LIGHT SHOW
FIGHT OVER ELECTRICITY SPARKS TEXAN’S ‘CURRENT WAR’ FILM.
When Texas-born film director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon was in the midst of making “The Current War: Director’s Cut,” a trip back to the late 19th century when a battle raged between inventors Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla over the best way to electrify America, the director needed some visual inspiration to decorate his office.
But instead of going with the men at the heart of his story or the stars lined up to play them — Benedict Cumberbatch as Edison, Michael Shannon as Westinghouse, Nicholas Hault as Tesla and Tom Holland (aka SpiderMan) as Edison’s engineer, Samuel Insull — Gomez-Rejon took a more rock’n’roll approach.
“The mood boards that I had were always about Jagger, Dylan and Bowie,” he says in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “Every department knew that we can break some rules and interpret the past and make it alive, make it feel as if you were there.”
The film’s very first shot — a trainload of men speeding through a dark field to a spot where Edison plans to show off what he can do with light — establishes a sense of movement that tells audiences they’re not in for a staid, sepia-toned, Ken Burns-style history lesson.
Gomez-Rejon, who based the film on a script by Michael Mitnick (“The Giver”) and had Martin Scorsese as his executive producer, says he loved the idea of telling “The Social Network” as an 1893 story.
“I loved this rivalry between ego and humility, and it was a movie about ambition,” he says, “but it was a movie that was a period movie (and) it’s about the future, and it should feel like that. … These were the first disrupters, the first futurists. Now, there’s Bezos and Musk and Branson and all of that.
“And another layer was just the responsibility and the consequences of new ideas and technology,” he continues. “You know, the light bulb led to the electric chair. Social media can sway an election or lead to loneliness.
“It’s a movie about the future, not the past. So I’d never want it to be still, archival photographs. It was alive and it was in color. It was about constant energy and motion, always moving forward with the audience playing catchup until they dropped you off into the future.
“And it’s also celebrating the medium that’s being invented concurrently at the time as electricity — motion pictures. We were really consciously using the medium, whether it’s split screens, motion or angles. Whatever it is, that hopefully serves the story and the characters.” The Weinstein effect
That “The Current War: Director’s Cut” is actually in theaters is almost as much of a miracle as the discovery of electricity itself.
The film, which had a highprofile premiere at the 2017 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, was picked up by The Weinstein Company for distribu
tion and was scheduled to be released that fall. There was even the faint buzz of potential Oscar glory.
Then the news of the sexualassault allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein hit the headlines like a bomb.
“The Current War” was put on the shelf as the Weinstein Company devolved into bankruptcy. Last spring, the film was rescued by 101 Studios, a new LA-based company founded by former Weinstein executives David Glasser and David Hutkin.
Reflecting on it now, GomezRejon says the film getting lost in the shuffle may have been all for the best in the end. The version now hitting theaters is substantially different — and better in his view — than what played festivals two years ago. That’s why the phrase “Director’s Cut” was added to the title.
“It’s called the ‘Director’s Cut’ for a reason,” he says. “There are past versions of the movie that have been reviewed, and that was then, and this is hopefully the beginning. … They were works in
progress during the Weinstein years. … It’s 10 minutes shorter, five new scenes, a new score. The whole movie is fully realized as opposed to a work in progress, with work that still needed to be shot. This is really a new beginning, and I hope people respond to it.”
From Laredo to Hollywood
Whatever happens with “The Current War: Director’s Cut,” it represents something GomezRejon, 46, could only dream of as a kid in love with movies growing up in Laredo.
“This is pre-internet. You had ABC, CBS, NBC, then Fox, and then the VHS revolution started, which really saved me,” he recalls. “Moving to New York to go to (NYU) film school was like an odd thing for people to understand for awhile. My parents supported it because they supported the arts, but it was still confusing.”
Gomez-Rejon parlayed personal-assistant jobs for the likes of Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Nora Ephron and director Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu into second-unit directing positions on a variety of films, such as “Babel” and “State of Play.” He also began to work in television, directing episodes of “Glee” and “American Horror Story.”
But his big, feature-film break came when he made the wellregarded 2015 indie film, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.”
“But once I landed and I started working in production, I just felt very much at home,” he says of his early days. “I started making films and they were not bad, you know. … I needed to leave home to have access to movies and equipment. Now, all the movies are online and your phone is your best camera.”
He returns to Laredo often and marvels at the opportunities young people have now.
“Sometimes I have screenings for students, and the film community has grown as well as interest in the arts,” he says. “I have a scholarship in my dad’s name, who I dedicated ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’ to. … So I always do screenings there for my films before they’re released, raise money for scholarships and talk to students and give them something I wish I had. They can learn from my mistakes.”
Can history sell?
The big question hanging over the head of “The Current War: Director’s Cut” like a cleaver is whether audiences will support a nonsequel, nonsuperhero period piece based on the lives of people only known from dusty history books.
“I just know that I personally was really interested in this movie because of how it relates to today,” he says. “I can just speak for myself (but) seeing how it has been working with audiences, maybe I’m not alone in feeling that.
“I think there is still a world where this can be seen and appreciated in a movie theater. It may not last very long, but the fact that we’re out on 1,000 screens is very exciting to me because it’s a film that I want to be experienced there.
“I’m still very 20th century in that I still believe in the communal experience of watching the movie in a movie theater,” he continues. “And I will always dream of that.”