BOP Interview: Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton
By Ryan Mazie
July 24, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Frequently finishing each other’s thoughts, one can’t help but wonder if the creative couple could relate to Calvin’s struggle of figuring out how to follow-up a critical and audience-winning first feature. During the discussion, the two of them talk about: the answer on why it took six years to make a follow-up film, finding the right tone, shooting digitally, and how they lit a scene using only an iPad.
It has been six years since Little Miss Sunshine. What about Zoe’s screenplay grabbed you and made it feel like this was the next story you wanted to tell?
Jonathan Dayton: We loved [Zoe’s] voice. It felt very true and singular and certainly the idea about doing a film about men and women and their relationships was very attractive.
Valerie Faris: And I think there was an appeal in being this mix of high concept while being totally grounded in reality, not making anything of the magic.
JD: It was a challenge, though. “How do you sell an audience on this?” Because there are no like funny machines that spit Ruby out or a comet that flies above the sky and there she is. And we liked that.
It’s very Woody Allen.
VF: Yes. The Purple Rose of Cairo. But I think where the story goes was very appealing to us. The first conversation we had with Zoe about the script was very good; we all seemed to be on the same page. We worked for about nine months to just kind of shape it into the film we wanted to make. But she is a great collaborator. The sense that we had from the first time we talked to her and then we started working with her was that she was going to trust us with the film, which was scary for us, because she is the actor and the writer, so if she was going to cling onto her script and be precious about it, I don’t think we would have done it.
JD: I had nightmares about her stopping in the middle of a scene and going, “This isn’t the way I saw it!” (laughs).
VF: But she is so not that way. She’s so great and she said from the beginning that this is your film and that is a great feeling. Once we arrived at a script we were all happy with, she could just let it go and completely assume the role of Ruby and not the role of a writer.
When you are directing, were there ever arguments over certain scenes or the overall direction of the movie?
JD: Not really.
VF: I don’t remember.
JD: Oh, I say “no” and she says, “I don’t remember.” (laughs)
VF: I’d call them discussions.
JD: But we constantly debate every aspect of the movie. The real secret for us is prep, and because there are two of us, we are able to actually act out the scenes at home and explore the material. We are terrible actors, but we know what we are asking our cast to do and we know the feelings.
VF: We’ve been done the road together and we try as much as possible to address issues that arise ahead of time off the set. Anything we have a dispute over can get worked out beforehand. We come to the material from a very similar angle. It’s not like I have one idea and Jonathan has another.
JD: We don’t take a film when those things happen. That will ruin our relationship. When one of us doesn’t like a project, we don’t do it.
VF: People ask why did it take six years to make a second film and sometimes it takes that long to find something and then wait for it to be ready to the point where we both feeling 100% behind the movie. It’s harder with two. We’ve been saying it’s really been three years with each of us (both laugh).
How different was this being your second film after Little Miss Sunshine? Was it a very big difference or a similar process?
VF: They are all different; every project has its own set of challenges and rewards.
JD: That’s part of what makes it fun.
VF: I’m sure that there were more similarities, we were more focused on what’s new about it. Probably the biggest difference is that Little Miss Sunshine was an ensemble cast so the preparation and rehearsals were a little different…
JD: For that, we had to create a family, so our rehearsals were on how do we make these people feel –
VF: (overlapping) like they had real relationships.
JD: But that wasn’t a need with Paul and Zoe [a real life couple] (laughs).
VF: In fact with them, the challenge was “you have a relationship, but how is yours different from your characters?” and it was pretty easy for them to distinguish between Calvin and Ruby, and Paul and Zoe. But in rehearsal we decided that one part of Zoe we didn’t want in Ruby and so on. It was a different process of preparation and even in shooting; there is something different about not being in an ensemble where they get to a point where it is a well-oiled machine. With this film we had more day players coming in so it’s just a different kind of challenge.
Besides the plot, the tone of the film really sets it apart from other romantic movies. I wanted to know at what point does that mood get shaped – in the script writing process or as directors when you put it to film?
VF: People have said that this film could have gone in many different directions and I think that’s really true. We feel a tone in the script, but it’s still a big challenge to get that on screen and preserve it.
JD: It’s hard to know though where it is. I feel the tone when I read it, but that might be my projection immediately of the material.
VF: That’s what happened with Little Miss Sunshine. A lot of people read that and saw it as a much broader comedy – kind of like European Vacation or something (laughs).
