Q&A with Billy Ray: The Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker on How Donald Trump Changed How He Makes Art
The writer-director with a journalist's heart talks telling true stories, the power of Hollywood to shape global narratives, and how the 2016 election transformed him.
Writer-director Billy Ray and I first met over lunch almost eight years ago, not long after he was nominated for Best Screenplay for CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (2013) at the 2014 Academy Awards. His was a career I admired because of how comfortable he seemed to be shifting back-and-forth between writing big-budget films such as FLIGHTPLAN (2005) or THE HUNGER GAMES (2012) and smaller, more intimate films he often directed, too, such as SHATTERED GLASS (2003) and BREACH (2007). This narrative agility has continued in the years since Billy and I last broke bread together, with titles as massive in Hollywood scope as GEMINI MAN (2019) and TERMINATOR: DARK FATE (2019) duking it out with smaller, more intimate real-world stories no less impressive in scope like RICHARD JEWELL (2019) and, most recently, the impressive “THE COMEY RULE” (2020) — which he both wrote and directed.
When Billy agreed to catch up over a conversation about his art, I was most keen to dissect these two sides to his career and, maybe more so, how his political activism since the 2016 election has impacted the evolution of his work. It turns out a family passion for journalism, instilled in him when he was but a babe, has shaped much of his life and career and, since Donald Trump’s political ascendancy, driven him to dramatically reimagine his role as a storyteller. Today, art has become a powerful tool to save American democracy for Billy.
We get into all this and more in the interview below, which will be followed by (handpicked by Billy) scene from “THE COMEY RULE” — the true story of FBI Director James Comey’s influence on the ’16 election and his downfall after Trump’s election — so be sure to stick around to read these script pages.
COLE HADDON: In personal emails, I think I’ve well-established my admiration for both your talents and political commitment. What I’d like to do is use this conversation to better understand how you developed into the artist you are and, given your activism, explore the argument that all art is political through the lens of your own work. I suppose I should just start by asking you if you agree with that argument.
BILLY RAY: I don't know if all art is political, but I know that all of my art is – and that's been true ever since Trump was elected. Since then, it has been intolerable to me to write anything that doesn't in some way reflect America back to itself. That election flattened me. I couldn't eat or sleep. I cried every day for six weeks. It was a mess. But it galvanized me, too, got me to throw myself into politics – specifically into teaching Democrats how to sound less like Democrats, so they can make arguments that Independent voters can actually hear.
I don't know if all art is political. But I know that all of my art is – and that's been true ever since Trump was elected.
CH: I’m curious what Democrats are getting wrong.
BR: [Barack] Obama had a great story. Trump's story was solid, too, albeit wildly dishonest: "I'm a businessman. I'll run this country like a business." Hillary [Clinton]'s story seemed to be: "My husband cheated on me, but I hung in there because I wanted to be president." I know that's a simplification, and not at all what she was saying... but that's the story America was feeling. And it was a turnoff. That, and the fact that her campaign charged $10 for Hillary lawn-signs in Michigan. Good God was that dumb.
CH: Is the solution you propose to Democrats derived from skills you developed as a storyteller?
BR: Yes. Politicians need to learn the basics of storytelling. I try to provide that for them. More importantly, they need to learn how to locate their audience emotionally.
CH: I’m going to come back to how political your art has become. But first, tell me about your childhood. Facts are nice, but how does it feel in your memory of it?
BR: I grew up in the Valley. My parents divorced when I was four. So, I lived in an apartment on Balboa Blvd. with my mother and sister. Saw my father on weekends. Watergate was formative for me. I was the kid who ran home after school in third grade to watch the Senate and House hearings as the Nixon presidency collapsed. In our home, [Bob] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein were heroes, which gave me a love of journalism and a firm belief in its critical role in our democracy. I think that's why I like telling true stories so much
CH: Did you come from a family that had a passion for the arts? What I’m getting at is, would a biographer trace an easy line from how you grew up to the screenwriter you are today?
BR: My father was a literary agent, represented some brilliant screenwriters and directors. He begged me not to go into showbiz. Begged. One day when I was nineteen, having just sold something for the first time — an episode of “THE JETSONS”! — I walked into his office and told him I was going to become a screenwriter. He crooked a finger and said, "Come with me."
Back then, literary agencies had rooms set aside to hold the scripts of their clients. Giant shelves, crammed with drafts. My father pulled out the shooting script for ORDINARY PEOPLE — written by his client, the late great Alvin Sargent — and handed it to me and said, "Here. Do this." That's where he was setting the bar, and I've been trying to hit it ever since. So, yes, I think a biographer could draw that line.
