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MillimeterFade to Black: Marc Abraham, Director
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
With a successful track record as a movie producer (The Road to Wellville, Thirteen Days, and Children of Men, among others), Marc Abraham chose a small movie about the legal and emotional battles of an eccentric inventor to serve as his directorial debut. Flash of Genius tells the true-life story of Bob Kearns, played by Greg Kinnear, who fought the Ford Motor Company for decades over his invention of the intermittent windshield wiper. Abraham had no pressing agenda to direct generally, but for years, he had been trying personally to make this specific film, based on a 1993 New Yorker article by John Seabrook, due to his love of the story's themes. So, he says, “I never attached anyone else to direct it.”
Abraham brought to the project the benefit of years of experience working with some of the world's leading directors — including Alan Parker, Tony Scott, Alfonso Cuarón, Sam Raimi, and Norman Jewison. He also had a crucial creative and emotional partner in cinematographer Dante Spinotti. Those relationships played a major role in helping Abraham frame his transition from producer to director.
“What I picked up from being around such talented directors was mainly their tenacity and dedication to the vision they had for their films,” Abraham says. “They showed me that no detail is too small to ignore, and every day, it is up to you [the director] to be the person with vision and provide a guide for moving toward that vision. That work ethic and creative vision is what I learned from the directors I worked with, more than technique. For that, I've been more of a student of film, and have been influenced as much by a Woody Allen or a Sidney Lumet.”
Meanwhile, the award-winning Spinotti served as Abraham's hands-on mentor, friend, and creative partner. “I had worked with Dante before as a producer, and always felt he was among the world's best cinematographers — one of the great artists of our time,” Abraham says. “But he was [also] a role model for me. I had talked to him over dinner about two or three years ago about doing this picture, if it happened, and he told me he would love to do it.
“He completely understood the themes and look I was envisioning, and sympathized with them and the need to focus on the emotional aspect of those things. He obviously was primarily concerned with the look of the movie, but I was so impressed with his intelligence and instincts that I made him wear earphones and listen to dialogue, and asked his advice on other things. He joked that I made him work harder than other directors.”
The main visual focus was to build the period look for the piece, which largely takes place in the 1970s, within the context of Abraham's desire to avoid having what he calls “a fetish about [the period look].” They used films that were made during the 1970s as their guide, rather than more modern period work, with Alan Pakula's All the President's Men (1976) being a prime influence.
Spinotti talked Abraham into shooting exteriors on Kodak Vision2 50D (5201) and Vision2 250D (5205) stock and interiors with Panavision's Genesis digital camera system. The limited-budget feature would then benefit logistically and financially from the combination, capturing a 35mm-formatted image and depth of field via the Genesis sensor, and using the same Primo prime lenses, 35mm spherical lenses, and Primo zooms for both film and digital image capture.
“I admit I didn't have a lot of detailed technical knowledge, but Dante showed me what it would look like, and I respect him so much that, if he felt so strongly about it, I wasn't going to say no,” Abraham says. “The truth is, he treated me as though I were David Lean, even though it was my directorial debut.”
