By Harry Haun
11 Sep 2010

	Hoffman and Amy Ryan star in the film "Jack Goes Boating"
	photo by K.C. Bailey

Blue-collar urbanities are Glaudini's speciality, and he writes about what he knows — and sees. "I lived on 151st Street for five years, and what I saw from my balcony when I'd sit out there was A View From 151st Street. That play had live music and jazz musicians, took place up in West Harlem and was about a couple of rappers and coke-dealers and a Puerto Rican policeman and his family."

His naturalistic dialogue and unadorned world-view puts him on a comparable plain with Paddy Chayefsky, the "poet of the pavements" from television's Golden Age. Indeed, one early review pegged "Jack Goes Boating" as a "Marty" for the new millennium, a comparison that sits well with Hoffman. "It is similar," he says, "but I didn't even think about that while we were shooting the movie. When I came across that review, I thought, 'Oh, yeah, that's fair. That's a fair correlation.'"

Where the movie is most reminiscent of its predecessor — a Best Picture Oscar-winner of 45 years ago — is in the awkward, painfully tentative coming-together of Jack and Connie. Hoffman and Ryan make this a very moving, very human spectacle.

"I worked with Amy before, the first time probably when I was 30," he recalls. "We were in different halves of a two one-act-plays evening. That's where we met. Then she was in 'Capote,' playing the sheriff's wife — she's pretty wonderful in that — and we've known each other, just in the circles of New York. She is really perfect in this."

As for his own performance, Hoffman brings it down a notch. "I think I did all right," he says. "It's not the best scenario, directing yourself — it really isn't — not a thing I recommend. We were trying to find another actor to play that part. I definitely didn't plan it that way — that's the truth — but we were up against the wall because you have to shoot that film in the winter. It can't be shot any other time because of the circumstances of the film. "Jack Goes Boating" is all about the fact that spring is coming. You can't shoot that in the spring or the summer. You have to shoot it in the cold winter months. That's the whole point of the movie."

Woody Harrelson and Mark Ruffalo were forced out of the running by previous film commitments, so Hoffman stepped up to the plate. "Basically, we would have to put off the film for a year, or I had to do it. Putting off the film for a year is like saying, 'You're never going to do the movie,' so I said, 'Well, I'm just going to have to do it because everything else is in place. So I did, and I learned all about what that's like."

	John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega in "Jack Goes Boating"
	photo by K.C. Bailey

The idea of directing film had, of course, occurred to Hoffman before — "but very loosely," he hastens to add, "kinda like 'Maybe that will happen. Maybe something will come up and that will be a reality,' but I wasn't pushing it or searching for it. It just made itself known to me, and I thought, 'Why don't I take advantage of it?'"

Given the weightiness of this double duty, he made himself comfortable as an actor by hiring two of his three stage co-stars. Beth Cole, the original Connie, did make the film cut, playing a teacher in a night school Ortiz attends. All the other roles that materialized when the play was opened up for the screen were filled by LAByrinth's rank-and-file who'd already been directed by Hoffman on stage: Richard Petrocelli, Salvatore Inzerillo ("The Cannoli"), Sidney Williams, Trevor Long, even playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis. Todd McCarthy, the actor recently turned director ("The Station Agent," "The Visitor"), flicks off a surreptitiously sleazy funeral-home boss.

"We really challenge each other and work hard on trying to evolve," Hoffman says of the company he has kept. "Everyone at LAByrinth is trying to be the best actor he can be. In the plays Stephen writes, people have a great opportunity to do that because his writing's very alive. Plays are cast because parts are written for certain actors — that's how Stephen works. He definitely writes with certain actors in mind."

So, is film-directing more difficult than stage-directing? "They both have their own difficulties," he finds. "After all's said and done, the thing about being a director of film is that it's a longer process. You're making decisions and choices and creative kinds of exploration for a longer period of time. But, in theatre, you're doing that in almost just as intense a way. It's just a shorter period of time. It's not just directing the actors. You have to work with the designers. There's a huge technical proficiency to being a theatre director. The picture you paint on a stage is something that you have to paint, just as the same thing you're going to put in the frame of a camera."

What he's proudest of in this maiden "Boating" voyage "is all the creative relationships you get to have as a film director, starting with the playwright-slash-screenwriter, working with Bob on the adaptation, then with Moff as a D.P. and going into shooting the film with them and all the actors. Then, when you finish shooting, you have a relationship with the editor. All along the way, each one of those relationships furthers the process of the film. It's a very satisfying experience."

View the trailer for "Jack Goes Boating":

(Harry Haun is Playbill magazine's staff writer. His work, including the popular Playbill On Opening Night columns, frequently appears on Playbill.com.)