Ryan Murphy talks 'Glee', Spielberg, loving Julia

For Ryan Murphy, discovering the best-selling memoir “Eat Pray Love” proved a real boon. The 44-year-old creator of “Nip/Tuck” and “Glee” read the book upon its 2006 release and felt an immediate connection.

He’d even go as far as saying that the book altered his life. “It spoke to me on such a personal level,” begins Murphy, the man who adapted the screenplay and directed the cinematic incarnation. “I read it as a fan, I had just come through a terrible break up, and what it said to me is that it is never too late to reinvent yourself. It is never too late to try to be happy. If you are in a bad relationship try and get out of it and if you don’t like where you are living, try and change it.”

The book, and indeed the film, tells the true-life tale of Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful travel writer who falls out of love with her husband and suffers a painful divorce. Gnawed at by guilt, she takes a year out, heading first to Rome in Italy, where she indulges her passion for food (Eat), then to an ashram in India, where she bids to find a spiritual meaning to her life (Pray), and finally to a familiar haunt in Bali, where, out of the blue, she meets, and falls for, a Brazilian man (Love). It is a hugely popular book, which spent three uninterrupted years on the New York Times best-seller list.

“It is about a general way of living your life. I love the phrase that they’re using to market the movie which is, ‘Let yourself go.’ I know that not everybody can afford to take a year off from work and travel round the world. I can’t. But I don’t think you need to leave your house to try and find something spiritual and find joy. So the book expanded my worldview. It got me out of my shell. It made me feel that it is okay to try something that you are not comfortable with. It did change my life.”

In fact, the book had such a profound effect on Murphy’s life that he adapted a screenplay and ensured that he got the job directing the movie. Murphy already had moviemaking experience, having adapted and directed the film version of Augusten Burrough’s controversial memoir “Running with Scissors”, although adapting and shooting “Eat Pray Love” gave him the chance to step up to the next level, to make a truly commercial movie, with a positive message, and to assemble a dazzling array of major movie stars. 

Among the impressive supporting cast, Murphy draws performances from Javier Bardem (Liz’s Brazilian love interest), Billy Crudup (her ex-husband), James Franco (a lover who awakens her interest in spirituality) and Richard Jenkins (an older man who encourages her to let go of her guilt), while the role of Liz Gilbert herself is played by one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Julia Roberts, which is something of a coup for Murphy; not since her Oscar-winning turn in Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 drama “Erin Brockovich” has Roberts appeared in every scene of a film. 

Indeed, the story has had a profound impact on many people. “I think that the book encourages change.”

For Murphy, change has been a constant companion throughout his life. He says that he was restless when growing up, and even as an adult he feels the need to tackle multiple projects at once. He began his writing career as a journalist, interviewing celebrities for the likes of New York Daily News, The Miami Herald, LA Times, Entertainment Weekly and Vogue. He then wrote a screenplay, “Why Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn?”, which Steven Spielberg optioned. “The movie was never made but everything I pitched out after that, because Steven had given me thumbs up, I sold,” says Murphy. “I know that Steven had done Audrey Hepburn’s last movie so he had a connection with her. In many ways,” he laughs, “Audrey Hepburn is the reason I have a career!”

Certainly, once Murphy’s career in TV and film took off change proved a recurring theme, resurfacing in his two movies and in his TV serials, with early work like “Popular” and his more recent, international hits, “Nip/Tuck” and “Glee”.

Murphy says that after spending seven years working on Nip/Tuck is was this need for change that leads towards both his latest movie, “Eat Pray Love” and also “Glee”, his popular TV series that follows the fictional trials of tribulations on a high school show choir (a modern glee club) called New Directions. The second season is due to air this September and a third season has been commissioned for 2011.  

 In this interview, he talks about the film, Roberts and Steven Spielberg.

What did you respond to most when you read the book?
For me, the thing that I responded to in the book is that I had just come through a terrible break up. When I read that book I read it as a fan and what it said to me is that it is never too late to reinvent yourself. It is never too late to try to be happy. If you are in a bad relationship, try and get out of it. And if you don’t like where you are living, try and change it. If you don’t like your towels, get a new brand! It was more about a general way of living your life. I love the phrase that the studio is using to market the movie which is ‘Let yourself go.’ I know that not everybody can afford to take a year off from work and travel round the world. I can’t. But I don’t think you need to leave your house to try and find something spiritual and find joy. To me when I read the book it did help me get out of a rut. I was in a rut. But it is not my life story. It is Liz Gilbert’s. I was adapting her book. It is her experience. She was a woman who went around the world. That is what she saw.

