Ray Lawrence pulled one of world cinema’s most surprising disappearing acts. His debut film, Bliss (1985), an adaptation of Peter Carey’s novel co-written by Lawrence and Carey himself, played in competition at Cannes, garnered rave reviews and dominated the Australian film awards. Lawrence joined Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi and Bruce Beresford as an Australian director worthy of global attention - but then did not make another film for 16 years. However, when his sophomore effort, Lantana, finally came out in 2001, it cemented Lawrence as one of the most important and distinctive voices in contemporary cinema. The movie featured superb performances from Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia and Barbara Hershey, and utilized the format of a slow-burning murder mystery to examine the emotionally dysfunctional lives of a group of people connected to the homicide.

In Jindabyne, Lawrence’s latest film, the director returns to the themes of death, guilt and emotional conflict in a transposition of the Raymond Carver short story ‘So Much Water So Close to Home’ (which was also one of the strands of Robert Altman’s 1993 Short Cuts) to a one-stop town in the Australian outback. The discovery of a young woman’s body by Stewart (Gabriel Byrne) and his friends on a fishing trip leads to a schism in the local community. The lines are drawn between men and women, white and Aboriginal, as the characters are forced to face up to the ghosts of the past. Uniformly strong acting by the whole cast, Beatrix Christian’s nuanced screenplay, David Williamson’s beautiful cinematography and assured direction from Lawrence combine to make Jindabyne an powerful and affecting film, and one of the most emotionally rewarding moviegoing experiences of recent times.

Filmmaker conducted an email interview with Lawrence in which he discussed Jindabyne, his years in the wilderness, and being beaten to the punch by Altman.



Filmmaker: You had a huge success in 1985 with your first film, Bliss, but then did not make another film for 16 years. Was this a conscious decision on your part?

Lawrence: Not at all. I was working on a lot of other projects but unfortunately none of them managed to get financed. There were a quite number over the years: Tracks, which was based on the book by Robyn Davison; Sweetlip, which was set it the tropical north of Australia, a murder mystery; and Machete, set on the west coast in a desert town. This story was the start of my interest in the male, female differences. They all made it to final draft.

Filmmaker: Were you only willing to make films on your own terms?

Lawrence: Yes, it's the only way I can do it. If I am the one that instigates the idea. It's probably a different matter if I was interested in a project that was brought to me.

Filmmaker: With the success of your recent films, do you regret the years you were inactive in filmmaking?

Lawrence: Of course.

Filmmaker: Were there many projects that you are sad you couldn't get made?

Lawrence: Yes, it doesn't make me happy to work on something for four years and then it doesn't get up.

Filmmaker: When did you first read 'So Much Water So Close to Home'?

Lawrence: 'So Much Water' was a story I found straight after Bliss. The book was given to me by Paul Kelly (he did the music for Lantana and Jindabyne).

Filmmaker: Why did you transpose the film to Australia?

Lawrence: Simply because I live here and know the place better than any other.

Filmmaker: Were you deterred by Robert Altman having covered the same story as part of Short Cuts?

Lawrence: Only in the sense I didn't think I would ever be able to do it seeing he had used the story. But in another way I thought it was still possible.

Filmmaker: Can you explain the reasons behind the drowned town being in your film, and any deeper significance it has?

Lawrence: One of the things Jindabyne is, is that it is a ghost story, in the sense that it's about things that haunt us from our past. The drowned town was a perfect metaphor of this.

Filmmaker: How much did the success of Lantana affect you professionally? Did it make this film a lot easier to make?

Lawrence: It helped a little, but not enough to make it easier or quicker between films.

Filmmaker: Gabriel Byrne and Laura Linney's characters in the film feel as if they were specially created for them. Was the script written, or altered, to accommodate them?

Lawrence: No, but they made the characters their own, as did all the other actors.

Filmmaker: Was there a specific look or storytelling style which you had in mind for the film?

Lawrence: I just want it to look like it is.

