Alison Stewart (3:09)

Ellen, you're also a cinematographer. What drew you to the images that Lee Miller made?

Ellen Kuras (3:16)

Well, Lee was originally a surrealist, so she was experimenting with, you know, putting different objects together to create new meaning. And. And I found that very fascinating. And it was only until later that I discovered, you know, who Lee was as a war correspondent and a war photographer. It wasn't until 2018 when Kate came to me and said, you know, I have this script I've been working on for years. You know, would you be really, would you be interested in directing this script? And what an opportunity to be able to make a story, such an important story about Lee Miller.

Alison Stewart (3:53)

Kate, you've told this story before, but it's one of the better origin stories I've heard about a film. It started with a table.

Kate Winslet (4:00)

Yes, it's true.

Alison Stewart (4:01)

Some friends of mine who.

Kate Winslet (4:03)

Yes, of course, some friends of mine who live in Cornwall, which is the westerly most tip of the United Kingdom, they work in antiques and they specialize in very interesting pieces and they dig into research and they called me and they said, a table has come in and we think that you ought to bid on it. And I said, please tell me more. And it was a kitchen table, a large wooden table that was owned in the family, shared holiday premises of the Penrose family. So at the time that Lee and Roland Penrose, played brilliantly by Alexander Skarsgard in our movie, at the time that they were lovers, they would have these wonderful sort of hedonistic summers of love in this home in Cornwall. And this was the kitchen table. And many surrealists and creatives and poets would sit and feast and often they would be eating Lee's food. She was an incredible cook and she would prepare the food on this table and they would sit around. I bought the table and when it arrived in my home, honestly, if tables could talk, it really has a hum about it. And I sat there and I thought, Lee Miller. I wonder why no one has made a film about her. And that was the beginning of my journey. And I knew that the most important thing that I should do would be to go and meet her son, Anthony Penrose, who lives in East Sussex, England, and he is the keeper of the Archive. And I knew I wanted to not only ask for his blessing, but of course form a friendship and include him in this very important collaboration, because it wouldn't have been possible without, A, his trust, but B, his incredibly important creative input. And I have felt so fortunate to have truly had his steadfast support from the word go. It's been a really extraordinary experience.

Alison Stewart (5:42)

Do you get a feeling when you sit at that table you do?

Kate Winslet (5:46)

Yes, you do. And actually, other people say the same thing.

Ellen Kuras (5:49)

They're like, wow.

Kate Winslet (5:49)

And it's a very detailed piece of wood. It's cut from clearly one tree, and it hasn't been hacked into slices. So it's a very solid, sturdy beast. And it feels like an old friend. And the knots and the whirls and the shapes of the wood are really quite something to behold. So it is quite a unique piece. It's not just any old table.

Alison Stewart (6:12)

You have a terrific character. You have a terrific actress. Ellen, what does it take to get this made?

Ellen Kuras (6:18)

Well, this was an independent film. So, you know, independent films about women, by women, you know, is not always easy to be accomplished, you know, and Kate, as a producer, you know, was really instrumental in being able to, you know, go to investors and talk to them and also to put together our cast. You know, we talked about who we could imagine in some of the those roles. And, you know, it was to our great advantage that Kate could call them up and say to Marion Cotillard, marianne, you know, we're making this film. Would you like to join us? And that really helped us to put this film together and to be able to have the funds to be able to do it. And we shot nine weeks over three countries, which is, you know, quite a feat. And all of the actors came prepared and everyone was really on board to, you know, get this film done. So, you know, we had an incredible production designer, Gemma Jackson, our entire head of departments crew, was an incredible group of talented people that Kate and I have put together from our previous experience in the. In the film industry, having been, you know, in the industry for many, many years.

Alison Stewart (7:31)

It sounds like it was really collaborative, Kate.

Kate Winslet (7:34)

It couldn't be any other way. It was one of those. It was one of those projects that we could feel the heartbeat of the person whose story we were trying to tell. Lee was somebody who embraced women. She embraced companionship, and she was an enormous champion of other people's work, especially when she would come across people who were perhaps holding back from living their truth because she could see that they had some shyness or some insecurity within themselves. She was spectacular at taking people under her wing, especially younger women. And we made this film in the spirit of who Lee was, made it with integrity, resilience, compassion, determination, and an enormous amount of courage. Because as Ellen just said, with independent film, sometimes what will happen is those finances that you might need to hit the account so you can actually pay people might not necessarily arrive on time. And you know what? You just dig deep and you say, let's hold our nerve. And Kate Solomon, my producing partner, and I occasionally had to put our hands in our pocket and just make sure that people were taken care of because we would not stop. The determination not to give up was really at the core of the making of this piece and the collaborative nature of it, especially with Tony Penrose really giving us that steady hand at our backs all the time was absolutely invaluable and really critical that we had that.

