​​In Highlight Reel, Awards Insider speaks with some of this year’s most notable Oscar nominees about their entire body of nominated work. In this entry, we speak with Tár writer, director, and producer Todd Field, nominated three times this year alone.

Todd Field went into this awards season with some well-earned fears. He might have received Oscar nominations for his first two features—2001’s In the Bedroom and 2006’s Little Children—but both campaigns were fraught with battles over distribution, final cut, and what he calls “frightening” promotional tactics. The experiences of rolling out his movies were not great, to put it mildly, and so expectations were low for his return to the scene after 16 years, with his masterful drama Tár. But things went differently. “There’s a huge sense of gratitude,” the filmmaker tells me. “If I could get in a time machine, I’d probably go back to the beginning of this and be less suspicious.”

A guide to Hollywood’s biggest races

Tár is now nominated for six Oscars, with Field himself recognized in three categories, as producer (best picture), writer (original screenplay), and director. Despite weathering a rocky art house theatrical market, the film has captured the zeitgeist and the adoration of critics in its long release tail, from premieres in Venice and Telluride to months of industry events in New York and Los Angeles. On Oscar nominations morning, Field said in a statement, “I’ll admit that for me personally, after 16 years away, it’s an emotional morning—and overwhelming, returning to this incredible community and to be afforded the rarest of privileges, that of celebrating the art of cinema.”

Over two interviews, we spoke about the two-plus decades of filmmaking and campaigning that have brought Field to this moment.

• Best picture (shared with Graham Leader & Ross Katz)
• Best adapted screenplay (shared with Robert Festinger)

Vanity Fair: I wanted to start with your experience of taking the movie to Sundance. I know you’d acted in films at this point that had gone to Park City, but what was it like as a director, taking your first movie to the festival back then?

Todd Field: GreeneStreet Films, who funded the film, had never had a film at Sundance, and they were nervous. They kept saying, “Well, what if we go there and it doesn’t sell?” That’s a valid concern for anybody that backs a movie. There was speculation that they wanted to show it to Fine Line at the time and have them be able to buy it ahead of the festival, and I was firmly against that idea. Ironically, Fine Line was soon no more, I think just before the festival or two weeks into the festival. So it was a wise decision that we didn’t do that.

There’s something about having a film, especially your first film, up there that was so terrifying. The first screening went very well. But even so, I think [my wife], Serena, had to drive me to the emergency room in Park City because I just had so much anxiety. That has not really abated. Walking around in high-altitude places is not necessarily a good thing for filmmakers who aren’t attenuated to the lofty summits. But the great thing about a festival like Sundance, as you know, or Telluride, is you get to talk to people who are really brainy and smart about film and see a lot of it. And it’s always great when they engage with the thing you’ve made and say nice things. That happened at Sundance. The scary part of it was that we hadn’t sold the film, and then we had to sell the film. That’s where it got a little bit more interesting.

Yes, so I’ve heard. Before we get to that, though, I was just struck by who you were in competition with there. I mean, you had Donnie Darko and Christopher Nolan’s Memento and Hedwig all in the same year, right?

The film that won that year was The Believer, which is a very strong film with Ryan Gosling, his kind of his exploding onto the scene, where he plays this young neo-Nazi. Chris’s film Memento was there, yeah, and people were really excited about that. And people loved Donnie Darko. Yeah, it was an interesting year for Sundance.

You’ve talked about the Miramax sale and the advice you received from Tom Cruise to preserve the movie. How did you experience actually selling the movie and then, from there, what became a real campaign? 

We were lucky that we had some very, very fierce defenders of the film out of Sundance, Amy Taubin being the first one at The Village Voice. She came up after a screening and basically grabbed me and said, “Don’t let him touch it,” because it had already been announced that Harvey Weinstein had bought the film. If you’re somebody that’s going to distribute a film and buy a film, that’s probably worth appreciating, at the very least, and paying attention to. But we know who bought the film. So that was a process, and that was a very interesting process to go through. But once Harvey decided that that was going to be Miramax’s film that year, that was something I’d never experienced before.