Filmmaker: There is a warning at the start of the film to certain Aboriginal tribes. Did you have to be careful what you put in the film because of them?

Lawrence: That warning should be on all media that involves Aboriginal people. They don't necessarily want to see the image of a dead relative. It gives them the opportunity not to watch it or listen to whatever it is. I spent two years going through the protocols with the different tribes to get their cooperation and trust.

Filmmaker: Your films are very rooted in Australian-ness and a sense of their own community, although their issues and themes are universal. Are you ever tempted by offers to make movies in Hollywood, or will you continue to have Hollywood actors come to Australia for you?

Lawrence: I receive scripts from all over, not just Hollywood. I'm open to any good story as long as I can tell it in my own way. I don't have any regrets in regards not taken any of the scripts that were offered. If they had been of interest, I would have been on board.

Filmmaker: Who are your strongest influences, both cinematic and otherwise?

Lawrence: Life itself is a pretty strong influence, but Ken Loach has always been a favorite of mine.

Filmmaker: What phrase best describes your philosophy on life? And your philosophy on film?

Lawrence: Treat others as you would have them treat you.

Filmmaker: What's your best piece of advice for aspiring filmmakers?

Lawrence: Keep at it, that's the test.

Filmmaker: What's the biggest compliment you ever received?

Lawrence: A critic said that she felt that Jindabyne was my 'sorry film.'

Filmmaker: And finally, should a director always take risks?

Lawrence: Of course.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/27/2007 11:30:00 PM Comments (0)

Brit Edgar Wright’s film career began when, straight out of college, he wrote and directed his ultra-low budget debut feature, A Fistful of Fingers (1994), an affectionate comedic homage to spaghetti westerns. The film played a few festivals, and was enough of a success to get Wright work directing sitcoms and sketch shows, where he worked with many of the best British comic performers around. His friendship with actors Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson resulted in the trio creating Spaced, a television series about the oddball residents of a house in London which achieved cult status. The show, which playfully and regularly referenced Hollywood films, ran from 1999 to 2001 and led to Wright and Pegg working together on their idea for a romantic zombie comedy, or “rom-zom-com.” Shaun of the Dead (2004), co-written by star Pegg and Wright, was a huge box office success in its native U.K., a surprise sleeper hit stateside, and was vocally supported by everybody from Quentin Tarantino to George A. Romero (who recruited Wright and Pegg to be zombies in his 2005 movie, Land of the Dead).

Hot Fuzz, Wright’s follow-up to Shaun, had a staggeringly successful U.K. opening weekend in February, taking an almost unprecedented $11.7 million. The film, which reunites Wright with Pegg and his Shaun of the Dead sidekick Nick Frost, riffs on the Hollywood buddy-buddy cop movies of the 80s and 90s with its plot about an overachieving London cop, Nicholas Angel (Pegg), who is relocated to a sleepy countryside village, a place where crime is seemingly non-existent. Unsuprisingly, Angel and his new partner, beer-guzzling Bad Boys fan Danny (Frost), soon discover that beneath the village’s placid exterior lies a truth more sinister than either could have imagined. Hot Fuzz is extremely funny and unashamedly enjoyable and, like Shaun of the Dead, is so fresh, charming and inventive that it manages to be referential (and reverential) without ever being derivative. Wright's direction is top-notch, while the script he co-wrote with Pegg is full of numerous details which perfectly set up future gags and make repeated viewings all the more satisfying.

Filmmaker spoke to Wright last month about his first forays in film, making one of the Grindhouse trailers, and why Robocop makes him cry.



Filmmaker: How old were you when you made A Fistful of Fingers?

Wright: I was just 20, and I did it about 2 weeks after leaving art college. It was the culmination of doing lots of amateur films, making films on super 8, then video. I actually won a video camera on [the U.K. kids TV show] Going Live! It was all in conjunction with Comic Relief, and I'd made an animated super 8 film about disabled access. The stuff I'd done up until then, all the amateur films, I'd funded myself from working at Somerfield [supermarket] – the same one that's in the film [Hot Fuzz], actually. But A Fistful of Fingers was funded by a local businessman. It was a guy who had seen all the amateur films that I'd done, and I think he'd inherited a lot of money – a tax loss kind of thing – so we basically got £11,000 to make the film, and we shot it in 21 days on 16mm. It was a weird experience, because it was so powered along by its own naivety. There was something brilliant about it. I went through a bit of a deep depression during the editing because I realized that I'd committed something to film and it had all come back so quickly. What was funny was that during production, I didn't really think twice about anything: I didn't do a second draft of the script, I only cast from my school friends – it didn't even occur to me to try and find local actors. We used the crew from some people from the local independent film circuit and most people from my college. But literally the first D.P. that we met was the D.P.

Filmmaker: How much has your approach to filmmaking changed since those early days?

Wright: I think it's just learning what the hell I'm doing, basically. It's funny, on the Hot Fuzz DVD in the U.K. we're going to put on the cop film I made when I was 18. Watching it back, there are some similarities in terms of the style but the thing that I really notice is how bad the sound is, and how important a really detailed sound mix is. The stuff I used to do when I was making amateur films, like this cop film I made, Dead Right, I basically didn't have any access to library music or sound effects at all, so there's like no sound effects on it and the whole thing feels so airless, it's weird. With A Fistful of Fingers, it had the spirit of 'Let's do the show right here,' but the worst thing about it is that it's quite ramshackle and lame, and it feels like a Bugsy Malone production because it's all 18-year-olds pretending to be badass Americans – it's funny. Basically, I wanted to do another independent film, but I wasn't really that happy with A Fistful of Fingers and how it turned out. It was alright, some people liked it and I got my break through [Little Britain comedians] Matt Lucas and David Walliams, who saw A Fistful of Fingers and really liked it, and recommended me to their agents at ICM, and then also asked me to do their first sketch show. So when I started doing TV stuff, I was very lucky again to work immediately. The first show I did was with Matt Lucas and David Walliams, and Jessica Stevenson was in it, the second show was with Simon Pegg, Jessica Stevenson, Julian Barratt and Bill Bailey. I completely lucked out by working with some brilliant people very early on. So [what helped was] working with great actors and feeling more confident as a writer. I don't ever think of myself as a screenwriter, even though I've written two screenplays, mainly because I've written out of necessity, because I can feel the films that I want to make in my gut. I think doing TV, and especially Spaced, was really like learning my craft and learning editing and writing.

Filmmaker: Was working in TV a necessary step for you to take? Were you always intending to come back to making films?

Wright: I always wanted to come back to film, and I had written another film after A Fistful of Fingers, but then I started to get into TV and then I was lucky to be successful at it almost straight away. What was weird was that before Shaun of the Dead, I'd done about 9 years of TV, and doing music videos and commercials as well, and it was great to come back to film having had a proper education.

Filmmaker: Was there pressure on you to make a sequel to Shaun of the Dead?

Wright: We were asked on several occasions about doing a sequel, asked about doing an American TV series version of it, doing an English TV series version of it, doing a game. We just felt that the story had been told – and it helped that most of the characters were dead! Even recently, I got an email from an American TV channel wanting to do a version of Shaun of the Dead, and I just thought, Why? Hot Fuzz is the only film that cannot be remade in the States, because it would completely lose its point. Why would you remake that in the States? Why would you remake Shaun in the States?! It doesn't make any sense, it's pointless. And it's the same with Spaced. Spaced got as far as a script stage, being developed, but I just thought, Surely there's nothing charming about watching American slackers act out American films? Surely the charm of it is that people are in a North London pub recreating scenes from The Matrix? Doing it within its own country doesn't really mean anything.

Filmmaker: Because of Shaun of the Dead, you became friends with directors like George A. Romero, and Quentin Tarantino.

