Inside ’PTown Diaries’ with director Joseph Mantegna
With Ptown Diaries, fans of the Cape Cod destination will not only learn about the town’s history but also hear from such notable residents as writers Michael Cunningham and Norman Mailer, performer Lea Delaria and drag queens like Hedda Lettuce. For those who have yet to experience the charm of Provincetown, the film, directed by Joseph Mantegna with narration by Alan Cumming, will surely make Ptown virgins break their respective cherries as soon as possible.
Earlier this week, Mantegna talked to Edge’s Jim Halterman about the film and it’s premiere on both Logo and Logoonline this Saturday night.
An amazing archive
EDGE: I know you just showed Ptown Diaries at Outfest in Los Angeles. How did the audience respond?
Joseph Mantegna: We sold it out and we had a 30-minute Q&A and among the subjects, of course, was marriage equality and gay rights. People talked about the history of the town and it was really fun to do. And Alan was there and was great.
EDGE: Alan Cumming really lends a nice touch to the film with his narration. How did he become involved?
JM: Alan and I are old friends and, at first, I never thought to use his voice and then we were just on the phone and I started to think about it and I asked if he’d consider doing it and said ’Of course!’
Alan came over and he read the entire documentary and I think he did two takes. He was the one who wasn’t satisfied with the first take, not me. I actually think that Alan has given the film a heartbeat and a voice that it didn’t have prior to him stepping into the project.
If that sounds congratulatory, it’s not. It really is the truth because he performed it. He actually took a minute to read the copy and then said ’This is what I’m going to do here.’ He just did a really beautiful job with it. I guess I never appreciated the role of the actor in a voiceover role.
He showed up for the Q&A in Los Angeles. I was with my partner waiting for him at the hotel and I said when we see him we might not recognize Alan because he really is a chameleon. We walked out of the elevator door and there was a shocking blonde Mohawk with some crazy shirt and big sunglasses and I said "What the hell is this?" He said, "I was here for four hours and I went Hollywood!"
He has a new record coming out that is really fantastic. And he did a show (I Bought A Blue Car Today) in New York in the late Spring at Carnegie Hall and then he brought it over to London and then to Scotland and now he’s going to bring it back to the United States to Los Angeles and a number of other cities. And he recorded a new record and there’s some amazing stuff on there. It was a joy to have him and it was a gift.
EDGE: Walk me through how you went about shooting the different people you interview in the film.
JM: The genesis of it started when I had befriended Norman Mailer in 2006 and we’d had a series of dinners and a casual friendship and every time I would leave him I would think ’I want to make a documentary about Norman Mailer.’ He’s such an amazing guy. I decided to interview Norman early on but then it became like an archeological dig where I started with a single camera and then I ended up with five camera men/directors/producers and we’d set out and we just took on the town.
I shot 400 hours and probably 375 interviews and it’s an amazing archive. I think virtually every important artist, painter, writer, theatrical people, actors and then people from the Cape Cod National Seashore and that was the best part of it because for every interview, I’d say to everyone working under me your last question needs to be off camera but ask who else do you admire, who else do you think has contributed something and at the end of the day we’d all get together and share notes about how the interviews went and then we’d say ’I hear there’s this guy who’s 94’ and he’s this great, old Portuguese fisherman and he was fantastic. I realized as soon as I sat down with him that this would be subtitled because even though I understood him I wasn’t sure if everyone else would. He told wonderful stories and then he’d say ’Go talk to Molly down the street. I’ll call Molly and it’ll be okay.’ I just can’t knock on Molly’s door! So I had a lot of support from the community literally, constantly, daily. They opened up all of the doors. There was no one that refused an interview.