JD: It was so nice to have Little Miss Sunshine out so people knew, “Oh that’s what you mean!” So when we approached this, Fox Searchlight knew how we approached material.
VF: I think a big part of the tone comes from casting. If you cast the right people in the roles who can play their parts as real people, what real people would do more or less, that already ropes the tone in so you are not chasing after comedy or make things too dramatic.
JD: We looked at a lot of comedians for the role of the brother that Chris Messina played, and they were really interesting…
VF: They might have made the funny parts maybe funnier?
JD: But what we needed was an actor who had the skills of someone like Chris, who could really deliver the credible questioning. He’s our advocate in the story, saying all of the things that we want to say, so when he accepts the premise, hopefully the audience does as well.
You shot this movie digitally and you’ve done other work with film, so what’s your preference as directors?
JD: We love film.
VF: So much.
JD: But we can’t ignore that digital media is here to stay. We worked very hard to get the most, let’s call it, “appropriate” look. We had to undo certain things that digital tends to give you, and yet in certain situations, digital was really incredible. We chose digital; we could have shot film. We figured since a lot of scenes were at night to capture Los Angeles in a certain way; say for example when we shot out the bedroom window and you can see the city lights twinkling, that was exciting. There were certain night scenes where we want to show Paul illuminated by the clock radio and we used an iPad as the sole illumination in the room.
VF: There is an app I think where you can select different colors on the iPad and it’s like different color gels and it’s amazing.
JD: So we put the iPad on top of the C-stand and hung it over him and that was the light.
VF: It’s so sensitive.
JD: So that’s the direction digital is taking film, but at the same time, it takes 60 people on set to set-up the iPad as the light (laughs)… We spent so much time adding grain and trying to emulate the gate weave.
VF: Persistence of motion, without the shutter and flicker, it just doesn’t feel …
JD: But this movie is going to be shown digitally in 60% of the country and every week more theaters give in, so we had to, we couldn’t turn our backs on it. … Kodak is committed to making film for four more years, but anything beyond that is unknown.
VF: Anything you can do to rescue it, we’re all for it (laughs).
JD: I have to say that there is another issue of people seeing films in a theater and I think they go hand-in-hand. There is how you deliver the film and how you experience it and one of the reasons that we are so happy to be back is that Little Miss Sunshine is the first time we saw our work with an audience, because our music videos were always just on TV. It was so thrilling and there is nothing like it.
VF: And we grew up watching movies in theaters so we feel like that’s the way they should be seen.
JD: Particularly a movie like this that has a challenging subject matter. When Calvin starts to go down that rabbit hole, you kind of want to be with other people.
VF: It’s fun for us to watch audience reactions.
With your music video background, how did you decide on the music for the soundtrack?
JD: Thank-you for asking, because that is one of our favorite parts of the finished film.
VF: We met with a number of composers, and then we started working with Nick Urata who we have such a great shorthand from Little Miss Sunshine. He saw a really early cut of Ruby which is one of the hardest parts about working with composers, having to show them …
JD: (overlapping) your dirty laundry (laughs).
VF: He saw it and wrote a piece just on his impression of the whole film and it ended up being the music we use when Ruby is clingy with Calvin. When we laid it into the scene, it fit perfectly which was the weirdest thing. So he did that spec and we realized he was the right man for it.
JD: We told him we wanted a big score. We did not want indie guitar based music.
VF: No guitar. And he writes on a guitar, but we forced him not to use it. I guess the films don’t have the budget anymore, but Nick was willing to work for very little on this for about five months, a lot of composers just come in when the film’s done and write to the scenes.
JD: And then you’re locked in. If you want to hit a certain note and it’s not breaking down to the measures, you are kind of screwed. So, this was a labor love for everyone involved. There was a lot of pressure coming from Little Miss Sunshine and we knew we wanted a film that was full of feeling and humor…
VF: And hard work. I think people get lazy sometimes. There is no guarantee that if you work hard it is going to be good, but it was fun just to be able to dive into this… [Jonathan’s phone starts ringing and he answers]…are you taking a call?!?
JD: It’s our daughter. I just want to make sure everything is okay. [Into phone], “Hey Augusta, we are doing an interview right now? Is everything okay? Is there anything you want to say about the movie?” [puts phone on speaker].
VF: Why did it take us six years to make the movie?
Augusta: Me, it’s all my fault. (all laugh)
JD: Right answer. … We’ll call you later.