Writer / director Rebecca Miller feels that THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE is an ancient story told with a contemporary sensibility. "The themes of the movie are both in the future and in the past," she says. "Myth or Fairy Tale--those aren't the right words to describe this. But somewhere in there is where the story resides. But at the same time, because it's been shot in this extremely realistic, almost voyeuristic way--it goes against that. It's not stylized in any way, so that gradually the feeling of necessity that the characters have--as crazy as their journey becomes-- my hope is the audience will feel that that's the only way.
"THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE functions on a lot of levels," says Miller. "It's the story of the unraveling of Jack, watching him come apart in this very moving way. It's also about the ascent of Rose and how she discovers that she has an identity that's separate from her father's. There are also elements that are very comical, broad tone shifts from one moment to the next, where you are dealing with very poignant subject matter and then suddenly more comical moments. I love trying to incorporate these different elements, as that's what life is to me--one moment you're crying and the next minute you're laughing."
The movie is also about love on very intense levels. "In a sense you could say that the whole movie is about love, even if that includes the kind of love that can deform people," says Miller. "But it's also about forgiveness, and the idea that it's possible."
Another current in the story is young people--like Rose, Rodney, Thaddius and Red Berry--trying to handle the burdens their families have placed on them and move on with their lives. "One of the themes in the movie is that not only do you survive, but there's some kind of knowledge you gather that your parents didn't have," says Miller. "And that there is some kind of moving forward and upward--in a spiral perhaps, not a line. It might feel like repetitive behavior but it's better than that. It's circling the same place, but on a higher level."
Also, THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE is about Jack's commune, which resonates as if it was its own character in the story. "What Jack and Rose are fighting for is the land and the place," says Miller. "It represents a kind of idealism which I don't think is extinct, but it's rare. It represents the idealism of the 60's and early 70's and also of the future, because I think the wish still exists in a lot of young people to make the world a better place."
"It's difficult to be a human being, it's difficult to be in a family, it's difficult to create a family," says Miller. "But within all of that, I think that there is a real optimism that people can recreate themselves in a small way. Not completely redefine themselves or have new personalities, but come to some kind of peace about themselves and know who they are."
Miller began writing the story that became THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE in 1993. "It started with the idea that two of the characters from what would become my first film, "Angela" (1996), were living together in a house in upstate New York," says Miller. "It soon became something completely different--the father and the daughter living on an abandoned commune on an island off the East Coast of the United States. But those two characters and their emotional life were the genesis of the story."
The uniquely intimate relationship between 16-year-old Rose and her father, Jack, forged in isolation from the outside world, became the heart of THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE, but Miller's screenplay was also driven by the awareness that Jack has a fatal disease.
"I was thinking about what it feels like to know that someone you love very much is going to die at some point, a parent in particular," says Miller. "You almost pre-mourn them--you mourn them in advance. It's possible for someone to believe they love someone so much that when that person dies, the person they leave behind is somehow going to be erased, or they won't continue to exist in some way. That was the emotional kernel that started the story for me."
Miller's choice of setting was inspired by her older brother's experiences living on communes in the late sixties. "Even though I was a little kid, I was fascinated by it, by the hopefulness and the wildness of it all," says Miller, "the idea that people were reaching so far out in terms of behaviors and the way they thought they could find a new way of living. And I was interested in how Jack had come from having a commune to having almost no interaction with anyone except his daughter."
In 2003, ten years after she first thought of a story about a father and daughter living in isolation, Miller already had the money to make the THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE with no cast attached. Jonathan Sehring and Caroline Kaplan of IFC Productions committed to making the film based on the script and their previous experience working with Miller and her producer, Lemore Syvan, on "Personal Velocity," Miller's hit second film and winner of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury and Cinematography prizes.
Though she was married to Daniel Day-Lewis, Miller had not written the film with him in mind, and, she says today, "I never thought he would do it."
She cites a number of reasons: Day-Lewis is known for taking a long tIme, sometimes years, between projects, and he'd just finished Scorsese's "Gangs of New York."
