Screenwriter and producer Anthony McCarten has penned the Oscar-winning lead acting roles in biopics such as “The Theory of Everything,” “Darkest Hour” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” as of late. His latest film is “The Two Popes,” which tells the story of Pope Benedict’s 2013 resignation as head of the Catholic Church, and current Pope Francis’ reluctant acceptance of the Chair of St. Peter. The script presents a struggle of wills and ideas, Benedict representing the Church’s strong traditionalist roots, and Francis representing a clear and present necessity for growth and change. In order to really capture these two men with respect and compassion, however, McCarten says he had to go beyond taking sides. He had to understand them, to absorb views counter to his own and synthesize something he calls the overarching crisis in the world today: a crisis of listening. In this episode of “The Call Sheet,” McCarten discusses how he simultaneously developed both a screenplay and a play around this material and what the subjects of “The Two Popes” share with some of those towering individuals he’s written as of late.
Screenwriter and producer Anthony McCarten has penned the Oscar-winning lead acting roles in biopics such as “The Theory of Everything,” “Darkest Hour” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” as of late. His latest film is “The Two Popes,” which tells the story of Pope Benedict’s 2013 resignation as head of the Catholic Church, and current Pope Francis’ reluctant acceptance of the Chair of St. Peter. The script presents a struggle of wills and ideas, Benedict representing the Church’s strong traditionalist roots, and Francis representing a clear and present necessity for growth and change.
In order to really capture these two men with respect and compassion, however, McCarten says he had to go beyond taking sides. He had to understand them, to absorb views counter to his own and synthesize something he calls the overarching crisis in the world today: a crisis of listening. In this episode of “The Call Sheet,” McCarten discusses how he simultaneously developed both a screenplay and a play around this material and what the subjects of “The Two Popes” share with some of those towering individuals he’s written as of late.
KRIS TAPLEY: I'm Kris Tapley and you're listening to The Call Sheet, a show that dives deep into the craft of your favorite Netflix films and series with some of the most talented artists and artisans in the game.
Before you hear from me this week, let’s go ahead and hear from my guest.
ANTHONY MCCARTEN: My name is Anthony McCarten, and my craft is screenwriting.
KT: Screenwriter and producer Anthony McCarten has a very interesting streak going on. Three of the last five Oscars for best actor have gone to the stars of his celebrated biopics: “The Theory of Everything,” “Darkest Hour” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” His latest film is “The Two Popes,” which tells the story of Pope Benedict's 2013 resignation as head of the Catholic Church and current Pope Francis’s reluctant acceptance of the chair of St. Peter.
The script is a sort of struggle of wills and ideas: Benedict representing the church’s strong traditionalist roots, and Francis representing a clear and present necessity for growth and change. Much of this, as you'll soon hear, was in McCarten's bloodstream and desperate to find its way out onto the page.
A lifelong Catholic, he had, like many, grown frustrated with the church and felt Pope Francis was a breath of fresh air. But in order to really capture these two men with respect and compassion, he had to go beyond taking sides. He had to understand them. to absorb views counter to his own, and synthesize something he calls the overarching crisis in the world today: the crisis of listening.
In this episode, Anthony will discuss how he simultaneously developed both the screenplay and a play from this material, and how the film allowed him to open it up a bit. He'll talk about how he followed Plato's rules in crafting dialogue for two strongly opposing viewpoints and what the subjects of this film share with some of those towering individuals he's written as of late. All of that and more just ahead. So let's dig in.
Anthony, this film was born in st Peter's square. You were in Rome on your way to light a candle for a departed family member, and you stumbled across this open air mass that Pope Francis was delivering and you were struck by the fact that there were two popes walking the earth. And you decided you wanted to write something.
How does that even begin to take shape? I ask that because sometimes I write something just to see if there's a story there. So I wondered if it was a lightning bolt or if it was just exploratory to try to find a story.
AM: It's really just following your curiosity where it leads, and my curiosity was sufficiently stirred on that particular day, just feeling the charisma of Francis, which was palpable in that square.
On that occasion, 5,000 or so people – probably only a fraction of them were Catholics. People are just interested in him as a figure. And I Googled “when was the last time a Pope resigned” and you know, when the number seven hundred years popped up…
You know, the dramatists in you wakes up and goes, “Hello! This is interesting!” So 1213 was the last time a Pope resigned? Read a bit further. Scroll down. Celestine V. Dante, when he writes “Dante's Inferno,” mentions this Pope and throws him to the lowest levels of hell, calls him The Great Refuser, and a coward for having walked away from the papacy.
