Collateral Beauty: We are All Connected

Collateral Beauty: Interview with Oscar Winner Director David Frankel

David Frankel is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for directing The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Marley & Me (2008), Hope Springs (2012), Collateral Beauty (2016).

From Oscar-winning director David Frankel, this thought-provoking drama explores how even the deepest loss can reveal moments of beauty, and how the constants of love, time and death interlock in a life fully lived. 

“Collateral Beauty” features an all-star cast, including Will Smith (upcoming “Suicide Squad,” “Concussion”), Edward Norton (“Birdman or [The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance]”), Keira Knightley (“The Imitation Game”), Michael Peña (“The Martian”), Naomie Harris (“Spectre”), and Jacob Latimore (“The Maze Runner”), with Oscar winners Kate Winslet (“The Reader,” “Steve Jobs”) and Helen Mirren (“The Queen,” “Trumbo”). When a successful New York advertising executive (Smith) experiences a deeply personal tragedy and retreats from life entirely, his colleagues devise a drastic plan to force him to confront his grief in a surprising and profoundly human way.

David Frankel is directing “Collateral Beauty” from an original screenplay by Allan Loeb (“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,” “21”). Loeb is also a producer on the film, together with Bard Dorros (“Triple 9”) and Michael Sugar (Oscar-nominated Best Picture “Spotlight”) under the Anonymous Content banner; Anthony Bregman (“Foxcatcher”) for Likely Story; and Kevin Frakes (“John Wick”) for PalmStar Media.

Christopher Buck: David, thank you so much for speaking with us. It’s a great honor. The scope and breadth of your work are amazing.

David Frankel: You are very kind. I wish it were amazing, but it’s very satisfying too, you know, do some work that stirs a response in people.

Christopher Buck: I can’t remember a movie coming out that I’ve been as excited about as Collateral Beauty. I haven’t seen many movies that have touched people so much just in the trailer, so it’s exciting.

David Frankel: It is exciting. I agree. And, you know, we have been working on it for a long time. But, we reached the finished editing a few months ago. And it’s just been this gift that’s been stored in the closet for a few months, waiting to get it under the tree for Christmas.

So, that’s a pleasure to get it out there.

Christopher Buck: It truly will be a great gift for Christmas. Now, Collateral Beauty you say is the profound connection with everything. What do you mean by that? What, in your mind, is collateral beauty?

David Frankel: For me it’s, it’s the connections with the people that we love. I think there are different interpretations in different times of our lives and the movie at different times. It’s easy to say …oh, just noticing the beauty. But, for me it’s rediscovering the reasons to keep on going, to keep living, you know, and what reason is there except for the connections that we have to our friends and to our loved ones.

And a lot of times those relationships become frayed. We either take them for granted or we lose people. There are times when life seems darn bleak, and we’re-just stuck inside ourselves. And so, Collateral Beauty is all about those connections to people.

Christopher Buck: It seems that one of the things that you were saying is that, you have these three big things in life that connect everybody. Of course, I guess other things connect everyone like grief… . David Frankel: Yeah, I think, and there’s a line in the movie that I think is the most profound moment in the movie, where Helen Mirren’s character says, you know, “Nothing is ever really dead if you look at it right.”

And I found that breathtaking; this idea that the way that we live on you know, most people don’t live on in history books. We only live on in the memories of the people who cared about the people who we cared about and us. And I think that idea is both very comforting and inspiring.

And, that’s why, I think, the movie ultimately is so uplifting, you see Howard starting to make connections again, and it reminds us to go out and connect. And, so often I have seen people at the end of screenings of the movie run to hug their loved ones. And, that’s gratifying.

Christopher Buck: Do you think the movie really expresses the need, the human need to connect with each other?

David Frankel: Yeah. That’s what I think Howard is missing. You know, he has withdrawn so much. And grief can do that. You know, grief can make you–you know, can drive you mad. And we’ve known that, you know, for hundreds–you know, Shakespeare wrote about it.

