Interview: Kirk Jones of ‘Everybody’s Fine’

Posted on December 13, 2009 at 9:43 am

Kirk Jones, a British writer/director, is best known in America for the delightful comedy “Waking Ned Divine.” His first American movie is Everybody’s Fine, a remake of an Italian film, with Robert DeNiro as the father of four adult children who don’t feel they can tell him the truth about what is going on in their lives. I spoke to him about parents, children, and an outsider’s view of the American landscape.
NM: How do you decide how much to protect your parents or children or how much to tell them?
KJ: That’s a fantastic question. It’s the first time I’ve been asked that but I was expecting to hear it a lot more often. I have to say I don’t know the answer. It’s an incredibly fine line. We should all be totally and completely honest with each other. But we’re all sophisticated enough to know and our emotions are sophisticated enough to know that there are times when if you don’t need to fill people in on every detail of every situation then that can only help protect them and their own emotions. I’m certainly not proposing that we keep huge secrets from each other but it is human nature to want to protect the person you care about the most and at times that means not being 100 percent honest with them
NM: How did you as someone from outside the US use the settings to help tell the story?
KJ: I was very aware that as an English writer and film-maker that I needed to take this road trip very seriously, so I flew to New York and went cross-country to Vegas mostly on Greyhounds and Amtrak. I drove a little bit as well just to get off the main highways. And I went across the country on a three-week trip. I took about 2000 photographs and interviewed about 100 people.
A number of things happened. I felt I really got under the skin of this country and felt I was much more qualified to go back to London and write a road trip movie that takes place here. The second thing was on a daily basis I was inspired with ideas that I saw out of the window of the bus and the train and they went directly into the script. Things like Frank’s occupation. I knew it was important. I knew I wanted it to have some relevance. I kept looking at truck stops and factories, trying to work out what he could do. Literally, I was traveling from St. Louis to Kansas on an Amtrak train. I looked out the window and my focus shifted to the telephone wires, and I just thought how beautiful and elegant they were and I looked at the wire and I thought, “Someone has to cut that wire and someone has to protect it from the elements.” And what a beautiful irony it would be if Frank had helped all these people communicate and protected the line of communication but was struggling to communicate with his own family. So that kind of dropped into place.
And I realized this was a chance to show these stunning landscapes. This country is so beautiful. Most of the people I talked to have not traveled as much as I did. I think that’s very common. I haven’t traveled very much in the UK. We take our own homeland for granted. We feel like we know it because we see it on the news or we see it in pictures, read about it in encyclopedias or studied it in school. But I think it is very important to get out there and appreciate the beauty of your own country.
I knew I wanted to include these landscapes but I didn’t want to just insert them in the movie as I think happens in other films just because they’re pretty pictures. I wanted to dramatically have a reason for them being there. So, I thought, the wires are stretching between the poles. The poles are incredibly graphic, these wooden crosses stretching across the country, through deserts and mountainous areas. So there was a dramatic reason to include the poles and the wires and we could hear the conversations and at the same time it allowed me to present the beautiful landscapes.
NM: Your stars in this film are all very accomplished and talented actors but they have very different styles of acting. How did you make that work for the movie?
JK: I was very keen that the level of acting throughout the film should be very natural. This is a film about a real family and the real problems they have. As a film-maker, I always find that it’s more effective to present a realistic view of the world because then you have a better chance of the audience believing in it and therefore investing in it emotionally. So the brief for the actors in general was to underplay, to keep it believable. As the younger daughter, more insecure, drawn to the bright lights, Drew’s way was to overcompensate and be bubbly and charming and more affectionate. I think that is often the way with the youngest.
NM: Is there one theme you keep coming back to?
JK: In the modern world, the importance of us communicating as families. It’s common for us to consider keeping in touch as something on our to-do list. When we used to live more predominantly in communities, more people had direct contact with their brothers and sisters and parents and children. Now it’s much more common for people to say, “I need to be in LA” or “I need to be in New York.” Supposedly we have more sophisticated ways to keep in touch with cell phones and the internet and texting and Skyping and video conferencing. But it takes quite an effort to make that call. Even though it is easier to keep in touch I am not sure that translates to actually keeping in touch. So many people leave this film saying, “I have to ring my Mum. I have to talk to my brothers and sisters.” That is a very fulfilling theme to be able to address.

