Interview: “The Book Thief”

Posted on November 15, 2013 at 8:00 am

Following an extraordinary evening presenting the film at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, with survivors in the audience, some of the people behind “The Book Thief” sat down for an interview. Director Brian Percival, who introduced the film, joined stars Sophie Nélisse, who plays Liesel, the title character, Geoffrey Rush, who plays Hans, her foster father, and the young Australian author of the book that inspired the film, Markus Zusak.

I began by asking Zusak about the book’s title. Is Liesel really a thief? “I remember reviews at some point said, ‘She hardly even steals any books!’ I added up one all of the books listed in the novel and there were about seventeen, mostly titles I made up, and I counted how many she actually stole. I decided she had stolen enough and it was a good title. It felt right. The Book Borrower? It wouldn’t work as well. It’s also different in the book when you make all those coincidences come together. But the book had a reason for the mayor’s wife to keep the window of her library open. She wanted it cold so she could go into that room to suffer and think about her son who died. In the Portuguese version, it’s called The Little Girl Who Stole the Books, and that sounds so poetic in that language.”

I asked Sophie Nélisse if it was hard to play a character who does not talk very much, especially in the beginning of the film. “My mom says that my face can say everything, so if I’m bored you can see it clearly on my forehead. I think it came naturally but it was wonderful working with Brian , who always made me feel very special. If I did a scene badly, sometimes he would go, ‘Oh, can you maybe try this? Go a bit this way?’ He would give me maybe five corrections but would always end by saying, ‘But it was great’ or ‘It was perfect.’ He wouldn’t say, ‘Do this,’ or ‘I want Liesel to be like that.’ He would let me do it my own way and then he would guide me.” She has to look much older at the end of the movie — she said that makeup emphasized her cheekbones, and Percival added that they put a ramp and had her in heels to make her taller next to the other actors. “The Alan Ladd phenomenon,” joked Rush, referring to the notoriously short actor who had to stand on a box for his kissing scenes.

Rush said that for his character, playing the accordion was like a monologue on stage. “You read a script and look at all those elements — what does this character do, what do the other characters do to him and say about him, build up a portrait of what the personality will be. It was such a vibrant and wonderful dimension of the character. If it had been a violin it would have been a completely different experience. I loved the sound of the wheezing bellows. They were like lungs. I finally learned the fingering but my tutor would always say, ‘It’s the breathing and the flow.’ That’s a great image for the internal rhythm of Hans. There were seven pieces we did. One didn’t make it into the film, but it was a great way to segue the encroaching hostilities — I was playing somewhat facetiously outside the room when the children were singing the anti-Semitic song that had been taught to them. But the moments of ‘The Blue Danube’ in the bunker. You can see he’s brought it in to protect one of the dearest things in his life and it’s his way of keeping calm, being familiar, and it’s a classic German/Austrian piece. The piece he plays later is very well known to a German audience, an old freedom song, an anti-Nazi song. You’d like to think that’s his way of rehabilitation. He will get over the shell-shock and having been injured. There will be some regrowth in the character. I could express something about the character that was completely abstract. I would not say this film had magical realism, but as in the novel there were happy accidents that made it filmic. You can’t hear music in the book.”

Percival spoke about talking to the survivors following the screening. He acknowledged the difficulty of handling such sensitive material respectfully and was encouraged by the “incredibly positive” reaction of the people who had lived through the Holocaust, and touched that they wanted to share their stories with him, stories that included some of the kindness of German citizens like that shown by Hans in the film as well as the atrocities inflicted by others. “People actually sold out their friends and their neighbors in some cases because they coveted their property. I can’t think of much lower than that. I can understand if you fear for your own life or were brainwashed into believing something wrong. But to do it for material gain — that is heartbreaking. One of the guys I spoke to had been protected by farmers who hid him for two or three years right under the nose of the Nazi occupation of France, putting their own lives in peril, taking terrible risks, a noble act.” Zusek said, as he had at the movie, it was that which inspired him to write the book, the contrast between the best and worst of human behavior that the Holocaust brought out in people.

Interview: Ron Clements and John Musker of “The Little Mermaid”

Posted on September 30, 2013 at 3:59 pm

After Walt Disney died, the studio he founded faltered, especially Disney animation. Following the powerhouse classics like “Peter Pan,” “Dumbo,” and “The Jungle Book” (the last animated film Walt Disney supervised personally), the animation division became mired in struggles that produced disappointments like “The Black Cauldron.” The documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty tells the story of Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, executives Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, and a new team of animators, writers, and producers brought the studio back for another series of instant classics like “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast.” The movie that was the turning point was this week’s DVD/Blu-Ray Pick of the Week, The Little Mermaid, one of my very favorites. It was a thrill to speak to the writer/director team of Ron Clements and John Musker about how it all came together.

