By Iain Blair
Academy Award-winning writer/director Aaron Sorkin and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, first worked together on the David Fincher-directed film The Social Network. Now Sorkin and Cronenweth have reteamed on Being the Ricardos, Sorkin’s behind-the-scenes comedy/drama starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (both Oscar-nominated for their roles), the pioneering power couple behind the beloved classic 1950s television sitcom I Love Lucy.
Aaron Sorkin on set
Using flashbacks and black-and-white reenactments of the couple’s hit show to examine both their professional and private lives, Sorkin also compresses time by setting and staging the story during a single week of production on I Love Lucy, in which Lucy and Desi battle with the show’s conservative television sponsor, Philip Morris, muckraking gossip columnist Walter Winchell and each other.
In addition to Cronenweth, Sorkin assembled a team that includes production designer Jon Hutman, editor Alan Baumgarten and composer Daniel Pemberton, all of whom collaborated with Sorkin on The Trial of the Chicago 7.
I talked with Sorkin and Cronenweth about making the film and how they collaborate.
Aaron, this is not your usual biopic or backstage drama. How did you approach the film?Aaron Sorkin: It took 18 months from the first meeting I had with our producer, Todd Black, for me to say yes to his pitch about writing a movie about Lucy and Desi. And the first thing I said to Todd was that I wasn’t interested in writing a traditional biopic. It’s very hard to shake that structure that’s become so familiar to audiences — the cradle-to-grave structure where this happens, then that happens and so on. It always feels a bit like a cover band doing the greatest hits.
We would meet once a month, and I’d collect information — books and articles and so on — and I read all the books that were written about both of them. Most of them just aren’t very good because they’re written for I Love Lucy fans, and there’s not going to be any bad news there. The only exception was Desi’s own autobiography, which was simply titled A Book. He is a fantastic storyteller, and you can just smell the stiff drink sitting next to his typewriter. He does not mind taking you to some darker places.
How early on did you decide to compress all the true events into just one week, and why?
Sorkin: After a couple of meetings, Todd asked, “What do you want to do?” Well, I like claustrophobic spaces and compressed periods of time. It’s sort of like taking a tangerine and squeezing it as fast and as hard as you can. Juice and pulp is going to fly everywhere, and you get serious drama that way. So I had this idea of setting the whole story during one production week of the show, from the Monday table read to the Friday audience taping. Once I had that structure, I really began to warm up to it.
DP Jeff Cronenweth
You teamed with DP Jeff Cronenweth. What did he bring to this project?
Sorkin: He’s an incredible DP with great ideas, and from here on, every film I do, he’ll be one of the first three people I try to hire. He understands that my Achilles’ heel as a director is visual composition, which is a pretty serious problem to have. And I was coming into this as a writer. I’d begun writing it before I directed Molly’s Game and The Trial of the Chicago 7, and I wasn’t even thinking about directing it until after Todd saw an early cut of The Trial of the Chicago 7 and asked if I’d be interested. By that point I had a bit more confidence in my ability to direct.
My thing is, I tend to listen to it more than watch it when I’m directing, and Jeff is able to talk to a director who can’t talk to him in the same sophisticated language about cinematography — in the way he’s used to, and the way David Fincher can. So I relied totally on his technical expertise. And in addition to all that and his extraordinary talent, he brings so much enthusiasm to the set. Really, he’s no less than the co-author of the film, and I feel OK saying the look of the film is fantastic, as I’m not responsible for it.
Jeff, can you talk about the look of the film and finding the right period look? What were the inspirations and references for the look?
Jeff Cronenweth: We began with the I Love Lucy show, even though we’re not recreating it. Then we looked at a variety of movies from the ‘50s, including ones Lucy and Desi had been in. We also looked at movies about that era that my peers have shot, such as L.A. Confidential, Carol and Peggy Sue Got Married, which my father shot. It’s tricky, as you want to avoid making a parody of that era, but you also want to pay tribute to it and create an atmosphere where the audience really believes the characters are living in that time.
That’s where we started, and then Aaron gave me a lot of liberty. Based on his brilliant script — which I feel is a love story about how complicated human relationships are — I pitched him this idea of making the movie contrasty, with good blacks and so on. Let’s not be dark for the sake of being dark, which seems to be the trend right now, and let’s have points of light so that there’s depth — most of the spaces they work in are big.
Even when they’re in their offices or home, they’re being attacked, either in their personal relationships or corporate ones or sponsorship ones, and they find themselves alone, defending themselves. So, with these points of light, you can see into the dark, but we’d isolate Lucy and Desi out by shooting wide open at 8K with 70mm glass and with depth of field. We wanted to keep them constrained in their world and show how claustrophobic it could be at times with all the pressures they’re having to deal with. So that was the broad approach to the look, and not specific to an era.
Jeff, how did you and Aaron collaborate on set?
Cronenweth: He’s a very humble guy and gives a lot of credit to people. I’ll say this: His script is so complete and so tight that it opens your mind. And it’s so creatively liberating that you can clearly see the journey and solve the visual problems and challenges. The other thing, and he’d be the first to admit this, is that when you’ve written the script and you’re directing it, you’re so close to it. It’s easy to get trapped into watching the words be read as opposed to figuring out a visual way to support those very words and keep an audience engaged — through choices in light, lenses and composition, set design, blocking and so on. And he comes straight out with that and says, “I want you to push me and break me out of some of my comfort areas.” When something rubs him the wrong way or doesn’t support something he feels is important, he’ll let you know.
Aaron is famous for his carefully constructed, dense dialogue. How challenging was that to shoot?
