A playwright plucked from obscurity
DID you hear the one about the young, struggling writer whose play was snapped up by one of Hollywood’s biggest stars before it had even debuted on a stage? This isn’t the start of a fairytale or a joke but rather the real-life trajectory of Beau Willimon, whose 2004 play Farragut North has been adapted into the new political thriller The Ides of March by George Clooney.
“It was the case that after a number of years of working in total obscurity I was being vaulted into a whole other realm in a matter of days,” the 33-year-old laughs. “It’s crazy. A great kind of crazy.”
Willimon wrote Farragut North — named after a Metro stop in the centre of power in Washington DC — after working in the press advance team of Howard Dean’s insurgent but unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.
The writer, who had previously stumped for presidential wannabe Bill Bradley and Hillary Clinton’s 2000 senate campaign, sent the completed draft to 40 theatres, all of whom rejected it. It then sat on his hard drive in a drawer for a few more years before his new agent suggested sending it out again.
“I think with the 2008 campaign ramping up, and because an agent was sending it out, it got into George Clooney’s hands,” Willimon explains. “That was five years ago, before I’d even had a production of the play or anything else I had written. That’s very rare.”
The Ides of March stars Clooney as an Obama-esque presidential contender, and Ryan Gosling as his precocious young campaign adviser, whose sense of idealism is slowly corroded by the backstabbing, double-dealing and dirty tricks involved in a national presidential campaign (the timing of the movie’s release couldn’t be more perfect for Irish audiences).
Dean’s 2004 campaign must have been particularly nasty to inspire such a piece. Was Willimon made especially cynical by that process? “I really poured myself into Dean and that campaign, and it was heartbreaking for me when he lost,” he responds. “But the play and the movie are drawn from all the experiences I’ve had on different campaigns. Dean’s was the closest both in time and probably to my heart when I wrote the play, but it was never meant to be, nor is it, a fictional portrayal of that campaign.”
Willimon goes on: “You might start idealistic, you see some things, and become more jaded and cynical. But then the right candidate comes along and you become idealistic again and it revitalises you and your beliefs. You go back and forth.”
The themes of The Ides of March could be interpreted as a reflection on the process of voter disillusionment with the presidency of Barack Obama. Does Willimon agree? “I remember hearing George say — and I assume this is true — that President Obama asked him if he should show the movie at the White House, and Clooney replied, ‘Absolutely not’,” Willimon smiles.
Another assessment is that it’s deeply cynical. “I think cynicism is the go-to word for acknowledging the truth we don’t want to swallow,” he counters. “I think the film is more realistic than cynical. Cynical is more about giving up, in a way, and our goal with the movie is not to give up.”
Willimon is sticking with the dirty ins-and-outs of US politics for his next venture, a US television “re-interpretation” of the 1990 BBC series House of Cards.
And he is again collaborating with weighty talent. “Kevin Spacey is going to be the star, and Robin Wright will play his wife. David Fincher is directing the first episode and is also executive producer. Fincher is very involved. Even while he’s shooting a $200m movie, he’s on top of things. He’s incredible.”
* The Ides of March opens today.