Tell me how you first started working on this movie, because this was a big transitional moment for Disney animation.

RC: Well, I actually pitched the movie. This was around I think 1985. \I’m bad with dates but this was period of shortly after those kind of a big transition at Disney. Mike Eisner and Roy Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg came. Roy Disney came back to Disney. He had left for a while. Michael had this thing called “Gong Show.” He’d come over from Paramount Studios. I guess they had that there. It was a way for generating new ideas for animated films or for any films. But in this case, animated films. So he got a group of story people and the directors together in a room. The idea was that everyone was supposed to go out and find five new ideas for animated features. Then, we would meet again in 2 weeks and pitch the ideas. They called it the “Gong Show” because if your idea was not good, it got a gong. So I took that very seriously and I looked for ideas. That same night I went into a bookstore in North Hollywood. I picked up a book of fairy tales, just kind of looking for ideas. I came across The Little Mermaid. I don’t know if I had ever read the story before so I was reading it on the bookstore. As I was reading it, I got really excited because Hans Christian Andersen writes very visually and very cinematically. The images just kind of leap off the page. I thought, “This could really make a great movie. I wonder why they’ve never done this.” Then, as I got through the story I realized maybe part of the reason is that it’s a very, very sad story. It kind of starts sad and then it gets sadder. Then she dies in the end.

So I was thinking about trying to come up with a way to put a little difference in the story so then it would have a little happier ending. I wanted to make the witch more of a villain than she was in the story and turn it into a little bit of more into a fairy tale. So I wrote up a two-page treatment with the basic idea. There’s only one character name in the treatment and that’s Ariel. I called her “Ariel” in the treatment. I’m not sure why but I sort of liked that name. Probably a good name for a mermaid. I also looked for four more ideas because they wanted five ideas. There were other ideas that I came with that I wrote two-page treatments for. But when we reconvened, he said, “Just pitch your best idea.” When they got to me, I said “The Little Mermaid.”

It was gonged.

Partly because Disney had “Splash.” They were working on a sequel to “Splash” which they never actually made. So they gonged it. But I gave them the treatment anyway and the other treatments. A couple days later, I got a call from Jeffrey Katzenberg. He went through the different treatments. Then, he said, “Michael and I looked at this ‘Little Mermaid’ thing and we think it’s really good. We want to do it. We want to put it into development,” which I was very excited about because I was really depressed when it got gonged.

One reason I love this movie is the traditional, hand-drawn animation.

JM: Growing up, I was always a fan of this animation. I drew my stuff. In college, I was a cartoonist at The Daily Northwestern. So I draw myself. I was an animator. But basically, I went to Northwestern to major in English, wound up in college for two years. Studied animation there. Came to Disney. My first week at Disney was the week that “Star Wars” came out. But anyway, I got to learn from Eric Larson, who’s one of the “Nine Old Men.” He was sort of the mentor for the younger animators. Literally, you would take your animation to him and he would take a piece of paper and draw, show you how you could improve the acting and the timing and the phrasing and staging and all that sort of stuff. It was really a craft that was passed on from one to the other. But as a kid, certainly, the Disney animated films seemed more vivid to me than a live action film.

There was something about the caricature element, I think not only are things sort of bigger and broader but you can get to the essence of things. So it really had a very strong appeal. I saw “Sleeping Beauty” when I was like 6 years old at the Mercury Theatre.

Then when I came to Disney I was in the company of these wonderful artists. People like Glen Keane, like Mark Henn, who were brilliant animators who could really bring these things to life. Watching it, it was a magical moment always when you see the first animation come to life, like when I saw the first animation on Ariel or on Sebastian or the Genie when we did Aladdin. It isn’t a drawing anymore. It’s a real character. You started treating them that way. Even the animators get protective with their characters. “My character wouldn’t do that.” “Sebastian wouldn’t do that.” They’re all grounded on recognizable human behavior identified through your reliability.

The medium with which you tell the story has evolved over the years. I love 3D animation. I love hand drawn animation. Certainly, the big compelling emotionally evolving stories, wonderfully done in 3D. I like Brad Bird and John Lasseter. But I still draw myself since I am fond of this kind of magic trick, where you can take all this expressiveness and power of drawing and add the element of performance and time. I do feel like animated films really combine a lot of different of art forms, film-making and writing and drawing and painting, to a certain extent even sculpting. It’s a wonderful medium to work with as a craftsman because it’s such so rich and so varied and so expressive.

One of my all-time favorite Disney villains is Ursula the sea-witch. So tell me about developing that character.

