Interview: James Lapine Discusses His 'Accidental' Documentary IN THE COMPANY OF ROSE

When renowned playwright and director James Lapine casually met 86-year old Rose Styron - a poet, journalist, human rights activist and the widow of the famed author William Styron - he was expecting a couple of great stories, so he brought along his camera.

Fascinated by her tales, Rose becomes his Scheherazade over a period of six years as he learns of the fascinating and complicated life she has led and the people she has known, and along the way, learns something about himself, too.

Those conversations were turned into a documentary, In the Company of Rose, which recently premiere at the DOC NYC film festival.

BroadwayWorld sat down with Lapine to discuss how the documentary was originally created, the differences between filmmaking and his stage work, and what he wants audiences to take away from the documentary.

How did this documentary originally come about?

It was an accidental movie, to tell you the truth. This person who I had heard about, had never met, and when I did meet her, we had to chat, and she invited me over to lunch one day and I heard so many people talk about her and said, blowing the ways that, I had a new camera and I said, "Do you mind if I bring my camera over? We'll have lunch." And she didn't. And I kind of got hooked.

She just had so many wonderful story after story after story that I kind of got hooked. I didn't know what it would become. I thought maybe it would become maybe a little short documentary profile, but five years later I had 22 hours of footage, so that didn't work out . And then I had to figure out, well, how do I make a movie of this? Because I, you know, it's really my Dinner With Andre but I only had one camera and I was never on camera. So that was the big, uh, challenge of making it into a film.

Once you did realize what you wanted to do with it, how did you then begin shaping the film and building it?

Originally, HBO gave me a little bit of seed money for the short. But then I thought, I have so much footage, maybe it could be a series and I could concentrate on subjects around which her life revolved. That then didn't really seem to work. I eventually just started doing topics and once I had all these assembled pieces, I realized that I had to put myself in the movie. That was the only way I could pull it together and I think it's what made it an interesting film.

What do you enjoy about the process of filmmaking and of making documentaries as opposed to theater?

Well, you know, the first and only other one I made was Six By Sondheim, which we did for HBO. That was not my idea. Sheila Nevans, who ran the documentary division there, came to me and said, "I'd like to do a documentary on Stephen Sondheim." So that was my first entry into documentary filmmaking and I loved it. I love asking people questions.

I think if I were doing something else in life, I might be on the phone with somebody else. I really like asking people questions. I really like delving into people and who they are and how they got there. That's just how it evolved. It wasn't really like, "Oh, I'm gonna make a documentary about this woman." It was just like, she's somebody who, when I met her was 86, and I just knew that she was just somebody I wanted to have some record of, just personally. So that's what sort of the way it began.

Storytelling is storytelling. I know theater is mostly where I worked, though I've made a few narrative films. But storytelling is storytelling and whether it's on a small scale like this one or on a big scale, a big theater project. Also, I'm just somebody who always likes to keep doing different things that I've never done. So this fit into that category as well.

Is there anyone else or any other documentaries that you would want to create?

No, I really don't. Ironically my wife made two documentaries and one Oscars for both of them and has never made another documentary. I said to her, you know, "Why don't you make more documentaries?" She said, "I don't really wanna unless I have a subject that I'm really, really passionate about." I think I feel the same way too. So if something comes along that strikes my fancy. The thing about filmmaking is when I began filmmaking in the old days, it was with film and no playback and anything, and I didn't really enjoy that. But now, in the world we live in where everybody has a camera, it's so easy to do. It's much more attractive to me as something to engage in.

I started my career as a photogrpaher. I like being behind a camera. So this was really, to be honest, just an excuse for me to have a chat with this woman. It's just that simple. It wasn't really a complicated notion. This woman is so interesting and so much fun to talk to and so smart and so beautiful. She was inspiring. So that's why I just kept visiting with her because I thought, well, other people might also find her company exciting.

What do you hope that audiences take away from this documentary?

I think what I love about it is, you know, she's now 94. I love the age. We're kind of so stepped into the ageism in our culture and I love the fact that you can be just as excited and stimulated and interesting in your eighties as you are in your thirties, you know? The thing about Rose, when you see the movie, you forget how old she is. You're just in the company of a really interesting person. We don't revere our elders in our culture. I like the idea that this movie does.

Watch Lapine and Rose Styron discuss the film at DOC NYC here: