Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko arrived on my radar in 1998 with her critic-proof debut feature, High Art. The main reason I saw it was Ally Sheedy. I grew up in the eighties watching her in stuff like War Games, St. Elmo's Fire, Oxford Blues, The Breakfast Club, Short Circuit... She was awesome. I loved her smile and how she laughed. Trite as it may sound, Ally Sheedy always lit up the scene. And then the nineties happened, to her and to me. She continued working, I guess, just not in anything I was watching. Then again, I wasn't watching much. The first four years of the nineties saw me in high school. The next four, college. Luckily, studying film in college expanded my interests to include low-budget indie fare, just in time for Ally Sheedy to reemerge, so to speak. I wouldn't've blinked twice at a movie like High Art before college, but after college, I couldn't get enough indie. I was a celluloid astronaut discovering a new world teeming with ineffable life. I didn't have a chance to catch High Art during its theatrical run which, like all too many indies, wasn't very long. So I ended up renting it at some point during my first year at SC, 1998-99. I have to be honest, in spite of Ally Sheedy and all the terrific press it had garnered, High Art was tough for me to watch that first time. The plot doesn't exactly zoom ahead, if you catch my drift. Plus, Ally Sheedy wasn't the Ally Sheedy I remembered.
She plays this wreck named Lucy Berliner. The backstory has her as a photographer who became a living legend in the New York art scene. But then the fame became too much and she went AWOL in Europe. When the film starts, she's back in New York with a German girlfriend named Greta, but her (former) fans in New York have no idea she's back. Lucy just happens to live in a flat above the main character, Syd, played by the underrated Ozzie actress Radha Mitchell. Syd's an assistant editor/gopher at a photography magazine. When she learns that Lucy Berliner lives right above her, she's shocked. The legend is here! But then it gets interesting. She sees that Lucy's not into photography anymore. She's listless, idle, on drugs. Totally unmotivated. And then they start falling for each other, much to Greta's chagrin. And by the way, let me give a shout-out to Patricia Clarkson as Greta. You talk about one of the best examples of an actress cast against type. Here you have a Southern belle from Nawlins playing a smoky-voiced German junky who always seems like she's about to nod off (and sometimes does). Soon enough you forget this is Patricia Clarkson. I know Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell got the props for their performances, as they should have, but Patricia Clarkson is the unsung hero here. Her very believable jealousy helps spur the same plot I had a hard time discerning at first. Yes, I've seen High Art a few more times, and it gets better each time. The plot is actually very visible, and equally simple, as the best plots tend to be. Indeed, High Art's plot is perfect. Each scene serves a purpose when the film is viewed holistically. Not to waste a single scene is a rare thing.
Another thing film school has made me do is follow directors. Most folks don't give two hoots about the credits beyond the leading actors. I'm not most folks when it comes to movies, though, as this blog makes abundantly clear. I very much pay attention to who directed a piece, who wrote it, who photographed it, who composed the score, all that stuff. So naturally, after High Art, I had to keep tabs on Lisa Cholodenko's career. Her follow-up was 2002's Laurel Canyon, which also got rave reviews. This time I didn't dawdle. I caught a weekend matinee show of it at the local art house near me in the Valley. Two years later she did a flick called Cavedweller, produced by and starring Kyra Sedgwick (Mrs. Kevin Bacon) just before she started that series The Closer. Somehow I missed Cavedweller. It's possible it got an extremely limited run or, as happens quite a bit with indies, went straight to DVD. I keep meaning to get to it but, like a lot of things, I get sidetracked by this pest called life. I'll get to it, though. It's already on my queue. After that, I'll've seen all her films, including her fourth and, unless Cavedweller is spectacular, best one yet: The Kids Are All Right. I just saw it today at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks. And yes, Lisa Cholodenko was there afterward for a Q&A.