RC: She was really a fun character to develop. I think John and I had a lot of fun with her. We had met with Howard Ashman fairly early on. We talked about the songs. Mostly, about where they might go. We talked about the witch’s song. Howard always saw the witch as Joan Collins, the “Dynasty” villain. When we wrote the script, we actually were thinking Beatrice Arthur a little bit. Then, when we went to casting, we wanted to try to cast Beatrice Arthur. Actually, I don’t think we ever got past her agent. They were insulted that we were thinking of her as a witch. I don’t think that they liked the idea. Pat Carroll then actually auditioned for the role. She did a great job. She really was just right. So that all worked out really well. Also, the other thing about the character is we developed her. She didn’t start out being part squid or part octopus. Before that, we explored her as part manta ray and part fish. Then we saw a pretty simple drawing, putting Ursula on an octopus body with tentacles. That was like “Yeah, that’s it.” That’s right. We studied octopus footage just to see how they move. There was a very kind of seductive and yet scary aspect. It’s just the sinuous way they move. So it all kind of came together. John and I, we like villains. She was certainly fun to do.

And this movie also has one of my favorite Disney princes.

RC: I’m glad to hear you say that. I mean, because princes are tough. They are always tough. The toughest character to animate. That’s why in Snow White, you only see the prince at the very beginning of the movie and at the end of the movie. They’ve always kept the princes to a minimum. Same with Cinderella. Cinderella has a little better prince. But still, they’re hard to draw. They’re hard to animate. The acting is tough. A realistic girl is hard but guys are harder to do. Girls are more fun to draw. Guys are tough to draw. So it’s got to be a really good animator. Only the best animators really can do the prince. But it’s not the most fun character to animate. We really wanted him to be more of a character, more likeable and to get more of him. Even though, it’s a little bit of a kind of a thankless job. Even for the actors and the animators. It’s like it’s a tough job but somebody’s got to do it.

Tell me a little bit about the challenge of underwater scenes and what that’s like for animators.

RC: When we first proposed it, we knew that it was going to be really, really challenging. I mean, for a lot of reasons. But one of the big reasons is two-thirds of the movie takes place underwater. All that requires a lot of effects animation. We have two kinds of animation in these animated films. We have character animation, the artists who animate the characters. They’re kind of like actors. We always feel they are actors with a pencil. Glen Keane and Mark Henn did Ariel. That’s what they do. Then, we have effects animators. Effects animators do the non-character stuff that moves which is like water, waves, or bubbles. Or fire or smoke or light effects, anything that moves that isn’t the character. This probably had more character animation than any Disney movie project since “Fantasia.” And it really had a lot of effects, even with the character stuff — like whenever Ariel is underwater, her hair has to move all the time. Hair moving underwater is tricky. We had a lot of meetings about hair. One of the extras in the video is some of the live action footage that we shot for reference to see the hair floating.

JM: You need people who have to do all the bubbles and all the underwater patterns and all that. We had a budget and the schedule and everything so we really did have to pick our spots. Like “Here’s where the water is got to be, so it’s got to be the A level in this scene. In this other one, the water is not quite as important. This one is quick scene, we can kind of punch this one a little bit. But this one is got to be really the top of the line.”

The crazy thing is even to get the production level we want on the original film, we want some hand inking. They’ve gotten away from hand inking in fact, certainly. So we sent some of the bubbles in the movie actually to mainland China. They were inked in China.

Why does this story have such enduring appeal?

JM: You see at the heart of it, “The Little Mermaid” is the father-daughter story. It’s an overprotective father. There’s a daughter who is kind of adventurous and rebellious and wanting to see a new world. How do they resolve that? That story is still in place today.

Interview: Joseph Gordon-Levitt of “Don Jon”

Posted on September 25, 2013 at 8:00 am

Joseph Gordon-Levitt met with a small group of journalists to talk about the film he wrote, directed, and stars in, “Don Jon.” Gordon-Levitt, who has appeared in edgy independent films (“The Mysterious Skin,” “Brick”), teen romances (“10 Things I Hate About You”), ambitious, big-budget special effects films (“Inception,” “The Dark Knight Rises”), and prestige dramas (“Lincoln”), began acting as a child, first appearing in the popular sit-com “Third Rock From the Sun” when he was 13. His grandfather was also an actor-turned director whose films included the classics “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Pillow Talk.”

In “Don Jon” Gordon-Levitt plays Jon, a New Jersey guy who prefers pornography to real relationships, indeed to pretty much everything else. He starts dating Barbara, played by Scarlett Johansson. “This is a guy that everything has to be in the right place. He has very rigid expectations of what a man is supposed to look like and the hair is certainly part of that. And he keeps control. So he has got a pretty extreme version of it, and a lot of gel in his hair. Both the Jon character and the Barbara character are people who are very intent on fitting into the conventional idea of what a masculine man is supposed to be and what a feminine woman is supposed to be. They are both very concerned with their looks and they put a lot of effort into their looks. They use their looks to get what they want, and are disappointed with life because if you are so busy trying to fit yourself into a mold, you’re going to miss what’s actually beautiful about life, which is what makes people unique, not what makes everybody the same.”