Interview: Zac Efron, Claire Danes, and Richard Linklater

Posted on December 2, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Director Richard Linklater (“School of Rock,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Before Sunrise”) and stars Claire Danes and Zac Efron talked to a small group of reporters here in Washington DC about their new film, “Me and Orson Welles.” It is a fictional story based on the real-life production Mercury Theater production of “Julius Caesar” in 1937. Welles, then a theatrical and radio prodigy and general enfant terrible was a few years from making “Citizen Kane” but already considered both brilliant and impossible. In this movie, based on the book by Robert Kaplow, a high school student (Efron of “Hairspray” and “High School Musical”) almost accidentally gets a bit part in the chaotic production and falls for a young woman (Danes) working on the production. When we saw them, they had just come back from a visit to the White House.
Q: What got you interested in this script?
ZE: Rick talked to me about it and that was probably the most flattering thing in the world, I was kind of floored. Although it appears on the surface to be more serious or dramatic, I think for the kids who did see “High School Musical” and “17 Again,” for a younger audience, its an interesting transition. At a first glance theater in the 30s might appear a more stuffy, boring kind of story, but what the audience will find out is that it is every bit as fun as “High School Musical” and even more real world and practical. It doesn’t just have to be a fantasy land in which theater can be fun. It’s probably more exciting — the stakes are higher and it’s real.
Q: You just came back from the White House! What was that like? Were the Obama girls there?
RL: I secretly suspected that’s why we were invited but Sasha and Malia did not play sick. They were in school — Michelle would not allow it. We were meeting with the policy advisor on behalf of the Americans for the Arts. They’re hosting the screening tonight. It’s about arts education.
CD: We had our meeting in the “war room.” They do real things in that building!
ZE: It’s just a meeting room — no buttons to push! But it was still really cool.
RL: George Washington is on the wall — that war. It’s like Hollywood — all of the people are really smart! So how can they make such bad stuff?
Q: You created the tone of the book beautifully. Can you talk a little bit about doing a period piece because the details are so evocative.
RL: That’s the magic of cinema, you can re-create a moment in time like this. It’s November 1937, this theater, this stage design. But beyond the specifics, you try to create a mood, an atmosphere. That’s not just the history but also the genre. This movie has elements of screwball comedy, if you think of the films of the 1930’s, just in film history terms, to get that tone. This is a genre Orson Welles would never act in or make a film about! We put him in a film he would never put himself in for a fun ride through a week in his life. It’s one thing to make a period piece about something you remember intimately, which I have done. It’s another thing to go back in time.

Is there a politician you admire?
CD: Obama’s the man!
ZE: Abraham Lincoln!
Q: Did you grow up in homes where politics was talked about?
CD: I grew up in New York, we talked about politics. I am curious, but I do not follow it avidly. I am not a news or politics junkie like my husband.
RL: I admire anyone who has devoted their lives to public service. Someone who’s truly a public servant.
CD: We try to make movies that are going to influence people in positive ways. We want to entertain them but we also want them to empathize and understand themselves in a new way. It’s exciting to talk to people who are working on a more practical level.
RL: It is exciting to have a President who has such vast empathy. You can read his books and you can see he really has this bigger vision and really cares about people. You see how tough that job is and you have to be patient. But we felt like these people get it.
Q: How would you like to be remembered?
RL: We hope people will like it, we’d like them to see it in a theater preferably. There might be some kid who’s too young for it now but will catch up with it later on DVD. These stories travel.
ZE: Orson Welles was so ahead of his time and took a lot of risks, so unafraid. I think that’s something that is a great way to be remembered. He pushed mediums forward; he reinvented three mediums before he was 26 years old.
CD: I love that line of Bowie’s, “It doesn’t matter who does it first; it matters who does it second.” The innovators are often overlooked because they prepare people to appreciate that idea later on.
Q: You achieved such an authentic backstage feeling in the movie.
ZE: Putting on a play and being part of a show, there’s no way to explain or condense it. You live the highest highs and lowest lows. You feel on top of the world. It was interesting living in that world and re-creating the highlights of those moments, especially being directed by Orson Welles.
RL: But Christian McKay (who plays Welles) was the least experienced actor in the whole cast! He was the top dog but he would ask the most innocent questions.
ZE: He would even ask me questions!
RL: But it never seems out of the realm of possibility that even with so little film experience he would have a lead role in the film. That’s the Welles-ian element. And it’s not an imitation; it is a real performance.
Q: Did you do much research about Welles or the era?
CD: Like so many people, I discovered Welles in college, “Citizen Kane” in class. I definitely had an appreciation for him. And Rick made a care package for us of slang terms, a great compilation of songs from that time. I didn’t have to do a lot of research. My character was very relatable. But I was not the performer, more the Girl Friday, though she is starring in her own epic drama.
ZE: We had a pretty exciting time re-creating 1937 New York City in Pinewood Studios and we kind of felt we were living in that era. And we did talk about how my character would have admired Fred Astaire.