I won't spoil the plot for you, but if you've seen the trailer, you already know the crux of the problem here. You've got a lesbian couple played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. They have a daughter and son who were both conceived by artificial insemination. The daughter, Joni, has just turned eighteen and wants to take advantage of her newfound right to look up the man who donated the sperm. (Side note: That gal who plays Joni's friend Sasha is Zosia Mamet, David Mamet's daughter by Lindsay Crouse.) As luck would have it, the biological father, Paul (the always dependable Mark Ruffalo) lives nearby. He runs this great restaurant and bar with a menu entirely informed by the produce he harvests himself. Lest you think he's a total do-gooder, Paul's also a sort of Casanova. Among many other women rotating through his sex life is one of his waitresses, Tanya. He's never been married, which suits his bohemian lifestyle just fine. Soon enough, of course, he meets the two kids and takes a shining to them. They don't want their moms to know, but of course they have to know if this plot's going to get any thicker. Paul comes over and they all have dinner at the family's beautiful house. At first it seems like Paul might be just the distraction the couple needs to escape the tension we noticed between them at the start of the film. Annette Bening's Nic is a whip-smart, if high strung, doctor. Very type A and focused. Julianne Moore's Jules, meantime, is a landscape designer, a creative and free spirit, pretty much the exact opposite of Nic. During that first dinner with Paul, Jules talks about her landscaping business. This perks up Paul's ears. He talks about growing his own food and that he's all into gardening and whatnot but has never had the time to give his backyard the attention it deserves. Would Jules be interested? Sure she is! You can tell Nic's not crazy about the idea, but Jules doesn't care. So she starts working for Paul. The chemistry between Jules and Paul is palpable. For one thing, Jules loves how Paul is so interested in her work. Nic’s never shown any such interest. Can you see where this is going? Yep, Jules and Paul have an affair, which you know Nic, smart as she is, is bound to uncover.
I'll stop there. Sounds juicy, huh? You should definitely see this. Special shout-out to Annette Bening. She was absolutely brilliant. I totally forgot that she was the cutie with whom Michael Douglas's President became all smitten in The American President, or that she was Virginia Hill in Bugsy. I also liked her in Being Julia a few years ago. Her choice of roles is awesome. It's like she's always trying to throw her fans a wickedly fun curve ball.
Today's Q&A was conducted by this guy named Ari Karpel, a New York-based writer who co-runs Modern Tonic, a blog for "gay-approved pop culture gems before they've been co-opted by everyone else." He also contributes to the New York Times Movie section. The first thing he asked Lisa Cholodenko was where she grew up. As it turns out, she's a Valley girl. More than that, she's from Sherman Oaks, where today's screening took place. "I grew up five minutes from here," she said. That's cool. I'm not sure I've ever been to a screening with a director who hailed from the same neighborhood as the movie theater, not to speak of the movie itself, at least some of which was shot in the Valley.
The first movie-related question Ari asked was why Lisa hired Stuart Blumberg to help her write the script, a clear break from the trend of her earlier three films, which she wrote by herself in addition to directing. Lisa said it was specifically because she'd written her first three features by herself that she didn't want to write her fourth one alone. Now that she's done the solo thing three times, she's decided she doesn't like it. Plus, she credits Stuart, a MADtv veteran, with having a more mainstream comedy sensibility, better equipped to craft scenes with solid comedic timing that would appeal to a broad audience. Going back to how I called High Art challenging, that's another thing Lisa's gotten tired of, writing stuff that's challenging and therefore won't make much money. She stated quite bluntly how bothered she was that more people didn't see High Art and Laurel Canyon even though both did very well at the festivals and got all that great press. So for The Kids Are All Right, she stepped out of her comfort zone and took deliberate aim at the mainstream and brought Stuart aboard so she wouldn't feel too insecure.
Lisa also had personal reasons for approaching Stuart. They've known each other since their college days in New York back in the eighties (Lisa studied film at Columbia). She said that when he was in college, Stuart donated sperm to make some extra cash. As I said above, the backstory with Mark Ruffalo's character Paul is that he too donated sperm when he was in college because he was strapped for cash. And so, in addition to the reasons already given, Lisa brought on Stuart to help make the Paul character more believable. Lisa, meanwhile, drew from her own experiences for the Nic and Jules characters. She didn't go into it too much since it is, after all, personal, but she and her partner Wendy used an anonymous sperm donor to have their four-year-old son Calder. Now you'll know what it means during the credits when you see the film was dedicated to "Wendy and Calder."
The film's title was originally just a working title. Lisa liked the ironic title of the 1979 The Who concert doc. She slapped it on this project, and it stuck. One clue as to why her films are spaced so widely apart came when Ari asked her about raising money for the film. I quote Lisa when I say fundraising for Kids was "miserable." She didn't elaborate on that too much. I have a feeling having done so would've brought hard feelings back to the surface. Suffice it to say she shouldered the fundraising responsibilities by herself. And of course Calder is another reason it's been a while since Cavedweller. Lisa and Wendy have been fulltime parents since 2006.
