Interview: Jalmari Helander and Onni Tommila of “Big Game”
Posted on June 27, 2015 at 3:53 pm
Big Game, now in theaters and on VOD, is an exciting action movie about Oskari, a Finnish kid on a solo hunting trip, who has to save the President of the United States when he is ejected from Air Force One during an attack. I spoke to writer/director Jalmari Helander and star Onni Tommila, who is also his nephew.
The President is played by Samuel L. Jackson, already a favorite of Tommila’s, because of “Star Wars.” He enjoyed talking to Jackson between takes and said he picked up some acting pointers by watching him, especially about improvising. Jackson also taught him a special handshake.
Copyright 2015 Big Zero Entertainment
Jackson was a fan of Helander’s previous film, “Rare Exports,” and when he expressed interest in being in this movie, “it sounded really cool to me,” said Helander.
Shooting outdoors in the mountains posed some problems for Helander. “Of course when you are shooting outdoors and especially when we were up in the mountains it almost never goes like you had planned. We had some difficulties with the weather and it was probably the second day when we started shooting there was snow up in the mountains and things like that. So there was a lot of things not expected with the weather. We had to shoot of course anyway because we were up in the mountains and it is really expensive to get all the people up into the mountain. So we just shot the last scene of the film with the snow and we were just hoping that the snow would melt away so we could shoot the earlier scenes. On the third day of shooting and it actually did. We were very lucky with the weather but of course there were some minor changes and things like that.” Another challenge was shooting the scenes in Air Force One submerged in water. “It was in the studio. It was a big and complicated set because it involved, there was so much water in it. And when you have water and you have a lot of electricity and stuff like that it gets quite complicated but I really loved the set and it was really fun to work with it. I remember that some stunts Sam didn’t love so much because he had to lay there in the water for a long time.”
He spoke about the costume worn by Tommila. “I was trying to get the designer to somehow make Oskari look like he doesn’t belong int the forest as much as all the other Finnish guys in the beginning of the film. The Finnish hunters look like very typical outdoor, forest kind of men. I was trying to add more color to Oskari and something that he could actually wear somewhere else, probably in the school or something like that. So I was trying to make him look like he doesn’t belong there as much as everybody else. Then of course when he meets the President, who has a suit and tie stuff like that, Oskari started to look like he belonged there hell of a lot more than the President.” And the vest he wears was inspired by “Back to the Future.”
Tommila laughed when I asked him if he did any of the stunts. “I would like to say that I did but no.” As for acting, he said that the most important thing in acting is “you must jump into the character and think that you are the character so that you are in this situation right now and not pretend it.”
Interview: Patrick Brice on the Very R-Rated Comedy “The Overnight”
Posted on June 25, 2015 at 3:01 pm
Writer/director Patrick Brice talked to me about his funny and provocative new film, “The Overnight,” about a couple new to Los Angeles (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) who are invited to dinner at the lavish home of an impossibly hip and creative couple (Jason Schwartzman and Judith Godrèche). Once the children go to sleep, the evening gets pretty wild.
I like the way this movie takes on the difficulty and complications and challenge of forming friendships when you have to factor in the interests and chemistry of four different people.
I think it takes twice as much effort and that’s kind of what the film hopes to explore. That difficulty is one of the driving factors that keeps the couple from leaving from leaving the house no matter how weird things are getting. You know, there is still this idea that “Well, maybe things will be okay,” and “Well maybe this is our chance to make friends and we need to make this work for us.” A lot of the film came out of me observing and understanding what a lot of young friends of mine are going through right now, having to reconcile a social life with being a parent at the same time.
Where did you find that amazing house?
That house came after a long long search. We had looked at probably 15 houses before that. And finally we ended on that one. It is a Spanish styled house up in the Hollywood Hills. It’s actually right above Lake Hollywood. Originally, the film was going to be kind of more pointed satire of my neighborhood, Silver Lake. But it’s not a real Silver Lake type house. It is much more of a traditional Los Angeles house. And so I’m happy with where it ended up because it feels kind of surreal. It feels a little more gaudy and not really of any particular time. It feels like they kind of go to Mars.
