett and Mel Brooks, before his breakthrough as a co-writer of Norman Jewison’s And Justice For All (1979). Unfortunately, the connection to the Toronto-raised Jewison, a pioneer of social justice films and director of Washington’s The Hurricane (1999) went unmentioned.

The 78-year-old Levinson, son of a furniture and appliance salesman, said that showbusiness “wasn’t even on my radar” until he landed a part-time job in college at a local television station, where his duties included setting up the late and late-late movies, giving him a crash course in cinema, leading to a career as a TV writer.

Years later, when working as a writer on Mel Brooks’ Hitchcock spoof, High Anxiety (1977), Levinson would tell stories on the set about the guys he knew growing up in Baltimore. Brooks told him he should write a screenplay, and recommended that Levinson watch the Federico Fellini film, I Vitelloni (1953), a story of five young Italian men and their small-town lives. It has also been considered an influence on Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and George Lucas’s American Graffiti. The result was Levinson’s acclaimed first film, Diner (1982), the first in a Baltimore tetrology.

Washington, 65, son of a beautician and a minister, said that acting “chose me.” He wanted to be a doctor as a child but took a combination drama and journalism degree at university. His first stage role was in a musical “but then I found out I couldn’t sing. One has to recognize one’s limitations.”

He said he was preparing to direct a romantic movie at present, and threw a question to Levinson: “What movie do I need to watch?”

Levinson said that was a tough one.

“It’s the most delicate thing to work with, how to handle the romance. If it gets too romantic in a sense, we don’t believe it.” But you need to communicate “the passion and frustration of two people trying to communicate.”

“Brief Encounter?” suggested Washington.

“That’s a good one,” Levinson agreed.

Washington has acted in more than 50 films but directed just three (Antwone Fisher, The Great Debators and Fences). He says it is a kind of work he has never out to get. His producing partner, Todd Black, pressured him for years to try working behind the camera and after a decade of procrastinating, Washington relented.

“In fact, I was in Toronto, and Peter Rice, who was running Fox Searchlight, got me to sign a napkin saying I promise to direct.”

Levinson said his advice in directing is to stay open to discoveries to “search for the unknown moments that tell the audience something.”

He gave the example of working with Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man in a diner scene opposite Tom Cruise. Levinson thought Hoffman’s character, who is autistic, looked too depressed. He suggested that it would be more interesting if he acted busy, perhaps looking up and counting ceiling tiles. They shot the scene and Hoffman became so absorbed in the tiles, he forgot to respond to the dialogue.

“I didn’t know what to do,” said Levinson. “I said, ‘You know he’s there but you’re busy. You just don’t want to be involved: Yeah, yeah — someone’s talking but you don’t want to pay attention.”

Hoffman immediately adopted it, and “Yeah, yeah” became one of the character’s defining traits.

Did Washington, given his years of acting experience, feel confident in tell other actors what he wanted from them?

“First of all,” he said, “You don’t do that. You don’t tell other actors what you want from them. That sounds like you know. “

He joked about his ignorance on set when first working with a director of photography: “Where do you put the camera? In the front? I don’t know either. Or, behind you? OK!”

Feinberg noted that Denzel Washington paid tuition for a group of students, including the late Chadwick Boseman — who passed away last month at the age of 43 — to study at a summer program at the British American Drama Academy in London. Boseman, who went on to play such African-American heroes as Jackie Robinson, James Brown and Thurgood Marshall, said at an American Film Institute event last year: “There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington.”

Feinberg asked him about his impressions of Boseman.

“A gentle man, a very gentle soul, a great talent,” said Washington.

He recalled seeing Boseman and director Ryan Coogler at the premiere of Black Panther, before seeing the movie: “After, I remember saying, ‘These young guys are just gone! They’re taking over.’ And watching that movie, who knew he didn’t have much life left? He didn’t get cheated, we did. He had a full life.”