Kelly Reichardt, Bong Joon Ho, Steve McQueen, Jonathan Dayton, and Valerie Faris, Paul Thomas Anderson— you’ve worked with a lot of great directors and presumably learned lots.
Absolutely. You experience things you respond to, things you don’t respond to and take a collection of learnings with you. The biggest take away though was a sense of permission. Meaning, taking the time to get things right. I’ve seen enough really good filmmakers just take a time out. “Let’s stop. Something’s not right. Let’s figure this out.” Because there’s just no sense in not making it the best it can be. That sense of permission because the clock is ticking, the location is only secured for a day, but fuck it. And as an actor? It made me trust them more.
Also, the sense of feeling like a family making a film. I wanted my crew to feel involved. A lot of the great filmmakers I’ve worked with have that relationship with their crew. I just think cultivating that good energy that drives people to want to be there and work hard is important.
Your idea of permission instantly makes me think of Carey Mulligan in this movie twofold. One, the way her character gives herself permission to behave, often badly and selfishly, and two, the way the movie allows Carey and the character to behave that way without much judgment or trying to pull punches and make her more appealing.
Well, love is the guiding principle from Richard’s book. I’m always astonished that families go through really difficult times and are still somehow remain family. Relationships split, fracture, break. Carey answered a similar question once and she said something like, “men are lionized for their bad behavior, and women are often looked down upon for it.”
It was kind of a shocking response here. And I was like, “wow,” I’m glad we gave her the opportunity to use all her lights and shadows. I think an artist like Carey gets the chance to give even more of herself when the character is allowed to be flawed. She really went for it and she was unafraid and she welcomed it. We worked really hard on that in Jeanette’s character, but I think, it’s also in the eye of the beholder, because I know some audiences find her empathetic and understood her and others who thought she was a bad mom and empathized with Jerry.
I think that’s the brilliance of it, is the shifting and fluid empathy throughout. And Jerry, Jake. He’s so good too, his absence is almost another character. And that heartbreaking line he gives to his son before he leaves, trying to be loving, and says, “men can love each other too,” and he hugs him, but he doesn’t actually say he loves him! It’s so warm and still so distant. It wrecks me.
Well, that’s nice to hear. That line is directly from the book. We did that scene in one shot and I remember people were really worried about that on the day, but I didn’t want to overcook it and punch in with a close-up. Let it hang, let it breathe. It’s funny, I actually wrote the first pseudo draft of this in my hotel room while shooting [Denis Villeneuve’s] “Prisoners” with Jake and that’s where we met and became friends.
Jake balanced that character out and brought a little danger to him. There’s a certain sort of energy and spontaneity to him, like that line “boy, boy, boy!” which is written kind of like him muttering to himself, but Jake kind of explodes instead. I was really grateful for that.
It’s interesting. You talk about if you would’ve directed this 10 years ago, it would’ve been different, you were too young or whatever. But the flip side, you made a film about family and just a few short years later, you have your own and it’s possible it could’ve been really different too with a potentially changed perspective of fatherhood.
Yeah, when I was younger, there would have been more rules. No handheld camera! [chuckles] Certainly the priorities shift. Filmmaking is all-consuming and has to be taxing on a family. The kid’s perspective. What Joe’s doing in the final scene [ed. gently forcing his estranged parents to take an awkward family photo]—which I made up and isn’t in the book, I think in some ways is what I’m doing in this film. Now as a parent? How it would be different? I’m not sure yet, you just go through things again and you let go of certain things through your child [Pause]. Yeah, that’s interesting to consider.
Do you mind if I ask, are you a child of divorce?
Well, no, but…[laughs]. This is an incredible coincidence, but in the book, Jerry and Jeanette live apart for quite some time and in the epilogue, one day, they resume living together. And that’s what my parents did. They never officially or legally divorced, but they did not live together for a large part of my life. It was a unique situation. Weekends here or there, sometimes long gaps, but I think that was part of my confusion. Because their situation was never crystal clear and that’s in the book too. Certainly, I wasn’t trying to make a film about divorce, it’s really just family and my experience in that, reflected through this book that spoke to me.
The ineffable mysteries of parents when they’re going through shit and you’re too young to understand it, damn. Are you going to direct again?
Yeah, I can’t wait to make another film. I’m afraid there’s going to be five-year gaps, unfortunately, which is not what I want, but writing is hard and takes time, especially when you want to write something meaningful. We have a family now and we love acting, but you also have to strike a balance. I do have my eye on something, I don’t want to talk about it because we’ll see if it gets to the finish line, but I am messing around with a story now. We’ll see.
Will you write with Zoe again?
Well, [pause, chuckles], I would like to, but she might have different feelings—I say that kind of jokingly. It was easier than acting with each other though [in “Ruby Sparks”]! It was pretty intense, so it would take a lot for us to do that again. But we will work together again in creating something, bringing a story to life in some capacity.
“Wildlife” is available on DVD and Blu-ray via the Criterion Collection now.