When the gate opened up, it was like going into the Emerald City.
I definitely wanted things to feel more surreal as the night went on. Having a location like that gives you a lot to play with. And you know, keeping all the spaces within it dynamic was definitely a big goal for me and for Theresa Guleserian, the production designer.
You’ve worked with the Duplass brothers, who were producers on this film. What did you learn from them?
One of their biggest considerations is trying to make the most out of a smaller budget. And that can be something you think of during production, but one thing I learnt right on this movie was that it is okay if this is something you can think of during the writing process. And it doesn’t have to be something that hinders your creativity, or keeps you from telling a story just as big as you want it to be. It can actually be kind of an interesting challenge and at the end of the day a refinement. So not being afraid of not having enough money to make the movie is a huge thing. There’s a trickledown effect with those guys in terms of their kindness and generosity and creativity and doing it for the love of movies. And I’m just so lucky to have been able to work with those guys. I think one of the biggest things we tracked on besides the strength to build this is, the sense of humor. We think the same stuff is funny and we like the same blend of sadness and pathos and humor. We don’t think all those things are mutually exclusive from each other.
One of the stars, Adam Scott, and his wife were also producers. How did that happen?
Copyright The Orchard 2015
Once Mark and I were happy with where I was with the script, we started taking it out to actors. Judith Godrèche was the first person we showed it to. She jumped on board and quite quickly and then the Scotts were the next folks that we took it to. I had met Naomi once she had come and helped us. She gave a critique on my previous film “Creep.” We had a talk back session on the screening and she was there. I knew she was wanting to produce a feature at some point. Most of her background has been in television production. And then Adam, I have just always been a big fan of stuff. Mark and I were having discussions and thinking about Adam as a possibility for the character of Alex and then, remembering that Naomi was interested in being a hands-on day to day producer, we thought, “Why not bring it to the two of them at the same time?” And I feel so lucky that they both said yes. They both read the script separately apparently and working with them was just a dream.
Adam is just someone who in the pocket and in the zone so often that you almost forget that he is acting. Or you forget that there is a chance that he could get a scene wrong emotionally, because he never does. He’s always been able to carry his own weight and he able really help out the other performers. I think he is a really good improviser, and I think a big part of that is knowing how to kind of save a scene emotionally or just keep things moving and he has a real knack for that.
Your style reminds me a bit of the very intimate, improvisational style pioneered by John Cassavetes. Are you a fan?
Thank you so much. Yes, I was thinking a lot about Cassavetes when I wrote it. I love the tension that can come from a kind of forced intimacy living with characters in real time. That was something that he was able to do so well. He was able to make a dance out of that with his actors. So I approached, with what as essentially on the page a broad comedy but I wanted to approach it with both the actors in terms of moment to moment, emotional growth in terms of how we shot it. Having something handheld and using only available lighting kept us nimble in terms of making it. I feel very validated by good response to this film so far and am excited to continue playing with this tone.
Boz Yakin wrote and directed “Max,” the story of a weapons-sniffing military dog whose human partner is killed. So traumatized he can no longer work, he goes to live with the grieving family and is cared for by their younger son, played by Josh Wiggins. I spoke to Yakin and Wiggins about the film and got to see Jagger, one of the five dogs who play the title character, too.
“I felt like it had been a while since someone made a movie about the human/animal dog human bond in particular,” sais Yakin. “A story that was was exciting and adventurous and harkened back to some of the things that excited me when I was younger. I wanted to make a family movie but not just for kids. I approached my friend Sheldon (co-writer Sheldon Lettich), who was a Marine and a Vietnam vet. He brought the idea of making it about a MWD, a military working dog. Once that came in the family that Josh is apart of and all that just kind of started to create themselves and it all started rolling from there.”
