Tracy Letts is a Tony-Award winning actor and a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. He’s starred in Oscar-nominated films and earned WGA Award nominations, but it appears he’s finally encountered the deflating experience of Hollywood studio meddling. Thank the Disney/20th Century Fox merger, sadly.
Letts was brought on to adapt A.J. Finn’s novel “The Woman in the Widow,” the first time he’s ever tackled another writer’s work. The film was directed by Joe Wright and features an all-star cast including Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Tyree Henry. Originally, it was scheduled for an October 2019 release. After Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, however, the studio decided to send it back to the editing room and push its opening to May 15, 2020. The whole process ended up not being that enjoyable for Letts.
“It kind of sucked. It was really hard. It took a long time. It was harder than I thought it was going to be,” Letts admits. “I read the book and I thought, oh this will make a good movie, I can do this job. And then I got into the weeds of it. I was like, oh shit, this is hard. And I was also working with a lot of producers, a director and they had a lot of notes and it was hard. Now I eventually wrote a movie that we were all pleased with. And we shot that film and we all looked at it and we were all pleased with it. And then they showed it to an audience in Paramus, New Jersey, and they didn’t like it. And so there have been some rewrites and re-shoots that I didn’t have anything to do with. So we’ll see what happens.”
As to whether Letts is disappointed in that fact? Well…
“I suppose. Like I say, I felt we made the movie we set out to make, so I’m a little confused by that,” Letts says. “But it’s a thriller and people have certain expectations about the way a thriller works. So I don’t know, I haven’t seen the redone version and we’ll see what it looks like. You always try to choose those things carefully because it is going to take a lot of time out of your life. So you want to choose those projects very carefully, but there’s only so much you can do to safeguard against intangibles, things you don’t know are coming down down the road.”
The good news is Letts is much happier about another 20th Century Fox film he’s in, James Mangold’s box office and critical hit “Ford v. Ferrari.” The true-life period piece finds Matt Damon and Christian Bale portraying auto legends Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles, respectively. The engineer and race car driver were recruited by Ford Motor Company to try and beat the famed Ferrari race cars at the 1966 Le Mans endurance race. Letts plays Henry Ford II, the company’s CEO who has little patience for failure. And despite the fact it’s a substantial role, he didn’t feel the need to do that much research thanks to a “great” screenplay.
“Everything I needed to know was in the script,” Letts says. “Now having said that, I read a couple of books. I watched some video. I watched the documentary of Le Mans 66 that the Ford Motor Company had commissioned. I found some press conferences of Henry Ford II. I watched him, I listened to him, but I talked to Jim Mangold about it. He said, ‘We don’t need to do an impersonation of Henry Ford II.'”
Letts adds, “Nobody remembers what he, I mean it’s not part of the public consciousness in that way, so we don’t need to hue to that real-life figure that closely and Jim and I both agree, we’re not making a documentary anyway”
And often, history doesn’t always help your narrative. One of the film’s more memorable scenes features Shelby taking Ford on a ride in one of the new race cars. In the movie, Ford can’t handle the speed of the vehicle and is blown away by the experience.
“That story of him being spun around the track in the car is true. Ken Miles, not Carroll Shelby, but Ken miles actually put him in the car and drove him around the track for fun,” Letts says. “[But] Henry Ford II had a bit of a lead foot himself and had a great time. But it’s not as interesting dramatically as what we have in the film obviously.”
The production also turned Letts into something of a fan of his director.
“Jim’s really something, he yells, he’s loud, he yells, he’s profane, he’s a yeller,” Letts says. “I’ve worked with those people, with people who scream and stuff on the set before. You can tell the difference between people who do it out of insecurity, they don’t know what to do. And somebody like Jim, who’s just excited and it’s just his way of communicating.”
He adds, “Jim almost gives the impression that he’s like a grip or a teamster or something. He worked his way up through to the ranks. But the truth is, his dad’s a famous painter and he went to CalArts. I mean Jim’s like a film school nerd. He’s very inspiring. He’s an inspiring leader. I would go into battle with him.”
There’s another film Letts appears in this awards season, “Little Women,” and he notes that its writer and director, Greta Gerwig is “the opposite of James. I mean, personality, not in terms of her skill level, but personality.” He also wants to make it clear he’s not on screen as much as the trailer would lead you to believe.
He first met Gerwig on the set of Todd Solondz’s 2016 comedy “Wiener-Dog.” She eventually asked him to play the father in her award-winning directorial breakout, “Lady Bird.” When she sent him the script for “Little Women” he wasn’t even a part of the film yet.
“We’d become friends and she wanted to get my comments on the script. I didn’t have any, it’s a fucking masterpiece,” Letts says. “And then she asked me to play a part and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t care what the part is. I’ll be a gaffer, I’ll do whatever you want me to do’ because she’s a great artist and a delightful person and people like to be where Greta is. She runs a great warm set. It’s a lovely place to be and to work.”
And, in case you were curious, it’s the writer in Letts that helps him inform what projects to appear on screen in or not.
“I don’t do it if it’s got two drafts to go. I mean I just don’t. That’s all I can tell. I’m no good at predicting anything else,” Letts says. “But I can read a script and know if a script is good or not. And that’s the only way I can make a decision about whether or not I’m going to do a project. So, if you see me in it, it’s because I thought the script was good.”
“Ford v. Ferrari” is now playing nationwide. “Little Women” opens nationwide on Christmas Day.
