The Sail & The Anchor

Or, When to Be Flexible and When to Take a Stand

In my background reading for my post on the change screenwriter David Seltzer made for the film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, I came across this anecdote about Gene Wilder’s casting as Wonka.

Apparently, the studio had seen a bunch of actors for Wonkad and found all of them not just wrong, but actively bad. And then they saw Wilder.

Wanting him for the role desperately, they agreed to a strange rider in his contract. In it, Wilder made a demand related to the performance—that when Wonka first comes out of the factory to meet the kids, he walks gingerly at first, seeming either infirm or injured, before slowing falling forward into this:

His vision for Wonka depended on the children, and by extension the audience, never being able to pin Wonka down. Wilder said, “because from that point on, no one will be able to tell whether I am telling the truth or I am lying. That’s the part I liked. You never knew whether I was telling the truth to the kids or I was lying.” Director Mel Stuart was puzzled and asked if Wilder was serious when he said if he couldn’t be allowed this choice. Wilder said he was.

And for this then-seven-year-old, Wilder was bang on. I wanted to believe the jovial clown-uncle Wonka was the real one, but I could never be sure. Was Augustus Gloop in trouble in the tube or not? Was the shoe going into the cauldron a joke or not? Were the kids, and by extension myself, in safe, if mischievous hands? Or were they in danger? Wilder wanted the answer to be “Yes.”

It’s an inspired insight but also a limiting one. Wilder took agency from the director and editor and fixed them with his vision. Perhaps if in the moment or afterwards Wilder saw dailies or a cut and believed his take wasn’t working, he would have relented.

If you are of the “there is a lesson here” persuasion, let me interrupt you with a different anecdote. A couple of weeks ago, my partner Michelle sent me this Instagram reel (don’t worry if you don’t want to click out to it, I will sum it up on the other side):

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A post shared by @vhsrevolution

Walken giving Spielberg a bunch of different options for this critical monologue in Catch Me If You Can is just downright mesmerizing. For someone who is relentlessly caricatured as “Christopher Walken,” there is delightful, even moving, variety in these takes. Spielberg eventually has to convince him at the end that he has given him enough, way more than enough even.

This stands in considerable contrast to Wilder’s determination. The reasons for each strategy matter less to me than the fact that they both worked. A strong, early (legally-binding!) conviction worked. A “take of these the one you best think fits” approach worked. The art of it is figuring out which to use—and when.

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I struggle with this in most new projects. Which parts shouldn’t move because they are indeed crucial to success? What can go into the “we’ll figure it out later” pile? A creative intransigence can sink something that has potential, just as a lack of clarity can lead to a rudderless muddle.

I am not going to pretend to have an answer or even to venture a provisional heuristic. I find it a perpetual conundrum and often a source of real paralysis.

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I forced my son to watch Master & Commander as our dad/kid movie night pick the other night, both because I thought he would like it (he did) and because I wanted to watch it again. Turns out, this about early 19th Century maritime warfare hinges on deciding when to drop anchor and when to raise the mainsail (the remainder is about how slippery the French are). Sail maintenance—lower this, raise that—is more dynamic in chasing enemy ships or weathering storms, but deciding when to stop to repair, refit, and replenish is equally important and fraught. If Master & Commander were scored like The Knight’s Tale with a modern soundtrack, there would have been a strong case for The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

The emotional climax of the movie is when Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) decides to drop anchor and pause his pursuit of his quarry, the privateer vessel Archeron, to give his best friend and ship’s doctor, Dr. Stephen Maturin, a sporting chance at surviving a bullet wound. The soldier and sailor in him knows he is giving up a rare chance, but the friend and fellow in him cannot proceed. Maturin, who had previously been roundly dressed-down for questioning Aubrey’s dedication to the pursuit at any cost, cannot quite believe that his friend/captain shirked his duty on his behalf.

Maturin has a chance to return the favor later in the movie, in a quite elegant inversion. The naturalist-doctor is enjoying his promised reprieve of specimen-hunting among the heretofore undocumented strange species of the Galapagos Islands, when over the crest of the hill he spies the Archeron, sailing in a nearby channel, oblivious to the presence of Captain Jack and his HMS Surprise nearby. Lowering his head resignedly, he knows it’s time to scurry to the ship, unfurl, and move—and give up his chance at scientific renown.

“Dammit. My devotion to that glorious rascal Captain Jack compels me to loose these most unusual creatures perchance to murder some sea-going Frenchmen.”

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I so want to synthesize these two moves, but the farthest I can get is to metaphorize them, and even that suggests a tidiness I do not feel.

I do find, however, my mind unexpectedly drifting back to the Hollywood executives who cast Wilder as Wonka. Even though no one reading a newsletter about creativity is inclined to credit the suits, if there is a co-existence to be found for The Anchor and The Sail, they might have found it. Their anchor was their belief that Wilder was the right actor—and their sail was then to let go of total control of what that choice meant.

For Walken, I would guess that his anchor was a desire to do whatever he could to help Spielberg make the best movie possible. If that meant in this scene he was a rakish story-teller, great. If it meant he was a blubbering mess, also fine. And so when Spielberg finally said “enough,” he could stop. The number and variety of takes weren’t showmanship or indecision. They represented the natural outcome of his creative anchor.

Can this help in the process of making something? Maybe.

Here is what I am going to think about the next time I am trying to figure out whether to dig in or to keep noodling:

• What is the heart of this?

• What about this do I feel the strongest about? How can I protect that?

• What parts can be in service to that but also be figured out later? Or altered? Or surrendered entirely?

• What brainstorming or experimentation or indecision is spurred by feeling that I haven’t cracked it yet and I do actually need to keep the sail up and what is the product of fear or ignorance or lack of belief in the project?

• When I am reluctant to retreat, start over, or abandon, is it because I think the idea is still good or is it because I don’t want to lose the work and admit the time I have already spent was wasted?

Progress. Perhaps.