Josh Wiggins is also experienced with dogs and has three dogs himself, a Rottweiler, a Lab and a little Chihuahua Wiener dog mix, “every level, small, medium, and large.” His father is a K-9 dog handler, who trains dogs to locate bombs. “Before I left to go shoot for the video I ran the dogs and it helped a lot. You learn how to hold the dog and how to compose yourself and stuff like that.” Then he spent some time with the dogs in the movie so they would be comfortable with each other. “Before we started shooting I went to this facility where they were training. We would run around on bikes and get into cages with them, run around trees back and forth. I love dogs, so I was very comfortable bonding with them. It’s just like with a person. When you spend months and months with someone you get pretty close to them.”
Copyright 2015 Warner Brothers
Yakin said the dog trainers were as much a part of the making of the movie as the cinematographer and stunt coordinator. “They train a lot of the animals you might see in a lot of movies. And they’re just so specific and so well organized and it really makes your life easy. The dogs respond to that kind of environment so well. It really was remarkable for both of us to see what they were able to make them do.” The two main dogs were named Jagger and Carlos, but each of the five dogs used to play the role of Max had special skills. They had to use a female dog to play Max in the fight scenes because males are not permitted to fight each other. Carlos was unpredictable but uncannily was the best “actor.” In one scene, he had to convey a new sense of respect for one of the characters and he added tip of the head that was all his own. And “there was a moment at the beginning of the movie where in order to show that he’s found the weapons, he is supposed to just sit where they are. So Carlos comes and sits and does this with his head and I was almost tempted not to yell. Like people are going to think it’s like cute dog added right you know. But in fact Carlos was just his jittery self got on the thing and went here ok and sat down on it and I went man this dog is unbelievable. He kept doing stuff like that throughout the film. So a lot of what gives Max his personality is Carlos’ personality.”
Wiggins is terrific as Justin, an unhappy kid who resents his father (Thomas Haden Church) because he is demanding and undemonstrative. And because Justin blames his father for sending his older brother, Kyle, to war. “He’s definitely overshadowed by his brother but I think there is definitely some jealousy, whether he would accept it or not, because his brother is kind of his dad’s perfect image of what a son should have been and Justin is not like that. So I think there is definitely some jealousy. I think Kyle fits in much better with his family than he does. But that doesn’t mean there is resentment towards him. It’s jealousy you know, not resentment. He has to find himself.” There are a lot of stunts in the film, as Justin and Max get involved with illegal weapons dealers. There were stunt doubles, but Wiggins said, “I did a good amount of the bike riding. All the jumps and stuff were my stunt double, Keith Schmidt, Jr., and did an awesome job with it. Of course I’m a teenager, I’ve ridden a bike before but nothing to that extent , with rocks and tree branches and all that. It was really cool to be able to go outside of my comfort zone a little bit which is the cool thing about acting. You do a lot of stuff you really wouldn’t do otherwise.”
Television veterans Church and Lauren Graham (“Gilmore Girls”) play Justin’s parents. Yakin talked about working with them. “Thomas is so close to this character. He comes from Texas and his father who is a “Great Santini”-like a military man. So in some ways the challenge for Thomas was to make something imaginative for himself in that space. For Lauren coming from where she does feeling like a part of this family was a little bit more challenging. She felt a little bit more like an outsider. It was a little bit less clear to her how to get into it. I think she marvelously managed to work her way into this situation.” But, “the whole movie hinges upon Josh,” he added. “With a movie like this it’s easy for it to slip into sentimentality in the wrong situation. You know you want it to be emotional but not sentimental and when we saw Josh’s work one of the things that really stuck me about it was that it’s perfectly appropriate for the scene, it’s honest and it has emotion in it but it never tries to hand it to an audience and it’s never sentimental. Once we know that we had that core we can cast the other kids around him.”