She also points out that "The character is that of a man with not much time left to live," Miller explained recently. "Daniel goes so deeply into everything he does, and I knew this role would be such a quagmire of guilt and deep, conflicted feelings for him. He would also have to lose 50-60 pounds, and he was already thin."
Miller and Day-Lewis had met via the movies, at a screening of "The Crucible," in which Day-Lewis had starred. The film was based on the play by Miller's father, Arthur Miller. As they got to know each other Day-Lewis expressed interest in Miller's career as a filmmaker, and she showed him her first film. Years later, Day-Lewis continues to be keenly interested in his wife's work, and was very aware as she prepared to make THE BALLAD OF JACK & ROSE.
"After I got the money to make this film with no cast, I'd said to him 'You're my first choice' and expected him not to do it," Miller says today. "I started making lists of other actors. It took months of him reading the script and thinking about it. But after a while," Miller continues, "he could see himself as this character and he could hear the writing in his head."
The character Day-Lewis would create would indeed be complex and demanding, as complex as any character Miller, whose previous film "Personal Velocity" drew acclaim for her creation of three distinct yet richly drawn women characters, has created so far.
She describes the character of Jack as "An angry utopian with a craving for order on the one hand, and on the other, an anarchist's need to destroy it. He is monstrous and completely loveable at the same time. His need to control every situation is probably what drove the other members of his commune away.
"He also has high moral standards," Miller concludes. "They are almost so high that he can't live in the real world, and he has isolated his daughter so he can control her intake of the modern world. He very purposefully keeps her out of the toxic exterior world, so that when we meet her she's completely un-socialized and has no perspective on relationships.
Miller points out that the film never addresses why the commune broke up, but she and Day-Lewis have a theory. "We don't know why the commune broke up, but most of them do because it's so hard for people to live together. In the case of Jack, I think he's a true utopian, and perhaps he couldn't accept the failures of his fellow human beings. After all, most people are a little bit lazy, and greedy, and Jack probably couldn't stand that."
Miller compares the character of Jack to 60s novelist Ken Keasy, who "had an amazing way of seeing into people and Jack has that magnetism, too. People are intimidated by him and also want to please him."
Once Day-Lewis committed to the role, Miller says he also became involved in other aspects of getting the film made, including casting, location scouting research and, ultimately, putting in long hours of physical labor to build the house his character had built.
The filmmakers searched locations for Jack's commune in various places, including Maine, before deciding on Prince Edward Island, off the east coast of Canada, near New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Says Miller, "I wanted the island to be on the East Coast, but did not want to be locked into any specific region or dialect. I wanted the place to have a slightly universal feel to it."
Production Designer Mark Ricker had only eight weeks to do all the landscaping and build all the structures. "I come from the theatre and design sets for movies," says Ricker, "but to design a house that isn't just a set but something that will actually stand on location and also represent the vision of the main character--that was something I couldn't turn down." Jack and Rose's house is an earth-covered house, so the filmmakers used bulldozers and backhoes to dig out the house's interior. The land at the location was basically flat, so the filmmakers used the earth from the house, plus dozens of truckloads brought in, to create a landscape of rolling hills. They built several other houses, three windmills, plus a greenhouse and a vegetable garden.
Daniel Day-Lewis was an active participant in Ricker's work, not only contributing to the design of the dwellings his character would inhabit, but actually worked on the construction crew. "He came every day, he helped tar the house," says Ricker. "He was here when it wasn't romantic and loved every minute of it and so did we. I think it helped the construction team as much as it helped Daniel in his process."
Miller's early research on communes brought her first to the 60s and 70s communes in the Southwestern US, which she describes as "messier, more haphazard, more collapsing geodesic domes and goats wandering around. But, as the character of Jack evolved, with his scientific mentality, I started looking at earth houses, a tradition that goes all the way back to Scotland. Because Jack is a Scot the earth house seemed organic and right." Miller and her production designer Mark Ricker discovered that there are prototypes being made as prefab earth houses, partly subterranean dwellings that are both ancient and futuristic at the same time.
Miller observes that there were many aspects to the making of THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE that were true pleasures and rare freedoms, such as Day-Lewis' collaboration on some final tweaks to the script and his involvement in casting. Says Miller, "We really fell into step together. We didn't agree on everything, but for the most part we were very much in sync."
