Interview: Bill Smitrovich

Posted on October 7, 2014 at 8:00 am

Bill Smitrovich appeared most recently in “The November Man” with Pierce Brosnan as a CIA official with some secrets even his colleagues did not know. He has had an extensive and varied career in theater (“Of Mice and Men”), television (“Life Goes On” and “The Last Ship”), and film (“Independence Day,” “Ghosts of Mississippi,””Iron Man”). He talked to me about creating a character and why his all-time favorite costume included a helmet made from a colander.

You’ve played a lot of law enforcement types. And what do you think it is about your look that makes you so suitable for those roles?

It’s not all about the look but sometimes it’s just about how to deliver the role. If you look a little further into my career, I played everything from a garbage man to the President of the United States. So it’s always kind of weird to think that. And even when I play policemen n they were all different characters in a uniform. It may seem the same to you or the public that I play a lot of characters in uniforms, but each of those men are different men. They are not all the same is what I think.

In “The November Man,” you play a character who personally and professionally keeps a lot of secrets. How do you approach a character like that?

Well, that’s a delicious part of it, playing a character who has a lot of secrets and conflicts. He’s a wonderful actor. And the best compliment I get from the movie is when people will go, “When you turned around in the chair and you were the bad guy was a real “aha moment.” It’s fun playing the perception of the character and then changing it and maybe possibly even changing it back again. People told that they thought that I was a bad guy from the get go and then they didn’t think I was a bad guy then I was a bad guy. So it was just delicious to do that.

It’s like the Vice President in “The Event.” All those secrets that he was keeping and doing it for what he thought was for the greater good. And he might be absolutely off his rocker. I don’t judge my characters. I don’t say they’re off their rocker. But I can’t judge them. All I can do is try to figure out their pure motive for doing what they do and to investigate that and to feel like I am involved with them. I take them on and sometimes a look is certainly helpful. I’ve been working on this a while and I think my experience, my life experience makes a difference because I didn’t get into acting until professional acting until I was like 32 or 33. So I was at a starter theater company. I have a Masters and I did a lot of theater but I never had a equity card or a SAG card or an AFTRA card. I think my life experience nourishes what I do and hopefully colors it and gives me some experience and gravitas in certain situations. But I think that is what comes with each actor that plays a role. You can only bring what we can imagine to the role.

Do you create a back story for your character and try to understand him that way?

In “November Man” the back story was also a part of the movie. They were in the agency together and so they had a back story. And the book helped in defining what that backstory was the ambitions, the risks they took and things of this nature. And then you embellish that. I mean then you look at that past and it enriches and informs what you’re doing in the moment because they had a history. There are things going on inside of each of their minds, especially being in the game, who is going to betray who? But there was a real moment there in their lives where they really trusted one another and got through. And then you have Devereaux’s relationship with Mason, Which is another kind of father-son thing. So it was pretty rich. I mean in terms of relationships, there were high stakes relationships, all of them; wife, Mason, his relationship with Devereaux, my relationship with Weinstein. There was a heart to it because these people did share so much. Not like Bond films, which are just action and sex and the drugs and fast cars.

What’s the best costume you ever had to wear?

In “Life Goes On,” we had a Halloween episode where space aliens came down and was a really funky crazy little kind of Buck Rogers show that we had and it was a lot of fun. And the prop guy made up these costumes. They helmets made out of a spaghetti colander. They had flashing lights on the front and wires coming out the top. And it had a chinstrap – I still wear it at Halloween all the time. I just love it. As far as theatrical costumes are concerned, when I played a garbageman in the theater, I had quite a costume and after a while they had to close the show, it stank so much.

Which director has taught you the most?

