Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

It's tricky for anybody to go from one trade to the next, even in Hollywood, where actors have become producers and/or directors. Try imagining going from fashion designer to filmmaker.

That is the case with Tom Ford, who spent much of the 1990's turning designer brand Gucci into a fashion powerhouse and later on forming his own signature fashion line. Now he plans on bringing his shaking things up to a new medium, the world of film with his debut, an adaptation of the 1964 Christopher Isherwood novel A Single Man.

We asked the 48 year-old fashion designer-turned-newly-minted-filmmaker what made him want to direct a film in the first place.

“Fashion and film are two totally different forms of expression for me," Ford believes, "I love what I do as a fashion designer, but I’ve always thought of what I do as a commercial art, not my art. Some fashion designers are artists and they create things because they have to create them. I enjoy creating something that has to fit in a box and be worn and sold. That’s one type of expression."

"I felt I had to make this movie and I’ve always thought I would be a good storyteller and that I have a lot more to say than what I could put, you know, in a fashion ad or on a runway," he continues, "So it was very important for me to do this and I hope I’m lucky enough to be able to keep doing this every two or three years for the rest of my life, so it’s something I’m really serious about.”

He was highly detailed about how he first fell in love with the original novel of A Single Man

"Well, I read this book when I was 20 years old and at that time, what spoke to me was the character of George," he says, "It was so beautifully written and he seemed so real. I was living in L.A. I was

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

a young actor and I felt like I was going to run into him and I did, because I met Christopher Isherwood not too long after that. A friend of mine was living with David Hockney and I spent a lot of time there. I also did some mescaline and shaved off my right eyebrow in the same house, so that came from my life, that little bit. But, anyway, I then read everything Christopher had written. Fast forward to the future, I was looking for something to make as my first film. First, I had to figure out what I wanted to say. Like, I knew what I was as a fashion designer, but why would anyone want to see a Tom Ford movie. What is that? What does it mean? So it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to say and I had optioned a couple of books and I was developing those projects and read every screenplay in town. Because I'm a fashion designer, people sent me very superficial, slick, beautiful but not a lot of substance things and nothing was speaking to me. And I realized one day, driving to the office, I was thinking about this character, George. I thought about this book often for 25 years. I should just pick it up and read it again."

"It spoke to me in a totally different way," Tom adds, "Being in midlife, reading a story about a man who can't see his future, I had just left a career, I had left Gucci, I had left fashion, something I had put so much energy in. All of a sudden, I didn't have an identity, a voice in contemporary culture, I was struggling, and that was what resonated with me. And also, I've always been a spiritual person and I had neglected that side of my life for a certain period of time, as certainly in the fashion

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

business, one can tend to do, living in the future, but all of us as a culture, and I've been part of it so it's certainly hard for me to criticize that, but as a culture, materialism is fine, as long as we keep it in perspective. The book was so spiritual. The first line of the book is, 'Waking up begins with saying 'am' and 'now'.' and that's the first line of the film. It's about living in the present, appreciating the small things in your life, and really trying to take them in, and connections with people. We have so many 'I's' in the film. This is a guy who has been going through the last eight months of his life not even looking at people. All of a sudden, on this last day, he's looking at people and he's connecting and people are responding to him, too, in a very different way and it's about connection. So, for me, it's about a lot of things that are eternal and timeless. That's why it spoke to me."

Tom also gave us more detail on how his initial interest in film began during his college days when he wanted to be an actor.

"I was an actor. I was at NYU," Ford recounts, "I was seventeen when I was taking an acting class. My acting professor had sent me to see an agent, J. Michael Bloom, who was a TV commercial agent, who gave me my first commercial. I started working a lot. I eventually dropped out of school because I was going to Studio 54 a lot and not doing much homework and writing papers on napkins."

"I moved to LA and lived in LA and worked as an actor and all I ever did was sell product, but I hated it," he continues, "I was too insecure at that period of my life and I never should be on the other side of the camera.

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

I'm too bossy, I think. I wanted fame, I wanted to be there saying, 'Move there, do that.' So I don't know if that answers your question. I have no desire to be on the other side of the camera."

Ford explained to us his reasons why he chose to do a story set in 1962 rather than something more contemporary as his first film.

"The story is what spoke to me and it's funny because I think there's a vogue right now for things said in the early sixties and a lot of people are doing stories on that and keep asking me about what's fascinating about that period," Tom explains, "This book happened to be written in 1964 and set in 1962 and at the moment, it was a real landmark book because of the way it treated a gay relationship in absolutely matter-of-fact way."

"It's such a well-known book and considered such a great work of Christopher Isherwood that it would have felt wrong to move it to another period," he adds, "It could still theoretically take place almost intact together. So it wasn't necessarily the era for me, it was the story."

The film tells the story of a British college professor George Falconer, played by Colin Firth, who must deal with life after the death of his partner Jim, played by Matthew Goode. Tom says that a big part of what the book A Single Man was about for him was feeling invisible.