The movie raises some important issues about families and about the military. Yakin wanted the movie to be more than just a boy and his dog. “For me the exciting part and the challenging part is making a family movie that provokes and challenges kids to think about and feel things that they aren’t necessarily asked to think about and feel and that allows adults to enjoy it even though it’s a movie that a young person can see. It allows adults to enjoy it for what it is without just feeling like they have to be there for their kids. So we’re trying to make a movie that can provoke and challenge while entertaining because it’s an adventure movie. And this country has been at war for how many years since 1991, and it’s a pressure that’s laying over everything that we do and feel about all the time. It’s always there and while trying to make a movie that’s entertaining and fun to a degree you know this war and the pressure of what it means to be a man, an American man in an environment where your manhood and masculinity are defined by how you react by this particular stress is always on you. That to me was interesting. Making the movie, it’s a family movie and I’m not trying to lay it on too thick but being an American man in the age of constant war. What the choices are in within the Justin character. That’s what the movie is about.”
Antonia Bogdanovich is the co-writer and director of “Phantom Halo,” the story of two brothers and their father, a one-time Shakespearean actor who forces them to steal to support his gambling and alcohol addictions. The brothers are named for the famous British playwright: Samuel and Beckett. While Samuel looks for inspiration from a comic book superhero who gives the film its title, Beckett tries to solve the family’s problems with a counterfeiting scheme. Bogdanovich talked to me about being “a product of LA” (her parents are director Peter Bogdanovich and production designer Polly Platt) and about how she was influenced by both her parents and her son in creating this story.
The music shifts and evolves over the course of the film.
I wanted to have that retro feel because the film got that kind of noir quality and we are seeing another side of L.A that is not a typical L.A, South Central, a different environment than you usually see when you get there to visit. I also wanted to have that kind of Americana folk feel because the boys are kind of struggling. Kind of simple and not a lot of instrumentation. But it was really just to feel like the songs go with the scene and I think I wanted that from my dad. It is an internal instinct as well. And I had a great editor who helped me to choose some of the more “shake your moneymaker” songs. He said “Your film can support this kind of music” and it really worked. I’m really happy with the way the music moves with the story. When I started to listen to alternative hip hop, it was just great. Why not use this and support artists that are up and coming or trying to get their name out there, like I am. It is always good to have one or two iconic songs in your film that people recognize, like the one that was perfect for the heist scene.
There are a couple of different points in the movie where people say that they don’t want to think about their past. Is that something that is particularly resonates for you? Is it an LA thing?
It is definitely not an LA thing although I am a product of LA in many, many ways because I grew up there. But I will say that people in general and specifically in my family, deal with the past in one of two ways, either by dealing with it and talking about it and working through it emotionally or not, like basically saying it never happened or not talking about. Not saying that it didn’t happen, but trying to move on and say “I don’t want to talk about the past.” So I would say my mother was a lot like that. She had a tough childhood and she had a lot of challenges, and she chose to kind of, I won’t say bury it, but she just chose to live more in the present and not deal with her past. And I think Miss Rose in the film is like that, though she is not based on my mother in any way. It is clear that she’s had some rough times, and that is the way she deals with it. Samuel, on the other hand, is acknowledging “we are in the mud and we are going to be stuck here until we get out of the situation” and “we need to talk about this” and his brother Beckett’s whole thing is the future. He is like “we are going to be able to get the money for this house, we are going to be able to do this”. Samuel says they need to deal with it now and recognize what already happened. So you know that is kind of my inspiration. I tend to be a little of both. Probably I talk about the past too much but am working on not doing that.
Samuel loves comic books and makes money reciting Shakespeare. How do those two kinds of storytelling, one considered high and one considered low, combine in the film?
My inspiration for the comic book was actually my son. At the time, he was three or four. I had decided that the youngest son escapes through some medium that is contemporary to his time. My father didn’t let me watch television when I was growing up. So I didn’t watch television but now television is so good. So I didn’t think that was appropriate. So I needed to find something that the father wouldn’t approve of. Comic books. My dad’s wouldn’t let my father read comic books. Sometimes, when you come from an intellectual family or a highly creative, artistic family, they are snobs about certain things. So I wanted the father to be a snob about comics and not be able to relate but for Samuel it’s like, “No, it’s a beautiful art form.” And there is a lot in it which we all know about it now. Those of us who appreciate comic books. But my son, who was about four, really loved superheroes. There’s an innocence to Samuel that was like my four year old who wanted to be Superman or Spider Man. And I started buying comic books to do research and he was like four and he was reading them. Of course I watch superhero movies but I’m not a fangirl by any stretch of the imagination. It was something that I chose for this character to have and I wanted to do the research. He is using comic books to escape. We all use art to escape our lives. The worse our lives are, the more we want to escape. I remember when Eminem hit it very big, I would listen to him for long because I was going through a hard time. I was young, and I could relate to his lyrics. So Samuel is relating to the character in the comic book because he is trying to escape his present situation. He is a dreamer.
