Sometimes art just has a way of coming together.
I think so. And that was one of the things on this film, it felt like it did in that way, with Lennon and all things just fit. I mean, I didn’t say like, oh John Lennon with his family and his kids and “Beautiful Boy,” I’ll write a movie about a guy trying to connect with his son. I wrote a thing about a guy connecting, and thought shit, that fits nicely right here. You know what I mean, that’s an interesting thing.
I know exactly what you’re saying; I think a lot of times people try to interpret art as everything was a conscious effort and sometimes people find themes. Maybe the creator didn’t realize, if they were subconsciously doing it
I think it’s one of the most interesting things about art in general without getting too hoighty- toighty in theory but I studied English literature in college, Victorian novels at Oxford university it was a very highbrow kind of affair. I remember all the analysis that would go into it, and I gotta think that all these guys weren’t thinking about that, Dickens and Bronte, they weren’t necessarily thinking about it. I’m a big Howard Stern fan, and one of things Howard always does, he has musicians on.
And Howard gets these things he’s fascinated about when he does these in-depth interviews, it’s like how they wrote songs, right? Songs that are so meaningful to us on so many levels, guys wrote them in ten minutes in a hotel room when they rolled out of bed and had an idea and that became a song that’s lasted for generations. Now it’s open to interpretation in a lot of different ways and I think that’s part of the fun of art. You can look at a painting that somebody just painted because they were feeling something, and then what it makes you feel and interpret is interesting.
I think that’s a great point. One of the things I also liked about the letter, I don’t know if this something in the original one, but the “what do you think about that” line.
It was, it was that exact line. I think he said it at the very end of the letter. The final credits sequence has some of the real life story and it’s actually an image of the real life letters saying “what do you think about that?” Pretty much everything in that letter [in the movie] is mostly verbatim from the [original] letter, that Lennon really wrote. He left a phone number, he said “what do you think about that?”, he said essentially money and fame won’t corrupt your art, only you can do that. I mean that was kind of the text of the letter.
With that line, even if you didn’t write it originally, I think it worked really well in the movie, because it’s kind of like a combination of both sincerity and a little bit of sarcasm.
Yeah it’s a jab, and Lennon had a kind of sense both a wit and a devious playful child there too. Which is kind of like, he’s not just advising, he’s also provoking. It’s a statement, it’s not a question, it’s just in question form. There’s something very interesting about all that.
There’s a lot of that kind of back and forth in the movie, patter between him and the hotel manager [Mary], and then you have the sincerity when he’s meeting his family, but then when you have anything involving Christopher Plummer, it’s basically all witticisms.
Well, it’s important when you’re dealing with this terrority of, I think, hope and optimism and heart. Which is the real world, like unabashedly making a movie that wears its heart on its sleeve, you have to be able to undercut with humor or sarcasm or else there’s a very fine line and no one knows where the line is. I know where it is for me, and mine’s probably a little higher than the average person because I live in the world positively, with optimism and hope. But I try and I know when I’m watching cuts of my movie and I go, oh we’re teetering over the edge, we need something to say something biting right now because I’m feeling too much, and I like feeling. I’m asking people to feel too much, so that’s the kind of balancing act that’s unique.
That’s what I’m interested in, that two hours in the movie theater where you can really feel real emotion … but also enjoy yourself. tweet
I admire and have great love for all these movies that win awards and are technically proficient, and are so restrained to the point of being depressing. But for me the heart is the needle, and the thread I’ll keep trying to thread for the rest of my career, probably, is finding the ability to make an audience feel the the same two hours they’re also laughing. And that’s what I’m interested in, that two hours in the movie theater where you can really feel real emotion, cinematic emotion, but also enjoy yourself, have a good time in a movie theater.
That’s definitely how I felt, I remember when I saw Crazy, Stupid, Love. There were a lot of feelings, but then you had the denouement at the end, and Ryan Gosling bursting out laughing, and you can’t help but laugh along with him. There wasn’t exactly the same of, it’s all coming together here, but I would say a little bit of the last scene had something like that, building up the tensions.
No, it’s a very different film, and Crazy, Stupid, Love had its comedic moments much broader than this, so this is quieter kind of film.
The balance is definitely there. I’ve seen a lot of movies also, and I can appreciate the ones that are constantly hitting you, like Still Alice with Julianne Moore. It was a great movie, but I wouldn’t want to see that one …
Again.
Or over and over. Or maybe even again.
Yeah, you don’t want to watch it like, the next week. I mean I love it too, and Julianne is exceptional, but even that, it’s not just a depressing subject matter, the movie’s about heavy duty stuff going on the world. And I feel that’s our cool currency right now, stuff for cynics is what’s cool.
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