Were you intimidated by directing the world’s biggest movie star in Julia Roberts?
She is not going to work with the director unless she feels that director has a very strong point of view and Julia is phenomenally talented but I did direct her. I fell in love with Julia Roberts. I want to see a movie where Julia Roberts is in every scene. I grew up with Julia Roberts. I love her. I have ideas that I want for Julia Roberts in make up hair and clothes, things that she had never done before, so as soon as my fantasy came through she was, ‘Okay, I will do it.’ I think that she just liked it that we saw the movie in the same way. But I think she thinks I am kind of insane because I was so passionate about her (laughs!)

Which movie made you fall in love with Julia?
I was very obsessed with ‘Sleeping With The Enemy’. I see everything she has done but when I saw ‘Erin Brockovich’, wow! The thing about Julia that I realize is that she is the world’s greatest movie star but she is also a damned good actress and in that movie you saw how talented she was. I was obsessed with her in that. My favourite Julia Robert’s performance is in ‘Closer’, though. I think that is a very hard role and that scene with Clive Owen, where she has to break up with him, is really hard. I know Julia well now and she is such a prude. She doesn’t swear. She is very ladylike and to see that movie and hear the words that come out of her mouth and I said, ‘How the hell did you do that?’ And she said, ‘Mike Nichols made me do it!’ I deeply admire her talent. My most favourite thing in the world is when Julia Roberts gets mad in a scene. My favourite scene in ‘Eat Pray Love’, other than the scene on the rooftop with her and Richard Jenkins, is the scene on the beach with Javier where Julia just gets mad at him and is like ‘How dare you try to control me?’ We shot that scene ten times and she blushed every time. At the exact same lines she got so worked up…

Are you in a position where you can force her out of her comfort zone, like Mike Nichols did in ‘Closer’?
I think so. She does things for me that she didn’t think she could. I am writing another movie for Julia right now that’s much more comedic. I want to see a movie where Julia is a parent because she is so good with her kids, so I am writing a movie about that. Once you feel love from Julia Roberts the skies open.

Did making the movie change your life in any way?
Yes. It sort of expanded my worldview. It got me out of my shell. I wasn’t a big traveller really before this movie. Now I am. It made me feel that it is okay to try something that you are not comfortable with. There is always hope, a hope to be happier, a hope to change your life, to go anywhere, to try to find a sense of spirituality. You don’t need to go to India to be spiritual. You don’t need to go to an ashram. You don’t need to do any of those things. You can burn a candle in a room and have a moment with yourself and ask yourself who your God is and what you want from them. There is a reason why that book is a phenomenon across the world and has sold tens of millions of copies.

Of all the characters in the movie, to whom did you relate the most?
Richard Jenkins’ character. My favourite scene in the movie is the rooftop scene where he talks about how he screwed up, and he ruined his life, but that he is trying to do better, that he believes life is about the hope that you can change your life and be a better person. That is what he says to her. I deeply related to that character. I got to know the real Richard from Texas - he died two months ago so he never got to see the movie, which is so sad for me – and he is the male character I relate to the most.

How did you get that rooftop scene in one take? Is that the power of Richard Jenkins?
Because he is a genius. No. I wrote that scene with the real Richard from Texas. It wasn’t in the original script. It was like something was missing. So I was, ‘Tell me some more stories’ and the real Richard did. He’d say, ‘Why don’t you say this and why don’t you do that?’ And I wrote the scene and I gave it to Richard and so we could rehearse, and he said, ‘No, I don’t want to rehearse it. I want to do it for the first time without doing it’ and we did although after that first take — which was great — we did about another six takes! But then, in the editing room we cut it up and I wasn’t moved so I was like ‘Let’s just hold the first take. What is it going to look like?’ It is four minutes and forty-five seconds! I had a bunch of boys in the editing room - all my editors were dudes - and we did it and I looked around and they were all crying. I said ‘Okay, that’s it’ and I cry every time I see that scene, because Richard Jenkins is literally having a nervous breakdown and when we finished he was still shaky.

Do you think people will understand why Liz Gilbert left her husband?
I think so. To be honest, that was part of my attraction to the material. There was never a specific reason why she left her husband. It was never, ‘I cheated, or she cheated.’ He didn’t hit her. There was no one moment in her life. Sometimes you just fall out love with people, and you’re either the heartbroken or you’re the heartbrokee. It’s not cut and dry. That’s why there’s that guilt in Liz, that  ‘He’s never going to forgive me, he’s never going to get over it, I’ve ruined his life’ thing. And it is not until she is India and Richard gets her on that roof and tells her not to come down until she’s dealt with her feelings of guilt. She does feel guilty, because he was an okay guy, and that’s why at the end it was important for me to show him walking down the street with a new wife and a baby. So you know that only by her leaving did he get to the happiness he was never going to get with her.