Talk about anticlimax, Lisa said after all the time since her last film, and after all the time it took to raise money for Kids, shooting the film hardly took more than three weeks. Twenty-three days to be exact. That's incredibly fast for a feature film, but she didn't have much choice. The longer you keep stars who are in high demand, the more you'll have to pay them. The tight budget decreed a tight schedule, in other words. She stated quite plainly that if she'd had more money, she would've been happy to pace herself with a less intense schedule. She also admitted how pessimistic she was during the shoot. It could get so chaotic sometimes that she was convinced she'd miss well wide of the mainstream mark. But sure enough, as she was putting a rough cut together, she became "pleasantly surprised."
Even though it only officially came out last week, she did get to show it at Sundance six months ago. That meant working through the holidays to put the final touches on the film so it would be in tip top shape. It paid off. Focus Features scooped it up before she left Park City. Thanks to that and the week it's officially been out, Lisa said she's been blown away by the huge cross-section of people who've seen it and responded favorably. She's had kids come up to her and rave about it. That's interesting. I wonder if I would've watched this as a kid. I reckon so. Joni and Laser aren't the main characters, but Lisa still does a decent job conveying their sympathetic points of view. And so now, after all the hardship and cynicism, Lisa admitted to being "cautiously hopeful" that Kids will be her first film to achieve mainstream commercial success. With a budget of about four million, tiny by mainstream Hollywood standards, I'd be shocked if this doesn't turn a profit.
As for how she was able to corral such a great cast together, Lisa said it started with Julianne Moore. They've known each other a good while now and have always talked about making a movie together. But Julianne Moore is, after all, Julianne Moore which, coupled with Lisa's methodical MO of building a film from the ground up, meant the planets had to align just so if they were ever going to work together. When Lisa and Stuart were happy with the script, they sent it to Julianne as a shot in the dark. Julianne loved it....and was available. In fact, it was her idea to cast Annette Bening as Nic. The only problem was that Lisa didn't know Annette. Neither did Julianne, but somehow Julianne knew Annette's e-mail address and pinged her about the script. Hilarious, huh? Simple as that. Just shoot an e-mail to Annette friggin' Bening to see if she wants to read a script. I know Lisa feels down on her luck sometimes, but do you have any idea how many writers and directors would love to have connections like that?
Annette's coming aboard, though, did have its proviso: She wanted to work on the script some more. Lisa said Annette peppered her with questions about the story and the characters. With Annette's motivation, the three of them really anatomized the script, which Lisa said was another reason pre-production took a while. Someone in the audience asked if the actresses' husbands visited the set. Lisa's response: "The one you're thinking of did not." But Julianne's man, indie filmmaker Bart Freundlich, stopped by now and again.
Another person in the audience asked how the three leads prepared for their roles. Simple, Lisa said. All three actors have been married a good while now. All they had to do was bring their life experiences, which is what Lisa did when she wrote it.
An older woman in the audience was confused about how Julianne Moore's lesbian character could suddenly like a guy. "How could she suddenly turn bisexual?" she asked. I'm paraphrasing, but not by much. Lisa shot that down, albeit politely, as did Ari. They're both gay and said as nicely as they could that what Julianne Moore's character does is, in fact, very believable.
She plays this wreck named Lucy Berliner. The backstory has her as a photographer who became a living legend in the New York art scene. But then the fame became too much and she went AWOL in Europe. When the film starts, she's back in New York with a German girlfriend named Greta, but her (former) fans in New York have no idea she's back. Lucy just happens to live in a flat above the main character, Syd, played by the underrated Ozzie actress Radha Mitchell. Syd's an assistant editor/gopher at a photography magazine. When she learns that Lucy Berliner lives right above her, she's shocked. The legend is here! But then it gets interesting. She sees that Lucy's not into photography anymore. She's listless, idle, on drugs. Totally unmotivated. And then they start falling for each other, much to Greta's chagrin. And by the way, let me give a shout-out to Patricia Clarkson as Greta. You talk about one of the best examples of an actress cast against type. Here you have a Southern belle from Nawlins playing a smoky-voiced German junky who always seems like she's about to nod off (and sometimes does). Soon enough you forget this is Patricia Clarkson. I know Ally Sheedy and Radha Mitchell got the props for their performances, as they should have, but Patricia Clarkson is the unsung hero here. Her very believable jealousy helps spur the same plot I had a hard time discerning at first. Yes, I've seen High Art a few more times, and it gets better each time. The plot is actually very visible, and equally simple, as the best plots tend to be. Indeed, High Art's plot is perfect. Each scene serves a purpose when the film is viewed holistically. Not to waste a single scene is a rare thing.