Miller and Day-Lewis also loved being able to shoot the film in sequence on one self-contained, stunningly beautiful location.
Miller calls Prince Edward Island "Truly a paradise. Everyone lived in farmhouses. We fell in love with the location, which was totally isolated. The location also meant nobody came to visit the set: no agents, no managers, no bankers, no press. No one knew we were doing this movie, we just did it. And for once I was able to conceive of a place and watch it rise up out of the ground."
Miller has made her two previous feature films with cinematographer Ellen Kuras, and both films have won prizes for cinematography at Sundance. "Rebecca and I have this common language and a very close way of working," says Kuras. "She has a sense of the poetic, a sense of the moment, and I feel that when I move in on a particular shot, she's right there with me--I can feel her speaking in my mind."
"When I make films it's about creating an atmosphere for the actors, where the performances can happen in an atmosphere of freedom and trust," says Miller. "We just want to make sure that the camera is there to witness what they're doing. And Ellen, with her documentary background, her gifts as an artist, and because she's so empathetic--has an instinct for where the heat is in a scene. Her camera will actually be moving and finding things as we go…Ellen and I have an almost symbiotic relationship at this point."
THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE was the first time Miller and Kuras had ever shot a film in continuity. Usually financial constraints make it necessary to link locations and similar weather conditions together. For the former, nearly everything took place in the same setting and for the latter, Miller and Kuras were determined to be flexible. The advantages were obvious--everyone in front of and behind the camera always knew where they were in the story.
About shooting the movie in sequence, says Miller, "I did it for the actors and I did it for me."
Having shot her last film, "Personal Velocity," on digital video, Miller was impressed by the freedom it allowed. Miller and Kuras elected to use Super-16mm instead of 35mm in order to have the flexibility of smaller cameras. Often they worked with two cameras at once, and on occasion used this method to combine several scenes into one long take. "For example, one camera is inside of Rose's room and the other camera is waiting inside of Jack's room waiting for him to come back," says Kuras. "And then I go out into the hallway and get him coming back through the hallway." By reloading one camera while the other camera was turning, Miller and Kuras created situations where the actors could shoot two or three different scenes without stopping, a big change from the typical start-and-stop of conventional moviemaking.
Says Miller, "What made shooting this way special was that the actors were having real experiences with their characters as much as possible, allowing them the experience of feeling that something is building as it happens from scene to scene."
Miller admits that shooting in continuity was hard for producers, but "I insisted on doing it as much as possible because I'll probably never be able to do it again. Shooting where we were shooting was like having our own movie studio and back lot."
This flexibility allowed Miller to shoot some of the most dramatic and confrontational scenes in sequence without cutting. "It was tough on the actors: they had to be really on top of it, they had to sustain the energy of the scenes and they had to know their lines. The great thing is that they're really coming from the emotional core of the scene; shot in any other way, the actors would have been forced to take a more artificial approach."
For the crucial role of Rose, Miller looked at 400 girls between ages sixteen and twenty, before deciding on Camilla Belle (A Little Princess, The Lost World: Jurassic Park). Day-Lewis became involved with the process as Miller narrowed her choices to a field of about ten actors. "He read with the girls and he was at a lot of the callbacks. I shared everything I was thinking about with him he was very much present for the process," Miller recalls.
"I was interested in an idea that her perfection contributes to his ability to idealize her, maybe in a narcissistic way, and for the audience to idealize Rose, too," she says. Even Rose's look, especially early in the film, was given special consideration by Miller. "That 60s, 70s ideal that Camilla brings to Rose - flowing hair with flowers in it, a certain angelic quality, something we associate today with hippies and flower children - is actually a very 19th century idea. When Rose decides to cut her hair, it is a profound form of disfigurement, especially to Jack. With that long hair she was truly the 70s ideal of female perfection."
Miller continues, "Another reason we cast Camilla Belle was her innocence. There are very few girls who aren't very savvy today, and her character must be able to experience enormous culture shock when her world is invaded by teenage boys her own age."