And here you have a character who is so withdrawn that I think it’s not just a detail that he doesn’t have a phone anymore. He is not functioning at work, he is not he is divorced. He has given up everything, every connection in his life. And that’s ultimately what the story is about, is it’s not just bringing him back into the light, but what does that mean?

You know, that means, forcing him to reconnect. And so, the scheme that his colleagues develop to make that happen is wacky and funny but also quite beautiful, that he is forced to return to the land of the living.

Christopher Buck: The writing to the concepts of, Time, Love, and Death is a very interesting and hopeful way to him to deal or to address his grief.

David Frankel: Yeah. I think that not all of us have lost a child. Not all of us have had a serious loss, even at some time in our lives. But, this idea of appealing to a higher power, of reaching out to the universe to provide guidance or some answers, some solace in times of trouble that seems like a universal idea. And all tribute to Allan Loeb, the writer, for creating this device of writing and venting and to these abstract notions.

Christopher Buck: All right. You seem to have some fun with the characters that or the personification of the abstract constructs of Time, Love, and Death. How did you go about–what was in your mind when you crafted them like that?

David Frankel: YI think that the idea that he wanted to have actors play Love–that he wanted to deal with the themes of Love, Time, and Death. I think that having them be–those ideas be personified by actors, was his device. And then, the fun for us was, “Well, who are those actors?” “What are their character traits?”

And, for example, Helen Mirren, I think, does a brilliant job of really focusing on playing a woman who has spent decades in the shadows aspiring to be an actress in the East Village in New York and finally getting her big moment. As she says, you know: “The role of my life for an audience of one.”

And I thought, the same for Keira Knightley. It is sort of easy to drift into abstractions.

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But, she is playing a character named Amy who is an actress who is also, you know, struggling and also playing for an audience of one. So, that’s just filling in the details of who those actors were and putting aside the abstract ideas was much easier for all of us.

Christopher Buck: Which of the three do you think, those concepts, of those actors, had the biggest impact on the message you were trying to convey?

David Frankel: Well, in some ways, Death seems to be the most well-rounded character in the movie. She has the best sense of humor, and she is the most confident and ultimately, you know, the most powerful. But, the one who seems to make the biggest change in Howard’s life, and maybe in all our lives, is Love.

She says, “Don’t give up on me,” to Howard because he has kind of rejecting it. He said goodbye to Love forever. And she beseeches him, “Don’t give up on me.” And I think that’s the most impactful for all of us is to always remember that, you know, if we have Love, we often don’t need anything else to keep going.

Christopher Buck: Yes, I agree. I certainly am looking forward to this. You mentioned it’s the fleeting moments like a sunset, or a child’s smile is what ties everything together between the three things.

David Frankel: Yeah, for sure, that the moments are important. But, the people in our lives, our love for them is probably even more important.

Christopher Buck: I have got one last question for you. You were referring to Collateral Beauty as those fleeting moments in between the big things in life; is there one particular scene in the movie, Collateral Beauty, that personifies your ideal of collateral beauty in the film?

David Frankel: Yes, and, it comes in a moment near the end of the movie where Will’s character is in a flashback, playing with his child. And I won’t even go into a lot of detail about it. But, it was an improvised moment between Howard, between Will and this very young six-year-old actress.

And they found a moment of connection that was so natural and so surprising to all of us, but especially to Will, that his laugh of surprise is so genuine. And his love for her at that moment, this little girl that he had only met a couple of times, seemed so genuine and real.

And so, it worked both as a moment of collateral beauty for all of us making the movie but also, within the movie a moment we were able to dramatize a moment of collateral beauty for the character, Howard. That is one of the most memorable moments of making the movie for me.

Christopher Buck: Well, I will specifically be on the lookout for that to share that with you.  Thank you so much for sharing this gift with everyone and for taking the time to speak with us.

David Frankel: My pleasure.  And thank you for your enthusiasm. I hope you love it.

Christopher Buck: I have no doubt whatsoever.

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