Alison Stewart (8:55)

I'm speaking with director Ellen Kuris and Kate Winslet. We're talking about the film Lee. So in the film, the huge firefight at the beginning of the film, we come back to it later. Palms, people running, Lee's terrified. This was one of your first scenes that you filmed, Ellen? Yeah. Great. Why did you pitch such a huge scene to film first?

Ellen Kuras (9:19)

Well, yeah, it was actually the first two days of filming in Croatia. And, you know, that whole week we had a very loaded schedule anyway. But it was actually great for us to just dive into it and to be able to, you know, ourselves, in effect, run through the fire to get started on the film. And, you know, I mean, we had to plan it very meticulously before we got there. But we did have a pre shoot day and one of the kind of stumbles that we had was we were doing our rehearsal and Kate came in running in from the bombing and slipped and, you know, and actually. And hurt herself quite, quite seriously. So imagine us having this entire shoot in front of us and having two days of her running through the battle yet to come. And she just. She was incredible. She motored through. I mean, it was really an incredible feat to be able to do that. And for us to get that kind of material that we did, it was very difficult.

Kate Winslet (10:27)

It was very typical of Lee Miller, who was constantly pulling the levers behind the scenes and somewhat dictating the order of things. And I. And I just sort of stared up to the heavens and. And kind of thanked her in many ways. I had truly injured my back terribly. And whilst I was in agony, Lee herself famously was in excruciating back pain throughout the entire experience of being in Europe during World War II. And I just thought, okay, well, thanks. Thanks, Lee. That's another thing. And yeah, we just. But, you know, independent movies, you just carry on. There is no time to stop and come up with a plan B. And So, yeah, you just old school. You just, you know, you just put on your big pants and get on with it.

Ellen Kuras (11:09)

Yeah.

Alison Stewart (11:10)

Ellen, in your work as director, something I think is really interesting, and I hope I'm not overstepping. I know that you have your hard of hearing.

Ellen Kuras (11:19)

Yes.

Alison Stewart (11:20)

And that really went into some of your choices about, should I direct? Could I direct? How did it factor into your decision to become a director and then what did you learn working on the film?

Ellen Kuras (11:33)

Well, you know, many people didn't know and haven't known that I'm, you know, almost deaf in my right ear and partially deaf on my left ear. So, you know, I was in a safe place behind the camera because, you know, I could be in my own little world and not have to worry about, you know, being able to hear every little thing, even though I could wear headphones while we were filming. And oftentimes, I mean, Kate and I heard An Eternal Sunshine, Michelle going, Helene. But for me, I didn't feel confident because part of directing is being able to hear everything. And you need to be able to hear the actors. You need to be able to hear what's going on around you. There's a different kind of awareness. So it wasn't until basically 2010, or even earlier than that, 2008, right after I did my feature documentary that I was introduced to these new hearing aids by President Bill Clinton, who I was with in Africa on the Clinton CGI tour. And it changed my life. People who don't hear don't know how much and how critical it is to one's confidence, to one's being able to go out into the world. And Kate was very aware of that as well, that, you know, hearing is essential. So, you know, here, because hearing aids have never been really developed. Well, you know, for me, it was. It was one thing that changed my life. And I felt that I could go out and I said, okay, now I can go out and direct. Because people have been asking me for many years, when are you going to start to direct?

Alison Stewart (13:12)

Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. Kate, what made her the right director?

Kate Winslet (13:18)

It wouldn't have made sense to have spoken to a male director about doing this. At a certain point, when something becomes so female in its heart, in its soul and in its courage, the very fabric of what you're doing, you know, that you need to keep it in a place that is honorable and is in line with one's own morals. And given that Ellen has had such a vast career as a cinematographer, bringing narratives to life in a Powerfully visual way. That's what lead it. That was her strength, it was her superpower. This unique way of seeing things that was utterly different to any man and it just completely made sense.

Alison Stewart (14:07)

We'll have more as we discuss the film Feet Lee with Ellen Curris and Kate Winslet after a quick break. This is all of It. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are actor and producer Kate Winslet and director Ellen Kuras. We're talking about their film Lee, about the World War II photographer Lee Miller. Premieres this Friday in theaters. Ellen, your previous work, you balanced documentary and fiction work back and forth. How is your background in documentary film useful in Lee?

