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: 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: Anne Fontaine of ‘Coco Before Chanel’

Posted on September 24, 2009 at 2:48 pm

The foremost fashion designer of the last hundred years is Coco Chanel and her life story is almost as fascinating as her timeless designs. As its title indicates, this most recent film is a look at Chanel from her childhood until the moment when, with the help of some money from her lovers, opened her first business, designing hats. In this film, as Coco cuts up her lovers’ clothes to make creations for itself that were simple, elegant, wearable, and instantly classic. Amid all the flounces, corsets, and enormous hats, it was like watching the 20th century walk into the room. At the end of the film, when we get a glimpse of one of her fashion shows, every single item is as chic today as it was when she designed it.
Anne Fontaine, who co-wrote and directed, spoke to me about the endless interest in Chanel and how she selected an American actor to play a British character who spoke French.
NM: Why focus on Chanel’s youth and relationships instead of her work?
AF: She is the 20th century by herself, it is about fashion of course but deeply it is about a new way to be for a woman, very physical. She was not beautiful, she was very thin, very androgynous, she was not at all the criteria of beauty for this period, she was like a little boy. You can’t understand Chanel unless you know that she has a very different body. Because she was so different, because she was poor, it gave her freedom to move differently, physically and through society. She was creating clothes for herself that were less confining not just for the style but so she could do what she wanted to do.
NM: You cast one of my favorite actors, the American Alessandro Nivola, to play a British man who speaks fluent French. How did that happen?
AF: When I was looking for an actor to interpret Boy Capel, as you say he was a British businessman, who was the most important love of Chanel’s life. She always said he was the first and the most deep relationship she had, I tried to look in England, if there was a young man who could play the part in France. Many actors when they lose their language — it can be awful. If he does not think through the language and only thinks through the sounds he can lose all the qualities he had because it is very difficult to play a part in another language. In England, I didn’t find an actor who has the charm, the qualities that the part requires and they didn’t speak French at all. I was doing some casting in New York and someone mentioned Alessandro Nivola. I knew he had played an English part in a Kenneth Branaugh film, but that was not the reason. I made him a little exercise before the audition: “Can you read one scene of the script in French?” When I spoke with him on the phone I knew he could speak French, not fluently, but he was not afraid. I did a test with him to see how the face moved with the French and it was not only good but also very different from the other man who played the aristocrat. They were so different. The two men she was involved with showed different things and affected her differently.
Alessandro said it was very hard to be directed in French because I was always at his shoulder telling him to be careful with this word and that word. I wanted him to have an accent of course but not too much.

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Interview: Sophie Barthes of ‘Cold Souls’

Posted on August 21, 2009 at 10:00 am

One of my favorite films of the summer is “Cold Souls.” Paul Giamatti plays an actor named Paul Giamatti who is anxious and depressed as he prepares to play Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. When he reads in the New Yorker about a place that stores souls, he decides to try it. The immensely inventive writer-director Sophie Barthes has concocted a world just slightly off-register from the one we know and Giamatti’s literal and spiritual journey is funny and provocative and always surprising. So was talking to Barthes.
I have some bigger questions, but I want to start with one small one. We see Paul Giamatti rehearsing “Uncle Vanya” under very different conditions — with his own soul, with a borrowed soul of a Russian poet, and without any soul at all. How did you and he work together to create three very different versions of Vanya?

That was the trickiest part of the film in terms of acting but we were nervous for different reasons. He thought he could act badly but not play Vanya well. I could certainly imagine him playing it well but thought it would fall flat to play it badly. It shows you how modest and humble he is. We had both seen “Vanya on 42nd Street,” and he knew his version would not be like Wallace Shawn’s. He doesn’t like rehearsal much. He is very intuitive. But when it came time to do it badly, for those we took time and rehearsed them. I said, “Let’s not make it robotic, but let’s be the opposite of whatever is called for. Confidence is something Vanya doesn’t have, so show confidence. Take directions very literally.” On the DVD extras we will have some other versions. In one he starts to mimic the wind, taking the direction he is given very literally. The one he does with Elena, he did unconsciously a William Shatner interpretation.

That is the beauty of working with such a talented actor. He is not someone to talk about technique and method. You roll the camera and he delivers and he is excellent — in a different way — in the first three takes.
I read an interview where he says he is always being asked to play the anxious man.