And it just started to really dawn on me how cataclysmic an event this resignation was. So I got back to London and started just reading and just wanting to know really. And that's often how these things are born for me, is: why did it happen?
And there were big gaps in the explanations. I never really believed Benedict's own explanation as to why he resigned, which was just that, “I'm old.” If that was the case, I mean, they would all have resigned. So I smelled something fishy here, and the wanted to learn.
KT: Yeah. So was it immediately like, this could be a conversation between two people? This could be a tête-à-tête? Like how does it take shape as like, entertaining drama? Like how does that begin to even click?
AM: I've always been interested in debates and the theater of ideas. I used to work in as a playwright initially when I started my professional writing career. And that's often what you're dealing with.
You know, you've got characters on stage with polar positions, you know, and the rules are ancient for these types of fights. You know, it goes back to the “Dialogues,” Plato's “Dialogues” and things. You have to love both characters equally. You have to equip them with arguments of equal weight and veracity and then you've try to find a middle ground.
And the sense with this project was that it could be a debate between a conservative and a liberal where somehow they'd found a middle ground. And it seems to me in society at large right now, that the middle would seem to have collapsed. And as Yates said, the center has not held. And that it might speak to that broader conversation.
The wheels started turning, and then, you know, to do justice to a double portrait like this, you have to do you research. It has to be as true and authentic as you can make it. And that begins with research. So I did a lot of diving into what their stated positions were. Translated articles out of newspapers from different languages and so forth until I had a pretty complete picture of what their stated positions and pronouncements were.
And the artifice in this particular project was then to put those two positions into conflict with each other to turn it into a dialogue. So although we don't know what was said behind closed doors between the two men, I think I've done justice to their known positions.
KT: Well, that's interesting about the research, because you used German news sources to research Benedict and Argentinean sources to research Francis. Well, what were some differences that you noticed in how the two countries kind of covered their hometown popes?
AM: When Benedict was elected, I remember the leading newspaper Die Zeit, their headline was a full page and it said, “We Are Pope.” There was a tremendous sense in Germany at that time that the election of a German pontiff somehow was a positive comment that Germany was emerging from the fog of suspicion. You know, that it could be seen as having a claim on some moral authority again.
So there was a lot that was easily available about Benedict, this theologian, this intellectual, a man of dogma who stood up for doctrine, who was a prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, this long title, which was essentially a body that was going to make sure that dogma was followed. That rules were followed.
The was the son of a policeman, and the obeyance of rules has sort of governed his life. He sees tremendous strength in rules and enforcing them. And he'd got the moniker of God's Rottweiler and God's enforcer. Which is fair and not fair. In that he’s more than that. He's one of the world's more interesting intellectuals. But an archconservative.
And then you've got Francis, and Francis, like Benedict, grew up under dictatorships and learned good and bad things from that. They learned the value of silence and to speak out against tyrannical dictatorship got people killed.
And so he abstained from criticizing the military junta and the Argentina in the 70s. The upside of that was none of his Jesuit priests under his care – because he was the head of the Jesuits in Argentina – lost their lives. Not one. But when 30,000 people were disappeared, and many priests were shot, and children were taken from parents and so forth, there was criticism, and remains criticism to this day, that he didn't speak up enough. Didn't do enough.
Getting to the bottom of that was trickier because there's still a lack of candor even on the part of Pope Francis. There's, you can see a YouTube clip where he's being called in to face some charges and under heavy questioning, and he's uncomfortable on the chair. He clearly resents having to answer questions about something so long ago where he feels he did all he could.
But he's still a divisive figure in Argentina. And interestingly, he's never been back to Argentina since those days.
KT: Oh, I didn’t know that.
AM: Yeah. But he has turned himself into a fascinating figure of humility and sacrifice.
My assessment is he's done this by an act of will, which makes him doubly interesting to me as a person and as, you know, someone dramatizing his life. Because if you’re born humble, it's no particular achievement to stay humble. But if you're born with the normal array of vanities and egocentricities, then you have to work at being good. And it's a bigger achievement.
And he's doing a good job. His positions on the environment and progressive issues is just a breath of fresh air.
KT: This started as a play. The production was this past summer, I believe, with Anton Lesser and Nicholas Woodeson. How did seeing it performed onstage unlock ideas for how to tell the story on a bigger canvas?