Jon, Barbara, and many of the other characters in the film struggle to find a way to connect. “Everything in Jon’s life is sort of a one-way street. He is not connecting or engaging with anyone. That goes for the women in his life, that goes for his family, his friends, his church, even his own body. It’s an item on a checklist. He doesn’t listen; he just takes. At the beginning of the movie, he is finding that dissatisfying because there’s the sequence where he brings a young lady home from the bar and he is comparing her to this checklist that he has got of what he likes to see in a pornography video. Obviously, a real human being is not going to map onto that because there is a fundamental difference between a human being and an image on a screen. So he looks for what can satisfy him. The first thing he tries is the sort of conventional moral high ground: what your parents would want you to do, what his parents would want him to do – which is find the prettiest girl in the room and make her your girlfriend, your quasi-wife. So he does that and he follows all the rules and does what he is supposed to do. But he is still not satisfied because, again, if he is just doing what he is supposed to do, if you are just fitting into the mold, you’re not connecting. They don’t listen to each other. They are not really paying attention to who each other is. They are sort of projecting onto each other what they think the other is supposed to be. And she is doing it to him just as bad as he is doing it to her. I want to talk about how people treat each other more like things than like people sometimes and how media can play into that. And I guess this comes from my own personal experience of growing up working as an actor. Actors in our culture do get stigmatized and treated like objects on a shelf sometimes. But I don’t think it’s just actors; I think everybody experiences this. I’m sure you all have. I have, you have. You are talking to someone and you can tell they are not listening. You can tell they have already decided what you are and put you in a box with a label on it. This is what I was trying to make fun of. And I do think that the media contributes to that. That’s where I came to the idea of a relationship between a young man who watches too much pornography and a young woman who watches too many romantic Hollywood movies. They’ve both got these unrealistic expectations that they’ve learned from these kinds of media that they consume and it leads them to objectify people or to not connect. That’s the origin of where it came from.”

He talked about what he learned from the directors he worked with and how he used three different styles in this movie to create different moods. “The year leading up to shooting Don Jon, I worked with Rian Johnson on “Looper” and Chris Nolan on “Dark Knight Rises and Steven Spielberg who made “Lincoln.” So I had a lot to go on. I was certainly watching carefully. But I’ve always loved watching. I spent my whole life on sets. I started working when I was six. I’ve always paid a lot of attention to what directors have done and what everyone else has done: what they are doing over here in the camera department or how they put together the set or what the script supervisor is up to, all those notes that they take, how is it, what is that. I really like being a part of that team, being a part of something larger. I really wanted this movie to have a flair to the filmmaking. Especially comedies, it seems, often stay pretty conservative and just leave the comedy to the writing and acting and the rest of the filmmaking is very standardized. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted the filmmaking to reflect what was going on with the character and the evolution of the character. We divided it into three acts, which is the standard story structure in a 90-minute movie. In the first act, when you meet Jon and his kind of world, the camera was all very kinetic, a lot of camera movement. The cutting was really fast and the music was all made of these big shiny synth sounds. Then, in the second act, once he is getting involved with the sort of traditional romance, the cameras are on dollies a lot. There is a lot of sweet, gentle movement. The cutting is very traditional Hollywood cutting, Frank Capra/Steven Spielberg-style classic Hollywood editing style. And the music is classic Hollywood orchestra. And then, in the third act, when he is broken down and starts to get more curious and break out of his mold, the camera is almost all handheld, there is a lot less cutting, and the music gets really sparse and it is just played on a few guitars. So that was the idea to have the filmmaking move along with the evolution of the character.”

He especially appreciate the support he got from Christopher Nolan. “I told Chris that I was going to direct a movie, and he, first of all, was encouraging. And that, just in itself, just him saying, ‘That’s great, I think you would be good at that.’ And taking it seriously really meant a lot. He would start asking me important questions like, ‘What kind of budget are you going to have? How many days are you thinking about, ballpark? Where are you going to shoot?’ He asked me if I was sure I was going to act and direct at the same time, which is funny. Several journalists on this tour have said, “I heard Chris Nolan told you not to act and direct at the same time.” No, not at all. That’s not what he said. He just asked a question. People love to print negativity. He was really supportive. He even came on the set one day. We shot one day at the Warner Bros backlot and he was mixing sound for “Dark Knight Rises” at the time and he came by. He didn’t have to do that. That meant a lot. It goes to show why a lot of people really love working for him and he really cares about people that work for him. That’s why people do a really good job for him, I think.