That Miramax machine, which is a very storied machine, was something I never expected because my dream going to Sundance was that [Sony Pictures Classics co-president] Michael Barker or somebody like that would get the film. I would’ve been happy if the only thing that happened was the film was out for a week at the Royal in Santa Monica, and I could take my family. I mean, that’s my world. That’s why I started making films in the first place. The idea that suddenly you were getting double truck ads in the LA Times and The New York Times and being trotted around places seemed very, very strange, very weird, but exciting because people were seeing the film. More people saw that film than any of us that worked on it could have ever hoped for.

The movie gets nominated for best picture, a feat in and of itself. You also have A Beautiful Mind in that race, which Harvey was kind of infamously accused of smearing. There’s a lot of conversation around tactics that year. 

Yes, that’s true, but there were some other things that went on from some other parties, too, that was quite interesting that year. That was something strange to see. I didn’t realize the deadly minefield of a campaign season and the way that the game is played by certain individuals, and that was really frightening to see…. That was really stock-in-trade. I mean, I observed a lot of stuff that would look like a documentary about Clinton running for president. It was just crazy. And it’s not like that anymore. I don’t think people want to live like that anymore.

• Best adapted screenplay (shared with Tom Perrotta)

Each of your features has really extraordinary, memorable performances. I wanted to ask you specifically about Jackie Earle Haley in this movie. His work is so indelible for me, and both he and Kate Winslet were Oscar-nominated for the film. How did you cast him?

It was a really amazing thing. I was in New York—I had started rehearsing with Kate Winslet and with Patrick [Wilson] and with Jennifer Connelly. I hadn’t cast that role. I hadn’t even seen anyone for that role of Ronnie McGorvey. I was casting a lot of supporting roles. I think maybe I was nervous about it. I know Phil Hoffman wanted to play that role. Obviously, he’s Phil Hoffman, but I was nervous that it would be somehow derivative in some fashion for what he’d done with Todd Solondz. So I’d never considered that as a possibility. Before Todd Thaler, who was casting, sent me anyone, this DVD arrived at my hotel room. Somehow Jackie had gotten my hotel [information], and he had sent me this little film.

Jackie had been working in advertising. He had a production company down in Texas where he lives. That’s what his career was. He was making spots. He’d made this film as the character that was utterly complete, like a 30-minute film. And it was very, very funny. I mean, tonally very different from what we would ultimately do together, but it commanded respect. I called him up and I said, “Look, there’s no money to bring people in here. This is a New York casting situation, and I know you live in Texas, but if you fly yourself here and if you get this role, I promise you will get them to cover your expenses. But if you don’t get it, I can’t pay for them.” It was a real raw deal, but I wanted him to understand that there was a risk. And he said, “Absolutely, I’m coming.” 

I told Kate Winslet this, and she said, “Oh, I know Jackie. I just met him on Steve Zaillian’s film All the King’s Men. I love him. Can I come in and read with him?” And I said, “Would you do that?” She said, “Yeah, absolutely.” They did a couple scenes, and it was obvious. And I said, “All right, you have the part.” We all broke down in tears together. It was a very emotional moment. And how lucky I am, how lucky we all were, to work with Jackie.

I recall the release of the film and the way in which it wasn’t ever really in a lot of theaters at one time—until the Oscar noms, the most screens it had been on was 32—and I remember—

No, the movie was dumped. I mean— 

So talk about that. How did you experience the rollout?

It was a film that was kind of not released. It was a film that many people at New Line really believed in, just not the right people, I guess. It’s a numbers thing. The film came out, it was in limited release, it was received warmly, but they never rolled it out. They just never released the film. Very few people saw the film. My mother would keep calling me for months saying, “When’s it coming to Portland, Oregon?” And I said, “That’s a very good question.” I’m glad to see that the actors on the film were recognized.