Michael Mann I would say. He gave me the opportunity to learn what I had to learn. Great guy, he was very loyal to me, helped me in my career immensely. Roger Donaldson for sure, we’ve done some things together. I think it was more about relationships. But what I learned most was from a teacher and the director of his own little community theater in Stanford Connecticut, his name is Al Pia and he directed me in college and it was my epiphany. It was where I discovered I was an actor. Al taught me how to read a play, how to break it down into beats and scenes and how it moves along. My favorite quote is “All art aspires to music.” And so we talk about beats and the rhythm of a play. It’s all connected and when we speak like that, we can call it a play.

What’s next for you?

I just got done with “Ted 2.” I was in Boston filming for 10 days and it should be coming up probably in July next year, sometime around there I would say. And the TNT show “The Last Ship;” I’ve just done the last couple of episodes for their finale and I’m waiting to see what is going to happen along with everybody else but I will be back.

And what’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten about acting?

If you don’t want to work 9-to-5, you’ve got to hustle 24-7.

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Interview: Nathan Gamble and Cozi Zuehlsdorff of “Dolphin Tale 2”

Posted on September 12, 2014 at 8:00 am

The young human stars of Dolphin Tale, Nathan Gamble and Cozi Zuehlsdorff, are back for the delightful sequel. They conducted a charming Q&A session after a screening in Washington, D.C., always remembering to say “Good question!” to the children who raised their hands, and warming the hearts of the locals by praising their visits to the local monuments. I very much enjoyed talking to them, two of the nicest, brightest kids I have ever met, and with the same chemistry off-screen that makes them so good together in the film. They were just 12 when they made “Dolphin Tale,” and are now both 16, so they have been working together for a quarter of their lives, and they stay in touch by text when they are home with their families, Cozi in California and Nathan in Seattle.

One addition to the cast in the sequel is Hope, the young dolphin whose rescue and “pairing” with Winter are the a key part of the plot. I asked Nathan and Cozi to tell me about the personalities of the two dolphins. “They are similar in the way that you can connect with them because they are very personable creatures,” Nathan said. “But they are different because Hope is a very energetic, fun-loving bundle of energy and Winter is more gentle. She is really there just to hang out not really to do all the funny crazy stuff.” Cozi said that if she could ask them a question, she’d ask, “What do you think we are doing when there are cameras in the water? What do you think is happening?” Nathan was surprised by “how easy it is to interact with them. When I first met Winter before I heard the trainer going through all the do’s and don’ts and I was pretty nervous.” He was worried he would hurt her because there was so much to remember. “But really with Winter and Hope it’s very easy to swim with them and connect with them. I’m not nervous around them at all.” “What surprised me is how distinct their personalities are,” Cozi said. “You see dolphins in the wild and you kind of go, ‘Oh look how cute!’ And they all look kind of the same. But when you’re with them you totally feel their personalities. In that way they’re very human-like.” They both understood why dolphins cannot survive alone. “They are social,” Nathan said. “They’re just awesome that way.”

They both felt they’d brought what they had learned from the first film and just from being more grown up to their characters and to the other actors. “I don’t think I’m as nervous that much I think especially on the first one with my first leading role where I was the main protagonist in it and it was all very new to me. And now that I’ve done that I’m not as nervous and I think I am very confident in that way,” Nathan said. Cozi added, “I think for me it is easier to grasp how important it is to stay focussed. That’s another thing like being respectful to the other actors; you really understand that it’s important to give as much as you can even when you’re completely off camera to aid them. It’s so disrespectful, like making funny faces.”

Charles Martin Smith directed the first one, but with the sequel he directed, wrote the screenplay, and appeared on screen as well, as a stern but not unsympathetic government official. Both Nathan and Cozi loved working with him, and enjoyed watching him in his early films like “Never Cry Wolf” and “Starman.”

Cozi wrote and performed a song called “Brave Souls” that is played over the closing credits. She talked about how much she appreciated being around Kris Kristofferson and Harry Connick, Jr., who play her grandfather and father. Surprisingly, she said Morgan Freeman also loves music and did more singing around the set than the two musicians. “He sang ‘Night and Day’ and it was lovely.” She said her notebook is filled with “scribbles” from her conversations with Connick about music. “He doesn’t treat me like a kid in that musical sense. He talks to me until I go ‘I have no idea what you’re saying,’ then he’ll clarify. I would play a really tough piece and he’ll say what chord is that?”