Wright: The most amazing thing after Shaun was the support from other filmmakers. Some of my favorite filmmakers championed Shaun of the Dead, and I was also very fortunate to become friends with them. That was really amazing, that period of getting great word from Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Guillermo Del Toro, Stephen King, George Romero. George was the first person to respond, and he absolutely loved Shaun of the Dead, and that was a real vindication for us.

Filmmaker: And your relationship with Tarantino and Rodriguez led to you doing one of the Grindhouse trailers.

Wright: Very recently, in fact. I finished it within the last three weeks. I got asked to do it in 2005, when they were first starting to develop it. I was in L.A., and out with Quentin and Eli Roth, and he said, “We're doing this Grindhouse thing. Do you two want to do trailers?” And we both went, “Uh, yes please!” So, [I was] very, very flattered to be asked. I wrote the script in December 2005 and sent it to Robert and Quentin. I got an email from Robert saying, 'Oh, that's great. Perfect, perfect', and a phone call from Quentin saying, [he mimics Tarantino's voice] “You know, the funny thing is, like uh, these are the first completed pages of the script!” They hadn't finished either of their screenplays, so I felt like the school swot because I'd turned my Grindhouse stuff in first. Then it cut to over a year later to film it. I had such a blast making it, it was hilarious. The really fun thing about making a trailer is that you literally just shoot the money shots: no continuity, we didn't shoot any sound. David Arnold did some music for it. Everybody's in it for a laugh, and did it for next to no money, or no money. And I did it for free. I'd like to say that on record to the Weinstein Company: I did it for free. So that was great, it was brilliant, and I'm really, really proud of it as well. And they really loved it, which is great.

Filmmaker: You've said that you watched 138 DVDs as research for Hot Fuzz. What were the worst and best films you saw?

Wright: And there were some on VHS as well, because some things aren't on DVD, like Busting. Isn't that a great film? Well, I don't think it's an all-round brilliant film, but that chase in the middle is extraordinary. I watched some bad films, though. I have more patience than Simon [Pegg]; I will sit through anything if I think it's in any way constructive. There would be ones that I would watch on my own time and then I would maybe cherry-pick the best bits to show him.

Filmmaker: Did you have to endure any Chuck Norris movies?

Wright: Oh yeah, I did. Some of them I'd seen before, like Code of Silence, with the amazing prowler ending. I saw Silent Rage, Delta Force, Invasion U.S.A., Hero and the Terror. Hero and the Terror is probably the worst; that was really, really poor, like not even fun in a “so bad it's good” way. The best film I saw, that I was really blown away by, was Gordon Parks' The Super Cops. I'd seen it on TV when I was 9, and obviously I couldn't properly appreciate it then. It's amazing, but not released on DVD, and is just great, a really underrated little film. Ron Leibman is amazing in it. It's based on a true story, about Greenberg and Hantz – who were nicknamed Batman and Robin - in the 70s in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It's incredible. The script is by Lorenzo Semple Jr., of Batman, Flash Gordon and The Parallax View fame.

Filmmaker: Why is your nickname Eball?

Wright: Nick Frost just gave it to me on the set of Spaced. I don't think it particularly means anything.

Filmmaker: To quote the journalist in Hot Fuzz, “What's your perfect Sunday?”

Wright: It would start off with the obvious of like probably going to a caff and reading the Sundays. When I'm on my own I tend to get quite antisocial, so if I'm on my own in the flat, I like watching the extras on DVDs. I've got so many Italian horror films and things from Anchor Bay where I haven't quite got round to watching the film, but I've watched every single trailer. I like watching trailers and extras and making-ofs. The other day I watched that documentary, Going To Pieces, about the slasher films, which is brilliant. It's out on THINKFilm, and it's this documentary initially about Halloween and Friday the 13th, but then goes into so much detail about every single rip-off – Prom Night, He Knows You're Alone, The Prowler. I love really in-depth documentaries, about everything, not just film.

Filmmaker: Which actor would you pay to see in anything?

Wright: I would say Clint Eastwood, but then there's quite a few recent Clint Eastwood films I haven't seen. I've probably never missed a Woody Allen film. I would watch every Woody Allen film, even the ones that are not so good.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you cried in a film, and which film was it?

Wright: I do get quite choked up at the weirdest films. I get choked up when I'm entertained, I don't always get choked up when I'm sad. So I would cry at the end of Rumble in the Bronx where Jackie Chan turns to the camera and puts his thumbs up. That would set me off, or at the end of Robocop, when he goes “What's your name kid?” and he says “Murphy.” It isn't always specifically sad films which would start me crying.

Filmmaker: When did you last do it for the money, not the love?

Wright: I suppose maybe the last time I did a commercial, which I haven't done for 5 years or more.

Filmmaker: And finally, which phrase best describes your philosophy on life?

Wright: “Give the kids what they want.” I would always say that when there was a gory moment on set. If there was a question of how much blood, I would say, “This is what the kids want.”

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/20/2007 05:05:00 PM Comments (0)

Chuck and Buck (2000), an incendiary examination of male sexuality, announced the film’s writer and star, Mike White, as an unusually daring and original talent. His next foray as a screenwriter, The Good Girl (2002), was another subversive take on American life, and all the more refreshing in that it was a studio movie which dared to ask difficult questions and featured a raft of indie stalwarts (plus star Jennifer Aniston).

Though White's subsequent films, Orange County, School of Rock and Nacho Libre (all starring Jack Black, his producing partner in Black & White Films) have been more mainstream fare, his directorial debut, Year of the Dog, finds him occupying an interesting middle ground between his recent family-friendly efforts and his earlier, darker films. Inspired by an incident from White's own life in which a stray cat died in his arms, Year of the Dog charts the impact of the death of Peggy's (Molly Shannon) beloved dog, Pencil, and how her life unravels as she attempts to compensate for his absence. White wrote the script especially for Saturday Night Live alum Shannon after they worked together on the White-created sitcom Cracking Up, which was canceled after only 9 episodes. Despite seeming wholesome and conventional, Year of the Dog is essentially about obsession and people's inability to find meaning in their lives, and features White's trademark edgy, barbed humor which works extremely well in this ostensibly benign context.

Filmmaker spoke to White about cats and dogs, screaming babies, and why he doesn't want to go to the Oscars.



Filmmaker: In a way, some of the origins of the film stem from Cracking Up.

White: Yeah, I did that in 2003 and into 2004, but it was one of those [things where I said,] ‘I can do a TV sitcom,’ and then suffered the consequences the entire time. They said, ‘We want a show from you, we want what you do,’ but it was immediately apparent that they did not want what I do, and it was just a constant fight, the most stressful experience I’ve ever had. I came out of it going, ‘I’m never going to get that unwound by a professional experience again,’ and I really wanted to do something where I was like, ‘I don’t care if I do this for $20 or $2m or $20m, I’m just going to do something that’s just my thing and do it, and succeed or fail on my own terms.’ And I wanted to have fun doing it, so when I set out to do this, I just wanted to make sure it was a good experience, no matter what.

Filmmaker: Though Year of the Dog is all about dogs, the inspiration came from an incident with a cat.

White: I had a cat that died on me. I had not been an animal person up to that point, but when this cat died I was stressed because of other things, but this thing just set me off and I had a blubbering, emotional reaction to this cat dying, in a way that I was not expecting. I actually now have two dogs and a cat, and they run my household! It’s funny because I didn’t realize how conducive it would be to my lifestyle to take on that, because those walks with the dog are when you have some of your best ideas and best inspiration, and you can kind of mellow out in the midst of the hubbub of the day.

Filmmaker: You wrote Year of the Dog for Molly Shannon, but at the time you presumably didn’t know she was allergic to dogs…

White: Well, I knew she was allergic to cats, but she assured me that it was going to be fine. And then, like two days before we were going to start shooting, we were doing prop photography and the dog licked her and she had a reaction to it and it was like, ‘This is not good. She has every scene with dogs.’ I didn’t want her to start getting neurotic about it, but for whatever reason it ended up not being a big issue. I dunno, maybe she got so into her character that it altered her allergy pattern!

Filmmaker: There seems to be a journey you’ve taken from a film like Chuck and Buck to Year of the Dog.

White: You know, the truth is that I see them as having more in common - my personal aesthetic is certainly present in both. I feel like both movies walk a line between melancholy and absurdity, and that there’s something funny but also something kinda tragic about them. With the main characters too, sometimes you’re sympathetic to them, and then you’re like, ‘Oh no, what are you doing?’ and you recoil in anxiety about what they’re about to do. With this movie I just felt it would be interesting to do a movie that had a kind of punk rock core but on its face it was very much the opposite of that. I made a conscious effort to make the movie so there wasn’t a lot of cursing. You know, there’s something demure about it, but, at the same time, underneath it I feel like there’s a subversive spirit to it. Which has made for a very odd reaction from people. Some people come out and are moved by it, or some people think it’s really funny, or some people just can’t get past the disconnect of it. People are like, ‘Who is this for?’ It’s ostensibly about a single woman of a certain age looking for love, and usually those movies end with a wish fulfillment romantic comedy element, and there’s really very little wish fulfillment here. For the amount of money that it was made for, it didn’t seem like I needed to keep such an eye on the marketplace, and I set out to do something different.

Filmmaker: You’ve described Year of the Dog as “a comedy that’s not funny.”

White: I find it funny, but it plays at such a deadpan level for so much of it that I feel like some of the comedy is missed. And there are also so many minor keys in it. My preference for comedy is something that’s played so straight that, in a way, you’re wrong-footed. I think it’s a comedy; it definitely plays for laughs, but it plays with the audience. As somebody who sees a lot of movies, when something’s not pre-digested, it’s very pleasant because you’re like, ‘I don’t exactly know how to take this.’ I set out to do that with Chuck and Buck, and The Good Girl too. This one, I feel like in its own way, it’s the most totally weird of anything I've done. It’s hard, because you want to win the popularity contest, and for people to have a unified attitude about your movie in a positive way. But at the same time, the pleasures I get from movies often come from the things where it really stimulates your mind as to how to process it, and what it is. The unusualness of something is what interests me as I get older. Which is not necessarily the most commercially safe place to exist.

Filmmaker: Your work seems to seek out paradoxes and unusual ways of approaching subjects. For instance, you’ve described Year of the Dog as a whimsical film about obsession.

White: For better or for worse, my worldview can be very positive or be very melancholy, or a little bit alienated. And there’s definitely a comic alienation going on in Year of the Dog. It would be nice if I could jump sides, but I don’t like movies that are so self-serious, like they have no sense of humor about themselves. At the same time, comedies that are just playing exactly for laughs often feel like very empty experiences and aren’t really about anything, and are not the kind of things that I want to spend two years of my life making.

Filmmaker: Was this always going to be a film that you were going to direct?

White: I wrote it with an eye to how to visually do it, and so in a sense I was prepared in a way that maybe with some other stuff I wasn’t. But I even sent it out, when I first wrote it, to some of the usual suspects to see what they thought. For some reason, I just kind of hesitated over whether I should direct it.

Filmmaker: And how was your first time directing?

White: It was super-enjoyable, actually. I had a lot of anticipatory dread, but when we were in the doing of it, it was actually just kinda fun. I have had so much production experience that the transition was not psychotic, but I also felt like I have a day job that I’m doing OK with, which is the writing, and if I end up, you know, flying the plane into the side of the cliff, I will still survive. You know, I made a pact to just try and have fun and not get too wound up if things started falling out from under me.

Filmmaker: Of course you had Tom McCarthy [who directed The Station Agent, and plays Pier in Year of the Dog] on hand if you needed any advice on directing.