“Rian Johnson was also super-encouraging. Rian was the first guy I showed my first draft of the script. Up to that point no one else had seen it. I was just writing this thing alone. I thought it was good. I was having fun writing it; but you never know sometimes. You can lose perspective. So him saying that, ‘I think you have something here. This feels like a movie. You have a complete story. I get it’ was encouraging. He also had important feedback and plenty of notes. But just him giving me the go-ahead was really a big turning point for me.”

These days, most movies are made digitally, but Gordon-Levitt worked with film. “First of all, it actually is easier to shoot on film at this budget level. It is not a micro-budget movie, but it’s a low-budget movie. This is like half the budget of “500 Days of Summer” and probably like a tenth of the budget of the lowest-budget movie that a studio like Warner Bros would make. So shooting on those professional digital cameras is expensive. You need more tech, you need more crew, you need more time to set up, they are harder, they are more complicated machines, they break more often, etc. So there were actually a lot of practical reasons to shoot on film and the cost of developing the film and buying the film stock is outweighed by the cost of all that other stuff that comes along with like the digital cameras. But also, I still think it looks different. Look, digital cameras have come a long way and they look gorgeous. There are some movies that are shot digitally that I think look amazing like “Life of Pi” last year, one of the prettiest movies that came out. You could tell it wasn’t film. It looked great. But I wanted to shoot this one on film. I wanted it to have that classic look of like ‘this is a movie with a capital M.’ It’s a movie that is about movies and media. So I wanted it to really send all those signals, like this is a movie. Yeah, I always wanted it to be on film.”

The title is a reference to the literary character Don Juan, an elegant, sophisticated man famous for seducing many women. But Jon lives in suburban New Jersey. “I don’t think it’s singular to any particular place or culture. He is Don Juan. Don Juan is an old classic literary figure. I did want to make it just a normal guy. I’m from the suburbs of LA and New Jersey is the suburbs of New York. I didn’t want to set it in like a cosmopolitan affluent setting where a lot of romantic comedies are set in Manhattan and London. I wanted it to be like normal, middle-income, suburban America because I think everybody knows people like this. We all are to a degree people like this.”

One challenge Gordon-Levitt took on and handled with exceptional grace was the depiction of the pornography. He had to find a way to indicate what Jon was experiencing without distracting the audience. “There are clips that are licensed from real pornography videos but very carefully selected, cut, cropped, and worked into very highly stylized sequences with voiceover and music and lots of cutting. The idea was to try to get inside his head, not to show you from an objective standpoint what it looks like. I think that would really be awkward and kind of dark. I wanted to make an entertaining comedy. It’s really more about getting inside of his head. So you don’t really see it. It’s all really close-up and it’s more about kind of his point of view. And he is an unreliable narrator. He is sort of assessing the situation the best that he can and telling how he sees it; but I think he is wrong at least as much as he is right. That was how I felt like we could approach it in a way that wouldn’t be alienating for people because it be funny and snappy and entertaining, and again, putting you inside the head of this protagonist.”

Another challenge was the portrayal of Jon’s sister, played by the very talented Brie Larson, who appears to be texting throughout the film and never speaks until the end. “She didn’t talk, but she is listening. She is in those scenes, and a crucial part of those scenes. We talked all about her character. The backstory we came up with was: here’s a girl, a young woman who is three steps ahead of her brother even though she is the younger sister. This evolution that you begin to see Jon start, I feel that’s an evolution that she probably went through when she was like 16 or something. She realized, ‘You know what? My parents expect me to be this, I’m not that and I’m out of here. No one listens anyway, so why should I talk? So that is my feeling about that character…but she is listening, and that’s the thing, and we talked about that. We didn’t want her to just be like, ‘Oh, the ditsy girl is always on her phone.’ I feel like she is talking to colleagues about something they are working on or something like that. That’s an input/output device. That’s not just a one-way street. We talked about Buster Keaton and how much you can do without saying anything. And I think she does. She kills it. Even before she speaks, she is crucial in those scenes.”

Gordon-Levitt cast his 1994 “Angels in the Outfield” co-star Tony Danza as Jon’s father. “That was a blast. Tony is such a good-natured, sweetheart of a guy which was funny having him play this character because Jon’s dad, Jon senior, has a short temper. He doesn’t listen to anything his family says and he is sort of a lecherous dude. It doesn’t come naturally to Tony because on screen, his instinct is to be likeable because that’s just how he naturally is. So I kept having to tell him like, ‘No man, I like you too much, you have to be willing to be a little less likeable’….But if the dad character was just a demon, it would be off-putting. I think he still has to have that charm and that’s important.”

