Ìý German director Wim Wenders maintains a fascination with the American West in Don't Come Knocking. He collaborated with writer Sam Shepard two decades previously for the acclaimed Paris, Texas, but their return to the metaphorical dustbowl was "less convincing" to film aficionados this time around. It didn't help that Shepard also chose to star as the movie cowboy in a midlife crisis.
Raising The Curtain
In a featurette recorded at the New York premiere, Wenders along with Jessica Lange and onscreen son Gabriel Mann take part in a Q&A. The director's dry sense of humour serves him well here, referring to the location as "a remote planet called Utah", and later seeks penitence for asking Lange and Mann to shoot an intense confrontation scene before they'd even met. Mann recalls "flipping out" at the notion and "banging on the walls and cranking music" to get himself keyed up for the scene, but when Lange asked him to come to her trailer and run through the lines she immediately melted him with a kiss and a hug. There are a couple of good anecdotes, but it's hardly a probing analysis of the film.
The Sundance featurette is a similar affair with Wenders this time joined by Mann and Sam Shepard to introduce the film. This footage is interspersed with interviews from location, but these are short on substance. It's only worth noting that the film took five years to make due to financial problems and general agonising over the script. Here, Wenders gives us a little window into Shepard's creative process, explaining that he works on a typewriter under the director's own watchful eye. Unfortunately, despite having so many films and plays to his credit, Shepard is a man of few words. He shifts around uncomfortably at the microphone and tells festivalgoers, "I think we should just show it."
Behind The Door
A five-minute interview with Wim Wenders and Eva Marie Saint is hardly worth the bother except that it offers the director a chance to sum up his approach to filmmaking. "I work from a sense of place," he says, adding that he prioritises characters over story because, "Usually actors are victims of the plot." Not surprisingly, Marie Saint is full of praise for the quirky German - after all, she's sitting right next to him. "I could sit around for hours listening to your compliments," he gushes. Well, that makes one of us.
Wenders is on good form for the commentary with a nice balance of behind-the-scenes dish and technical trivia ("We used Super 35mm cameras with anamorphic Hawk lenses"). He recalls his first meeting with Eva Marie Saint who apparently is a bit of a speed demon in her Mercedes despite a sideline in designing safety-first bumper stickers, eg 'Get off the phone, or get off the road!' Later, the director talks about a drawn-out tussle with Shepard over the casting of Sarah Polley's role. Apparently Shepard wrote her as a "half-blood Indian" so casting a blonde actress really rubbed him up the wrong way.
The commentary is the only place you'll get a decent feel for the way this movie was designed and conceived. With limited contributions from the cast and lack of direct behind-the-scenes access, only die-hard Wenders fans need wipe their feet on the welcome mat.
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