What do you want people to learn from this film?
I want people who have alcoholics in their home, who are young who know they can get away now. Their fathers don’t have to die so they can get away. I wanted people to see the characters disappearing to a better place. We can change our paths. We don’t have to end up like that. That is why I didn’t have either brother, drinkers or partiers at all. These boys are not doing that. I wanted it to be the boys arguing and making use of their intellect that they inherited clearly from their father to make a better life. I want people to know that they are not alone and that there are other people out there that have this situation in the home. And sometimes the most unlikely person is the hero. And if you have family you can’t depend on, the children are depending on themselves. And also maybe for people to get a taste of Shakespeare. It is accessible to the masses. You don’t have to be highly educated to enjoy Shakespeare. I tried to really use passages that are pretty clear on what Shakespeare is saying.
People get turned off by the language but Shakespeare was kind of a street guy. Actors during that time of Shakespeare, they were considered the lowest on the totem pole. They were low class people. I was just telling a story that I could relate to and I think everybody is going to take something different away from the film. It is interesting how people relate to different things in a movie.
What is the best advice you got about directing?
Have a really good script. First and foremost ensure that your script is in top shape before you direct. Really know how to talk to actors, and really know what you want. Go in there extremely prepared because if you are just trying out, you are not going to have a lot of time to shoot. And you are going to have very little time and probably have to shoot six to eight to nine pages a day. And you really can’t mess around. You have to know exactly what you want. Once you have shot, you can’t really go back. You can’t be in the editing room, going, “we did not get what we needed.” You have to be prepared, if not over-prepared. You have to know what you want. You have to know the vision of your film. You have to do your homework and do the legwork to know how you are going to shoot the film, what your vision is, what you are trying to say. And then, actors change dialogue and I think you have to be open for that. That is totally legit. I think it’s important to make actors to feel confident and that they can be part of this process. But also when they are suggesting something that you don’t agree with, just be confident enough to say, “No I don’t agree with that.” Because you can’t be intimidated by your actors, even if some of them are more experienced than you. You have to know how to talk to your actors and respect them and work with them as a team in collaborative fashion, but remember that you are ultimately the boss and will definitely take the fall if the film that does not turn out right.
Writer/director Maya Forbes did not just base her new film on her own childhood; she had her sister contribute to the soundtrack and cast her daughter as Amelia, the character inspired by Forbes herself. The film covers the period when Forbes and her sister were living with their father, who has bipolar disorder, in Boston, while their mother was getting her MBA in New York so she could support the family. Cam, the father, is played by Mark Ruffalo and the mother, Maggie, is played by Zoe Saldana.
Most movies are not very accurate in portrayal of people with mental illness. What did you want to make sure to avoid in creating a more realistic, three-dimensional character?
Yes, there are some movies that are great and there are many that are terrible. And I didn’t want it to be this sort of cute characterization or assembly of quirks. It was very important to me that it felt like the core was Cam, who he was. The mental illness was something he experienced but not everything he was. I had my father and other people who are bipolar in my family and I sometimes are wonder, “Are you manic right now or are you just really happy?” And that sort of anxious feeling because you don’t want to tell someone that they’re manic when they’re just happy. Because they’re not that different. It was very important to me to make it feel holistic. And I was trying to avoid making light of it but I also wanted to show a person who is loved and loves other people and is lovable. A lot of families have mentally ill people and it’s somebody they love who suffers from addiction or mental illness. It is a family issue and so it is important to me to portray that.
