SIFF Interview: Il Divo’s David Miller Talks About His Debut Short, ‘A Hand of Bridge’

For David Miller, making a faithful adaptation of the Samuel Barber play A Hand of Bridge was twenty years in the making.

Miller has been enormously successful as an opera singer, starring on Broadway as part of Baz Luhrmann’s La Boheme and, most famously, for being the American tenor in the Simon Cowell-created classical project Il Divo (with over 30 million albums sold, Il Divo are actual Guinness World Record holders for the most commercially successful classical crossover act). For A Hand of Bridge, Miller is returning to the short opera he filmed as a student over twenty years ago and making a fresh, but faithful, film adaptation of what is considered to be the shortest, regularly-staged opera production. Miller made it with co-director Frank Borin.

In A Hand of Bridge, two couples meet for an evening of the card game and confess their desires through song as an internal monologue. Miller’s adaptation is gorgeous to watch because of its lush cinematography, beautiful vocal performances, and an incredibly photogenic cast (which include Miller and his wife, also an opera singer, Sarah Joy Miller).

While in town for the world premiere of A Hand of Bridge at the Seattle International Film Festival (playing prior to the feature The Paris Opera), I met up with David Miller for an interview at SIFF Lounge to talk about his filmmaking debut. I was pleasantly surprised at how generous he was with his time. A Hand of Bridge is about 15 minutes long, and our interview was close to an hour.

How did you decide you want to get into filmmaking?

That is a very very long process for me. This project is about 20 years in the making. My dad was the first person to put a camera in my hand, and taking me to the San Diego Zoo. We lived in San Diego at the time and would go to film the monkeys and the primates cage. And it was like this huge bonding moment between me and my dad.

And then when I was like 6 years old Star Wars came out and this had huge impact on my psyche in so many different ways. And like just just creating a sense of the love of the epic story of the epic nature of epic storytelling.

And by the time I was 10 or 11, I was playing with high school students in a classical orchestra. It was like a youth orchestra and that gave way to many different things. But when I hit high school, that’s when I found I had a voice, like an actual voice in my throat. Not just metaphoric.

And that kind of propelled me into what’s going to be the most epic way of singing opera. So I went to Oberlin Conservatory and I studied as an opera singer and I did 10 years, kind of going around the world like that. And then that gave way about 13 years ago. And I just showed up for the audition for a Simon Cowell project called Il Divo and that was its own form of epic. And all across the those 13 years the record company at the beginning the record company was like oh, this is really interesting, so creative and new and different. So we should be getting this on film.

You know at the time there was no formula they didn’t know if it was going to work. They were already spending a ton of money on this, this pet project for Simon that wasn’t related to TV shows, it wasn’t related to anything else, just something Simon wanted to do. And so they were they were spending a lot of cash and they just couldn’t justify spending more. So I said give me a camera, I’m pretty handy with a camera. So I just started filming things. I gave the footage back to the record company but they didn’t do anything with it.

And I’ve got like 30 or 40 short films over the last 13 years. And so then at a certain point a few years ago I was preparing for a concert with my wife, who is also an opera singer. And she’s also in Edinburgh. And we’re preparing for a concert. And so I you know put the put the opera on. I think it was La Traviata, and I started from the overture and all of a sudden I have these images that are popping into my head and I’m I’m trying to figure out which production was that from what where did I see this. Where is this coming from? Then I realized, oh I’m inventing this. This is creativity happening when you start just like writing it down, like journaling about it.

And a couple of years later it happened again with Romeo and Juliet. And so then I started storyboarding and sketching that and I realized that I had this growing desire of merging everything that I knew from opera as a purist in a classical sense with everything that I’ve learned from the populist side. What does it take to hold onto someone with a Facebook mentality for three hours? What does it actually take to keep these people interested for such a period of time? And I realized that I wanted to merge these two. And the only real medium for that was would be film.

How did you get to making A Hand of Bridge?

When I was down on in Mexico with Il Divo and we were shooting our commercial for our most recent album, I pulled the director aside and said, “Look I want to bend your ear for a second, I’ve got this thing. It’s my first movie project. I want to get it off the ground. I don’t really know what I’m doing. How did you get your start?” etc. etc. He said, “Well, show me what you have” and I showed him the storyboard. He said I think this is great and I want to help you get this made. He’s been looking for a narrative piece because he’s never done a narrative before. He’s mainly done commercials and videos from TV. And so he kind of brought all the technical know-how, and a lot of additional creativity to the piece. It ended up taking on a life of its own.

 

 I thought it was a very gorgeous film, not hurt at all by the fact that your cast is also super-photogenic. I wanted to ask, though, about returning to A Hand of Bridge, because it was something you had done previously in college.

I had already done it before, so it was something I had a frame of reference for. I mean this is just like a super ultra extension of that video from 20 years ago. There was only one surviving copy, and it ended up with my ex-girlfriend’s stuff. When we parted ways at the end of college and she tried to mail it to me and she sent it to Seventh Avenue instead of Seventh Street so it’s gone, it’s just out in the ether. But I found the original footage and I still had that on and on micro tape or mini Super 8. I had it digitized and got it back. And because I was thinking that would be like interesting enough to send to film festivals if I could get it back.

It was absolutely terrible. And really it’s a matter of perspective, because at the time I was really proud of it and I really enjoyed having been given the opportunity to make that so I can pass the course. All my friends chipped in and everyone wore their own clothes. I think we stole a couple of wigs from the costume department to the opera. But then you stack that against the last 13 years and my video editing capabilities and using better cameras and better lenses all of that just kind of adds to the value of what you’re watching.

And so I realized that it would be the easiest piece to try and go after because it’s only nine minutes long and you know if I were to go after the next shortest opera that’s kind of in the repertoire is The Telephone which is about 30 minutes long, one act. I’m just so glad that we went after nine minutes because being my first experience as a director. I think if we tried to attempt a half hour piece I would have gone insane, even if it was on this piece. I think I’ve had too many heart attacks already and was on the verge of a stroke because I wasn’t originally intending to be in it, nor was Sarah Joy to be in it. She was the one in the green dress.

What ended up happening was that my stockbroker was in the middle of doing a whole bunch of other things and this was a favor I was pulling. It was turning out to be a whole lot more complicated so he dropped out and I had to find his replacement. No he couldn’t do it during that window so we had to shift the window of everything which is amazingly difficult given so many people who are involved, all the department heads all the everything and moving that window, I lost two of my other singers, so I was like What am I going to do?

Sarah Joy said, “Well, you know someone who can sing this.” I said “I can’t be in it. This is my directorial debut.” She said “David, don’t be stupid. You are going to ultimately have a much bigger beam of attention on this if you’re in it.” And I was like why is that? And she said “Because you’re David from Il Divo.” It didn’t even occur to me. And then she filled in as Sally even though that’s not her voice type. She’s more like a Beverly Sills, more like a Joan Sutherland, kind of like a really high voice that does all these amazing things. So to have her be like Johnny One Note, she was a really good sport about it.

It looked like you had a lot of fun making it.

It was a lot of fun. And you know it’s it’s really funny to kind of see it back because you said before it didn’t hurt that everyone was so photogenic. And they are. But what I learned through this experience is that virtually everyone is photogenic if you have the right people behind the lens capturing it. I remember what it looked like on set and it did not look like that to my eye. Part of the reason I was having a heart attack I was sitting there going “This does not look right. I don’t think this is going to work.” I was just completely petrified.

At one point, because they had the four of us sat at the table. The lights weren’t working. There was a lens issue there was this and that, and we’re losing time. We were only set for four days of shooting and then we had to do five days because we just ran out of time. And they’re wafting in tons of smoke. I didn’t know about this trick, but I do now. How when you put smoke in a scene, it catches the light in different ways and it reflects differently. And when I when I got all the footage back and looked at all the footage all the smoke is in there like just careening past the faces.

And it was just like “Frank, there’s a ton of smoke in here.” “No, no, no, no, don’t worry about it. We’re going to send it to the colorist. He’s going to take all that out. He’s going to get that.” I guess it’s all done in post. OK. Which was also a whole other thing. Dealing with the colorist and the visual effects and the green screen and stuff like that was way beyond my frame of reference and scope and that was such a big part of my expectations, because I just I had to defer to him. I was like here’s what I want to see here’s my storyboard. And he was like Great. That’s a good framework. And here’s what we’re going to do with them. I said, “I never would have thought of that” a number of times. So. I think my biggest takeaway from all of this is that film is not a one man man kind of endeavor like I thought it was. You know, I thought it would be one of those things where, if I just got the funding and got everything together that I would set up the lights and I would set up the set and I would be behind the camera and then in front of the camera in the times where I needed to be.

But it’s just there’s no way to get perspective that way; you have to collaborate. And that’s where the genius comes in: you get all the ideas when everyone comes together and you sit around the table and debate the validity of different ideas and how they might apply it. And that’s when you get to you find the genius and you find the answer.

I wanted to ask you about about appearing in Baz Luhrmann’s production of La Boheme on Broadway. Moulin Rouge is a movie I really revere and love. I was wondering if you learned anything from him about filmmaking that you were able to apply to A Hand of Bridge, even though it was a stage production?

That Baz can plant a seed in my head that went completely counter to everything that I learned as an opera singer, which was to sing to the back of the house make sure those people in the back, in the highest balcony, can tell exactly what’s happening on stage. So everything has to be super grand gesture and everything has to be like that so that they know what’s going on. And Baz came in from a film perspective and said, “Yes, there is an element of that, that’s kind of only because it’s traditions built on traditions built on traditions. When you really boil it down, those people can see just fine. If you do something with your eyes, they’re probably not going to catch them. Everything else – body language, posture, everything translates. But the bigger you make something, you start getting the eye used to having all of this going on, then all of a sudden, creating an intimate moment is impossible. Because the BE eyes like the ears have this giddy sense of getting used to. You get used to what you’re looking at. Like with the year the year starts to compress to the decibel level that is happening you turn left music really loud. The ear will play. We’ll adjust to that compress and then if you turn it down rinse off. But you can’t actually you like hear it as you’re used to because the eyes, like the ears, have this sense of getting used to what you’re looking at. Like with the ear, the ear starts to compress to the decibel level that is happening if you turn the music up really loud, the ear will adjust to that, but if you turn it down really soft, you can’t actually hear it as you’re used to it being really loud. Do you want people to move back into their chairs or do you want to have them hanging on your every word? And that was completely new for me as an opera singer. It was really more about distilling the energy into its most potent form and getting rid of everything extraneous, so the emotion is the most important thing and the voice wraps around that, not the other way around.

What is going to happen with this short film after it plays this weekend?

I’ve got a bunch of applications that are in with other festivals that I’m still waiting to hear back from. I have someone who’s been helping, her name is Kimberly Browning. She’s one of the programmers at Tribeca and she’s been helping me come kind of coached me through the film festival circuit. And she’s a programmer and she’s a filmmaker as well. And so she’s helping me avoid rookie mistakes. I was just going to apply to the top 10 or top 50 or whatever film festivals. And she said thing is most film festivals have like type. They have a type of film that they want. They have a type of film that they want to see and your film does not necessarily tick all those boxes, your film is very outside the box. If someone’s putting up a film festival of all horror movies you wouldn’t put this in, right? Well no, of course not. So if you’re going for a film festival that does mostly documentaries, would you put this in that? No that doesn’t make sense. She said you need to find a film festival that is very music-friendly, which SIFF is. They have the Face the Music program.

It’s it’s it’s kind of like Il Divo. It’s a little bit too classical to be considered pop; it’s a little too pop to be considered classical music. And so this this film kind of it’s beautiful and it’s enjoyable to watch and it sounds good, I think, but does it fit in a box [that film festivals are looking for]? So it’s a waiting game. A lot of these places will come back with rejections and hopefully some of them will come back with acceptances and then eventually I plan to release it online as a downloadable product.

How did A Hand of Bridge get to SIFF?

I was just searching out film festivals and Seattle actually found me. I put it on a website and announced it to the Il Divo fans and there was a fan here in Seattle immediately thought of the festival and contacted Dustin Kaspar and said here’s this guy, here’s what he’s doing, maybe it would be a good fit for you. And it just so happens they had a feature that they were planning to program called The Paris Opera.

Here’s an interesting side note: the Paris Opera was the last place where I auditioned for Il Divo. It was basically the place where Il Divo found me, so it’s just really funny to me how there seems to be a lot of synchronicity here.

{A Hand of Bridge makes its World Premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival on Saturday, June 3 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 3:00 PM, and on Monday, May 5 at SIFF Cinema Uptown at 6:45 PM, both screenings are programmed with the feature film The Paris Opera. Tickets and more info can be found here.}