Interview: John Hillcoat of ‘The Road’

Posted on November 23, 2009 at 3:56 pm

I spoke to John Hillcoat, director of the apocalyptic new film, “The Road,” based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. We do not know what caused the cataclysmic damage that has wiped out most forms of life on earth and left everything covered in ash. All we know is that there is a father (Viggo Mortensen) trying to protect his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) from the physical and spiritual consequences of the devastation.

NM: Do you see this as a spiritual film?

JH: It can definitely be read that way. Yes, absolutely. I never wanted to be heavy-handed about the approach. I wanted it to be open to interpretation according to your own belief systems. It’s certainly got a kind of ancient, Biblical parable feeling to it. There’s a morality tale there. But in terms of essence of humanity, that’s really brought to the fore because everything’s stripped bare. There’s nowhere to hide. So it definitely has those dimensions to it. There are many spiritual aspects, but the whole idea of carrying the fire is an ancient one.

NM: I do not diminish the power of the film at all when I say that it seems like an exaggerated version of what every parent goes through in trying to both protect the children and give them the survival skills they will need when we are not here to protect them.

JH: Yes, absolutely. Knowing Cormac and his son, he calls him “Papa,” like the boy in the story. It’s obviously a personal work and that personal relationship is definitely embedded into the text and that’s also why it strikes such a deep cord, even thought it is set into such an extreme scenario. There’s a truth to it.

NM: For me, one of the most wrenching scenes in the film is when they return to the house the father grew up in, and it is only there that the father truly realizes that his son has no frame of reference to understand what life was like.

JH: Where does he learn? How does he become this amazing being? It’s like a scientific experiment. That drive to keep going and the hope they create in this idea of going to the coast. Every parent starts from scratch, but this story just makes that more stark. Ultimately, the boy becomes the teacher. That is something all parents see.

NM: I was very surprised to find Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall in the film. I did not recognize them at first.

JH: We tried to quite change their appearance quite a lot.

NM: The New York Times said that Kodi Smit-McPhee, the now-twelve-year-old who plays the boy, was so shocked by the cold water he was dunked in that he began to sob for real, but that he kept acting and you did not know how distressed he was until the scene was over. Is that true?

JH: Yes. It was actually a real turning point, early on in the shoot. My job was also to protect the boy. But Kodi was such a consummate professional. He didn’t tell anyone how cold he was. And afterward, we had an understanding that if there was any time that he felt real uncomfort that he’s got to tell us. He was so determined to get the best for everyone and the best from him as a performance. The most incredible thing was his maturity; he really understood what the story was about, what each scene was about. His instincts were razor-sharp. And yet, as soon as we stopped filming, he became this kid, joking around, playing. And we really encouraged that.

With that scene, I was about to call cut, and then I heard the dialogue, and everyone’s glancing around at each other, and we see that Viggo is actually responding totally. It’s this incredible thing of being real, Viggo’s concern for Kodi, and playing their parts. That was a great gift and I wouldn’t mess with that. Luckily, we shot it on two cameras, so that was it. And when we were done, Viggo kept holding Kodi. None of us had put two and two together to realize why he was so upset. I had spoke to him about coming out of shock. Kodi’s father was there; he played one of the cannibals. Viggo started to hand Kodi over to them but he stepped away. Kodi knew he was there but he and Viggo from that day had this incredible bond.

NM: Tell me how you achieved the look of the film. It is so bleak and stark and powerful.