There’s a great story behind the shoes that Cozi wears in the film. “Hope Hanafin who is our costume designer, she’s like one of my favourite people. Hope was so knowledgeable and so intelligent about never buying something in a store that my character couldn’t afford. But she said, ‘I want Hazel to have some really cool shoes. Do you like to draw and would you like to draw on your shoes? Because a lot of people do that. You know like they’ll take blank white shoes and they’ll draw on it. So she gave me some yellow shoes because yellow is my favourite colour and she gave them to my sister and my sister took all my favourite quotes from shows like ‘Doctor Who’ and Bible verses and just like anything that I loved and put them around the base of the shoes. And then she drew dolphins all over them and a sunrise and waves with the dolphins breaching and jumping over and birds in the air. And every dolphin has a little name. And it was all my best friends’ names so now I can say to all my best friends that they were there in the movie. You really see the shoes in the scene where we’re lowering the stretcher and Winter got scared. There’s a whole shot where you can totally see the shoes.”

Nathan talked about playing a character who is very interior, “which is totally opposite of me. I’m a very outgoing person and I talk a lot. So, you’ve got to find little things you can relate to and just build on that. Sawyer is shy but also he is just passionate about things. Not a ton of things but when he finds that thing that he really loves, he really is passionate about it and he is going to devote his life to it. That’s how I am so I just sort of build off that and see how I can morph that into a real life character.”

They enjoy the questions they get from children when they show the movie or appear on behalf of the aquarium. Some kids offered to share their popcorn. Some just say, “I have a question! …..You are cool!” But some ask thought-provoking questions about what is real in the movie (yes, Cozi really cries, but if what they are doing would be even a little bit dangerous for the animals, they use robots). And in some scenes, where they appear to be interacting with the animals, they were just looking at a tennis ball to show them where their eyes should go. Nathan said he prepares for those shots by closing his eyes and picturing what his character would really be seeing “and kind of match it together.” And Cozi said, “I kind of think of it as a game for myself like how emotional can I get when I look at the tennis ball? Ii is kind of like a fun challenge, like how much realness can you put into staring at a tennis ball. Sometimes there is this full second where you go, ‘This is so weird!’ And you just kind of go, ‘Okay, forget it. Now I’m just going to do it.’” One surprise was that the water, which looks very warm and comfortable in the film, was very cold and salty.

They would both love to make a “Dolphin Tale 3.” Nathan said that he would like to return from the adventure we see him begin at the end of the movie “almost like a totally new person.” Cozi said she would like to have her character meet a new volunteer who might make Sawyer feel a bit displaced. “I hope that she would be happy and strong and really, really starting to own up to the fact that one day she will probably run the aquarium.” But she thinks before she can do that, Hazel would have to “travel around the world in the same boat that her dad and her grandfather travelled the world in, and then she can find out where she belongs.”

They are both grateful for what they have learned from the movie and from the dolphins. “I learned so much just from the countless stories of families and people who have been inspired by Winter. It’s really cool to just see in person what Winter has done for so many people.”

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Interview: Elan Mastai, Screenwriter of Daniel Radcliffe’s Romantic Comedy “What If”

Posted on August 16, 2014 at 7:49 am

what-if-daniel-radcliffe — Copyright 2013 CBS Films

Daniel Radcliffe’s first romantic comedy is “What If,” co-starring Zoe Kazan. Radcliffe plays Wallace, a former medical student who dropped out after his romance fell apart. He meets a girl named Chantry (Kazan) who seems perfect, but she has a boyfriend (played by Rafe Spall as Ben). Wallace and Chantry become friends. Will they ever become more?

