What does it take to make it possible for one person to forgive another?
“And what we needed the answer to was, is this person going to forgive their mother?”
“There’s such a difference between ambiguity and obscurity.
Leanne Best, Ophelia Lovibond, Helena Wilson, Laura Donnelly in ‘The Hills of California’.Joan Marcus
If you’re told two very clear opposing things, that’s art.
If you’re just left in the dark, it’s not.”
Much of the play’s reshaping hinges on a key new scene in the third act.
‘The Hills of California’ script.
Here, Butterworth shares annotated script pages from that scene and breaks it down for us.
I didn’t get the chance to be in rehearsals as much as I normally would.
But I thought, ‘I really like the play the way it’s shaped.
‘The Hills of California’ script.
I’m okay with it.
I’m kind of glad that it’s not entirely what I intended.
It’s got a strange beauty.
Playwright Jez Butterworth.Marleen Moise/Getty
“There’s a few clues,” he notes.
Because she didn’t.
“My mom does that all the time.
There’s nothing that personal about what you get.
Last Christmas, she gave me a book that had my name written in it from 30 years before.
3) “Ambiguous care”
The words almost seem an oxymoron.
How can one’s care be ambiguous?
But nevertheless, that’s how Butterworth describes the essence of the presents that Joan gives her sisters.
“She has not kept track of them, but she loves them.
She feels that she wants to give something.”
“You get to see and find out things about her life through those gifts,” he notes.
“45 seconds later, you’ve got a portrait of Joan that you didn’t have before.
“She’s not handing out Keith Richards’ scarf or Jim Hendrix’s amp,” he quips.
“She’s giving gifts away that are obscure to the people that are receiving them.
They’re impromptu; they’re of value to her.
They’re not of value to the people that they’re being given to.”
Even though she’s choosing these items on the spot, she somehow forgets Gloria.
“It’s excluding Gloria,” notes Butterworth.
“I watch things like this happen all the time throughout my life.
You forget on purpose.
Why is it she has nothing for Gloria?
Why doesn’t she pull something else out of that bag and try it?
It’s very interesting psychologically.”
What he means by that is the ability for a dramatic sequence to serve a dual purpose.
There’s a fairytale quality to it.
6) Memory is a fickle thing
But the fact is Joan can’t remember.
“We remember what is useful to us.
Each of them had a very vivid sense memory of when it was and they were all different places.
We remember things to bolster our narrative of who we are and we forget the things which attack that.
It’s as indistinct as the future.”
“My little brother came home in a crimson duffle coat.
He hadn’t seen a blood red duffle coat for 50 years.
But when he saw it, he remembered everything.
And he spent the next year of his life telling us everything.
It had all been buried, and it was opened up by something that he saw. "
“Joan sees herself,” he continues.
They come back to her.
I believe that because I’ve seen it.”