JH: The spark for that came when I read the book. I was always trying to be true to the spirit of the book. Usually the post-apocalyptic films are about the big event and they feel so much like a spectacle and there’s no real human dimension or spiritual dimension or any other dimension really other than the roller coaster ride. So it was that feeling of authenticity, really simple things like pushing the shopping trolley with all your possessions in it. That’s the homeless in every city. And the dirty ski jackets. So it felt familiar. It’s almost like I’ve seen this before, not as a vision or a premonition, but we’ve actually witnessed these elements, just not on a local scale. That is what led us to those locations, and the locations were the key to the look. The bulk of what we got was in camera. We filmed in the winter in places like Pennsylvania like where all the mining leftovers are, the ash piles in the winter time. Where are the trees are bare of leaves. We had the aging and the muted colors of the wardrobe. There’s a strange beauty in these desolate locations. Then it also gave a real poignancy to working in a place like New Orleans, where the post-Katrina clean-up was still happening. When half your crew has lived through that, it really added focus. It also became something that the actors could really react off of, so it was like there was a third character working with Kodi and Viggo the whole time. We went to Mount St. Helens. We went to Oregon, the gray beaches. It was a patchwork tapestry of man-made and natural disasters that have already occurred. We added physical effects like spraying biodegradable ash and paper, but whatever we couldn’t get in the camera, CGI took over to eliminate signs of life, green pine needles, birds, jet streams. It was more to take out or put in. The challenge was when it was beautiful blue skies and sunshine, because we had to block the sun. There’s a shot of two ships sitting on a freeway. That’s 70 mil. IMAX footage from two days after Katrina. We had to replace the blue sky and green grass in that shot, but everything else is real. Even the smoke billowing in the background we took from was from 9/11. We deliberately used images we have all seen to make it more real and to give more poignancy and a warning sign and to surround it, because that’s what the book is about, grace under pressure. When you’re surrounded by your real fears, things that you know are possible in some way, it makes hope all the more special. The light shines brightest when it is surrounded by dark.

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Interview: Jared Hess of ‘Gentlemen Broncos’

Posted on November 5, 2009 at 9:08 am

Jared Hess directed “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Nacho Libre” from screenplays he wrote with his wife Jerusha. Their latest film is “Gentlemen Broncos,” about a teenage boy whose story is stolen by a best-selling author. He told me that he has spent part of his Mormon mission in my home town of Chicago and that it was there he first heard the name “Napoleon Dynamite.” I spoke to him about the autobiographical sources of this film, sleeping on the couch, and why things get funnier in hindsight.
NM: You have an outstanding cast in this film. But the one who surprises me is Mike White. I would not have expected to see you work together.
JH: Both my wife and I have been big fans of his work on “Freaks and Geeks” and “The Good Girl” and “School of Rock.” A lot of people might not see our comedic sensibilities matching up, the same things make us laugh. We were both raised in very religious families. There’s a little bit of an understanding there.
NM: Michael Angarano was extraordinary; some of his expressions were so thoughtful and layered.
JH: We spent a lot of time trying to find someone who would be really genuine in the role of Benjamin. He’s just kind of effortless, really believable, super-talented. Every actor has their own process but he’s the kind of guy where we’re on set and he’s chatting and boom! He jumps into it as soon as we’re ready to go. Compared to the other characters in the film, he’s kind of Mr. Normal. But when you see the world that he’s created, you realize that he is strange like everybody else.
NM: And Halley Feiffer is wonderful in the film. Shes the daughter of artist Jules Feiffer and was so terrific in “The Squid and the Whale.”
JH: For that role, we read a lot of people. Again, she had a natural but crazy feeling, that unintentional feeling, unaware of what she is doing to people, trying to take advantage. The hand cream scene was very autobiographical. When my family moved to Idaho, the English and theater kids were going to a Shakespeare festival in southern Utah on a bus. I was crowded onto a seat with a guy who was blowing in a girl’s ear and giving her weird head massages.
NM: Are those real vintage pulp novels in the opening credit sequence? The cover art is amazing!
JH: Yes, they were all real. Those were all real illustrations, mostly from the 60’s and 70’s. The main artist was a man named Kelly Freas.
NM: Are you a fan of that genre of sci-fi?
JH: Yes, though as a kid I didn’t read as much but I loved the covers. All my favorite films were science fiction.
NM: Like what?
JH: “Star Wars,” David Lynch’s “Dune,” which I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about. That was a creepy movie, though. I liked it. “The Explorers.” And then as I got older, I got more aware of the more obscure films. I’m a big fan of the limited resource genre, the ones with small budgets. They’ve got a lot of charm to them. They’ve got big worlds that they’re trying to create but they don’t really have the dough. One guy who was in the Q&A scene, when we were done shooting, he gave me a copy of the screenplay of “Krull.” “Check this out, man, you’re going to love it; it’s a really great read.” He said his new year’s resolution is to read every Philip H. Dick novel. I really wanted to be a special effects guy, a lot of my early films were sci fi related, when you’re a kid you don’t have a script, or the whole idea is cut short.
NM: That’s what you did in this film.
JH: Yes, and the idea that this is from the mind of a 15-year-old kid. This is his epic fantasy; it’s not “Blade Runner.” We’re in the world of battle stags and yeast.
NM: Yes, there is this very fresh, innocent cheesiness in the stories in the film.
JH: We really try and populate our films with authentic people who might not normally have an opportunity to be in a film. We have a lot of fun with it. Like the idea of adults that are still thinking like children. I guess that’s how I am.
NM: This is your first PG-13 film.
JH: Yes, my wife has seven brothers and I’m the oldest of five boys. The body humor aspects of this film are quite prevalent. We wanted to have the kind of awkward body things that happen in his real life influence his work a little bit. It’s quite silly.
NM: How do you and your wife work together when you are writing a screenplay?
JH: It’s fun working with my wife. I slept on the couch a lot, but each time we write it gets better. We’re not really sure who’s responsible for what. We spend a lot of time just talking. The biggest difference is I’m a boy and she’s a girl. On “Napoleon Dynamite,” she was the costume designer, on this one she is the producer. Whenever she’s on set she keeps me in check. We are planning a romantic comedy and she might direct it. I’d like to do a western with cowboys and shoot-outs.
NM: What makes you laugh?
JH: The awkward things that happen, usually in hindsight. You have to have a good sense of humor about the past.