“I think that George talks about minorities and being invisible, and I think George’s character, who was a gay man in this particular moment, you had to be invisible," he believes, "It wasn’t anything that you could necessarily let the world know. And so, um, it’s a bit of a key word when Jim says to George early on, ‘You’re always saying we’re invisible,’ when he tries to kiss him and George is like, ‘No, no, no, people may see us.’

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

So invisibility is what that particular minority, and some minorities today still have to endure.”

Ford also believes that the relationship between George and Tim in the film, during a time where homosexuality was seen as a deviant, criminal form of behavior in America, is very important, even today as there are still hurdles that the gay community has yet to overcome like marriage and residual homophobia.

“It was very important and it was one reason I wanted to portray the relationship like that," Tom says, "Most of those scenes are not in the book because in the book, we never really see Jim. The scene lying on the sofa with the dogs, that's right out of my life and that's me and my boyfriend. I have to pay him to walk the dog. And I had to pay him 20 bucks. I had to go back and make it five because it's 1962."

"But I still to this day occasionally have a friend that will say something to me about my lifestyle," he adds, "And I’m like, ‘My lifestyle, I live together with somebody I love, we’ve been together 23 years, we make dinner, we have arguments, he has to walk the dog, we go on vacations,' So I don’t know. I think that it was important to just depict that, you know, it’s love, love is love for me.”

We asked Tom if he believed a comment that openly gay actor Rupert Everett made not too long ago that gay people in Hollywood should stay in the closet or risk having a limited career.

“I would love to hope that that’s changing," he believes, "You know, I don’t know, I guess because I live in the rarefied world of New York/L.A./London, I don’t actually ever think about gay/straight, you know. You ask me 10 words to describe myself, you know, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess I’m gay.’ You know? I don’t know. So I don’t think about that."

"I would

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

love and hope that we could come to a moment in time where that wasn’t, you know, defining," Ford continues, "I don’t know. It’s probably a hard question to ask. You’d have to ask actors who are struggling with this. I would like to think it’s not true, but it probably is still true.”

When asked about whether felt the right balance between art and substance, Ford said that this was his most important goal for A Single Man.

"I hope I found the right balance," Tom replies, "I'll take that as I found the right balance, I hope. I think all these things are intuitive. I don't know. I act, and I've always acted in most things in my life, by intuition. When I was editing, editing for me was the big surprise. We shot this for 21 days and we edited it for five months because I didn't really realize how you could make a scene feel completely different and make a story feel completely different. It was like a Rubik's Cube. It was click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, until it just kind of seemed to sit in a way that I couldn't imagine clicking to it in any other way. So I think that's intuition, it's rhythm, it's pacing. In writing it, I was very aware of highs and lows."

"Julianne's character, for example, she's the light in George's life and she's the light in our film," he continues, "Whenever he imagines her, even at the beginning of the movie, when he's talking to her on the phone, everything is flat, but she's in color because that's the way she is in his mind. And I was also conscious that we needed in the middle of this story her in that scene in that likeness, because that's the way that life is. The suicide in that story came from my family and that suicide really took place in my family. It's not

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

in the book and I remember it very vividly, these very dark, comic moments because what the hell are you going to do when these things happen to you in life? Even in your deepest, darkest depression, there is sometimes humor and it's an intuitive balance, I think. I don't want to be specific about it, because many of the people are still alive and kids. But it was exactly that suicide. Someone planned and laid out, cufflinks I had given him, suit I had given him, laid everything out, zipped himself into a sleeping bag, because he didn't want to make a mess."

We asked him Tom whether he was emulating any kind of filmmaking style in particular as his own in the film.

"There were no intentional, actual references except for The Wizard Of Oz, when tap, tap, tap, she turns to color," he answers, "That was quite literal and I meant it to be. But I think if you're someone that loves film, the moment I started making films, of course, I watched films in a completely different way, of filing things away, using different kinds of shots, different kinds of color. Then, I'd like to think that all of that goes into your hard drive, then when you do something, it comes out with a personal stamp."

"But, yes, Stanley Kubrick, Antonoli, one of my favorite movies is one made by Vittorio de Sica called Umberto D," Ford continues, "It's about a man and a dog and there's very little spoken. It is so emotional, so beautiful, and we had those long moments when you had to be intimate with George and there's not a lot of dialogue, which is watching him. Hitchcock is one of my favorite directors, but I have many going back to every period and many different types of film and I think that most films do."

A misunderstanding Tom wanted to clear up with us was that his script of

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

A Single Man, which he co-wrote, being described as "spare".

"See, that's not really true and if you want, I can bring you the script," Ford insists, "I think what they mean was that maybe I was spare in my direction, because actually, I broke every screenwriting rule. I was very descriptive and a lot of it was even written shot-by-shot. We start on the ceiling, we push into George, we ride over his face, we linger. It was very, very descriptive. But in terms of, I think what John Huston said, 'We did our directing of actors when we cast the film.'"

"I had spectacular actors and my job was to give them the security and space to feel that they can perform," he adds, "Colin Firth wants to give the most amazing performance of his life, as does Julianne Moore and Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult So all I had to do was give them general direction, help them with the scene, what's the general intention, block it, technical direction, but then, you have to just make them feel that they can go. And so, I think that's what they maybe meant by 'spare', because I supposed in terms of screenwriting, I wasn't that spare."

