“I may disappoint you,” admits playwright-actor Tracy Letts when asked what sort of mind could produce such controversial plays and film adaptations as Bug, which deals with an addict (Ashley Judd) and a fugitive (Michael Shannon) fighting off a nonexistent insect horde during real emergencies and Killer Joe, in which Matthew McConaughey plays a cop who moonlights by doing contract hits. Both adaptations seemed right at home in the hands of The Exorcist and The French Connection director William Friedkin.
The latest adaptation of the Chicago-based Letts’ work is August: Osage County. The play, about the dysfunctional Weston family, of Pawhuska, Okla., centers on the abrupt disappearance of their alcoholic patriarch Beverly and the chaos that ensues. It won Letts a Tony and a Pulitzerin 2008. Sam Shepard plays Beverly, Meryl Streep plays his caustic, cancer-afflicted wife, Violet, and Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson play their struggling daughters.
While the play and movie often feel like being in a boiling cauldron of unresolved grievances, it’s unusual for its red state setting. Letts explains,“Even with Killer Joe and Bug, I guess I was conscious of trying to create something that would be the kind of theater that people could afford and appreciate. I love the idea that people in Oklahoma could go see a play that spoke to them about their experiences and wouldn’t cost them $140 a ticket. That was always a governing principle about writing those things.
“ … People from that part of the country are portrayed as hicks and rubes and rednecks. And God knows, those people are there. The truth is my parents were English teachers. I grew up around academics. My father was a Ph.D. and a Fulbright Scholar. He taught at a … state school in southeastern Oklahoma, but he was an educated man, and I grew up around educated people and the children of educated people.”
If Letts’ plays and movies have a common theme, it’s that they often feature potentially repellent characters who sometimes fascinate as much as they disgust viewers. The characters in Bug and Killer Joe have substance abuse issues, and the characters in the latter hire the title character (played in the film by McConaughey) to kill a woman for insurance money.
While the chemicals in August: Osage County are legal, even outside of Colorado, Letts says there are reasons audiences don’t immediately sprint for the exits.
“While all of the piece might deal with an unpalatable subject or unpalatable people, a sense of humor is what keeps people locked in,” Letts says. “I was adamant during the process with [the film of] August: Osage County in that we had to preserve the humor. If we lose the humor, we lose the audience.
“With Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, having performed the play myself recently, it’s riotously funny. The movie, though it has some humor in it, is not riotously funny. It’s bleak and dark and it’s got that inky black Haskell Wexler cinematography and adults behaving very badly. It’s a very different experience.
“Similarly, with Violet, as monstrously as she behaves, she’s also a human being, and I think that people recognize that,” he adds. “For me, part of the process of writing August: Osage County was humanizing my grandmother, who had sort of taken on that kind of monstrous proportions in my memory and in my mind. I had to remind myself there was a human being underneath all that, too, who started out with very simple wishes and wants and through circumstance and some bad decisions came to be the person she was. That boot story that Violet tells inthe movie, that’s true. It’s a true story from my grandmother’s childhood. How would you expect somebody like that to behave when they become an adult?” THE PLAY’S THE THING
To preserve as much of the comic tension of the play as possible, Letts and director John Wells (The Company Men) retained a 20-minute dinner scene that drove the play. While Letts would say he’d appreciate more people getting to see his story onstage, he bluntly admits getting his tale on-screen reaches legions who couldn’t see it otherwise.
“That’s the reason I did it; that’s the reason I do it. I myself was a little kid growing up in southeastern Oklahoma in a small town. I would not have had access to great productions of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? or A Streetcar Named Desire or Shakespeare. I had access to those things through the movies. Similarly, there are a lot of people out there who would not have access to a great production of August: Osage County, including some little kid in some small town out there, and they’re going to get a chance to see this film and see things in it that speak to them and in their lives. I think it’s sad that most people can’t see quality theater. I also think the movies have a kind of outreach. They get to places that plays can’t get, and that’s why it’s valuable to me,” Letts says.
Even though the play and the movie end identically, and less than happily, the film adaptation attracted unexpected controversy.
When people ask him about the changes made to his play, Letts, even over the phone, seems to roll his eyes.
“I don’t kind of know how this got to be controversial,” recalls Letts carefully. “John and I spoke about this some at [the] Toronto [International Film Festival]. I don’t want to say that we were misquoted and perhaps we misspoke. In any case, we were misinterpreted. The ending of August: Osage County … the film is the same as the ending of the play. That’s the ending of the play; that’s the ending of the film. And that’s always been the ending of the film.
Whereas Friedkin’s movies of Letts’ plays play up the claustrophobia that comes from their limited settings, Letts said that Wells had somewhat more freedom with the spacing in August: Osage County.
“Similarly, there’s a claustrophobia that occurs in August: Osage County,” Letts says. “I know from growing up in Oklahoma, you can feel that claustrophobia even when you’re looking at a vista that goes perhaps 60 miles to the horizon. We wanted to take advantage of that in August: Osage County. We didn’t feel we needed to keep them in the house as much as in Bug and Killer Joe. We could give them freedom to roam in the countryside.”
Letts also admits that working in different media offers him delights most artists don’t get to experience.
“I’ve seen quite a few actors play Killer Joe, and I’ve seen them range in age from 32 to 60. It sustains a lot of interpretations. One of the nice things about being a playwright by trade as opposed to a filmmaker is I get to see a lot of different people take these roles on. There will be other people who will play Violet in August: Osage County. It will sustain different interpretations. [Actors] are intimidated by Marlon Brando doing Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire, but the role is a living thing. It’s something another actor can take on [and] make his own.” A NEW ROLE
Letts may enjoy watching actors putting their own spin on his material because ofhis own experience onstage. He’s heading to Broadway this month with Michael C. Hall and Toni Collette in The Realistic Joneses. Just don’t expect him to ever play a character he has written.
“I have no interest in doing that. Orson Welles doesn’t grow on trees. I’m just not that driven to get up on stage and perform my own words. I would feel like a showoff. I would be very self-conscious about that.”
Letts’ self-consciousness has been somewhat heightened because millions of viewers now know him as the skeptical Sen. Andrew Lockhart from Homeland. At age 48, Letts is experiencing something like stardom. He continually praised Homeland throughout the conversation and even admitted that he and actor Mandy Patinkin, like their viewers, have no idea what will happen from one episode to the next.
Letts, however, is not used to being instantly recognized for what he has been doing.
“It’s different; it’s weird. I’m being recognized on the street and in airports, not a lot, but it’s like I’ve spent my whole … life doing this, and now suddenly I do nine episodes of a television show, and millions of people see it. Suddenly, it’s a different deal,” he says. “In fact, I had lunch with Mr. Friedkin the other day, and I said, ‘I’m kind of losing my anonymity, Bill.’ Billy said, ‘You’ll get over it.’”
Style, Pages 29 on 01/14/2014