Another thing film school has made me do is follow directors. Most folks don't give two hoots about the credits beyond the leading actors. I'm not most folks when it comes to movies, though, as this blog makes abundantly clear. I very much pay attention to who directed a piece, who wrote it, who photographed it, who composed the score, all that stuff. So naturally, after High Art, I had to keep tabs on Lisa Cholodenko's career. Her follow-up was 2002's Laurel Canyon, which also got rave reviews. This time I didn't dawdle. I caught a weekend matinee show of it at the local art house near me in the Valley. Two years later she did a flick called Cavedweller, produced by and starring Kyra Sedgwick (Mrs. Kevin Bacon) just before she started that series The Closer. Somehow I missed Cavedweller. It's possible it got an extremely limited run or, as happens quite a bit with indies, went straight to DVD. I keep meaning to get to it but, like a lot of things, I get sidetracked by this pest called life. I'll get to it, though. It's already on my queue. After that, I'll've seen all her films, including her fourth and, unless Cavedweller is spectacular, best one yet: The Kids Are All Right. I just saw it today at the ArcLight Sherman Oaks. And yes, Lisa Cholodenko was there afterward for a Q&A.
I won't spoil the plot for you, but if you've seen the trailer, you already know the crux of the problem here. You've got a lesbian couple played by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. They have a daughter and son who were both conceived by artificial insemination. The daughter, Joni, has just turned eighteen and wants to take advantage of her newfound right to look up the man who donated the sperm. (Side note: That gal who plays Joni's friend Sasha is Zosia Mamet, David Mamet's daughter by Lindsay Crouse.) As luck would have it, the biological father, Paul (the always dependable Mark Ruffalo) lives nearby. He runs this great restaurant and bar with a menu entirely informed by the produce he harvests himself. Lest you think he's a total do-gooder, Paul's also a sort of Casanova. Among many other women rotating through his sex life is one of his waitresses, Tanya. He's never been married, which suits his bohemian lifestyle just fine. Soon enough, of course, he meets the two kids and takes a shining to them. They don't want their moms to know, but of course they have to know if this plot's going to get any thicker. Paul comes over and they all have dinner at the family's beautiful house. At first it seems like Paul might be just the distraction the couple needs to escape the tension we noticed between them at the start of the film. Annette Bening's Nic is a whip-smart, if high strung, doctor. Very type A and focused. Julianne Moore's Jules, meantime, is a landscape designer, a creative and free spirit, pretty much the exact opposite of Nic. During that first dinner with Paul, Jules talks about her landscaping business. This perks up Paul's ears. He talks about growing his own food and that he's all into gardening and whatnot but has never had the time to give his backyard the attention it deserves. Would Jules be interested? Sure she is! You can tell Nic's not crazy about the idea, but Jules doesn't care. So she starts working for Paul. The chemistry between Jules and Paul is palpable. For one thing, Jules loves how Paul is so interested in her work. Nic’s never shown any such interest. Can you see where this is going? Yep, Jules and Paul have an affair, which you know Nic, smart as she is, is bound to uncover.
I'll stop there. Sounds juicy, huh? You should definitely see this. Special shout-out to Annette Bening. She was absolutely brilliant. I totally forgot that she was the cutie with whom Michael Douglas's President became all smitten in The American President, or that she was Virginia Hill in Bugsy. I also liked her in Being Julia a few years ago. Her choice of roles is awesome. It's like she's always trying to throw her fans a wickedly fun curve ball.
Today's Q&A was conducted by this guy named Ari Karpel, a New York-based writer who co-runs Modern Tonic, a blog for "gay-approved pop culture gems before they've been co-opted by everyone else." He also contributes to the New York Times Movie section. The first thing he asked Lisa Cholodenko was where she grew up. As it turns out, she's a Valley girl. More than that, she's from Sherman Oaks, where today's screening took place. "I grew up five minutes from here," she said. That's cool. I'm not sure I've ever been to a screening with a director who hailed from the same neighborhood as the movie theater, not to speak of the movie itself, at least some of which was shot in the Valley.