AM: They kind of developed in parallel. I mean, the play was written first, and then we started to workshop and so forth. But yeah. My agents got me out around the studios, touting it as a movie at the same time. So we're kind of developing them both in parallel. So they kind of both informed each other.
The stage play by its very nature, you couldn't dramatize flashbacks into Argentina and so forth. So that had to be done through monologues and confessions and so forth. But with the movie, I mean, we had this fantastic opportunity with a good budget from Netflix. So to reinvent the past and bring it to life again.
And hence the whole elaborate restagings of Francis’s past, and the opportunity to rebuild the Sistine Chapel and work on that scale. So we really were able to bring the full pageantry of the church alive in the movie, which we perforce could only suggest in the play.
KT: Yeah. All right. So speaking of building the Sistine Chapel, I want to get into the production side of it and bringing in someone like Fernando Meirelles to tell this story. It's fascinating to me because he's got such a definitive voice, but it's not one you might immediately expect for this material, I guess.
And so I just wanted to get your thoughts on that – on bringing him in and what he brought to the material and why he was ultimately just a perfect choice for this.
AM: Well, I think he's one of the great humanist filmmakers. He loves people. He loves faces and you look at the way the camera lingers on faces of ordinary people, and he has a great compassion in the way he shoots this thing.
He's also very interested in the simplicity and intimacy and getting rid of a lot of the paraphernalia. I’d come off making a movie, “Darkest Hour,” where it was a different type of approach aesthetically. It was very painstaking and it was very painterly.
And coming onto Fernando’s set with the great Cesar as DP, they said, “We're not going to work in light and dark. We're going to work in colors.” So when we're going to light, just light this thing, in a general sense, and then we're not tweaking and we're going to move and we're going to do it handheld and we're going to get it naturalist.
And so it lent a greater sort of authenticity to it, a real level of reality and spontaneity to it all, that allowed him to then jump between archival footage and the stuff he was shooting almost seamlessly. And if you watch the movie, you're almost, it all seems a similar texture. And there's so many different formats of film and footage shot in the 1970s on video, which is up against 35 millimeter stuff. And then video. And it's a sort of very, it's an amalgam of all these different techniques.
KT: You've got Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins taking on the roles now, a brilliant pairing, sort of an unexpected pairing. And I spoke to Fernando a while back and he was talking about how, regarding the photography plan and things like that, that the idea was to do what would be unexpected.
And I'm just curious if that's something you shared with this project, considering it's “Waiting for Godot” in some sense. You know, two individuals talking, you want to kind of like break out of that and be unexpected. So I'm just curious if that's something you shared.
AM: I'm not sure Fernando even knows this, but when Jonathan and Dan, two of the producers, and I went into Netflix and pitched this, we took two photographs with us, one of Anthony Hopkins and one of Jonathan Pryce, and we hadn't asked them their permission to take the pictures in, and they hadn't consented to do the movie, and didn't even know about the movie at that point. We pitched the movie and at the end Netflix said, “So do you have these guys?”
And we said, “Well, yeah, not exactly, but you know, we're going to go to them.” And Fernando's worked with Tony Hopkins before and Jonathan Pryce, it turns out is a huge fan of Fernando's work and we got them, and that almost never happens.
Whether they're unexpected casting decision, I'm not sure. I'm sure you'll talk to Jonathan, but when Francis was elected Pope, the internet was full of pictures of Jonathan Pryce, right?
KT: He looks like him. I think it's just the pairing, like seeing these two guys together. It's not something I would've expected to see in a movie. And it works out so beautifully.
The film opens up for you a bit when you're able to do this flashback structure with Bergoglio in Argentina, and you know, he's having his awakening, serving with the Jesuits and everything, getting tangled up in the dirty war as we were speaking to. You said you weren't able to do flashbacks in the play, but how were you able to kind of like deal with that element of his past in the play?
And obviously with the film you're able to open up and show that, but how were you able to indicate it?
AM: Well in the play, the original working title had been, “The Confession,” and it was my initial design to have this about two men who gained each other's trust to the point where they start to confess their sins and their humanity and their flaws.
And through an understanding and a recognition of each other's flaws, then you can move forward into new possibilities. So I had contained the flashbacks in the play, in the forms of a confession. So it was an extended monologue.
So a lot of the research that went into that monologue, the challenge was then to make that real and to go down to the Barrios and in Argentina, and show the trucks and the conversations, you know, between the priests that were working in the slums.