My father pulled out the shooting script for ORDINARY PEOPLE – written by his client, the late great Alvin Sargent – and handed it to me and said, "Here. Do this." That's where he was setting the bar.
CH: After that advice, how do you think your father feels about how you’re doing?
BR: My father is extremely proud of my career. I send him everything I write.
CH: I’m glad to hear he’s still with us and you get to continue to share that part of your life with him.
CH (cont’d): If someone were to look at your filmography, they would identify a shift in your produced work starting with SHATTERED GLASS in 2003, which was a biographical drama about disgraced journalist Stephen Glass who committed plagiarism at the NEW REPUBLIC throughout the nineties. You’ve continued to write commercial films since then, often quite large ones, but just as often you’ve had hard dramas produced, many with political slants, culminating with “THE COMEY RULE” in 2020. These hard dramas also feel very personal to me. Careers are launched in many different ways, so I’d like to hear more about the story behind this “pivot” in 2003 that seems to have resulted in this bifurcated filmmaking career.
BR: The first twelve to thirteen years of my career were a complete embarrassment to me. I had gotten a few things made, but nothing I was proud of. And I felt ashamed that I'd contributed nothing to the industry that was supporting me. Then came SHATTERED GLASS, which changed everything. It was the kind of story I felt authentic writing. It said things I wanted to say. And it showed me what kinds of things I should be working on.
All the true stories that have followed — BREACH, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS, RICHARD JEWELL, “THE COMEY RULE” — all came from that same impulse. It goes back to loving journalism, and to wanting to fuse that with moviemaking. That's the true north for me. It turns out, I have a lot to say about our country, and democracy, and what makes the American experiment so vital. Movies let me do that.
CH: I’ve heard you talk about your passion for journalism elsewhere; maybe it was over that lunch we had, Jesus, seven or eight years ago now. You’ve referenced it again here a few times, too. Is there another dimension where you’re vigorously covering American politics as a journalist today rather than making films? I think what I’m getting at is, was there a fork in the road for you and why did you choose TV/film over the Fourth Estate?
BR: I went to Northwestern University specifically to be a journalist, started in the famous Medill School of Journalism there. My freshman year, fall quarter, I took my first journalism class. It remains the only "C" I ever got in college. The teacher absolutely hated me, hated the way I wrote, thought it was wayyyyyy too dramatic. She said to me, "You will never be a writer."
CH: [Laughter] I think she missed the mark a bit.
BR: Not long after that, I decided I'd lean into screenwriting instead, and I transferred home to UCLA.
I love the research. It makes me feel so good to learn how things actually unfolded, to know what truly motivated Richard Jewell or Comey or Glass or Robert Hanssen or Captain Phillips.
CH: Research plays a major part in many of these projects. For example, “THE COMEY RULE”, the scope of that undertaking, must’ve broken you. I imagine the journalist in you still gets a workout all the same.
BR: I love the research. Love. It makes me feel so good to learn how things actually unfolded, to know what truly motivated Richard Jewell or Comey or Glass or Robert Hanssen or Captain Phillips. I always write treatments before I write FADE IN. Those treatments include all the research I've done – all the interviews, all the reading, everything. The treatment for “THE COMEY RULE” was 144 pages. No, it wasn't exhausting, at all. It was inspiring. Made me feel like I could write that world with authenticity.
CH: There are many kinds of screenwriters and many kinds of approaches to true stories. Facts, in some surreal way, can even get in the way of the truth sometimes. In your case, this research you’re doing, this journalism scratch you’re itching to prep your stories, involves real people and, often real people you’ve developed relationships with. What are the challenges of telling the true stories you do, such as “THE COMEY RULE”, and what are your personal rules about how to treat your projects based on real events and people?
BR: Yes, telling stories about real people poses some limitations. You can't make things up. But these obstacles are far outweighed by the benefits of examining actual lives and events. Real people are so fascinating, so idiosyncratic, so rich in human detail. They say things that are vastly more interesting than any dialogue I might fashion. Also, and hugely, they're so magnetic for actors. Actors love being able to talk to and learn from the people they play.
Real people are so fascinating, so idiosyncratic, so rich in human detail. They say things that are vastly more interesting than any dialogue I might fashion.
CH: I have to ask, what’s the strangest bit of feedback you’ve received from someone you depicted onscreen?
BR: I once met Stephen Glass at a party, two years after SHATTERED GLASS had been released. We sat down and talked for about a half-hour, and have since become friends.
CH: That’s remarkable.
BR: His feedback wasn't strange at all, but it was, of course, entirely surreal to be talking to him. I just wanted to know if he felt I had gotten the story right.
CH: And?
BR: He said that I had.
CH: What do you think the arts — film and TV — what do you think they afford you and unique power to effect change that journalism or maybe even a late-in-life career change to some sort of political consultant wouldn’t provide?