So, as a director, how did Miller talk with her young cast - particularly sixteen-year-old Belle - about such complicated emotions as emerging sexuality?
"I try to talk as little as possible," says Miller. "As a director I cast people because of who they are, because of the innate qualities they bring to the role. Then, I bring certain elements of their performance forward. I am always thinking about the whole film, where each moment fits into the whole. You have to speak to each actor according to who they are. There are no rules.
"Of course, with certain scenes in the film, we had to make sure there was no real physical contact between the actors, and that everyone was pretty clear that what was going on was all pretend. When you are dealing with kids and complex emotional and physical situations, everything must be a negotiation. But Camilla is a real actor, a real a professional, and she wanted to get it right. And I think what we get from the film is the real feeling that she is a girl who's never had these experiences."
Did Miller ever feel particularly protective about Camilla? "No," says Miller, "Never. Everyone who worked on this movie are all really great people. They would have protected each other. Besides, Camilla knew I would protect her from any exploitation. I told her from the beginning that I wanted to make the action seem real, but I was not making a documentary about her body."
Belle describes Rose as "An original. She follows her own rules and has no boundaries. She does whatever she wants to do, and nothing stops her, because she has nothing to compare her life to. And she's free with her body as well, but in a completely innocent way, like she still feels like a kid inside."
The crisis that propels THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE is, as Miller puts it, "Jack's awareness that he's falling in love with his daughter. He suddenly realizes this with horror, and this terrible cloud gathers within him and that's the moment he decides to take action."
Enter Jack's lover, Kathleen, played by Catherine Keener.
Says Miller, "Jack has a crisis, so he goes across the water and asks her to come live with him. She's the kind of woman who gets herself into these situations. A 'Delia' kind of person [the character played by Kyra Sedgwick in 'Personal Velocity'] but not as tough."
"I'd be perfectly happy to be known as that person who can penetrate the female psyche," says Miller when asked how she feels about her reputation, in the wake or the success of "Personal Velocity," of being a great maker of films about women. "But with JACK AND ROSE, I think the most compelling dilemma of this movie is Jack's. He essentially dies of guilt. But it is also a story of Rose becoming an individual apart from her father."
Kathleen's sons are played by Ryan McDonald (Rodney) and Paul Dano (Thaddius).
Also joining the cast are award-winning actor Beau Bridges, who plays Jack's nemesis, housing developer Marty Rance and Jason Lee (Almost Famous) as Jack and Rose's handyman, Gray. "As an environmentalist, Beau has worked with a lot of developers," says Miller. "His experiences helped him make Marty not a caricature, but a decent guy who has a particular point of view. He made Marty a full human being." Jason Lee's character Gray ended up being a more important character in the story than Miller originally envisioned. "He represents a kind of purity, a deep honesty in a person," says Miller, "that's what the character is and that's what Jason made him."
"The way you shoot a performance becomes one with the performance," says Miller. "If we were to shoot the performances like a TV movie, the performances would not be the same performances. Even though the actors would have had the same experience, the sum of what the cinematography is plus the acting would not be the same performance. Because meaning is created in film through a lens."
"I had thought it was primarily Rose's story," says Miller, "and while Rose's story is extremely important and Camilla Belle's performance so beautiful, subtle and true, there's something very compelling about watching a man in this particular struggle and still being able to empathize with him and care about him. I think that hidden in the screenplay was more of his point of view than I realized."
"In making a film," Miller continues, "you're not so much creating it as uncovering what's really there. And sometimes it's not what you think it is."

REBECCA MILLER (Writer/Director) studied painting at Yale University, then moved to New York City, where she showed her paintings at the Leo Castelli and Victoria Munroe Galleries. She then began a brief career as an actress, appearing in such films as Regarding Henry, Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, and Consenting Adults. In 1991, Miller wrote and directed a short film called Florence, which caught the attention of the Cincinatti Ensemble Theater. They invited her to direct a revival of her father, Arthur Miller's 1964 play "After the Fall." In 1995, she wrote and directed her first feature film Angela, Miller's second feature was Personal Velocity. Miller recently wrote the screenplay for John Madden' screen adaptation of John Aubern's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Proof