Best known for starring in the film “The Hobbyist,” Daniel Mitura discusses his multi-hyphenated career as an actor, writer, producer, and playwright and his new science-fiction short film “Launch at Paradise.”
Debbie Millman:
Daniel Mitura is a writer, actor, playwright and producer. He had a starring role in the film, The Hobbyist, which was featured in more than 100 festivals around the world. His short film, Loyalty, is available on Amazon Prime and his theatrical work has been produced at Theatre Row, Playwrights Horizons and the Cherry Lane Theatre among many others. One of his latest projects is a short sci-fi film titled Launch at Paradise. He joins me today to talk about his multihyphenated career and more. Daniel Mitura, welcome to Design Matters.
Daniel Mitura:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.
Debbie Millman:
Daniel, I understand that in addition to your many talents as an actor and a writer, you also play the oboe. Why the oboe?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, I played the piano since I was four and I remember apparently I saw it on TV and wanted to play. And I started playing the piano and my feet could barely reach the pedals, but I still played. I remember giving some of my first concerts which is why I always felt very comfortable in front of people because I literally grew up doing that. And when I was about 10 years old, I decided that I wanted to play another instrument and so I went through the entire orchestra and I picked the one that I thought was the most beautiful sounding. Which is also it happens to be one of the most difficult to play. You have to learn how to make reads, but I chose it based on the aesthetics purely.
Debbie Millman:
Daniel, you were born in Dallas, Texas. Mother ran a shelter helping unhomed people get back on their feet. That must have been really emotionally challenging.
Daniel Mitura:
Oh, incredibly challenging. My mother is a saint in person and helped so many families and so many people get back on their feet. They also had job training, transitional housing, so the full process from people that were homeless to actually getting them enabled to have jobs, have homes, take care of their families. These are homeless people with families if you can imagine, so that just magnifies the whole problem and most homeless families are mothers with children.
Debbie Millman:
How did that influence how you felt about the world and your place in it?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, it’s probably a couple of different things. It showed me the full range of humanity because I went to a private prep school, so that’s like one set of people in Dallas and that was actually … In some ways for me, it was great to see that. It was good to see the other side and people who didn’t have everything, who didn’t have all the resources like all of my friends in school did who would have, obviously, when you’re in grade school and high school people complain about certain things, and then if I was visiting the shelter you can see that those complaints were actually quite silly compared to other people that didn’t even have a home. In many ways, I think, for me, and I think about this with writing too, is that you see these people who “don’t”, who have nothing or are homeless and there’s so many times when you actually see more humanity and more grace and more love and more manners than you do from the people that have everything, that’s a lesson in humanity, I think.
Debbie Millman:
What did your dad do as you were growing up?
Daniel Mitura:
My dad is a sommelier and-
Debbie Millman:
I couldn’t find anything about him, so that’s so interesting.
Daniel Mitura:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He originally had an interest in history, and then as life goes on, you get a certain age, sommelier was a second career. So I grew up and never wanted to drink any wine. Because when your parents do it, it’s not cool. So everything was always offered or, “Try this, try that.” It’s like, “No, I don’t want it. I don’t want it.”
Debbie Millman:
So is it fair to say that you’re the first performer in your family?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, it’s funny, my dad played the accordion, I remember, and I saw him play that a few times, but definitely on the level that I at least tried to do it, yeah, I think so. I’m probably back in different family trees, I’m sure there were other actors and things like that, but none that were ever spoken of or that I knew about.
Debbie Millman:
I read that you would produce concerts for your family to watch and you memorized all the music and created the costumes. Were they one-man shows or did you get the whole family involved?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, I have an older brother and it’s very difficult to direct an older brother. So there were attempts at collaborations, but then they often ended up being one-man shows. And it’s amazing because I feel like that’s a story that you hear quite often, but when I was little, that’s a natural thing. I was like, “Okay, you sit over there and then look this way,” and there’s some kind of lighting. It’s just something that happens naturally.
Debbie Millman:
You started writing and acting in plays in high school and I read that in the summers between grades, you were watching three to four movies a day. Was it at that point that you thought, “I want to make my life in performing and in theater and film”?
Daniel Mitura:
I think that I always thought that. I used to also, over the summer, I would just read novel after novel after novel, just one after the other, just big stacks of them. And in a way, movies are just like shortened novels. They have an entire world. They have a language which they’d speak. They have characters. So I think I was always just devouring anything and everything, whether it be novels or films or … Television, not so much. I never was as much into television, but I was always doing that and I loved the movies. And it’s funny because then I ended up in school, in the summers, I ended up interning at the Sundance Channel. And so I would sit there and I would watch movie after movie after movie and write these short reviews. So it’s like a muscle that I had. I love movies, I really do. It’s really rare that I see a movie and I didn’t like something about it.
Debbie Millman:
You visited New York City only one time, I believe, to see Sweeney Todd before deciding to go to Columbia University. That one visit was all it took?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, it’s funny, it’s interesting you put it that way. Actually, we came here and Sweeney Todd was available on TKTS and so we saw it. It wasn’t particularly to see that show, but-
Debbie Millman:
Well, that a good pick though, right?
Daniel Mitura:
It was. It’s a fantastic show. There’s the one with Patty LuPone and Michael Cerveris. And the actors and characters all doubled with musical instruments. So for me, having grown up and having played the piano, seeing the actors on stage also be musicians, it was a perfect match. It’s funny as if almost that was the reason that I came to New York to see that. And yeah, absolutely a fantastic show and I think, theatrically seeing that on Broadway, because I had seen musicals obviously, but seeing that, the actor-musician-type combination was really eye opening. Because like I said, as a musician, you’re a performer and you stand up in front of people, but you perform music, whereas as an actor you are the instrument and you are the thing which is looked at and judged.
So they seem very similar, but they’re different types of performing. So I feel like it’s surprisingly formative experience and that’s a great plug for TKTS as well. It’s a good plug for Broadway because it’s also like, “Try something. See something. You may not know what it is.” My parents knew what Sweeney Todd was, but I had no idea.
Debbie Millman:
But how lucky to see Patty LuPone.
Daniel Mitura:
Oh, absolutely. I still do and I grew up, I really loved opera and Sweeney Todd to me is very close to an opera, much more than other musical theater. And I had always loved musical theater. It was more like opera as in, the Sweeney Todd is drama, has very high stakes. There’s not a lot of song and dance in Sweeney Todd, so I think it’s especially appealed to me in that way. And also a lot of the novels that I grew up reading, I remember I would read Charles Dickens and Balzac and the 19th century novels and Sweeney Todd has that kind of setting with the meat pies and everything else. So it was very much aesthetically something that spoke to me.
Debbie Millman:
You majored in art history which surprised me. You only minored in theater in college. Did you have other artistic professional ambitions at that time?
Daniel Mitura:
I think I took art history in school, it was when you do theater, there were the theater clubs and then there was also the major, but they didn’t have a major in acting or writing. It was a sort of all-around theater major. So I took acting and writing classes and then art history was my major because it gave me this palate cleanser that nonetheless ended up, you think that it’s different but a lot of things end up being the same in studying artists. And I did a thesis project on Picasso. It was incredibly informative just as an artist when you read how does an artist develop their brand. And so studying that with Picasso and also thinking about film, in a film, you have thousands and thousands of frames and images, but artists would spend several years making one single picture.
If you look at the French landscape artists or anything up to the early 20th century, let’s say, there were entire narratives in one image. And how do you tell a story in one image that makes this certainty about, “What is the story? “Who are the characters?” So thinking about theater and film, in some ways, it’s easier than these artists that had to spend several years and only got one shot in one picture to tell everything.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve said that your focus on studying the classics prepared you well for being a writer, and while the Odyssey may be an ancient text, it’s still a great model of storytelling. Why do you think that?
Daniel Mitura:
I would say because people are still reading it and the Iliad then it’s proved itself in a way and that people are … You can see, it’s like as a creator, look at the things that have endured and ask, “Why have they endured?” Those are books, but I suppose they’re actually poems. They were actually performed poem songs that were done extemporaneously with different bits that were changed or improvised. So in a sense, those were live performances. Also, what they say about character is fascinating. If you look at the Odyssey and what are the moral alignments of that world, I ask that question because I actually don’t know. It’s his idea of faithfulness and then where he’s going and the homecoming. These are all such fantastic themes and the Iliad is the same. The first word of the Iliad in Greek is rage.
And if you think about what makes a great character and that Achilles has this very particular point of view and how far will he take that point of view, those are really enduring questions. And then of course, they open up historical and cultural questions and all the different people that have tried to say, “Where is the city of Troy and what was Odysseus’ journey?” and that crosses with the history of Ancient Greece which is drama and also democracy and the history of the Mediterranean. So it’s something that opens up every other possible door, which I really love about it. That’s something I think people should strive to do, is create something that then makes you want to go and look on Wikipedia about this and that and say, “Oh, when was it made? And who was the ruler at the time? And what about that? Oh, let me learn about the monarchy and then this thing,” and just to open up into all of these directions,
Debbie Millman:
It almost seems like everything harkens back to those original stories and it reminded me of something that you said about there only being a finite number of stories in that even original works are adaptations. And as a writer, I was wondering if that scared you in any way.
Daniel Mitura:
It doesn’t because I really love style as a writer. So content is one thing and then style is different. And I feel like from what I’ve seen and when I watch things, I prize a certain style. Especially in theater, I like when things are very swift and I like when they’re direct. I like the sound of the dialogue, the arc of the sound of the scene which is why I don’t really like to direct things because in my head I’m going to say, “Oh, I think it should just sound a certain way and the argument crests like this and then it falls silent.” It’s a compositional thing which doesn’t work for actors at all. And so that’s a totally different way to speak, but for me, when I write something, I can hear it and then I just pull it out from what I can hear, especially since I’ve written a lot of things for particular actors and so I know how they would say something and what their voice does and what their stature does and how they would drive it a certain way.
So for me, that’s why, well it’s a similar story, but you can tell it in a different way and then how does it come across, and for me again, it’s like the sound of it is incredibly important.
Debbie Millman:
Well, you’ve talked about the difference between the criticism or feedback you get from critics or an audience that comes to see something and then tells you what they think about what you’ve written versus the feedback that you get from actors where you’ve said that criticism speaks for itself. Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by that?
Daniel Mitura:
I don’t really know that there really is such a thing as criticism. I think there’s only really commentary. Critics, they are writers and so I think they are also stylists. And so oftentimes, what they’re creating, and come on, when I criticize things and I look at them, it’s really all about me and my reaction. So to assume that someone can actually have a high-cultural arbitration of whether something appeals to what we assume is the mass of the average theatergoer is totally impossible. So I think if you read criticism and it’s very well written, it’s like, “Well, whatever they saw must have really inspired them to do a good piece of writing.”
People have so many different hopes and dreams of what they want from a piece of theater. I think everybody wants it to be interesting because it’s often expensive and it takes effort to get to a theater. So beyond that, I think I wouldn’t really put much on it. That’s why I say I think criticism speaks for itself because I respect that as its own genre.
Debbie Millman:
What about the criticism that’s more of a takedown where there seems to be glee in not just criticizing something but insulting it?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, I think again that speaks to whoever the author of that piece is. Actually, I feel like it’s very difficult. If you have written or someone goes to see a very perfectly written play about divorce and they’re going through a divorce, they might be very angry at the play. And if they’re a critic, they might just want to take it down. And in some ways, I’d say that actually means it’s a really great play, but for them it was a really bad experience. So I remember when I was very young, someone told me, “Look, all that matters is that people react to your work. Having them be bored is the worst thing.”
And then I think there’s a fine line. I don’t think you want to startle, surprise and challenge people, but we’re definitely in a phase where you have to be and want to be more careful about offending people. So there is that fine line, although I’m not a comedian, so I feel like that’s most difficult for comedians these days to push boundaries because we’re all deciding new boundaries for ourselves and our work. So I think that is tricky, but if you listen and you communicate with people and you’ve worked hard and you respond to, that wouldn’t be criticism but feedback, you can adjust if people are upset by things in the wrong way. But that’s tough these days.
Debbie Millman:
Daniel, you graduated in 2009 and your first play, The Picture of Dorian Gray was produced the next year. Your adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s only published novel was produced by Nomad. What made you choose this particular play to adapt?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, it’s more of a novella than a novel, which made the idea of putting it on stage a little bit easier as opposed to War & Peace, the play. And also because I just felt that, thematically, it has comes out of this traditions like Jekyll & Hyde and what it said about character, what it said about audiences and watching. There’s so much in that book about what it means to be seen and looked at, which is what we’re doing when we look at actors on stage. And I guess, just from my structured mind, I could see the 90 pages and felt that it was something that was so … In some ways, I guess from your question, I’m hearing myself say that I was thinking as a producer and it coming out that way because I feel like I don’t even have to defend the story because it’s such a great story and there’s such great characters. Who wouldn’t want to see those characters?
And it’s fascinating because so much of Oscar Wilde’s biography gets hooked into how people respond to that play, which is just amazing to me. I think it’s been what, over a hundred years since he passed away. And people are still really obsessed with something that was a scandal in the London papers back in the day. So I can’t explain that, but it is what it is.
Debbie Millman:
Well, the play is about how the young, impressionable and stunningly beautiful Dorian Gray sells his soul for eternal youth and I’ve noticed that the purpose of life or the reason for being is apparent in a number of your works. Is that intentional in reference to this specific choice or was that just the beginning?
Daniel Mitura:
I don’t know. I thought that that’s what all work was always about, but I never really liked philosophy class, so I don’t know. I remember taking some classes in philosophy and I just thought that it was way too confusing and it was too dense. That’s a really great question. I think because purpose comes to mind because creating art takes so much effort and the rewards are mostly nonmaterial rewards. So when I think about making something, it’s like, “Why? Why this? Why is it important?” So it brings you all the way down to like, “What is the meaning of life? Why is this? Why do I want to do this? Why do I do what I do?” I think all those things come out, all those questions come out for artists because of the effort involved and then because you do something and nobody sees it or the person who sees it as a “critic” or whatever. So then you constantly ask these questions and things take such a long time to develop.
And also really good collaborators will ask you those questions. Directors will say, “Why did you write this? Why does the character do this?” Actors will say that. And if you don’t have a good reason, then you just look really stupid. Unless you’re working at a really high level and you’re paying people millions of dollars, they tend to really need a good reason to do it because you’re not giving them a great monetary reason, so they tend to try to look for a passionate connection. And if you can’t deliver that, then you should get more money either way.
Debbie Millman:
At least if you’re not getting paid, it needs to have meaning I guess, right?
Daniel Mitura:
Yeah, absolutely. And also that comes across I think in the preparation and then in the performance. You can really tell if the actors are connected to it, if they mean it, if they believe it and then audiences will sit back. I have this experience in the theater, when someone on stage actually says the thing to the other person versus the line, it shocks me. When the person, if the line is, “I really hate you,” well, they say the line a lot and then you’re just, “Okay. That person hate that character, he hates the other character.” But when you hear it and they’ve said it and they mean it, it sounds a different way. And it’s funny how you can go through a whole play and not a single thing because actors can get into a volleyball back and forth rhythm, but then when it really lands, it lands and you’re like, “Oh, this is why we do what we do, because when it lands, it’s so good when it lands and it doesn’t always or even often land.”
Debbie Millman:
Your next play was titled Plan B which was a musical in one act. You wrote the book in lyrics and the music was written by Rebecca Greenstein. Was this the first time you extended your playwriting into musical theater?
Daniel Mitura:
Yes, and it was not sung through. So there were scenes and then a song and scenes and then a song. I find it really fascinating as a writer because they say like, “Oh, you’re writing the book,” but the songs are where so much of the expression happens. And so it was just a fascinating experience for me because I was the book writer and then I’d listen to the music and I’d be like, “Oh, I should just do all this.” I was like, the music … Becky was such an amazing composer. I was so captivated by her music and I was like, “Wow.” So it’s interesting. I feel like sometimes then words can fall short, but that was such a fun experience and it was very campy and it had a farcical energy to it, which just came out of the time. I’m not sure that I would capture or could capture that again or it’s where my mind or soul are at.
And so when I think of it, I’m so happy. I don’t know that I could create that again. It wouldn’t be the same or it would be too ironic or it had a bubbly effervescent quality of youth and sometimes that’s hard to bring back.
Debbie Millman:
Well, speaking of youth, these plays, your first plays were mounted a year or two years after you graduated college with an undergraduate degree. How did you get the plays mounted so quickly? How did something like that happen?
Daniel Mitura:
Just a lot of effort and you just keep pushing. And I don’t really know actually. I worked on a lot of those and was producing some of those on my own. And so I just keep pushing. I think that comes back to the question of why. And so when you believe in it, you’re like, “Well, this is going to happen and there’s so many reasons why it can’t,” and you just keep going and going. And when you push, you meet people that help you and believe in you. That’s part of the magic. They don’t believe in you and then you do something. It’s like when you’re doing something and then you’re worried it’s not going to happen, but you really want to do it, then the angels come to help. And they always do, but yeah, that’s not … I guess if someone was wondering how do they do it, I don’t know. I’m not a good teacher of … I just said, “Believe in yourself and work hard.” I think that’s all I have to offer because that’s all I did.
Debbie Millman:
Your first big acting role was in 2016 in the short film, The Hobbyist, which was written and directed by George Vatistas and shot in Brooklyn in two days. And for our listeners who haven’t seen it, can you talk a little bit about what The Hobbyist is about?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, it’s based on a short story by Frederic Brown, which George gave me the short story and it fits on a single sheet of paper which is a really great basis for a short film, because again, you’re not trying to overstuff something and it’s a very simple concept. And it’s a neo-noire thriller. And I say that because genre’s important. So it’s about a man that’s decided he wants to try to kill his wife. And there’s a twist obviously in what happens and what he imagines. And the film itself is really just a two-character piece. And Robert Smith actually, who’s in that movie, passed away recently, which is really sad and he was an amazing actor. He has this incredible presence on screen. The store was filmed in the Lower Eastside and that’s actually the store. So it wasn’t a set that was built.
And then the basement that he goes into with Robert was actually a basement that was in Brooklyn. It was our producer David Mayer, who’s amazing, it’s his parents’ or grandparents’ basement. So we were actually in the basement. It wasn’t a set. So it was the real place. And Robert was incredible. Robert was terrifying, frightening and so intense and so good. And then I just spit out lines. He was frightening me and then they came out. It was great. I’d say that that’s a very positive thing. That’s my endorsement of it. I think it’s amazing. I didn’t even see myself in it. Also, I had longer hair at the time.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you had really hair on point in that one, I have to say. Good hair, really good hair. And I read that it wasn’t a wig. Yeah.
Daniel Mitura:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s funny because then we would go to screenings, and after the film, I cut my hair, it looked like this. And so we’d go to screenings and it was Robert and I standing next to each other. All these people would come up to Robert and be like, “Gosh, you were amazing.” And then they’d look at me and then they’d walk away. I said to Robert, I was like, “Oh, I must have been really bad,” and he’s like, “No.” He’s like, “Nobody recognizes you.”
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, there are several plot twist that occur in just a few minutes. This is a short film which requires a lot of deft acting. And I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about how shorts are constructed to get so much to happen in such a small amount of time.
Daniel Mitura:
Well, that’s a good question. It’s like there’s some expression about, “Oh, I wish I could have written something shorter, but I didn’t have enough time,” that sense that a poem is harder to write and I do think that about short films. You want to be like a poem. You want to make people think, but also feel like it’s a complete experience is very, very hard to do. I think what I said about the Frederic Brown story being a single page, that’s a great place to start. Because sometimes you watch television these days and you feel the opposite. You’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this one page has been stretched and stretched and stretched too far.” So I think having a source material is great that’s very contained, but then it really is an art for a short. I think it’s actually, in some ways … Well, it’s much more expensive, but making a long film and not cutting anything is sometimes simpler for story.
We had that with Launch of Paradise where it was strange because we had an 18-minute cut and then there was this scene that I really loved and then we cut that scene, but then somehow the movie actually made more sense without it. I don’t think I’ll be able to explain why that is. It’s just something about the flow because maybe that scene added information, but it added too much information and made you want 10 more minutes and taking that out then made the 15 feel okay. So it’s this thing that you do with editors and composers and you hope for the best, I think, is all I can say about it.
Debbie Millman:
Along with Lauren Schaffel, you wrote and acted in the short film Loyalty in 2018 and I read that you need and demand loyalty. What was the motivation for writing a film about loyalty?
Daniel Mitura:
Like I said, I’m very interested in words and I don’t know if you remember, but that year that word was batted around a lot. Actually, the quote that you read was told to someone who worked for the FBI. I just hate saying names to endorse-
Debbie Millman:
I get you. I hear you. We know.
Daniel Mitura:
And the absurdity of that, which it’s not really absurd because it’s all of our lives and it is the government and it’s what we live in, but the absurdity of this concept and you got me again thinking about farce and then also talking about these plot twists and I was like, “Well, if we can do …” If you do one plot twist, it’s like, “Interesting. A second one more interesting. A third one,” and then you’re like, “The fourth one, the fifth one.” And it gets to a point, I feel like it’s something that David Mamet does really well in his plays where it twists and turns so many times that then you lose the throughline because it’s trying to tell you that it’s not quite about that and then you get to the place of absurdity, it’s like if you do a mantra and you repeat it over and over again. The point is to make your brain think, “No more,” from the repetition.
So I think a lot of us felt that idea of absurdity that went on towards a kind of madness. I think of the playwright, Luigi Pirandello who wrote things like that or even something like Noises Off. That was the idea. And Lauren Schaffel, who was in that film, I worked with her and so many different things and she’s amazing and it was a lot of fun to do and it was a real actor piece. The cinematography is mostly closeups. And so when you work with someone a lot, you can get all of the minute reactions and it’s about the faces and all of that. So yeah.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, one thing I was really struck by when watching the film was how everybody was both believable and yet unbelievable at the same time. And the title sets you up for assessing even before anything happens. If it’s called Loyalty, then who’s being disloyal? Who’s being loyal? And that keeps switching. And so the acting, it really is something that makes you so aware of the acting because you’re trying to decide who you can believe and who you can’t believe based on somebody’s acting.
Daniel Mitura:
Right.
Debbie Millman:
And that was something that I really enjoyed about the film.
Daniel Mitura:
Oh, well, thank you. And they’re acting for each other because they’re lying to each other.
Debbie Millman:
Right.
Daniel Mitura:
And I think that Lauren is such a great actor, because in that, she has this very human moment where my character is saying, “Oh, she told me this and she doesn’t want to get married,” and then she breaks the thing and she’s like, “Wait, you said you didn’t want …” You know what I mean? Then it’s this human moment that she has of panic and they’re out of the whole and that’s what I love about Lauren is she does that so well.
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, and all of that happens in her eyes, by the way. It’s all in her eyes. All of it.
Daniel Mitura:
Yeah, that’s why we went with the closeups. And I was like, “It’s so much fun to do that.” And then if you watch it … And then our composer for that, actually, he watched it and he’s like, “I really want to write a string trio for this because it’s …” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.” That’s what he wrote. His name is Ricky Schweitzer and the music is another character in the film.
Debbie Millman:
Absolutely, without a doubt. You’ve said that so much of creativity happens extemporaneously or it just happens on the spot. Did that happen on this set of Loyalty? Was there sort of adlibbing or additional construction that was happening while it was being filmed?
Daniel Mitura:
I think that the reactions sometimes get adlibbed. The script is pretty close to what we filmed, but things like Lauren in her eyes, the reactions, the hesitations, the look, that’s the stuff that organically comes out. I think other scripts could be … That one was just so tight because it had to meet the plot points. So I’ve had other things where it’s been a little bit more extemporaneous, but I feel like that had to be pretty close.
Debbie Millman:
You have a surprising scene after the end credits and I don’t want to give any spoilers away because this is a short film that I think everybody should see. So I just want to ask you, what motivated you to add that little surprise at the end? Too many Marvel movies?
Daniel Mitura:
Never enough Marvel. I love the Marvel movies. I love it. I love it.
Debbie Millman:
Me too. Me too.
Daniel Mitura:
Exactly because of that. Because it’s like this little … It’s always a little something extra at the end. It’s great that you said that because that’s really why I thought of doing that because I love the Marvel movies. And it’s like, “What can we do for this?” It’s like, “Oh, one more twist. Just pack one more in there.” And there’s also this part of me that loves that because it makes people sit through the credits to see the composer, all the people that contribute. That’s one of my little pet peeves of when people walk and it’s like, “No, that’s a really important part of the film.” And so I like doing that because then it’s like, “Oh, there’s something at the end. You have to wait,” and then you wait through it and it’s not that long.
Debbie Millman:
You’ve stated that there’s an aspect of complicity with the theater and authorship and ownership, and in a play, there’s almost always talk about who wrote it, whereas in a film there’s not as much talk about the screenwriters. It’s usually more the directors or the actors. Do you feel like you have to own the words more in theater?
Daniel Mitura:
Oh, you have to own the words and you have to own the meaning. I feel like I go to the theater, and like I told you before, I really like the style of the dialogue when there’s words that get repeated later and really crafting it, so that some character will use a certain word and then someone else uses that word and the rhythm of the dialogue and the lines. And I don’t feel like people ever actually talk about that when they see theater. They’re very obsessed with the characters and the meaning of the play. So I wish that words would have more value. And there’s some really great playwrights that are great stylists and I feel like Beau Willimon is a great example and who wrote House of Cards. And it’s like people get really hung up on the … And it’s great drama too, but I wish there would be more talk of style. You just think back to Tennessee Williams and how beautiful his lines were.
And then I think because there’s not as much talk about it, then I see plays and I’m like, “Well these are really good characters.” I was like, “But this isn’t very well written. It’s clunky.” But yeah, I think in the theater, I feel like it’s the real weight of the moral message often gets put on your shoulders as the playwright. So if you try to write something that’s satire, it can be very dangerous, because then people, if they don’t understand that it’s satire, then they think that you mean the opposite and I think even more so in the theater. That’s just the way it is. That’s just how theater is. People sit there. You’re really not allowed to get up during the show and go to the bathroom. You don’t eat popcorn. It’s like all these things in the theater you don’t have in film. So it is this communal experience, but that’s all part of it, I think, just get a thicker skin too.
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s interesting because people are eating more in the theaters and I think that’s one of the things that Patty LuPone is so appalled by as was I. I just recently saw Into The Woods and there were people with crinkly candy wrappers next to me, people eating pretzels. This is a theater and I think that there should be a level of decorum that’s different from being in a movie theater.
Daniel Mitura:
Well, and the respect though for the person on stage that is singing that warmed up, that is their voice, that is making sure they’re in good health and at the energy to do the song in Into The Woods. The way that is so … You know what I mean? So you see the performers and the energy that they give to it. So you’re absolutely right. That should be respected because a human being is sitting just a few feet away from you and is not getting paid that much money and is working really hard to do something. And Into The Woods is a fantastic show, but you see in that that actors do a lot of work.
Debbie Millman:
Oh, the physicality, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Daniel Mitura:
Yeah, and to sing … And everybody knows those songs, so they have to sing those songs correct. Everybody in the audience has seen … You know what I mean? So it’s not easy.
Debbie Millman:
Let’s talk about your latest short science fiction film, Launch at Paradise. You wrote, produced and starred in this film and you also filmed it during the worst of the pandemic. What was that all like for you to have all of those dual roles as well as filming it during a really challenging time?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, after almost a year of not doing anything, I think I had the energy to take on the stress of that. And also, that was the time in the pandemic where everybody was tested. So you’d show up and you’d take your mask off and everybody was tested. And there was all these people that I hadn’t seen in so long. So there was a relief of being in a room with human beings and doing something fun and knowing that we were safe after so much time. So looking back on it, I was like, “I can’t believe I even hesitated to do that.” It was so nice to be with everybody.
But at the same time, I do and I like this, I feel like, especially in some of the scenes that take place in a basement and there’s two characters that have a very mysterious relationship, so much of that was made possible because of the pandemic, because we had spent time away from other human bodies and I feel like there’s a sense of alienation and kind of, “What is it and how do I look at people?” and we were wearing masks. And I love that about the film and that’s something that we could never have engineered because it was in everybody. It’s like people showed up on set and they had just been with their spouse or partner and not other people. And our first day on set, there’re probably 30 or 40 people there. So for a lot of us, I think it was just a lot of fun.
Debbie Millman:
In the movie, a powerful organization offers some agents eternal life in exchange for their brain matter, recognizing the best content of their minds to create a superior intelligence that can bring an end to war and conflict. And they’re terrified to learn that they sacrifice their individuality in order to achieve this. And you asked some questions in the promotion of the film that I’d like to ask you. You asked, “If creating a unified perspective for all humankind can spell the end of violence, conflict and discrimination, is it worth killing individual thought?” So I pose that question to you.
Daniel Mitura:
This is a great question because humans are given or are born with, have dignity. They have intellect. They have all of these things they can achieve and they have free will. But as you know, people have the free will also to make the wrong choices. And so it’s one of these things that you wonder, and especially when we’re in an age when people embrace disinformation, so it’s one thing to be confused or just not know and even to not know and not have the time or care to find out, but we’re in an age when people know that something is wrong and they still will promote it and do it. So that’s why I asked that question because I have always philosophically, and I think a lot of us do, we think about free speech and free will and the potentiality of the human being.
But when someone has decided to use that potential in a way that harms society, this is the whole argument for why we have jails. When you break the bonds of human trust, you’re removed from society and so you can be brought back in. So this is the idea of the limits of free speech and free thought, especially when we’re in an age when thought can be so easily translated into speech, when someone can just type on Twitter with their thumbs and then two seconds later the whole world is talking about it. So I thought it was at least worth posing that question.
If you actually are going to ask me the question, I would always probably err on the side of still allowing the free speech, but I am tempted by the idea of what would happen if we ended an individual thought. And I also, just from this concept of however you want to look at God or what angels are, all emotion comes out of a partial view. So any being that has infinite intellect, they can see all sides of something, wouldn’t have emotion, they wouldn’t be frustrated, they wouldn’t be angry, they wouldn’t feel lost because they could see the whole picture. And I am someone who believes in an ultimate truth. So if you could see the whole picture, then there is only one picture to see. So individual thought, in a way, is a paradox because there aren’t really different thoughts. There is one. We just are all blocked from what it is or our own choice.
Debbie Millman:
Well, it’s interesting because the movie really does make you think, makes you think about what do we sacrifice for the best in humankind, but one thing that I don’t think the film ever specifies very intentionally is what that one thought is or what is required. What are the thoughts required to end violence and conflict and discrimination? If nobody is discriminated, are we all equal? If there isn’t conflict, are we living conflict-free and what does that look like? And what that looks like is still very much open to interpretation and that’s something that I think you very intentionally leave the viewer to ponder.
Daniel Mitura:
Oh, well, thank you. That was part of the idea because I’m not perfect and so I don’t have the answer. And I think that’s why that Elsa character, she has this line. She says, “We would all just blow our own brains out if there was no more game to play,” and she’s talking from the realm of Spycraft, but the sense of, “If we did achieve that, then we would all be bored.” But again, if we achieve that as human beings, we create conflict. That’s what we do and that’s what drama is and it’s learning to live with that which is what we have to do, although I do think that we’ve all been through a period where we’ve had a little bit too much of the drama, more than we were meant to be able to handle. So that’s where it comes from.
And also, as much as there’s this philosophy, I really love James Bond movies. So in posing these questions, I also was as interested in this idea of the organization and humans taking it over. And Elsa’s character is the spy character and just the Hollywood just drama of that, that if you did have this device that it would actually be like a villain character that would take it over. So I think, in some ways, it was posing these questions and then I was like, “Oh, but you also wanted to be a good movie and so what does it take to appeal to some of those aspects?” And I have all of those aspects. And so I think that that comes across.
Debbie Millman:
Do you think that the brain needs to be fundamentally changed in order to end conflict?
Daniel Mitura:
I think that perspective just needs to be widened. I don’t think it needs to be widened to the infinite view, which can’t happen anyways, but I think that we all need to just have multiple paradigm shifts. It’s like we were talking about with Loyalty. It’s like everyone just gets spun around so much that then they forget what it was that they hated and who they were mad at and what they thought was all this stuff. I think that in some ways it’s a shakeup is needed just so we can appreciate. Appreciate the value of metaphor and see ourselves in other people that don’t look like us and that we’re all telling each other’s stories. I just wish it wasn’t so black and white. Like I said, I like satire, I like metaphors and I feel like people have really reduced it to this one-to-one correspondence.
So that’s what I think I would like is if you could expand the brain in that way, like I said, with perspective, but I’m very much a conservative in that way though. I think perspective education, I’m not into the whole thing of psychedelics or anything like that, but that’s just me to each his own.
Debbie Millman:
Another theme of the film is the all-encompassing power of technology and you stated that the power of technology to multiply our options and enable actions, both good and bad, that we could not accomplish under our own capabilities puts our morality under greater and greater pressure. Do you think that technology is tempting us to forsake our own morality?
Daniel Mitura:
I think it tempts us to not even know that we’re forsaking it. Like I said, it’s the example of the thumbs on Twitter and that everyone sees it. It’s like it’s allowing you to speak to so many people in a way that your mind can’t even envision what it means to speak to that many people, but you’re able to do it. I think that’s the scary part, is that you can run past your own morality without knowing it. If you think about Paradise Lost and John Milton, there’s Satan as the main character and the protagonist. There is something very dramatic about choosing and giving, the choice. But I think what’s scary is that people don’t even know that they’re choosing.
And that gets you back to the idea of The Matrix, is that people don’t even know that they’re not in the real world. That, I think, is the most frightening and I would say I would be most frightened for the kids that send 10,000 text messages a day and all of that. I grew up and I remember dial-up internet and I remember not having internet. I remember not-
Debbie Millman:
Oh, yeah.
