Exclusive Interview: Katherine Ferguson on her new intimate, engrossing film on the life of Humphrey Bogart

Released this week, Humphrey Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes takes what is quite a well-documented life and makes it feel refreshing and new, largely due to the perspective that writer/director Kathryn Ferguson and co-writer Eleanor Emptage bring to the material. A thoughtful, candid look at Bogart’s life, the documentary is told through the lens of his relationships with the women in his life (beginning with his harsh mother and ending with his marriage to Lauren Bacall). Our writer Nick Bartlett met with Ferguson to discuss her insights into Bogart and the various influential figures in his life, as well as her love of classic Hollywood and the film’s unique sound.

TPM: This feels like a very different project to Nothing Compares (Ferguson’s previous documentary on Sinead O Connor), where you had a pre-existing personal connection with the subject – what was it about Bogart that drew you to the documentary? I’ve also heard you say you didn’t know much about him before, did that change your approach at all?
Yeah, well basically I was approached by Universal when I had just finished Nothing Compares about this project, and I’d watched maybe five Bogart films by that point, if I’m honest. But I’d always grown up fascinated with classic Hollywood, and watched a huge amount of those films growing up with my mother at weekends, and we just loved watching films from that era, but I was always very interested in the women from that era, these wild women, and these fantastic stories, so certainly when I was first approached I thought crikey, that’s an interesting proposal, and what I did with my cowriter Eleanor Emptage was go off for a couple of months and really look into it, and look into him and think about what sort of film we could make about this icon of 20th century American masculinity. Very quickly from looking into Bogart and reading the biographies, we could see there were these incredible female characters that were a constant in his life, obviously beginning with his mother Maude who is extraordinary and deserves her own documentary! So really, that’s where it all started and once Ellie and I found a story we were interested in as women, we then went back and presented that to Universal and the Bogart estate who thankfully were all very behind it too as a fresh take, so that’s where it started.

TPM: I just recently watched an interview with Stephen Bogart who seemed completely on board with the angle of exploring his father’s life through this lens, and not just in terms of Lauren Bacall, he seemed really keen that Bogart’s previous wives got the same depth, and the same amount of screentime. I really loved how they’re not just footnotes in Bogart’s life, you really fleshed them all out. It felt to me like you maybe had the most empathy for Mayo Methot, (Bogart’s troubled third wife) do you think that’s fair?

I do think that’s fair because I think, what we were kind of saddened by when we did look into Mayo’s story was just how derogatory the history that had been left behind was about her. We just thought let’s look into this in a lot more depth and really work out what’s gone on here, and it was very clear that she fell foul to the Hollywood system particularly during the Hays code era when women’s roles were just obliterated due to this moral control over the Hollywood system. There’s that quote from Eric Lax who talks about Mayo and Bogart being on two escalators face to face when they meet, pretty much the same age, and due to the system, her escalator rapidly begins to go down while his ascends, and that became something we were very interested in as women. Everything that we read about her was, she was an alcoholic, she was violent, she was unwell, but we wanted to know what had made her that way, and how much damage did the actual system do in her case in particular. So we were empathetic to her, and we wanted to turn her story around as much as we could, that’s why we included that Louise Brooks comment about her being the fire that set fire to Bogart and made him the Bogart that is known as the icon today. It was her actually that was behind that humongous rise in his popularity and him really finding his feet as an actor. So we felt like we did right by her in that way.

TPM: That definitely comes across. Speaking of Louise Brooks, do you generally agree with her assessment of Bogart’s other wives as well? She talks about how each wife helped Bogart progress or mature.
I love how sharp-toned and ruthless Louise Brooks is in her assessment of it all! I don’t know if he was as calculating as that, but I think they certainly did provide comfort or inspiration or ambition at different points in his life for sure, obviously culminating with the actual love he found with Lauren for the last 12 years of his life. They found each other. Lauren had been really looking for a father figure, and he’d been looking for a mother figure, actually after the relationship he’d had with Maude where he hadn’t felt nurtured or looked after or cared for. I think they both found in each other something that brought a lot of comfort.

The Bogart that emerges from the documentary is quite a contradictory figure. He’s obviously raised by a strong independent woman, and throughout his life he’s drawn to these career-driven, independent women, but then gives them an ultimatum where they have to stay home, while he provides for them, which actually ended the first two marriages! He was obviously lucky to finally meet Bacall, but then she was the one who actually wanted kids!
I know, you could write a whole book on it!

TPM: One of the reasons I love Bogart more than Cagney, Muni, Raft, and his other contemporaries is the subtleties of his performances, and how they all feel so lived-in. What I really appreciated about this documentary is the way you show how this wasn’t always the case! I feel like in the films he made with Fox especially, he seems so uncomfortable in his own skin. I love the progression from these roles to The Caine Mutiny. It’s such a journey he goes on in terms of honing his performance style, was that intentional to show that progression?

Absolutely, and the fact he had 20 years of hard graft before he got anywhere. He really had a lot of tenacity as an actor going through Broadway and then as you say as a contract player in Hollywood. It must have been quite rough in that Hollywood system particularly playing all the B parts, I’m sure he thought it was never going to end or get better. So, I think and then showing the latter films where he does finally feel like he was in the roles he’s most comfortable in and maybe most authentic to him. It’s commented on too by both himself and Louise Brooks, in In A Lonely Place and The Caine Mutiny, he’s playing these more complex, paradoxical men, which felt quite relevant to him really.

TPM: In my head, it was pretty much plain sailing from The Petrified Forest on, but as you show, it really wasn’t. And that montage of unceremonious deaths is so nicely put together. I also loved the score by David Holmes and Unloved – there’s that ethereal piece of music that recurs throughout and that dramatic sting as Mayo bursts onto the scene. Were there many conversations about the sound of the film?

Yeah, it was with David Holmes initially; David and I know each other from Belfast. We spoke to David about composing the whole score, and he said “What you should do is listen to the four Unloved albums because a lot of that music is a homage to this era. Have a listen to those, and then we can talk about it” and what happened, in the end, is that we did have access to the four albums and Mick Mahon, our incredible editor who needs a massive mention as he was the third key team member when we were making this film (obviously we worked together every day for a year on it!) He took the Unloved albums and their stems; he basically took every single track and brought them in as threads of music that would work with each of our scenes or themes depending on what we were trying to explore emotionally and narratively. He just did this painstakingly brilliant music edit across the whole thing where he just re-appropriated the albums and used them in this very fresh way. I love what he did with it, I think it’s really beautiful. We were very keen for it not to be too nostalgic, but I loved their contemporary nod back to that era but through a contemporary sound, so it felt very exciting, and it felt very female.

TPM: It’s not old-fashioned at all, especially with the use of the incidental footage that you shot, it all feels part of a piece and flows really cohesively. Were there any stories or aspects from Bogart’s life that you wanted to include but couldn’t fit in anywhere?

Not really, I suppose what we wanted to be very clear in what we did include was fact, Obviously there are lots of stories out there, which of course would be interesting to explore, but without fact you’re very aware you’re getting into dubious territory, so we were very careful to only include things that we could definitely have backed up, and weren’t just salacious rumours. Also obviously working with Bogart’s kids, we were very keen to do that carefully, so I feel like we got everything in that we needed to get in to tell this part of the story.

Humphrey Bogart: Life Comes In Flashes is available now on digital download now.