White: He was only there for a few days, but he was awesome to have there. I had the experience with Chuck and Buck of having directors in acting roles [American Pie’s Chris and Paul Weitz both had major roles], and it’s always helpful to have a few multitaskers on the set.

Filmmaker: What were the most difficult moments on the film?

White: The most challenging moments, in a basic way, were not [because of] the dogs, but the babies. The first day that we had Laura Dern on the set, I really wanted it to go well because I’m such a fan of hers. The first shot of the morning was her with the baby in her arms and she had this really long monologue. But the baby was crying wildly through the entire thing and nothing was usable. With those kinds of things, it’s hard to have a sense of humor in the moment that it’s happening. I’m kind of an over-preparation person, but the truth is that, as a director, I guess I’ve realized that you need to be fluid. It’s good to have an agenda, obviously, but when scenes don’t play the way that you hoped they would, or issues happen with production, you need to be as flexible as possible because otherwise you can lose yourself in the details. As a first-time director, you don’t know what you don’t know. Some of it is practical, in-the-moment decision-making and really being able to figure out what is important and what isn’t important, because if you get too precious about specific little things, you can miss the forest for the trees.

Filmmaker: You’re due to work with two British directors soon, Edgar Wright on Them and Pawel Pawlikowski on Vernon Good Little.

White: Well, Vernon God Little is just a movie that I’m producing, but I love the book and we’re putting that together as a production company and I think that will be a really great movie. And Them is something that I’m writing with Edgar, who’s awesome. I saw Shaun of the Dead and loved it, and we talked about doing something. This is kind of a paranoid conspiracy theory comedy that’s more in his wheelhouse than mine.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you wished you had a different job?

White: I don’t think I‘ve ever wished that.

Filmmaker: Have you ever been to the Oscars?

White: I’ve never been to the Oscars, but if I was ever invited to the Oscars, I would have this weird paranoia of terrorism. It just feels like The Poseidon Adventure, everyone in their tuxes. Somehow, I feel like the whole time I would be looking for where the nearest exit was, and in a cold sweat about some kind of man-made disaster, like a terrorist strike or something. It seems like such a scary, claustrophobic proposition.

Filmmaker: And finally, which film do you wish you had directed?

White: Badlands. It’s one of those movies where you can have such a different experience watching it, from time to time. That movie just continues to reveal different colors to it. It can be so funny, yet so poetic, and so earnest – it depends on your mood. It just stays with me.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/13/2007 11:39:00 AM Comments (0)

Writer-director Jake Kasdan comes from a filmmaking family: his father is Hollywood heavyweight Lawrence Kasdan, director of Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983) and Grand Canyon (1991), and his younger brother Jonathan has just written and directed his first film, In the Land of Women. Jake's own debut came in 1998, when he wrote and directed the quirky private detective movie Zero Effect, which he followed up in 2002 with Orange County. In between, Kasdan directed several episodes of two high-quality but short-lived Judd Apatow-produced TV series, Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, and also helmed the pilot for a TV version of Zero Effect.

Kasdan's time working in television inspired him to write and direct his latest film, The TV Set, about the myriad frustrations of trying to create something meaningful on the small screen. The movie centers on disheveled writer-producer Mike Klein (David Duchovny, a great performance playing against type) who conceives the idea for 'The Wexler Chronicles,' a TV series inspired by his brother's suicide. The script for the pilot is greenlit, but Klein then sees his vision for the show constantly undermined and manipulated by everybody from network boss Lenny (Sigourney Weaver) downwards. The TV Set is a damning — and extremely sharp and funny — indictment of television and its need to stifle creativity and originality in pursuit of higher viewing figures. Kasdan maintains it is not a satire, but an accurate picture of the industry today.

Filmmaker spoke to Kasdan (in between takes on his new film, Walk Hard) about being part of a directing dynasty, his experiences in TV — and what makes him cry on set.

Filmmaker: What was it like growing up in a family like yours? Did you feel pressure to go into film too?