I spoke to screenwriter Elan Mastai about the challenges and pleasures of romantic comedy. He is just as charming as the characters he created. (Don’t forget to enter the contest for free tickets to see “What If” in the theater.)

Why is it so hard to find a good romantic comedy?

Part of the problem is that romantic comedies are the one genre that we’re all experts in from our own lives. I mean, most of us do not live legal thrillers or space operas or horror stories. But we all live romantic comedies. We’re all experts in love and flirtation and missed connections witty banter and bittersweet longing and love. This is the stuff of our everyday lives and for a lot of us it’s the thing that kind of gives our lives meaning and it’s a reprieve from our work life or whatever our personal problems are. Without getting too philosophical about it, we’re all experts in romantic comedy so we all immediately recognize when one is phony or glib or contrived. And it makes us angry because we know that it’s not the way it feels when it’s really happening to us. The good thing for me, I didn’t set out to revolutionize the genre. I just wanted to write a romantic comedy that was actually romantic and actually funny. We just took the situation seriously with both the comedy but also the emotion of what it really feels like when it’s happening to you.

We in the audience know before the characters do that they’re perfect for each other just from the rhythm of their conversation.

Yeah, I absolutely agree but at the same time that’s both a marker of a potentially perfect romantic partner and also the marker of a great new friend. And I was interested in the messy line between those things. When you meet somebody who you just have a great spark with and makes you laugh and gets your sense of humour and makes you feel like you could talk to them forever, that’s also where you are looking for a new friend. And as you get older it gets harder to make new friends because you don’t always have the time sit around and just shoot at the breeze and get to know each other that way. And so I was interested in the idea — if you have that connection with somebody and you know that it’s not going to get romantic because of their personal circumstances, what’s wrong with just being friends, what’s wrong in trying to make the friendship work and going into it open eyes but just saying, “I’m can to make this work because I’m a grown up, because I like spending time with them?”

Well, the only problem with that is you can go and do something with good intentions but your feelings evolve, circumstances evolve and even in a situation where you went in trying to do the right thing, it can suddenly spiral out of control, emotionally speaking.

One of the hurdles that comes up in designing a romantic comedy is creating the character who is going to be dumped to make room for the happy ending. He or she has to be good enough that we believe the lead character would like them but not so good we want them to stay together.

First of all I agree completely. I think that a problem with many movies in this genre is that the make the sort of Ralph Bellamy character, the boyfriend character, like such a clearly bad guy, like manipulative or a liar. They make it so clear that it reflects negatively on the character that’s with them. I mean what would it say about Zoe if she was living with her boyfriend of five years and he was like totally a jerk and obviously a lying cheating scumbag. Why would we invest in her if she has such terrible taste? I like the idea that this is a totally loving committed relationship and we get why they are together but also see that there’s a difference between her dynamic with Daniel and her dynamic with Rafe. They don’t talk and joke in the same way, but there is love commitment and support.

There are some sparks that she finds with Daniel that she’s obviously missing because she’s drawn toward him. Even though she sets up very clear boundaries early on to make sure that it can’t go anywhere. And I think in real life it’s not the obstacles about internal/external, you know when work takes Ben away from her it’s plot but also to me it’s realistic at a time in your life when you’re balancing out between the relationship you’re in but where you’re work is taking you. And when you’re committed and ambitious to your work, and you feel like it’s good and important work the way Ben does about his work.

I mean he’s got a very different job than Daniel does, Daniel doesn’t care about his job but Ben does and so it’s totally in character that he would go where his career is taking him, and that also he’s totally aware of the potential for damage it can have on his relationship and they’re very upfront when they’re having conversation about it. He doesn’t want to sacrifice his relationship for his work but it’s also an amazing opportunity and they try to be open and honest with each other about it. That was important for me. I think it is funny because people have very different reactions to Ben and part of that was a divide, it was trying to find the right pitch of a character. Some people think that he’s just like a super nice, sweet, ambitious good guy. Some people perceive sort of like sinister motives or manipulation or controlling elements of this character which I don’t think were intentional, and often say more about the reviewer’s point of viewthan I think we actually are in there. But that’s life, people are free to make their own interpretation.