Cronenweth: It was a learning experience. You can read the script a hundred times and not know the exact reason why he put a particular word where he put it until you’re lining up a shot and he says, “But I need this to happen here.” And it always turns out there’s a whole back story to it and a reasoning you’re not always privy to. That was such a fun part of collaborating with him and was so creatively interesting.
How did you make all your camera and lens choices?
Cronenweth: I wanted to use depth of field and be able to shoot in low light. I’m very fond of the color science and the way that the Red cameras interpret color. I’ve used their cameras a lot, so I was very comfortable shooting this 8K spherical. Then I went to ARRI and asked if I could use their DNA glass that had been used on a Star Wars film and Joker. They have built-in artifacting. It’s old glass rehoused and reconfigured, and each lens has its own little personality.
Aaron, how early on did you decide to shoot black-and-white for the recreations of the show?
Sorkin: It was all in the original script, and what you have to understand about all those little shards of I Love Lucy is that we’re inside Lucy’s head. Whether it’s at a table read or pitching a joke in the writers’ room or at a rehearsal, she can project what it’s going to be like on Friday night when taping in front of an audience, and what it needs to work. So with camera work, editing and score, we were able to get across that it’s not just recreations of the show. There’s a reason for it.
Jeff, what about dealing with the black-and-white recreations of the show? Was that a different setup?
Cronenweth: It was. I did a lot of tests with the Red Rangers I used on set and then took all the color out and compared that to the monochrome. In the end, to me there was such a stark difference. To me, any time you’re dealing with a period piece, you have to draw the line somewhere. What is a modern audience going to expect? Because you’re not entertaining an audience from the ‘50s. It’s an audience that’s grown up watching Game of Thrones with dragons in the sky and phones that are better than TVs.
Jeff Cronenweth
As a filmmaker I feel you have an obligation to entertain the audience that’s in the room today. So I wanted to shoot a modern version of an homage to the show, and I can get away with it, as it’s not really the show – it’s only in her mind. So I added more contrast and highlights, but it’s in the spirit of the show, and I used the Red Ranger full-frame Monstro monochrome sensor, which has all the pixels dedicated to black or white, and it gives you this beautiful silver tone… a sort of 50 ASA black-and-white quality, which I loved.
How tough was the shoot?
Sorkin: Considering we did it all during COVID, it ran remarkably smoothly. Thanks to all our health protocols, we didn’t miss a day of shooting. We began last March and shot for about 40 days, mainly at Sunset Gower Studios, where we built all the sets, and then we also shot at various locations in Hollywood.
Working with Jeff on-set was great. I’d say there were a handful of times when I knew there was a particular shot I really wanted to get, whether it was a pencil tapping on a desk or a cigarette lighter being flipped or a particular push-in shot. The rest of the time, I’d say to him, “What’s a good master here?” And he’d show me, and we’d talk through it. But I wouldn’t move on from any shot or scene until he was ready to move on, so it was a very close collaboration. He’s also the nicest guy in the world and someone you want to be around after a long, hard day.
Aaron, tell us about the post process. Do you like that part of filmmaking?
Sorkin: I do. It’s always tough at the start since it’s a bit of a mess, but bit by bit it all comes together, and it really comes alive as you put in sound and the temp score.
We had a great editor, Alan Baumgarten, ACE, who also cut The Trial of the Chicago 7 [for which he received an Academy Award nomination and won an American Cinema Editors Eddie award] and Molly’s Game [for which he also received an ACE Eddie Award nomination].
How did you work together, and what were the main editing challenges?
Sorkin: It’s a very close collaboration, and a big challenge was dealing with all the black-and-white shards of the show and making sure we understood what was happening. Then it’s always about finding the right performance, but with Nicole and Javier and the other principal actors, we didn’t have to do much with them. And then it’s all about getting the right rhythm and pacing, not just for each scene, but for the whole movie, and that takes a lot of time.
What about the DI? How closely did you work with Light Iron colorist Ian Vertovec and Jeff on the look? What was involved?
Sorkin: I’m not in the room with them, and I rely on their skills and expertise. They tell me what they’re going to do and then show it to me, and I never have a problem with it. The DI is very important to me, but I’d be as useful in it as I’d be conducting musicians in an orchestra.
Jeff, what was the DI like for you?
Cronenweth: Ian and I spent a couple of weeks. It’s funny; there’ve been all these reports of all the prosthetics that Nicole had to wear, and it’s not true at all. We had to do a lot of fixes and work, but it was because in that era, all the women shaved their eyebrows and then drew them back in as a much higher-arced eyebrow.
It’s a very distinct thing that Lucy did, but Nicole didn’t want to shave her eyebrows off, as she’s a very busy actress. So they covered them with a prosthetic and make-up and then drew them in. But any time you put anything on the human face — especially in the eyebrow area — it can constrict movement in the forehead and so on, so we had to do a lot of work on that.
There was never any intention to have many VFX in the film, but we ended up having a lot of background replacement work, such as elements like the stage doors, which in reality opened onto other stages instead of onto the backlot. Then for the scenes on Mulholland, overlooking the city, we had to take away any modern elements. So we did a lot of that.
I love the DI because it’s like a second chance to go back and fine-tune everything you did. I’m not a fan of doing everything in post. I try to do as much in-camera as possible because you never know what might happen, but there are certain things you know you can remedy later.
And doing the HDR version was so much fun.
Aaron, did it turn out the way you first envisioned it?
Sorkin: Yes, it’s absolutely the film I wanted to make, and I’m very happy with it.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