• Best picture (shared with Alexandra Milchan & Scott Lambert) 
• Best director
• Best original screenplay

The nominations for Tár represent the biggest embrace you as a filmmaker have received from the Academy. You put out a very sincere and emotional statement on nominations morning. Given that it had been a long time since you were able to make a movie, and given that evidently your last experience was not the most fulfilling when it came to the rollout, has there been a certain amount of taking stock in all this?

Yes, absolutely. There’s a huge sense of gratitude. Also, if I could get in a time machine, I’d probably go back to the beginning of this with Focus and be less suspicious, because I’d had a couple really rough outings with a different situation. Let’s just leave it at that. Back in July, [Focus Features executive vice president of publicity] Stephanie Phillips and I were sitting at Abbey Road and we were recording this concept album, and Cate [Blanchett] was there. We had this quiet moment at Studio One of the booth, which is where the Beatles recorded “All You Need Is Love.” I told them both this [Little Children] story, and I remember [Focus vice chairman] Jason Cassidy—who was with me, by the way, on In the Bedroom, because he worked in marketing there at the time—looked at me and he said, “I promise you it’s not going to be like that this time. We’re not going to let that happen. We love the movie, and we’re going to support the film. I don’t want you thinking about any of those things.” I really wanted to take him at his word because he was telling the truth. It was a long time coming, to be able to hear those words from somebody.

Yeah, so to what you were saying about observing campaigning during the A Beautiful Mind year, how do you feel it compares to now? Twenty-plus years later, you’ve got a new movie out that got a really robust campaign.

Let’s put it this way, Focus Features was born from Good Machine. They weren’t born from Miramax. And they’re completely sincere, absolutely devoted devotees to cinema and to filmmakers and to believing in the things that it is that they make. They have integrity, and when they take a film out, they’re dealing with the film. There’s no dirty tactics. They’re not trying to go after anyone.

How have you found the conversation around Tár and the way it has evolved, as well as the debates? For all the discussion around the health of art house cinema right now, it has been very heartening to see a movie like this not only resonate but inspire so much back-and-forth.

When Cate and I first started talking about this, and when the studio and I talked about this, we said, “Look, if we make this, we have to make it. And if we make it, if we don’t fail at our aim, which is to inspire a very, very fierce debate about this character, then it will be worth it.” But easier said than done. That’s really a testament to Cate Blanchett and her artistry. You can dream up a character like this; quite another thing to inhabit a character like this and turn her into a three-dimensional human being.

It was only a few days into editing where Monika Willi, my editor, and I were walking and talking about Lydia Tár. We talked about her like she was real because we’d already done a pass on the first long scene between Cate and Adam Gopnik. It didn’t take but two minutes before we forgot it was Cate Blanchett. That informed a lot of the filmmaking in terms of the cutting of the film because then we were trying to find, Okay, what is fair? How is it that we don’t lean one way or the other about how we feel about this person? Because as far as we were concerned, we were treating it as if we had gone out and followed this person around for three weeks of their life and we were making a documentary. How can we not be biased one way or the other? You’re questioning your own bias and you’re questioning why you’re feeling one way or the other. Are you feeling that way at the same time? Are we feeling differently because of what’s happened to the material? Or are we feeling differently because one of us didn’t get enough sleep? That was our experience with her. I would never have imagined that that would be the experience in the world at large. That’s absolutely mind-blowing.

I’ll close by asking you about my favorite speech from this awards season, which was your acceptance speech at the Gotham Awards. Not to sound creepy or anything, but I’ve sent it to people. I think it encapsulates a lot about this whole dance.

Oh, thank you. I wish that was the only speech I was giving. That was a very easy speech to write. That was the beginning. We were all in that room together. We had a moment together. Shouldn’t we just all be jumping up and down that we are together and celebrating each other’s work and not wanting something more?

It’s a complicated thing, campaigning.

Yes, it is indeed. You want people to see the thing that you’ve all worked on, so you do it. But yeah, it is complicated.