I also like that you’re seeing this guy and he’s standing next to this attractive, very beautiful work colleague and even if he hasn’t done anything wrong there is this sort of just like implicit threat or Chantry can perceive it that way if she choose to. And so it becomes a marker of where the trust level is between them. And it’s likewise for him you know to be like actively threatened by Daniel being in her life in being a friend. That could also imply a lack of trust and so Ben’s character has to decide, does he trust his girlfriend or not and he does.

Ben is aware that Wallace makes Chantry laugh, which is very intimate.

Again that is something that we were all — me as a writer, Michael Dowse as a director, our cast, Zoe and Daniel — that was something that we really wanted to embrace, that very messy and complicated question. If you’re spending so much time with somebody and you love to be with them and they make you laugh and you’re revealing personal stuff to them and you have an intimacy that’s growing, when does that become cheating? If you’ve never touched, if you have never kissed, if the most physical contact you’ve ever had is a handshake but you’re connecting on a deep, deep level, when does that start counting as cheating?

A bacon and peanut butter and jelly sandwich called Fool’s Gold is an important part of the movie. Have you tried one?

Yes, many times, many times and I have to admit even the day we made them on set I ate them because I was like, “Oh wow this is so great.” We hired a chef to make it on camera, so I said, “I’m going to eat this.” Funny story actually, the only two people that tried it on set the day were Daniel and me, and then the props guy told me afterwards sheepishly that they had sprayed it with this weird kind of like lacquer to make it shiny on camera. So we just ate this thing that basically was partially poisoned but it still tasted delicious. I’ve had it many times and I don’t think that Daniel really knows that we were accidentally almost poisoned but the props master.

I think it’s hilarious that you think that whatever they put on the outside is more poisonous than the actual sandwich itself.

As Zoe says in the movie, bacon isn’t even a food; it’s technically just pure fat. Yes, I know it’s terribly unhealthy and really you can’t get through more than a couple of bites. It is delicious but it’s is kind of overwhelming. I go to these parties for the movie and there are plates of Fool’s Gold and trays of nachos and deep-fried pickles, and it’s just like my head has exploded out into the world. But it’s so funny and kind of a rewarding in a perverse way that these weird little obsessions of mine, because they’re in the movie, are being brought out into the world.

One thing I thought was both funny and true in the film is that everybody has got some friend couple that in every possible rational world would be a total train wreck of a relationship and yet it just works in some way that is incredibly frustrating to those of us who think we understand what the rules are.

On the one hand there’s a structural thing that’s I’m doing as a screenwriter, showing two couples who meet within minutes of each other, where one couple lunges into a relationship and one couple gets kind of caught in this complicated complex nuanced sort of emotional limbo. I love the idea of counter-pointing with a couple that was completely going for it. They have a lot of advice but it’s not like their advice is always good. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. It’s what works for them, but what works for them isn’t necessarily going to work for Wallace and Zoe because they are in different circumstances.

Like in real life, I don’t have any sage-like friends who are like relationship gurus. I have like friends who sometimes give me good advice and sometimes give me bad advice. But I love the idea that of just like one of them like really launching without all the sort of obsessive ethical kind of emotional debate into just for better or for worse they are going to try to make it work and they’re volatile and very sexually frank and they’re full of energy and it’s a great counterpoint, and I think a necessary counterpoint to a nuanced, witty, emotionally resonant story line.

What are you working on next?

We’re adapting an episode of “This American Life” into a movie. It’s a comedy about love, heartbreak, and how it can feel like the worst thing that can happen to you can turn to be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. It’s great and Ira Glass is amazing to work with, exactly as you hope he’d be. He’s a delight to work with, incredibly smart, incredibly insightful about the creative process, and has the best stories.