His HitRecord collaborative production venture has just announced a new partnership with the Pivot channel. “I have really grand, fanciful ambitions for all sorts of things that aren’t ready to be articulated probably yet. I’m just a very grateful man. I have been doing this for a long time. On the one hand, I never necessarily thought that I would have such fortunate opportunities. But on the other hand, I have got to say that part of doing well at anything, I think, is believing that you can do it. I always had parents that told me I could, told me I was good at what I was doing and supported me with what I was doing. I think you have to have that balance between the humility of not being too full of yourself; but on the other hand, believing in yourself and recognizing. There is a quote that I think is attributed to Nelson Mandela. He said that our light is more frightening than our darkness because if you look at the darkness within yourself, you can make excuses and shirk the responsibility of having to do anything and say, ‘Well, I’m not capable.’ But if you recognize the powerful light that is in yourself, that we all have within ourselves, that’s scary because with that light comes a certain responsibility to live up to it and do something. I love that quote. I think about that a lot. I don’t know, I might be avoiding your question or something. I guess my answer is you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

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Interview: Will Bakke of “Believe Me”

Posted on September 22, 2013 at 3:59 pm

I really enjoyed talking to Will Bakke of Riot Studios about his new film, “Believe Me.” I’ll post information about the movie’s release when it is available.

Tell me a little bit about this project.

I’d love to. Well, “Believe Me” is the story of four college seniors who start a fake Christian charity in order to make the money that they need for tuition for college. In the process of throwing this big fundraiser to tell people that they’re donating wells in Africa, they end up being asked to be the keynote speakers for a summer-long evangelical tour. And so they kind of get little into their heads and they decide to sign on and do it and just sort of study the Christian culture in order to get away with it. I think people would sort of expect some big altar call at the end but this is a very different story and we’re excited to tell it.

Where did the story came from?

Michael Allen and I have actually produced two documentaries together before we wrote this. We were in college when we made “One Nation Under God.” He and I and two buddies of ours road-tripped around the United States just asking people what they believed about God. We were both from Dallas, Texas. We kind of grew up in the Bible belt and realized that our faith, we only had it because our parents had it and because that’s what we were kind of raised to have. And we just wanted to get out of that bubble and just find out what other people believe and really challenge our own beliefs in the meantime. And as a result of that, it kind of brought us to make a second documentary called “Beware of Christians.” Michael and I and our other buddy Alex Carroll who jumped on board with us created that film really as just a way of solidifying what we believe and how that would shape our lives and what we would lack, especially in college. I think both of those films really were kind of the jump-off point for “Believe Me.” We made these two films that were probably labelled as Christian films, because we’re Christians ourselves but it was about us. And so we were excited to take a look at the industry and kind of see the ins and outs of it and we just realized how many funny things there are about Christians out there and so the idea of “Believe Me” came out of this: what if somebody really wanted to take advantage of that? What would Christianity look like to an outsider? That was kind of a starting point for the film.

What were some of the challenges of going from documentary to feature film?

There were a lot of challenges. When we made the documentary, we had a couple of notes written down on like a napkin on what we wanted to do while we were Europe or while we were touring around the United States. There was no real planning to it beforehand. With a movie like this, we spent about two years writing the script and polishing it and just working out every character arc, every story arc, every theme to the movie and two years of writing transitioning into directing for me. And there’s a lot of people involved. It was no longer just me holding the camera running around filming as much as I could and just throwing a story together at the end. We had a very precise story that we wanted to tell and it was a lot of people involved so it was a completely different experience. It was so rewarding and humbling and I was very excited. We actually just wrapped yesterday at 6:00 AM so I’m still winding down from the experience as you can imagine. At some point you start to feel like everyone is playing with paint brushes when you’re directing because it’s such a collaborative effort. And I loved it for so many reasons because I didn’t have to be thinking about what writing was like or exactly what the camera shots were going to be because I’d worked that out beforehand with my director of photography so on the day that we’re shooting, my mind was just fully into the story and fully into the characters and I had just this incredible team behind it that was making everything look ten times more amazing than I could have ever imagine. So it ended up being a surprise, just being able to really focus on just one aspect of filmmaking which is the directing side and much less the technical aspects because those were already worked out in pre-production.

Do you consider this one a Christian film and who do you think is the audience for it?