Ford says that he felt very comfortable in the director's chair, despite never having directed a film before and feels there are even similar principles in directing a clothing line and directing a film.

"Oh, I wouldn't say give orders," Tom says, "I think confidence is certainly something you can work on. I think I'm actually quite shy and introverted in a lot of ways, which is why I think this movie will come as a surprise to a lot of people. But at the same time, I don't know why, I don't let fear stop me from doing anything. I mean I'm just as afraid of doing things as everyone else, but I think that confidence or drive is something you're

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

born with, I don't know. I've probably been like this since I was a little kid and I've tackled things sometimes that maybe were a little too big for me to accomplish. So I feel lucky and fortunate and very pleased with the result here. It's funny because now everyone says what did you think, everyone was laughing at you. And I didn't even realize it at the time because there's a line about Hollywood that people could nice you to death, like, oh, I want to make a movie, and people would say, that's great. So I had no fear. I was like, oh, absolutely, I'm going to a movie. And now that I've made one, they'll say, how does it feel when everyone was kind of joking and making fun of you that you made this. But it was something that I wasn't aware of."

""When you're working in fashion, too, and people don't realize this, it's collaborative," Tom continues, "What you have to do is have a vision, then you have to work with a team of people to help you realize that vision, then you have to work with the very best of all those people, but you still have to steer them towards your ultimate intention. You're going to think this sounds crazy, that I sound egotistical, but none of it surprised me. I imagined every second as I dreamed, I loved every single moment, and I felt very comfortable and prepared throughout the whole process. Editing surprised me the most just because I didn't understand really what you can do in an editing room and that surprised me, but it was fun and I had a wonderful editor, Joan Sobel, she was terrific."

Some of the people the first-time filmmaker collaborated with were other newbies to film like composer Abel Korzienowski, as well as Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi.

"Abel Korzienowski did such a wonderful job," Ford says, "He's a great young

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

composer. I will never be able to have him again because he'll be too expensive next time. How did I find him? I had been looking and looking and looking for a composer. I had listened to everything in Los Angeles. I lived partially in London and partially in L.A., as we were shooting the movie. I had received every CD from every agent in town. And the woman I was working with as an editor, Joan Sobel, who was working with someone else, said you've got to listen to this young composer's music. At the moment I put it in, I knew he was the right guy we had. His music is so emotional."

"He scored, which is different, because we have some beautiful music in the film by Japanese composer Shigeru Umebayashi, who did the music for Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood For Love, which is beautiful music as well," he adds, "He wasn't able to do the entire film because he was working on other projects. But he did a few very beautiful stand-alone pieces, that's very different than scoring and Abel was able to watch the action and to move with the motion and the action. Music was important to me from the very beginning because the book is an inner-monologue and I had to stray quite a bit in the story to put something visual on the screen that would help you understand what George was thinking. So the music and the shifts in color weighs for us to understand what George was feeling and Abel Korzienowski, who is Polish and lives in Los Angeles, is I think so talented."

Another person new to film that Ford said he enjoyed working with is cinematographer Eduard Grau.

"Another young guy who never had a real feature film before," he notes, "Well, that was complicated and I didn't let him in the room when I was doing the color shifting and I don't think he

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

agreed with that. The visual everybody asked me that because I'm a fashion designer, so they think style matters, but believe it or not, that's why it took me so long to find the right project. This movie, to me, while you can say, on the surface, it was stylish, but I hope that the style was always in support of a story, because style without substance is nothing."

"And the important part of this film for me was the story and the emotion and that was key," Tom adds, "And then, I used style to try and help support that in terms of how these characters are, how they live, what they do, and this also, this man thinks, his last day on the planet. In the beginning, everything is flat, there is no color, we're not seeing, and as he moves through the day and he's pulled by the beauty of the world, he starts to really look and so things become overly lush and almost hyper-real because he thinks it's the last time he's going to see these things."

Finally, we asked Tom if he had any comment on the immense critical acclaim the film has received, including being nominated for a Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, as well as possible Oscar buzz.

“Live by the buzz, die by the buzzsaw," he remarks, "It's wonderful that people are responding to the film. I love the movie. I'm so proud of it. I'd be silly to tell you that I didn't care if people were talking and saying nice things about a potential award and anyone that says that to you is probably lying. I'm really proud of the movie and that's the most important thing to me."

"I hope life on a Tom Ford film set feels fun," Ford continues, "I think that everyone, because we didn't have a lot of money, as a set, we shot it in 21 days, they

Tom Ford

"Far More Than Fashion"

did this because they wanted to do it and they were happy and in love with the project. I think that's also part of my job, to keep. There's no room on a Tom Ford film set, I hope there's many more, for divas in any way, shape, or form, whether you are on a crew, whether you are an actor, everyone needs to work together, so I think we created an environment or I created an environment, all of us together, where people were all pulling for the same thing and helping each other."