BR: Try this: I ask you what happened to Apollo 13. What comes to mind, instantly? Ron Howard's movie. If I were to ask you, "What do you know about Woodward and Bernstein?" Bang. There's ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN – vivid and indelible. Ditto — forgive me — CAPTAIN PHILLIPS. Movies have that power. They become the narrative. How many stories on Breitbart can you say that about?
CH: I’m going to get wordy here, so excuse me, but I think readers need some context for what I’m about to bring up. The Hollywood landscape has changed substantially over the past twenty years, with the independent studios that used to make smaller, more incisive films shuttering and the studios shifting to bigger, more IP-driven films that typically don’t bear any relationship to what’s happening in the world today. I work a lot in Europe and Australia, too, and I can say these markets, just like America, love to discourage development of anything politically controversial in favor of what I call “neutered themes” most of us agree on anyway. Consequently, I struggle to find films and TV that adequately tackle the greatest challenges of our day – such as a “COMEY RULE”.
Do you think the appetite for bold work that holds a real mirror up to America and the world about authoritarianism, climate change, COVID, systemic racism – do you think there’s a real appetite for that kind of storytelling from the wider audience anymore, or is this a matter of corporations avoiding divisive issues and leaving the world without its most effective “truth teller” on the job?
People really do want to be entertained in ways that are challenging and illuminating. They want art that reflects life as it actually is.
BR: A week before “THE COMEY RULE” aired, the head of the network called my producer and said, "Just want to warn you, no one is going to see our show. It's not tracking at all. We're still proud we made it, but there's just no interest out there. I'm sorry." Then, “THE COMEY RULE” had the biggest debut of a Showtime limited series by a factor of four.
Yes, there is a very real appetite out there for content with a point of view.
Will American media companies bet on that? Probably not. They suffer from a timidity that is borderline pathological. Movie-studios are deathly afraid of the streamers, and have decided — for the moment — to make blockbusters and little else. But I believe that will change, because eventually the marketplace will dictate that it is tired of having so few options. And people really do want to be entertained in ways that are challenging and illuminating. They want art that reflects life as it actually is. We just have to deliver it in a way that doesn't feel like we're asking people to eat their vegetables. That's the challenge. It's also the gift.
CH: What I worry about a lot is what happens to society during the interim when art isn’t adequately reflecting life as it actually is, when the biggest mover of culture, the biggest potential “truth sayer” in the world — the moving image Hollywood produces — abdicates its role as a mirror for too long. In that void, however temporary it might be, have people instead turned to other media — whether that’s reality-bending news channels or social media — to understand the world? It feels to me they have.
BR: Hollywood has always played an outsized role in shaping American values. No one under fifty would know this, but the broadcast of "ROOTS" changed racial attitudes in a hugely impactful way in this country. NETWORK changed how we look at television. And so on. When Hollywood abdicates that role, there's a vacuum. Things like Fox News fill it, in a dangerous way. And then we all pay the price for our industry's cowardice.
If I write a script, and someone reads it and says, "This is the smartest script I've ever read,” I have failed, 100%. I don't want to reach people's brains, I want to reach their hearts.
CH: My early career was…complicated. I tried to be an activist on the page, but I never quite found the balance between my convictions and the art of it, especially given the fact that I was primarily writing big-budget features meant to spawn franchises. That only came later when I stopped writing such big films. As a storyteller, how do you protect against, I suppose, yourself when you write? Your passion, your rage. Because there is, after all, always the risk of creating propaganda rather than art.
BR: Job One is to move people. That's it. Screenwriting is an intellectual exercise intended to elicit an emotional response. You have to make the audience care. Anything else is bullshit, I think. That's true of movies big and small. If I write a script, and someone reads it and says, "This is the smartest script I've ever read,” I have failed, 100%. I don't want to reach people's brains, I want to reach their hearts. If I do that, I can infuse the piece with all kinds of my own personal beliefs, and no one will mind. But the most important thing is to ask yourself, "What is the simple, emotional journey?" Nothing else matters.
You can find Billy Ray on Twitter.
Billy was also generous enough to share some pages from “THE COMEY RULE’s” second episode for educational purposes. This particular scene is of a politically dangerous dinner FBI Director James Comey and Donald Trump shared at the White House.
When you read this scene, note how Billy drives the entire scene with conflict to create a kind of existential nightmare. It’s Comey’s integrity, his sense of his own personal decency — honesty is a word that keeps coming up — versus Trump’s lack of all these things, the menace he exudes, the implicit danger of every word he utters. Neither ever say what they specifically mean, one too afraid to speak plainly and the other accustomed to only speaking in non-threat threats.
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