And here, this is where Fernando availed and did some of his best work, you know, I think since “City of God.” And it feels like the camera is journalistic. And it's horrifying. It's like the nightly news as you don't want to see it.
Pay tribute to Fernando and the whole team, the Argentinean crew, creating that veracity, that urgency that you feel in those sequences, which are truly horrific, you know. So the scene, for example, where they drug one of the women who's a friend of Bergoglio, and the camera pulls back and you realize they're in the back of an aircraft carrier and the doors are open and then they roll these drugged bodies out of the back and dump them, and the bodies fall down, down, down, towards the sea.
That's described in the play, but it cannot have the power that it does in the movie.
KT: Something that's so beautiful about the story to me is that Bergoglio has obviously has these sins in his past and he's attained a certain level of grace and a sense of feeling forgiven. And that is clearly what Benedict covets, he’s searching out the same kind of grace in his perceived misdeeds, and peace.
And I mean, was that something that was just in your head the whole time?
AM: Yeah, it was, it was a sense of a man who was in a kind of spiritual at agony, and that he was seeking a reconnection to God. I mean, I don't know in your own personal life, but we all need a connection with something, whether it's family, whether it's with an ideology, a loved one, something on the spiritual realm.
And we've all had moments, which St John of the Cross once described as “dark nights of the soul,” where that connection is severed and you feel alone and you feel lost and disconnected and in search of reconnection. That's the sort of motive that's driving Benedict through this, through this story.
And he's just subtly envious of this man from Argentina, who seems so effortlessly connected. And it leaks its way into the dialogue, “How was it for you? How do you maintain your connection? Do you ever lose faith? Have you ever lost your faith?” You finally learn what he's getting at.
KT: Yeah, he seems almost accusatory at first. But then you understand –
AM: -- that he's in need. He's in pain, and he's searching as well, and he's trying to find that place of peace and he gets there. I did think it's a spoiler to say that. That he gets there.
And I think something, some of these elements start to explain why, you know, the film is winning all of these audience awards and things, which, you know, I hope people would love the movie, but I wouldn't have said going in that it was going to be the type of film that wins audience awards. Traditionally it isn't, you know, a theological debate between two old men. You know, it's usually a car chase or two.
KT: You could have gotten one of those in there. Yeah. Just shout out to Cesar, who received the Silver Frog at Camerimage, which I thought was fantastic.
AM: Yeah, it shows the sophistication of the judges too, because it's not a pristine, manicured, highly curated aesthetic thing. It is trying to capture the chaos of life and it's, you know, mixed media qualities and…
KT: Visual storytelling.
AM: Yeah.
KT: This idea of the epic and the intimate. Something you said you've kind of chased with your work. How did that translate to this project?
AM: Well, you've got a faith whose light has been burning for 2000 years, 1.4 billion Catholics followers. So that's epic. And the fate of this institution then plays out in an intimate tête-à-tête between two men. Even more than anything I've done, probably, this combines those two things. It's just something that where I love that contrast: you know, the grain of sand and the universe, you know. The stakes are higher.
That what was transacted between these two very real human beings has universal implications. In my personal life, I can have an argument and resolve it. People, you know, don't die as a result. There aren’t world wars as a result. But it's fascinating when you show the implications of the intimate having global repercussions.
I studied a course when I was at university called Political Psychology, and it looked at history as being really about the psychological flaws of individuals, and how some childhood trauma can explain the First World War. You know what I mean? The world leaders are susceptible and their judgments are susceptible to very intimate human trauma or experiences that inform their decision-making, in ways that we all pay the price.
So that's sort of become a bit of a recurrent theme in my work.
KT: It seems timely too. I wanted to talk a little bit about the post-production situation here, speaking earlier of the flashbacks. A lot of that got trimmed as I understand, and I'm just curious if there were any elements of that, that you’re sort of sad to lose.
AM: No, it's – we had expanded the universe of those flashbacks and made it more Francis-centric. But as soon as we started previewing the film, audiences didn't want to leave Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce. And they wanted to get back to them as quickly as possible and get back to that conversation.
So having done all the work to expand that territory, we then cut it back, cut it back, cut it back, just to its raw bones actually. Because, yeah, the people resented being taken away from two people they'd kind of fallen in love with. So as interesting and as well done as the flashbacks were, it was always a challenge to integrate them.
KT: Yeah. Well, there’s probably multiple stories you could tell here. I mean, I talked to Fernando about this and he said there were probably two or three versions of this movie and all of them were good.