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Interview: Michel Gondry of “Mood Indigo”

Posted on August 2, 2014 at 3:50 pm

Michel Gondry is one of my favorite directors, with a distinctive style of romance and whimsy, best known for “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Be Kind Rewind.” His films usually feature intricate contraptions with a very hand-made feeling. His latest film, starring “Amelie’s” Audrey Tautou, is based on a popular French novel first published in 1947 novel by Boris Vian with a title usually translated as “Froth on the Daydream”. Gondry is the perfect choice for a film that features a “pianoktail,” a piano that makes cocktails according to which tune is played on its keys, and a character who becomes ill because a water lily is growing in her lung. The book has been filmed twice before and turned into an opera, but in Gondry it has found the perfect person to translate its bittersweet allegory to cinema.

I spoke to Gondry about why handmade items still matter and which item from the film he would like to have in real life.

In a world of CGI effects that feel realer than reality, it is very endearing to see a film that is filled with charming items that all feel very handmade.

I am surrounded by function, and I am not very good at decorating or being organized. It is very messy most of the time. But I like to make things and to have people make things for my movies. It is very nice when you can see the construction and the results, when you can take it in your hand and it moves and functions, where you can see the mechanics and the guts inside. You want things to be made my people, not things made by things. You don’t want robots to be designing the items you are going to buy like it’s a sign of better quality. I don’t see it that way. A lot of the films I saw when I was growing up, you could tell how things were made and I found that exciting. It stimulates the creativity of the viewer. You would be inspired and want do make the things yourself. If you show how it is made, people will think about how to make it themselves. It’s a democratization of creativity.

The actors have to believe that they are in a real world. The fact that everything was made, there was no green screen, helped them. They have to jump into this world so they can feel the emotion they would feel in the real world.

If you could have one of the movie’s contraptions in real life, what would it be?

I have the airplane. I like some of the cars we did. One was made by two very famous French cars from the 60’s and 70’s. Storing items costs more money than building them. It’s too bad.

The book that inspired the movie is still very beloved in France, isn’t it?

Yes, I was about 15 when I first read it. Everyone has their own take on it. That puts some pressure on me to not fail them — some people say, “Don’t make this book into a film because we love it!” That scared me a little. But I have to forget about that and the best I could.

The movie’s US title comes from an American song and American jazz plays a role in the film.

Duke Ellington is very important to the story. The character Chloe has a name inspired by a Duke Ellington song. And I grew up listening to Duke Ellington. Two heroes in the house — Duke Ellington and Serge Gainsbourg, who was in a way sort of a student of Ellington. So I did put a lot of Ellington music in the movie and it was very important to honor that spirit.

What did you tell your actors about maintaining a reality in a partially fairy tale setting?

They asked me a lot of questions about who their characters were and where they came from. I don’t like to intellectualize the background of each character. It should come from themselves. They just have to be themselves and believe in the moment. I don’t think they need to create a heavy psychology. The psychology of the emotion comes from the situation and what is going on. They don’t have to imagine a full and complex story for each character.

Am I right in seeing some influence by George Méliès in your work?

Yes. He was a magician first and used the camera to complexify his tricks. And he discovered most of the effects that were used in cinema until CGI. He had the ingenuity and creativity and complete freedom in his work that I really got inspired by.

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Interview: Richard Linklater of “Boyhood”

Posted on July 17, 2014 at 8:00 am

Richard Linklater is one of my favorite directors. Films like “Waking Life,” “Before Sunrise”/”Before Sunset”/”Before Midnight,” “Dazed and Confused,” “School of Rock,” “Bernie,” and “Me and Orson Welles” display his restless intelligence and remarkable range. His latest film, “Boyhood,” was an under-the-radar twelve-year project, filming just a few days each year, so that we watch the main character, Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, grow up before our eyes. It was an honor to have a chance to talk to him about the film.