What were the challenges of making this evoke the 70’s?Copyright 2015 Sony Pictures Classics
I wanted it to feel like a vivid memory. Sometimes memories pieces are kind of faded and sepia, but to me it felt like memories that are sort of vibrant and alive. And I was drawn to that style of doing it. Especially doing a smaller budget movie you are looking for these evocative environments that have a sort of neutral quality. There is a movie called “Small Change,” a Truffaut film that I love. He shot that in a French village and it’s very simple because it’s mostly the stone facade of these big old French buildings. I was kind of looking for brick and stone and wood. I’m going to look for texture. I’m not going go to Harvard Square because Harvard Square doesn’t exist anymore. I didn’t shoot in Massachusetts actually; I shot in Providence because Providence looks more like Cambridge in the 70s than Cambridge does now. So Providence had all these great locations that have not been gutted up and changed. Also with the clothes I wanted it to evoke the period that does not bludgeon you over the head with “Hey remember the 70’s, wasn’t it cool?” I wanted it to have a bit of a timeless quality but with just smaller touches so working with my whole design team we were looking for these textures and these little touches that would evoke the period without trying to recreate the whole period, which is something that we wouldn’t be able to do anyway.
Speaking of “Small Change,” like that film, this really gives us the point of view of the children, though we understand more of what is going on than they do.
Being embarrassed, that is one thing children do definitely understand. They understand how to be embarrassed by a parent’s annoying behavior. The wonderful thing about the kids is that they really are in the moment. The main thing is just getting them to listen to the other actors. That’s the key; they are listening and they are responding, they also need to seem quite natural. I didn’t go looking for kids that were highly trained because I don’t feel like this movie needed that. It needed a freshness and a naturalness. There was a lot of anger, there was sadness. My daughter plays the older one, so I would take her off into the corner before some of the sad scenes. We talked about the context of the scene then I would start crying and then she would start crying and I would say, “Okay, now….” So that was part of the process of working with her, sort of sharing the emotion in a context with her was helpful to her in terms of bringing her to that place.
Did you see your childhood differently as you worked on this?
I knew always that my sister and I we were a team, we were a team as children going through the world, and we still are. The main thing is I resolved a lot of issues with my mother. I had never felt that she abandoned us but then when I had children of my own…I had two little girls, just like she did, so it was almost like I was reliving something. All these memories came flooding back. I was just catapulted back into my childhood and reliving it somehow.
My mom is an ardent feminist. She has always wanted my sister and me to go out and be in charge. So for her to see me direct this movie, that’s what she thought I should be doing. She thinks it’s important for women to step up and be leaders. But we were having some conflict in the areas of motherhood and career when my kids were younger. She pushes the career so hard and I wondered if she was just trying to validate her choices. I said, “Maybe I don’t want to make those choices,” and she said, “Don’t drop out. It’s hard to get back in. You’ve built a career, don’t drop out.” I was resentful of some of those messages. Then as I was writing the movie I saw things so much from her point of view, what she had been up against and what she had wanted for us and what she had given us in terms of sending us to good schools. My father’s family sort of have a culture of “don’t try too hard.” You want things to come naturally to you. You don’t want to be a striver. And it’s easy to kind of absorb that attitude but it is a crippling attitude; it means that you don’t go out and try because you are not supposed to fail. But my mom is not like that. It almost didn’t matter to me whether it got made because what it did to my relationship with my mother was so profound. She became my hero and I realize she was right about a lot of these things. And, on my mother’s side she had read it and it did the same thing for her seeing my perspective as a child and what it had been like. She was there but I don’t think she as deeply understood some of the painful times, just the complicated emotions that we had, that my sister and I had just because of the situation that we were in it, a lot of different feelings and exposure to things that you maybe don’t want to kids to expose to or to have to deal with. Seeing each other’s stories was really amazing.
She was working really hard at school, she didn’t have a great apartment, she came back to our apartment and it was not like anyone was trying to make it easy for her. We weren’t all taking care of her when she came back. She came back and took care of us. It was very, very difficult and I’m so grateful to her.