Ellen Kuras (14:50)

Well, I think documentary has taught me how to think on my feet, how to be able to problem solve. Because you know, when you're in documentary, you're forced in a situation where you have to immediately think about what's the core of this story, you know, what do I need to film and from what point of view, so where can I get the camera so that I can best be able to tell that story? And that helped me enormously in trying to imagine what the visual component would be for Lee as well as the production design and other aspects of the film. Because need to think about what is the story, what is the story we want to tell tell and what's the point of view. And point of view is something that oftentimes, even in narrative films, the director doesn't think about in terms of, you know, how does the camera help to tell this story meaningfully? I mean, just not taking shots. It's about, you know, being able to create the blocking and create the story in a way that is meaningful to telling the story itself. So Kate and I talked a lot about, you know, the so called female gaze, you know, and how we could bring that into this film in a way that was not looking at Lee Miller, not watching her go through the beats of her life, but be able to bring us, the audience closer to her as a character, as a real living person, you know, who we could identify with and we could go through her emotional journey with her. So there were different things that we did in the film. You know, I, I talked to the cinematographer, Pavel Edelman about being able to bring the camera close to her, you know, following with her, being over her shoulder as well as we did it in post with sound where we backgrounded all the sounds of the, of the explosions as Kate is, as Lee, as Lee Miller, running through that conflict you know, through dodging bullets and the explosions. But the explosions are not foregrounded. We backgrounded them so we can bring the sound of her heart and her breathing closer together. So immediately we're saying we're with her as we go through the story.

Alison Stewart (17:07)

Yeah, the film is about her as a photographer, but it's also about her as a person. Kate. And when you reflect back on it, how did you want to show what drove her to journalism?

Kate Winslet (17:21)

We knew that it was going to be impossible to tell a cradle to grave story about Lee Miller. We also knew that we didn't want to make a quote unquote biopic, but we wanted to focus on the defining decade of Lee Miller's life. When I believe Lee truly became Lee. You know, this was a woman who had walked away from the labels that were placed on her in her 20s, former muse, ex lover of man, Ray, former these sort of slightly sexist, reductive terms that history was in danger of leaving Lee in that way under the male gaze. I knew it was important to lift her out and not only give her her place at the table, but to place her at the head of that table. This was not some up and coming photographer who wanted to make a name for herself. This was a flawed middle aged woman who had already lived a lot of life. And it was important that we showed the pre war period of the holidays they have in the south of France, which really happened. Picasso would famously host these annual holidays in Mougins with all of these surrealists and creatives and we needed to see that heyday so we sense the joy in them and the unknowing of what is about to happen immediately. Pre war, Lee was someone who knew it was her duty to bear witness, who felt compelled to go to the front line and be that visual voice for the victims of conflict. Not photographing the soldiers and the bloodshed and the gunfire, but looking into the deep dark cracks and corners and seeing the women and the children and the collaborators who were being shamed, having their heads shaved in the street and climbing into the train carriages on the outskirts the of Dachau and standing amongst the horrors that she and Davey Sherman, played by Andy Sandberg in our film, stumbled upon. Lee had a courage and a determination to bear witness and tell the stories of those innocent people that I have never known in my life. And had we not had her images, her very unique gaze, we may never appreciate this level of war photography in the way that we do now. She was at the beginning of reportage photography and just thank Goodness for Lee Miller and this extraordinary work that she gave us, these historical documents for which she paid an enormous emotional personal price.

Alison Stewart (19:56)

Yeah. Let's play a clip from the film. This is actually a scene when Leigh goes into the British Vogue offices and she begins cutting up some of the negatives of the films because they've declined to publish them. The British version, it begins with Lee speaking. Vogue editor Audrey Withers, played by Andre Riseborough, eventually comes in and begs her to stop. This is from Lee.

Film Clip Voices (20:15)

These are mine. I took them. I decide what happens to them. Lee, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. They're in historical records. Well, who cares? Nobody saw them. You didn't print them. I fought for them, Lee. I fought for them. These must be preserved. What to stand a filing cabinet? The Ministry thought they may disturb people. F this happened. This. This really happened. Lee, Lee, Lee. This happened. These images will disturb people more than they've already been disturbed. People need to move on. Move on, Move on. This little girl in a death camp, raped and beaten. How does she move on? How does she move on ever?

Alison Stewart (21:03)

Ever? That's from the film Lee. We understand her son, Anthony Penrose, said that this actually happened with some of the Dachau negatives. And she told the darkroom assistant, I don't want anyone to have to see what I witnessed, but I'm leaving enough to make sure there's no doubt about what happened.

Kate Winslet (21:22)

That's true.

Alison Stewart (21:22)

Do you believe she had ptsd?