“This is an odd movie, because it’s a period piece film, but we were filming it in the present tense,” he explained. “You don’t get that opportunity very often.” Knowing as you film that what you are shooting won’t be seen for another decade, “you kind of look at that differently. Film’s a powerful recorder of the present. If you look at a silent film, even if you don’t like the movie, it’s a great record of how people lived and what fashions were. I had no agenda, but I thought this would demarcate its era, just by its own existence.”

He said he wanted the film to reflect the way that children process time differently from adults. “When you’re young, you hear a song and it’s very specific — fifth grade, eighth grade. When you get older, it gets kind of mushy. It doesn’t mean as much. It gets a little more undifferentiated.”

It is an extraordinary, unprecedented form of storytelling but he said he wanted it to be an ordinary family at the heart of the story. “These are not superheroes. They’re people trying to maneuver through life like everybody.”

Mason’s parents, played by Ethan Hawke (Mason senior) and Patricia Arquette (just billed as “Mom”) are separated, at in the film’s first scenes, Mason senior returns after an extended time in Alaska, to see his children. He said he wanted “the off-screen separation to be a little mysterious,” to maintain the point of view of the children, showing us that children “just feel the effects. I didn’t want to give the audience information that is outside the viewpoint of the kids.” Because the actors themselves interacted so little in filming, they were each able to develop their own ideas about what had happened in the relationship. “Both of the parents are admirable and a little triumphant in varying degrees. He wanted to be a dad and he is. He is a big figure in their lives. And she wants to provide for her kids and get an education and she does. She’s kind of a great woman, flaws and all. Who doesn’t have that?”

He had the big picture, “the big issues, moving, the end, the last shot” early on. “I kind of work that way, big structure planned out, and then kind of macro/micro within it a lot of leeway to be inspired. In most movies, you’re very rushed during production. It’s great to work like a sculptor. I’ll work three days, and then edit, and then think for a year. Film doesn’t give you that and I wanted to take advantage of it! Watch at home at 2 in the morning, thinking ‘What does the story need? Is this part working? Oh, I need to put back in this relationship. I never made a film that felt like it wanted to be itself so much. They always say films are like your kids, but I never believed that before. With this one, I actually do. It’s its own living, breathing person who I’m now sending off to college. Reluctantly.”

And Linklater’s own living, breathing daughter is in the movie, playing Mason’s older sister, Samantha. Linklater said that as the younger brother with older sisters in his own family, “it was hard to carve out space for myself. They have such an impact on you.” The girls were such a powerful force in his life and he wanted Mason to have a sister who was part thorn in his side, part witness, part support system. “They have that rivalry, but as they get older they support each other.”

Mason sees a range of models of masculinity in the film — his father, two stepfathers, even a teacher who really takes him to task in a scene set in the red light of a photographic darkroom. “It’s a male world. They’re in your face. The male world is in your face, compelled to shape the youth and be in your face all the time. Men want to be mentors. Moms will still straighten you out, but they’re more accepting. A step-parent is a fraught relationship anyway. These guys who are suddenly in his life — no one asked him — they have influence and authority over him that he feels maybe they haven’t earned. That’s his perspective. They’re probably not as bad as he sees them.” In what Linklater called “one of the most violent scenes you will see this year,” Mason’s long hair is cut short at the direction of his stepfather. Linklater told us that Coltrane’s look of mute, impotent, fury was all acting. Linklater insisted that Coltrane grow his hair for a few months before the shoot so they could do that scene, and the reality was that he was relieved in the hot Texas summer to get it cut off.

Making the film this way meant no opportunity to go back and re-shoot a scene or add in something extra. That was fine with Linklater. “Work hard and if that’s the best you could do at that moment, you should be okay with it and make your peace with it. I’ve never done a lot of reshoots. I believe in making it work. That’s the good thing about movies and art in general.”

Many thanks to Rebecca Cusey for sharing this interview with me and for her thoughtful questions.

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