With this film specifically, Christianity is the backdrop to the story but I would never label it that. We didn’t want it to be that. We weren’t shooting for that. We believe this story is all about the idea of truth which is an universal theme which we’re very excited about because it doesn’t matter really where you’re coming from on the line of faith whether you’re for it, against it, whether you have it, whether you’re a part of a religious culture or not. Anyone can walk into this movie and get it and really understand the desire that we’re going after. It’s all about the idea that truth is relative and that what works for you works for you and what works for me is best for me. We start to see that there are a lot of different characters that are really good people that live with that mentally; they kind of get in their own way. And when those different wants and needs clash, it’s compelling as a viewer to see that. And so it’s not a Christian film. We’re pretty excited to tell people that just because we don’t want to have any kind of pre-conceived notions in people’s minds coming into it . One of the tough things about being labelled that is a lot of times people believe there is going to be some sort of agenda to the story which we don’t have. We just really want to tell a compelling story. There’s no secret motive or agenda behind it. Although, we are guaranteeing a 100% conversion rate with this movie; I hope that’s not confusing at all. We promise there is going to be conversion. We’re not positive on what religion it’s going to be on by the end of the show but we’re promising a 100% conversion-rate.

What effect do you think it has on people to try to live up to other people’s expectations?

It’s not so much I think for these guys to live up to expectations as much as I think it is based on themselves as a whole. They just committed to becoming the speakers on this major evangelical tour and as a result, they had to sort of adapt and they ultimately don’t want to go to jail for what they’re doing. I think a lot of it has to do with beliefs and why do you believe what you believe. It is because someone stood up on the stage and told you that something was true or is it because you have investigated and researched and really looked into what someone says and is claiming and for me alone, with this movie it’s just so interesting because Alex Russell, we was the star of the movie “Chronicle” last year. He plays the lead in our movie and in the film it was so interesting to shoot with him because there’s just some amazing scenes where he is preaching up on stage and all the credit to him because he’s an incredible actor but he just sold it so well that it made the rest of us kind of look back and be like, it’s really freaking me out how well he can sell this. And I know personally that Alex Russell doesn’t identify himself as a Christian. I think he’d be comfortable telling anybody that, he actually has. But you know, it’s very interesting to see just the words come out of someone’s mouth that seem so compassionate and so compelling and yet at the same time, isn’t what they believe.

That’s why they call it acting.

Exactly. So it really made me rethink what my youth leaders taught me back in the day. Like, ah, I wonder if they were really genuine in all of this. That’s just what gets serious about it when it has to do with religion and faith and putting your chips on something that could change your entire life, not knowing if it’s coming from a genuine place or not.

When you were writing this script and you were working on, as you said, the structures and the characters and all that, what were some of the resources that you relied on? Did you look at other movies? Did you look at books about script writing? What did you do?

We read plenty of books on screenwriting. I was a film student at Baylor University and took screenwriting courses. It was a great education in terms of like what it looks like to tell a good story and I think for the two years that we were diving into script; story was the most important thing to us. And like I said earlier, without having an agenda, that’s what we wanted to make for ourselves in the first place is compelling characters, compelling stories, even tell the stories of characters that don’t line up in the same world-view as us. We love the idea of college students just getting in over their heads and how they react. It’s just such a pivotal time of life in the way that’s going to shape you later so we love playing in that sort of age range.

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Interview: Jerusha Hess and J.J. Feild of “Austenland”

Posted on August 22, 2013 at 8:00 am

No movie this year made me laugh more than “Austenland,” based on the novel by Shannon Hale. The film has Keri Russell as a Jane Austen fan who visits an immersive Jane Austen theme park/experience. It was a lot of fun to talk to writer-director Jerusha Hess and actor J.J. Feild, who plays the brooding but dashing Mr. Nobley — and who played Mr. Tilney in the version of Austen’s “Northanger Abbey” that was shown in the US on Masterpiece Theatre. This is the first directing gig for Hess, who co-wrote “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Nacho Libre,” and “Gentlemen Broncos” with her husband, director Jared Hess.

Tell me a little bit about the place where the movie was filmed and what it was like to be there?

JJ: It’s one of the great British estates. I’ve filmed there three times!

Jerusha: It’s called West Wycombe. And there’s even a lord named Lord Dashwood . It’s very steeped in Austen. It’s been used in many films, but not in its entirety and we shot the inside and the outside and used every nook and cranny. The inside is very gaudy. It’s a little naughty inside. There’s a lot of portraiture.

JJ: Slight sexual innuendo with the portraits there, but that’s the home of something called the Hellfire Club, which is a very, very old society in Britain, that was known in Charles II’s time, but it goes back beyond that and who knows what else. It’s the home of that society that supposedly no longer exists, but I have heard that Prime Ministers and Cabinet members are still members.

Jerusha: We used that gaudiness to our benefit.

Tell me a little bit about the wardrobe.

Jerusha: The costume designer, her name is Anne Hardinge. She’s done “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.” She’s really comedic costume designer, which was right up my alley. She was a joy to work with. She was like fabulous Geena Davis. She was just floating with her red lip and kind of fabulous.

JJ: Mostly with her costume designed just looked good.