You know, since this film is a more expansive rendering of what you did on the stage, do you think you'd have it in you to do an even more expansive rendering of these two guys or this situation?
You know, I'm thinking of things like how Peter Morgan can't leave the Royals alone. You know, like maybe you and the popes. What do you think? Is it something you’d want to revisit?
AM: Well, you never rule anything out, but no, I've kind of exhausted my curiosity with this particular subject. I'd have to have another kind of epiphany again about something that I thought was important to address here. I don't have a rear view mirror. I tend not to want to rehash.
KT: And then, you know, regarding some of these biopics you've written lately, these towering individuals: Stephen Hawking, Winston Churchill, Freddie Mercury, and now Bergoglio and Benedict. What do you think has drawn you, perhaps subconsciously, to these specific individuals? What qualities do you think they share?
AM: I think they all found themselves in a moment in their lives when they could have gone one way and they went the other. I think we all find this in our lives, where there are heroic choices with the sacrifices that are attendant to those choices.
Oftentimes we take the easy road. The difficult path often is a constant in great lives, and there are costs. And they all pay them. Then whether it's Freddie Mercury or Churchill or Stephen Hawking, you give up things to make the most of your gifts. But you know, we are all born with a life mission, and we're challenged to take up that measure.
Sometimes it's way easier to go, “You know what? Not today.” Well, these are people who accepted it.
KT: Absolutely. We're going to slow things down here a little bit -- well, slow things down, we're gonna have some rapid fire questions for you. Whatever comes to you on these. First of all, speaking of biopics, what's one piece of advice you would give to anyone writing a biopic?
AM: You can make the mistake of inventing too much with a biopic. You can also make the mistake of inventing too little.
KT: So you're just gonna leave people in the middle of the road there?
AM: You said these are quick fire questions!
KT: You’re right, you’re right. Who would be the star of your biopic?
AM: Of my biopic? Who would play me? Pope Francis.
KT: Great answer. I actually have this quote hanging above my desk – I'm curious if you agree or disagree with it. E.B. White: “A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word to paper.”
AM: Sounds about right to me. Yeah.
KT: And then finally, what's the movie that made you fall in love with movies?
AM: Oh, gee. I would either be “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Planet of the Apes.”
KT: Interesting. Tell me about those two.
AM: “Lawrence of Arabia,” I remember played at the State Cinema in New Plymouth, New Zealand. I went along and they used to do these things called “spiders,” which was like a scoop of ice cream and then they pour Fanta on top of it and it turned into this frothy mess. I loved them.
And I'd sit there and the screen started to open, because they had curtains in those days. And then they'd play “God Save the Queen,” which in the Commonwealth countries of Britain, you’d always have to stand up and “God save our gra-“ Unbelievable. But we used to.
And then the screen would start to open, and it got wider and wider and wider, and it was impossible how wide the screen finally was. This Panavision glorious color thing, and then this music score came up and the great deserts of Arabia came on screen, I was in thrall to move making since. And it remains my favorite movie.
But similarly, around the same time, “Planet of the Apes,” the first version with Charlton Heston, was playing and it was an R13, and I was 11, and it broke my heart.
I used to line up, try day after day to get into this screening and “Get out of here, kid!” And eventually I bluffed my way in and got to see “Planet of the Apes.” I love a good popcorn movie. But I also love a camel opera type movie, which “Lawrence” surely is.
KT: Yeah, no doubt. Well, thank you again for talking to me today. This movie's amazing. I keep calling it sublime, that’s sort of the word I've settled on for “The Two Popes.” It was sublime to watch these two guys talk and to see these ideas that were clearly a conversation you were having with yourself as well. It's just a great piece of work, so thank you again for talking.
AM: Thank you, buddy.
KT: There really is something sublime about seeing these ideas play out on the screen in the marketplace today. And it's a real challenge, as we discussed, to make this material sing, to engage the audience for two solid hours with talk of religion and nary an explosion in sight. Great actors help tremendously, of course, and filmmaking that grabs you is a must.
But it would all be for naught if Anthony hadn't managed to craft such an exquisite engine on the page. “The Two Popes” is available to stream on Netflix right now.
The Call Sheet is a Netflix podcast hosted by me, Kris Tapley. The show is produced by Noah Eberhart and the team at Blue Duck Media. Stuart Park created all the original music in this episode and a special thanks to the team at Netflix.