Kate Winslet (21:25)

She absolutely had ptsd. And we do know that for sure. We know that because we had her son to tell us that. Lee became pregnant with Anthony Penrose very shortly after the war. And very unexpectedly, she actually didn't think she was capable of having children. Anthony was raised by a woman who had a dangerous relationship with alcohol and was permanently traumatized by the atrocities and the things that she had witnessed during World War II. And it really is true that the scene where she goes into the Vogue offices and she hacks into the Dachau negatives. When I was researching the film, Anthony introduced me to an elderly woman in her 90s who had been a 15 year old secretary at Vogue at the time that Audrey Withers was editor. When Lee came back from the war and into the office one day, drunk, furious and determined to find where her negatives were, and she took a huge pair of scissors and started hacking into those negatives, saying, if no one can see them, then I must destroy them. Almost physically trying to cut them out of herself, cut them out of her head. And this young girl Told me that the only way she could get Lee to stop, for fear that she was actually going to hurt herself with these scissors, was she turned to her and she said, now you look here, Leenilla. Those are my good scissors. You jolly well give them back. And Lee turned, and she was somewhat taken aback by this young girl really taking a stand. And she quietly put the scissors down, stopped cutting, and walked out. And when I was told that story, I knew that it had to be a part of our film, because it's not only devastating to hear, and I've actually held those severed negatives in my own hands. It's that metaphor of what so many people were dealing with Post World War II, that thing of trying to cut the images out of their soul, out of their minds. And Lee's courage was just formidable. And even in that moment of trying to stop other people seeing it. And as we say in the film, once you've seen it, you can never unsee it.

Alison Stewart (23:39)

One of Miller's most famous photos, Ellen is at her. She's sitting in Hitler's bathtub. You create the scene for the film when you were creating it. What was important to you to get that moment?

Ellen Kuras (23:54)

I think what was important is that we have the flexibility to be able to find the core of the scene, that Kate and Andy Samberg, who's playing Davies Sherman, be able to have the flexibility to shape it in a way that we understood that Lee was deliberately doing this. She was deliberately making this, you know, almost like a performance to get this photo. She understood the meaning of all of the elements of going into this photo, but all of the nuances that happened in that, you know, was the chemistry between Davey and Lee, Andy Samberg and Kate finding that together as they were both in that room. And we actually built the bathroom onto. In an apartment because there was no bathroom there. And also we wanted to be able to replicate it exactly. So we set the scene, and it was a tiny bathroom, but enabling us to put the cameras there so that they could actually find that. That scene themselves and be able to experiment with it. Because some of the elements, as you see, Lee will grab the picture of Hitler to put by. By the. By the bathtub. You know, she stomps out the mud of Dachau, which. Where they had just come from on his bath mat before she gets into the bathtub. So, you know, all of those elements we needed to put into place, I need to put into place so that Kate and Andy could, you know, find the core of that.

Alison Stewart (25:32)

And Andy Samberg is Amazing.

Ellen Kuras (25:34)

Amazing.

Alison Stewart (25:35)

Really amazing. In a dramatic role. I'm sort of curious. And we're gonna wrap up very soon. I'm. This got me thinking about all these women photographers like Vivian Meyer, who. Nobody discovered her work, the Nanny Photographer in New York until she was dead and it was found in a cabinet somewhere. Think about Lee Miller, whose furnace was. Whose work we didn't find because her family didn't find it until she died. What do you think about that? I've just been thinking about that a lot since watching the movie. These ideas of these people, these women taking these pictures and then not exposing anybody to them.

Kate Winslet (26:10)

Leigh was certainly somebody who, quite honestly, she didn't need to be queen. She didn't need attention. She didn't want attention, actually. Which is precisely why she lasted a couple of years as a model in front of the camera because she couldn't bear to be looked at. She was utterly selfless and in a strange way, remarkably unvain. Even though she cared a great deal in her own life about clothes and she loved crimson red lipstick. When Lee came back from the war, I don't even think she made a conscious decision to hide her negatives and prints. I think it was something that she automatically did in order to try and never think about it ever again and perhaps to protect people in her home from being exposed to the things that she had seen. So there's something extraordinarily heroic, I believe, about women who don't ask to be in the limelight and don't try and show the things that they did and created. Because, of course, that's not the point. The point is about making sure that no one's story ever goes untold.

Alison Stewart (27:30)

The name of the film is Lee. It'll premiere in theaters this Friday. I have been speaking with Kate Winslet and Ellen Kuris. It was really nice to meet you.

Ellen Kuras (27:39)

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

Kate Winslet (27:40)

Thank you.

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