THE SEND-OFF IN
SCREENWRITER JOHN AUGUST ON THE CATHARSIS OF CRYING
TIM BURTON’S BIG Fish is a guaranteed weepfest. Adapted from Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel about a father-son reconciliation, it ends with Albert Finney’s story-spinner Edward Bloom in his dying moments, asking his son Will (Billy Crudup) to tell him how it all ends. Later, at his funeral, reality is served, with Will meeting characters from Edward’s life and realising that his father’s tales weren’t quite as tall as he’d first thought. Love floods the sadness. Writer John August seeded his relationship with his own dad into the screenplay, and Burton, who had lost his father a couple of years before filming, has called the movie a personal catharsis. For many others, it cuts just as deep.
This film elicits an intense emotional response from people. What’s that like for you?
A common experience of Big Fish is that people don’t expect it to take them to that place. A lot of men especially aren’t used to crying. And so when they find themselves emotional [watching it], it sort of freaks them out. When we were doing test screenings, we realised we had to keep the lights low a little bit longer because if you brought the lights up right away, people were not in a place to be around other people. It’s [proven] a cathartic experience for a lot of people.
How did you go about capturing that feeling on the page?
How I got there as a writer was very ‘method’, in that I literally sat in front of the mirror, I’d bring myself to tears and then I would write a scene. A weird alchemy happens. You pick different words when you’re in a certain emotional place. Until the roles are assigned to people, I’m all the characters. I have to be able to internally perform everything that these characters are doing. And the Will character is very much me. I kept things as close to me as I could.
The ending really hits. There’s something about seeing all of the characters as they really were that works on an elemental level.
I definitely hear that. The sequence at the funeral — you don’t have to have that moment in the movie, you could cut it, but it’s where the dam breaks for a lot of people. Because you recognise that there is a reality underneath all of this. And while Will’s father was wildly exaggerating, his exaggerating was based on some underlying truth. There were people who deeply cared about him, and he had touched so many lives. There’s a deeper emotional truth underneath all the fabrications. Seeing it is hopeful. I think the reason why people might come back to this movie at this time of uncertainty and crisis is that it gives you hope. And as sad as you are to lose Edward Bloom, you recognise that there’s the hope for a continuation. You can mourn someone’s loss while also celebrating their life, and being optimistic about the future.
Presumably you’ve heard lots of stories from people who have watched the film with their father, or after they’ve lost their father.
I’ve been lucky to have been hearing those stories a lot. More so than any other movie that I’ve been involved with, this is the one that people come back to and say truly impacted them. When my father-in-law was going through chemotherapy, he would watch Big Fish. And I can understand, because it’s about being hopeful in a dark time.