Interview: Lone Scherfig of ‘An Education’

Posted on October 29, 2009 at 3:59 pm

Danish director Lone Scherfig (“Italian for Beginners”) has garnered a lot of attention for her first English language film, “An Education.” It is the story of a young woman impatient to be independent and sophisticated, and what happens when she meets an older man. It is set in 1961 London, on the brink of a shift from post-war deprivation to the wild and audacious era of Carnaby Street and the Beatles.
NM: I related to the film as a former young girl and as a parent — I identified with everyone.
LS: That’s good!
NM: The period detail is so exact. That era, on the brink of so much change, and you get that in the production design.
LS: It is a period that hasn’t been depicted much. The period itself is bursting with appetite for the future but doesn’t know what it will be.
NM: Like the main character!
LS: A lot of her frustration is because she is heading for a future that is better than she can imagine. She wonders why she should get an education just to have a life she did not want, the few options that were available to her. She does not know what she wants. She says she does not want to feel anything and the first thing she does is jump straight into the arms of this man. She is bright but still completely innocent.
My main task as a director was to trust the script, not to be over-inventive, just to tell the story. We don’t have soldiers getting killed; we have a girl who loses her trust in other people.
NM: The book was written by a woman based on her own life, but the screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, better known for writing about men and boys.
LS: This is the first time I’ve had a female main character. You are just interested in that other species. But now I am so far from being 17 — of course I can remember and I have a daughter who is 15, but I could not have done it 10 years ago. I have a warmth for a girl at that age now that I don’t identify with her any more.
Tell me about working with the lovely and elegant Rosamund Pike, who plays the not very bright girlfriend of a slightly shady character.
LS: She’s never done comedy before. I love casting against type. To have her inventing herself as a comedian as you go was very exciting. She combines some comedy and something melancholic. You can have very stylistically different characters but not stick out. We did a lot of variations. And it is wonderful to see her realize, “I can do this.” She does research and she does eight different takes trying out the mechanics of comedy. And she was the only person in the cast who had been to Oxford, so she helped us understand that environment.
NM: Is there a theme that you keep coming back to in the stories you like to tell?
LS: Insecurity, people who can’t speak for themselves, people who are slightly invisible, odd couples, men in their late 30’s. The more I do, the more I identify my own footprint as a director. Now I can look back and see where I’ve been. When the world has been in a bad way, I’ve felt “I must do comedy.” But now, I think I can do something darker.
NM: Will you make more films in English?
LS: Yes! There are so many wonderful English-speaking actors, a great acting tradition. And it’s a very rich language, more expressive and precise than my own language.
NM: There has been a lot of focus on your young star, Carey Mulligan, who is luminous in this movie. What was it about her that sang to you?
LS: Singing is a good word. She hit the right emotional notes. You feel for her. She was believable as someone who was a virgin. She has a good sense of taste in her acting, very versatile. I started working with her, even acted with her. The costume and hairstyle department were very important in helping her develop the character. That dress she wears the first night she goes out, much too warm, carrying her mom’s handbag, was perfect. The costume designer got a lot of personal photo albums instead of relying on magazines and reference books, we trusted in reality.

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