Directors keep asking him to play the anxious man because he is so good with it, so vulnerable, such a sad sack, so funny. Jerry Lewis says that comedy is a man in trouble. That’s what Paul is. He always looks like he is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He is very human and vulnerable and has the skills of a comedian. He can go from total slapstick to very melancholic. As a film-maker he is like a grand piano. You can play any note and he gives you this performance. We didn’t know how to choose from the takes. They were all interesting in a different way. He can do deadpan and ultra-emotional.
One of your other actors, David Straithairn, who plays the man in charge of the soul storage, was in a role that was quite different from his usual characters.

David was a bit anxious. He has not done much comedy and this is a melancholic kind of comedy. How much larger than life should this doctor be? It was very different from “Good Night and Good Luck.” But he and Paul had played in a Chekov play together and had chemistry like old buddies on set, very playful.
One of my favorite moments in the film is when Paul looks into his own soul. One of the images he sees is of a toddler, walking and crying.

It is a completely absurd moment and it came about by accident. We had a part in the movie that was a dream I had a long time ago about a baby factory where babies are manufactured. I’m going to put that in another film because it did not work out this time. When the casting agency came with the babies I was expecting four or five month old babies. But they brought toddlers who could walk, so we gave up on the factory idea and used the set next door with the white space.
Tell me about shooting in St. Petersburg.

Russia was a very surprising and pleasant experience. We had heard it was tough but from a logistical point of view the crews were super-professional and we never had a problem. Aesthetically, we decided not to shoot it as a postcard and turned the camera the other way.
Now a bigger question, maybe the biggest. Paul Giamatti is very distressed in the film to find that his soul looks like a chick pea. What would your soul look like?

My soul would change every day, maybe liquid. I go through all those moods.

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Interviews about ‘Adam’ — Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne

Posted on August 6, 2009 at 8:00 am

Hugh Dancy plays the title role in “Adam,” the story of a man with Asperger Syndrome, a form of social dyslexia that is on the autism spectrum. As the movie begins, Adam’s father has just died and he must learn to function on his own. Rose Byrne plays Beth, his new neighbor, who finds Adam’s inability to say anything but the literal truth an appealing quality because of her own losses and disappointments.

Hugh, one thing that really struck me in your performance was your walk, which really communicated a lot about the character. How did that develop?

It was a less conscious process than you might imagine. I never walked in my apt seven different ways to try to develop the right one. It was more learning the ways in which people are and are not tactile, being aware of the feeling of certain clothing, observation, obviously, and instinct. The first scene we filmed was the first one in the movie, the scene at my father’s grave. I waited until the camera was rolling and then had to walk away.

I was also impressed with your American accent and way of speaking — very different from the American accent you did in “The Jane Austen Book Club.”

It was as much about figuring out the voice as the accent. What I worked on was the delivery and tonality that is fairly typical of that condition. Getting that right and getting the rhythms right is what really mattered.

Tell me about what made you want to do this film.

What drew me to it was the way the character was treated, as a character as a bunch of symptoms. He is not labeled, until a good third of the way into the film, so you get to know him before you hear what his diagnosis is.

I understand that you and your fiancee, Claire Danes, have now both played characters with Asperger Syndrome.

She plays Temple Grandin in an HBO biopic. I had already finished this film before she took the role, so we shared research and we discussed both characters with each other.

***

Rose, Adam is such an unusual and fascinating character that it must have been a challenge to make Beth and her concerns carry as much weight in the story. How did you make that work?

Beth had a crappy relationship with guys and a father who was overbearing and larger than life. Adam was the antithesis of all the people she was exposed to. And it was important that the romance took a while. That helped to make her role in the story stronger.

I was very interested in the way Beth’s clothes helped to convey her character. How did you work with the costume designer to determine what would best tell her story?

We talked about it a lot. Alysia Raycraft designed the costumes and she jumped at the chance to be creative with Beth and a little eccentric with the clothing. Beth favors vintage clothing, second hand things. We are a little surprised when we see how wealthy her parents’ home is because her clothes and apartment show that she has eschewed her middleclass-ness. A lot of the clothes were mine. Prada heels weren’t in the budget!

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