Author: Joey Ciaramitaro

Interview hosted by Joey Ciaramitaro with Michael Cascio and Phil Grabsky, award-winning filmmakers who collaborated as co-writers and directors on  PBS American Masters | Hopper: An American Love Story , a documentary that premieres nationally on PBS January 2, 2024 at 9pm.

Despite being one of America’s most iconic 20th century artists, Edward Hopper has not been the subject of an American Masters biopic until this feature.  

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This interview was broadcast from the Maritime Gloucester museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts on December 21, 2023. Host: Joey Ciaramitaro and Catherine Ryan with support from Pat Dalpiaz.

TOPICS INCLUDE

Michael Cascio (filmmaker); Phil Grabsky (filmmaker); the choice of the title (at 8:00min); Edward Hopper; Josephine Nivison Hopper (spouse & fine artist); the origins of Edward Hopper’s and Jo Nivison Hopper’s collaboration; the filmmakers’ access to locations of significance that inspired Hopper’s art (his formative years in Nyack where he was born and raised, Paris (33 min), Gloucester (15:22 min), Truro (Cape Cod), and Washington Sq. North in NYC; more Gloucester, Sebastian Junger & The Perfect Storm;  Hopper artworks Nighthawks, 1942 (23 min and lengthier dive at 26:40 min), Soir Bleu, Automat 1927, and The Mansard Roof (18:14 min); showcasing archives rare color footage of Edward Hopper interviews (21:00 min) and Jo’s diaries (23:00 min); Hopper’s cinematic qualities (26 min); solitude; luminaries mentioned in passing such as Mozart, Vermeer, Rembrandt; recent Edward Hopper exhibitions at the Whitney Museum (Hopper’s New York), Cape Ann Museum, and the Hopper House Museum (which featured work by Jo Nivison) 

American Masters – HOPPER: An American Love Story premieres nationwide Tuesday, January 2 at 9 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS App.  

TIMESTAMP SELECTION:

• Michael Cascio (2:58): Mentions Cape Ann Museum and Whitney: “The most important thing was the art.”
• Phil Grabsky (3:21): The first Hopper exhibit I saw as part of this project was in Nyack which is fantastic, a wonderful place where Hopper was born and lived…fortunate that they had an exhibit of Josephine Nivison’s work…hadn’t happened very often since she met Edward Hopper in Gloucester…One of the great revelations of the film of course is you can’t understand him without understanding her and that is all cemented in Gloucester…
• Michael: Film is done for American Masters on PBS that specifically looks at person and relationship to what they do. When I realized that American Masters had not done one on Hopper, which was a big surprise because they had done Wyeth and Rothko and others,…”
• Joey Ciaramitaro (8:00 min.): How did the title Hopper An “American Love Story” come about?
• Michael (13:00): Jo picked up the thread. She was the opposite…Story of modern day, of a wife giving up a very promising career to promote his…”
• Phil (13:50): Also have to look at the evidence…The Whitney exhibition, Hopper’s New York…featured (theater) ticket stubs–multi-color torn in half, and they’d write on them what they’d seen–in a fantastic display case. You cannot understand the paintings which are iconic without understanding his biography, and you can’t understand his biography without understanding their relationship…
• Joey (15:22): Edward Hopper and Jo Hopper clearly painted side by side in Gloucester. St. Ann’s steeple, if you’re from Gloucester, you know that site right away…
• Michael: It’s amazing. Visual proof right there.
• Phil (16:30): Surely you know in your community, what’s so attractive in Gloucester to artists and so many artists would come and paint (Joey: the light) boats, and fishermen. Hopper paints the front of buildings. What’s so great in Gloucester, and the film has these dissolves, these buildings are still there…You can see exactly what Hopper was painting. It’s fascinating to see how he transforms the 2-dimensional canvas into a painting. It really kicks off his career. Without Gloucester…
• Michael (17:50): You can make the case without Jo there wouldn’t necessarily have been Edward Hopper. Without Gloucester there wouldn’t have been the two of them. It was a meeting point for both of their lives…
• Joey (18:14): Was Mansard Roof the painting?
• Catherine Ryan (CR) (18:30): You kick into Gloucester about 14 minutes into the documentary and the music changes. And it’s a light piano…
• Michael (18:43): It’s a love story at that point. They’re falling in love. It’s a great moment. It’s essential to the story. It’s the pivot point for the entire story. And I think that’s part of what’s different in this particular documentary…Jo’s influence and the beginnings of which are in Gloucester are central to the story…
• CR1(19:50): Can you tell us about the voice overs, the process working with them and getting such big notables (JK Simmons reading Ed and Christine Baranski reading Jo)
• Michael (20:06): Our friends over at PBS (and the pandemic and the actors’ strike)…Christine Baranski was the perfect voice…They’re all wonderful. Christine Baranski was Jo personified.
• Phil (21:00): Adds the first thing you do when you’re making a documentary film is try to find correspondence…letters, for more recent artists filmed interviews, video interviews. Because then you get their actual voice…Our fear with Hopper…can you imagine a very successful artist basically not interviewed (on the cover of Time magazine), he was almost like a recluse at times, but really what’s the reality?…when he does speak, when he writes a newspaper, when he does give an interview, he is extremely…What are the pictures telling me?
• Joey (24:30): I found the interviews that you include fascinating and show that he cared about his legacy. He was not aloof.
• Michael : You can see he’s thoughtful in the black and white earlier interview. And the color one which we dug up in the NBC archives which no one as far as I know had done anything of substance with it. He’s reflective. Back on his career and shows humor. He’s extremely observant about his career and his own work. There are no accidents. He’s very aware.
• Phil (25:41): There’s an interesting point you raise there which is the extent to which he cared about what he thought after he died. (26:05 segues to cinematic qualities in Hopper’s work.)
• Michael (27:25): And why am I, are we, so attracted to it…people bring their own views…Maybe the solitary aspect of it or communal…
• Phil (28:26): What we do in the film is provide a chance to look at it again…
• CR (29:00): I admired how you let the curators/experts’ personalities come through. They’re all seated. They’re almost all like Hopper (paintings)…I thought the film structure mirrors the artist’s process in that way. You let the art speak and the people interpreting.
• Michael (30:00): The art is the star. The art tells the story. We’re not going to mess with it…As a result there are 30 or 40 images there that help tell the story. We didn’t skimp!
• Phil (30:50): You want to have the audience have the questions in their minds before you give them, or some of the answers…

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Images: Edward Hopper artwork discussed in the interview