Kasdan: I never felt great pressure to do it. It was really just my father [who was making movies], and everyone else has gotten into it since I have. So at the time that I was getting going, my brother, who's a lot younger than me, was not doing this kind of work. I grew up around movies, but I wouldn't say that I felt a great pressure. I was exposed very early to a lot of what's great about making movies, and as a result I developed an appetite for it very young.

Filmmaker: How much of The TV Set was influenced by your experiences on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, both of which were canceled in their first season?

Kasdan: Certainly the movie is an amalgamation of all of my experiences and the experiences of my friends compounded into one movie. I would say that it's not a directly biographical experience, but it is, as I said, a collage of all our experiences. It's a world where I've spent a lot of time.

Filmmaker: How closely is the Mike Klein character (played by David Duchovny) based on you?

Kasdan: I don't think of it as being directly me, but it's definitely a little like me, like Judd, like a lot of us wrapped into one guy.

Filmmaker: The movie comes across as satirical, but you've said it's an accurate portrayal of how TV is today.

Kasdan: To my experience, yes. I don't really think of it as satirical because I don't think that there's anything in it that's particularly exaggerated or over-hyped. I think that everything that happens in the movie you could see happen, and in fact most of it is happening somewhere right now in almost that kind of language in the midst of pilot season.

Filmmaker: The film seems to say that total compromise is inevitable when you're bringing a TV project to fruition. And your decision when you had to cast Sigourney Weaver as Lenny — rather than your original choice, Ben Stiller, who became unavailable — was also a compromise of sorts.

Kasdan: I never thought of that as a compromise. There's a difference between making choices that are different than what you originally intended, and being forced into taking the edges off of something. That was in no way a compromise - that was a huge coup. I got this really wonderful actress to play this part. It wasn't until a moment after I'd finished the script that I realized what the character should be, and that Sigourney was the right one to do it.

Filmmaker: After making The TV Set, do you think you'll be able to work in television again?

Kasdan: My television career may be over — I have to acknowledge the possibility that that's the case. I certainly wasn't protecting anybody.

Filmmaker: You often work on projects with your friends, such as Mike White and particularly Judd Apatow. Is that to try and help guard against your creative vision being sabotaged or diluted by the suits?

Kasdan: It's a combination of that, and the fact that I really like working with those guys. They're really good friends of mine and those friendships are born of collaborations. A lot of us from Freaks and Geeks have continued to work together a lot: me with Judd a lot, and also with Mike White on Orange County. I love working with those guys. Judd's the best producer around, for me, and he's a very good friend of mine.

Filmmaker: You're shooting Walk Hard at the moment, with Judd producing. How's that going?

Kasdan: It's going very well. The movie is a fake music biopic, the story of a fictional music legend, Dewey Cox. It's really fun — we're having a really good time.

Filmmaker: The music in your films is always very effective and well-chosen. What's your favorite Bob Dylan album?

Kasdan: Blood on the Tracks. It's probably my favorite album of all time, and it's probably the most profound experience I've had with a record in terms of discovering an album at a time when you're really receptive to it. The way that he writes and sings on that record made it one of the formative pieces of art of my adolescence.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you burst into tears on set?

Kasdan: I cry laughing on set a lot, and have several times on Walk Hard. And I always get emotional and sentimental when movies end. The design element of Walk Hard is so extraordinary that I have to say there have been a couple of times when I've walked on the set and have been overwhelmed by how good the work is that it's kind of moving. I can't believe the quality of the look.

Filmmaker: What's the smartest decision you've ever made?

Kasdan: I don't know, tough call. Usually you feel like the smartest decisions you've made are the things you've chosen not to do. There's movies I haven't made that I'm glad I haven't made, there's actors I haven't worked with that, in retrospect, I'm glad I haven't worked with.

Filmmaker: Finally, if someone gave you $1m dollars and you had to spend it in a week, what would you spend it on?

Kasdan: At this point, probably an extra week of shooting!

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 4/06/2007 11:39:00 AM Comments (0)