Daniel Mitura:
I remember checking email once a week. So I think I still have some preservation of some brain, I don’t know, or maybe the kids that are teenagers are actually going to be super geniuses and we’ll be able to see through atoms and then they’ll be way smarter than us, I don’t know. But I just think it’s dangerous because the technology is exponential. And as humans, we haven’t gotten very far past the letter writing stage emotionally. So I think that the speed and the way that we’re able to talk to so many people, we don’t even know what that means and we are just doing it over and over again.
Debbie Millman:
Well, I think, if I’m correct, that the whole notion of how we use technology is the centerpiece of a project that you’re working on a film titled Birthright. Is that correct?
Daniel Mitura:
Yes. Yeah, well, that’s quite literally about Twitter and it’s quite literally about political speech on Twitter and what a Twitter influencer could do or any influencer online. Because I think that’s something else that hasn’t quite sunk in is just how powerful that kind of speech is. You have news organizations taking information from people on Twitter that are verified, but who knows if it’s actually that person? You don’t even know how your thought is being driven and what it’s being driven by. I think, politically, that is especially frightening because those are real choices that are being made. Those are choices that are being made if you think about and it’s beyond taxes with judges, with rights, with life, with marriage, with benefits for seniors of basically whether they live. It’s actual life-and-death decisions that are being made.
And the people that are making them, I would argue many of them don’t even understand the machine under which they’re making those decisions. And we only have, what, 435 representatives and there’s a hundred senators. There’s only 500 or so people that make all these decisions with and with technology-
Debbie Millman:
Yeah, but 350 million people, yes.
Daniel Mitura:
Yeah, and it’s not that many people that are making these larger decisions and they’re doing so with facts and figures and points of view that are just wildly askew. So that’s the basis of the movie, although really it’s a character piece and the Twitter influencer is actually in love with the guy who’s running for the … So it’s a very human element at the same time. And it’s the human element that actually gives it a happy ending because I think that humanity can then cut through the technology in person-to-person level. It’s just this basic thing of where you can try to get something done and all these phone calls happen and then you’re like, “You know what? I’m just going to go in and ask for the appointment.” And you go in, two human beings, and then suddenly, it’s just so easy and so clear. So that’s my viewpoint for an antidote to technology because I still believe in the off switch and the plug. You can pull the plug and then we’re all back talking to each other and taking a walk in the park and there’s trees and sunshine and you left your phone at home.
Debbie Millman:
When and where will you be debuting the film?
Daniel Mitura:
Well, so we’re still working. It’s in the preproduction stage right now as far as getting people attached and getting the ball rolling on that. I have another play that I’m working on. So these takes a while with the process and been enjoying also with the screenings for Launch of Paradise and seeing people’s reactions to it and being in audiences and watching it has been really cool.
Debbie Millman:
I think that you were referring to the play The Martingale and is that …
Daniel Mitura:
Yes.
Debbie Millman:
… the play that you’re working on next? So yeah, that’s the last thing I want to talk to you about. I understand it’s a single-act dramatic thriller. It’s going to have the directorial debut of Zainab Jah who costarred with you in Launch in Paradise. So do you have any sense of when and where we might be able to see that?
Daniel Mitura:
Yes, we were working on that too. We’ve had two readings of that. Looking for a theater for that now. It’s funny, so a lot of what we’ve been talking about like single-act thriller, also it has a political basis, but it’s my other historical basis. It’s set at the US Embassy in Paris and the lead is a guy who’s been a newly appointed ambassador and most of the entirety of the plays, him being held at gunpoint by an assassin. It’s a whole issue of colonialism or neocolonialism and how that intersects with race. I was very interested in taking a story and having Americans and move them to Paris and then taking in this concept of what is this colonial legacy, both of the US, and of course, France.
And it’s interesting because there’s a party going on for July 14th, is the setting, and it’s in the ambassador’s office and all of those things really exist in Paris. They do have parties there and they have costume parties. There is the office. So I was really interested in doing something like that. And thinking back to drama, it’s like, well, two people in a room and this has three people, what keeps people in a room for all that time? And sometimes, I see stuff on Broadway and there’s like 50 scene changes and they make the actors move the set in between. And so just one scene, what is the thing that keeps these people? And the roles in it were written for the actors that have read it. So it was exciting.
Actually, well, the lead role was originally written for Zainab and then she approached me about directing it. So yes, it was really interesting to work with these people and then also bring out even elements of what I would consider the psyche of the actors and the characters that I know they can play and just going for it. There’s big monologues and that kind of thing I was excited by.
Debbie Millman:
I can’t wait to see it. Daniel, thank you so much for making so many things that matter. You’re one of the most exciting new voices in the theatrical world and I want to thank you for joining me today on Design Matters.
Daniel Mitura:
Thank you for all the questions too. I feel like you really made me understand my own through line better, so thank you so much.
Debbie Millman:
You can see more about all of Daniel’s work at djdlproductions.com. This is the 18th year we’ve been podcasting Design Matters and I’d like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference or we can do both. I’m Debbie Millman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.