Apparently the man who played the Balinese healer Ketut was someone you found in a hotel lobby?
I wanted a lot of fresh faces and yes, the actor who plays Ketut had never acted before. He barely even spoke English. We found him in a hotel lobby I think playing the drums. And our casting director just liked his face and his kindness in his smile and then he screen tested with Julia and she just fell in love with him. It was like that. It was a bunch of new fresh people who got a lot of opportunity. It was the same in India using many people who had never acted.

This film has a very different moral standpoint from some of your other work, like, say 'Nip/Tuck', right?
Oh yeah. When I did ‘Nip/Tuck’ I got very depressed three or four years into it because it was so dark and so depraved. Those people had no morals and they would have sex with everyone and it was so violent. But that was the show. The show was always a satire, but I got sick of going home and feeling dirty! So I wanted to do something that was much happier, a lot more optimistic, and much more mainstream, and I wrote ‘Glee’ and I wrote the screenplay for ‘Eat Pray Love’ back to back. And it was a lifesaver for me. I felt much happier and more optimistic. I felt more hope. I changed my energy of writing from something really dark to something much lighter, and that was something I needed at the time. That been said, my next movie is something really dark. I do want to go back to the darkness but I wanted to have a little light, a little bit.

‘Nip/Tuck’ seemed to get darker and darker…
I was doing a TV show called ‘Popular’ which wasn’t very popular which was a comedy and it only lasted for two seasons, and I was really young, so I wanted to reinvent myself. One of my favourite movies is ‘Carnal Knowledge’, the Mike Nichols movie, so I thought that I wanted to do ‘Carnal Knowledge’ with plastic surgeons so that is how I did it. That is how it came about. And then you’re right: it became darker and darker.

How did you make the leap from that to ‘Glee’?
I believe in putting stuff out to the universe so I said at a big meeting with some executives that I was tired of doing something so dark and I wanted to do a musical and they laughed in my face. And then two weeks later some guy came up to me and said that a friend of his had written a movie script about glee clubs and did I want to read it. I took it away, read it on a plane, and it was very adult. But I liked the title and I liked the writing, so I met the writer and we did it. I just conjured it out of a desire to do something happier. But a lot of people would not expect me to make a film like ‘Eat Pray Love’ and if you took my name off the title they would never guess that it was me.

There are common themes in your work, though, like the search for identity…
Absolutely. I think all my work is the same, in terms of what they’re about. ‘Even Nip/Tuck’ is about searching for identity – searching for yourself by changing your face, which is the wrong way to go. You’re better off going to a shrink instead. I’m fascinated with change – I change so much. I change everything in my life a lot: my house, my clothes, even circles of people. I get restless if I don’t. I’ve always been that way. I’m a restless person. I’m always working on several things, and now I have this music career on the back of ‘Glee’. I have an offer to start my own music label. I wish I could just concentrate on one thing for like one year, but I get too itchy.

You were once a journalist. Did you have any aspirations to write movies at that time?
No. I was a journalist and I worked for the New York Daily News, Miami Herald The LA Times, Entertainment Weekly and Vogue, and I loved writing and I would interview people. I remember I interviewed Cher six times in a year! I had never written a script and I would go home every night for a solid six months and I would write from 12pm until 3am. Go to bed at three and get up at seven; it was tough but I was young. Doing this I wrote the script called Why ‘Can’t I Be Audrey Hepburn?’ I loved the title and I got an agent. I had no connections. I had moved to Los Angeles knowing nobody. She sent it out and Steven Spielberg called and said ‘I am buying your script’ and then I got to have meetings with Steven Spielberg and we talked about Jaws. He took me under his wing and was really sweet to me and talked to me about writing and said ‘You have a really specific, strong voice and don’t lose your voice’. The movie was never made but everything I pitched out after that, because Steven had given me the thumbs up, I sold. So I was very lucky. I am very humbled by that but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I don’t even know if the script was that good. I know that he had done Audrey Hepburn’s last movie so he had a connection with her. So Audrey Hepburn is the reason I have a career (laughs)!

Are you still in touch with Steven Spielberg?
I see him and I say ‘Hi’. I am very shy with him. He is the one person I am shy with. I know he loves ‘Glee’. His kids love ‘Glee’. I heard that he loved ‘Glee’ and he said, ‘Thank you for making it.’
 

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.