Jerusha: She just couldn’t wait to get her hands on Jennifer Coolidge and design these gowns that matched the curtains and the bedspread. Yes, she had a lot of fun with it and we all did, because a lot of just a very straight regency costumes that we just rented from the houses, but some of it we got to make and have fun with.

The dress that her friend made was very funny, the idea of someone who really does not know the period and is just piecing something together, with good intentions but awful results.

Jerusha: The cheap, renaissance get on that.

I also loved it when Keri Russell’s outfit just felt apart when you were carrying her around there. I thought that was very well done and surprisingly shocking.

Jerusha: It was shocking to see a leg! You’ve never seen a leg in these stories. We made it a little saloon girl. We played up on many elements because everything is just very covered and the tights are very thick and heavy. And then to have it all fell apart, absolutely, we wanted to see the leg!

It was also very shocking to see the scenes by the pool, where you see some of the men in modern clothes, but Nobley was still in his full period dress.

Jerusha: Yes, absolutely and Martin because we couldn’t reveal too much. That was really fun to just have guys in the pool with the wig on.

How did you and “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer, who produced, and this book by Shannon Hale all come together? Tell me about Stephenie Meyer and how she got to be involved.

Jerusha: Stephenie was a friend of Shannon Hale previously, because they’re both girls in the writing world and Mormon girls to add to that. They were buddies and they always talked about making a movie together. Apparently, when I came on it became real which I laughed at. I was just another girl adding to the mix. There was a time where we went on a little trip together and we just like giggled, like, “It’s going to be so fun to make this movie and think about all about the handsome men.” We were just such chicks making a movie. She was great. She’s powerful woman. I met Shannon Hale through some friends and family. I was interested in her book called Princess Academy, which is just a very sweet, Newbery-nominated fairy tale for young readers. She was like, “Oh, actually I have something else for you.” She gave me Austenland. The next morning, I’m sure I called her and I was like, “Let’s make this movie.” It is so fun. It just felt so girly and great and a great vehicle for the weird Hess comedy.

The weird Hess comedy has mostly been more boy-oriented.

Jerusha: Absolutely and very young boys. I was just ready to make a movie for the girls. It was just really fun to write for a girl. It was really indulgent and sweet. The whole movie feels indulgent, doesn’t it? It’s such a romp in England. And our experience in England was that. It was a delight. I had never even been to England and I got to spend five months there in a beautiful estate and just party with these gorgeous men and women and poke fun at their beloved genre, which they all loved. We teased it, but it’s so gentle, that you’re still swept away the whole time.

What’s the difference between playing a real Austen character and a fake Austen character?

JJ: One is a comedy and one is not. Playing this part in “Austenland,” for me it’s the man who doesn’t want to be there, who’s there by accident and he’s feeling deeply embarrassed.

Which is very Darcy.

JJ: Exactly. Then you just take the world of British costume drama and trying to send up as much of it as you can.

Why is that such a perpetual romantic fantasy?

JJ: It’s the outspoken, funny, poor thinking woman who can actually soften and tame someone like Mr. Darcy. It’s the fantasy that perhaps some men are misunderstood.

What was the biggest challenge that you had as a first time director?

Jerusha: It was just so cushy — like the time frame. I had 41 days to shoot. I had amazing comedians at my fingertips. I had this very cool Director of Cinematography who shot all the Stanley Kubrick films. I had all the staff at my fingertips, amazing talent and I’m like a nice to a fault whoever wanted to raising me up, like, ‘We’re going to make you look really good.’ I don’t have to do much. What I was surprised at and the challenge was that dealing with an ensemble cast who are in scenes together everyday all day, that is a challenge. It’s a challenge to make sure everyone get as much coverage and attention, it got just kind of competitive. I loved it because it made it funnier, but the improv went nuts. People were like, “Oh wait. I have something better to say.” “Now, I’m going to say…”

JJ: We needed six cameras.

Jerusha: It got hard to juggle the funny on set and then even harder in post-production.

Fortunately you had the credit sequence where you could throw in some of that stuff, which was great, great fun. I thought that was just too sweet. What about you, what was the biggest challenge of doing it for you?

JJ: Keeping a straight face. It’s not easy to have a grouchy face in front of Jennifer Coolidge and Bret McKenzie and Georgia King and it’s just hilarious. Jennifer Coolidge’s improvisation could be very physical or one line. James Callis when he started talking, he would talk an entire roll of film out. I don’t know how you can extemporize that amount of dialog, because he doesn’t prepare it. It’s just sort of flows. He’s extraordinary.

If you could enter a theme park of a book, what book would you pick?

Jerusha: I would do Winnie the Pooh. We would live in the tree house. We would hunt for honey.
JJ: I just got a new son and my childhood was made magical by Narnia, so if I could take my son to a wardrobe that would be it.

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