The first movie-related question Ari asked was why Lisa hired Stuart Blumberg to help her write the script, a clear break from the trend of her earlier three films, which she wrote by herself in addition to directing. Lisa said it was specifically because she'd written her first three features by herself that she didn't want to write her fourth one alone. Now that she's done the solo thing three times, she's decided she doesn't like it. Plus, she credits Stuart, a MADtv veteran, with having a more mainstream comedy sensibility, better equipped to craft scenes with solid comedic timing that would appeal to a broad audience. Going back to how I called High Art challenging, that's another thing Lisa's gotten tired of, writing stuff that's challenging and therefore won't make much money. She stated quite bluntly how bothered she was that more people didn't see High Art and Laurel Canyon even though both did very well at the festivals and got all that great press. So for The Kids Are All Right, she stepped out of her comfort zone and took deliberate aim at the mainstream and brought Stuart aboard so she wouldn't feel too insecure.
Lisa also had personal reasons for approaching Stuart. They've known each other since their college days in New York back in the eighties (Lisa studied film at Columbia). She said that when he was in college, Stuart donated sperm to make some extra cash. As I said above, the backstory with Mark Ruffalo's character Paul is that he too donated sperm when he was in college because he was strapped for cash. And so, in addition to the reasons already given, Lisa brought on Stuart to help make the Paul character more believable. Lisa, meanwhile, drew from her own experiences for the Nic and Jules characters. She didn't go into it too much since it is, after all, personal, but she and her partner Wendy used an anonymous sperm donor to have their four-year-old son Calder. Now you'll know what it means during the credits when you see the film was dedicated to "Wendy and Calder."
The film's title was originally just a working title. Lisa liked the ironic title of the 1979 The Who concert doc. She slapped it on this project, and it stuck. One clue as to why her films are spaced so widely apart came when Ari asked her about raising money for the film. I quote Lisa when I say fundraising for Kids was "miserable." She didn't elaborate on that too much. I have a feeling having done so would've brought hard feelings back to the surface. Suffice it to say she shouldered the fundraising responsibilities by herself. And of course Calder is another reason it's been a while since Cavedweller. Lisa and Wendy have been fulltime parents since 2006.
Talk about anticlimax, Lisa said after all the time since her last film, and after all the time it took to raise money for Kids, shooting the film hardly took more than three weeks. Twenty-three days to be exact. That's incredibly fast for a feature film, but she didn't have much choice. The longer you keep stars who are in high demand, the more you'll have to pay them. The tight budget decreed a tight schedule, in other words. She stated quite plainly that if she'd had more money, she would've been happy to pace herself with a less intense schedule. She also admitted how pessimistic she was during the shoot. It could get so chaotic sometimes that she was convinced she'd miss well wide of the mainstream mark. But sure enough, as she was putting a rough cut together, she became "pleasantly surprised."
Even though it only officially came out last week, she did get to show it at Sundance six months ago. That meant working through the holidays to put the final touches on the film so it would be in tip top shape. It paid off. Focus Features scooped it up before she left Park City. Thanks to that and the week it's officially been out, Lisa said she's been blown away by the huge cross-section of people who've seen it and responded favorably. She's had kids come up to her and rave about it. That's interesting. I wonder if I would've watched this as a kid. I reckon so. Joni and Laser aren't the main characters, but Lisa still does a decent job conveying their sympathetic points of view. And so now, after all the hardship and cynicism, Lisa admitted to being "cautiously hopeful" that Kids will be her first film to achieve mainstream commercial success. With a budget of about four million, tiny by mainstream Hollywood standards, I'd be shocked if this doesn't turn a profit.
As for how she was able to corral such a great cast together, Lisa said it started with Julianne Moore. They've known each other a good while now and have always talked about making a movie together. But Julianne Moore is, after all, Julianne Moore which, coupled with Lisa's methodical MO of building a film from the ground up, meant the planets had to align just so if they were ever going to work together. When Lisa and Stuart were happy with the script, they sent it to Julianne as a shot in the dark. Julianne loved it....and was available. In fact, it was her idea to cast Annette Bening as Nic. The only problem was that Lisa didn't know Annette. Neither did Julianne, but somehow Julianne knew Annette's e-mail address and pinged her about the script. Hilarious, huh? Simple as that. Just shoot an e-mail to Annette friggin' Bening to see if she wants to read a script. I know Lisa feels down on her luck sometimes, but do you have any idea how many writers and directors would love to have connections like that?
Annette's coming aboard, though, did have its proviso: She wanted to work on the script some more. Lisa said Annette peppered her with questions about the story and the characters. With Annette's motivation, the three of them really anatomized the script, which Lisa said was another reason pre-production took a while. Someone in the audience asked if the actresses' husbands visited the set. Lisa's response: "The one you're thinking of did not." But Julianne's man, indie filmmaker Bart Freundlich, stopped by now and again.
Another person in the audience asked how the three leads prepared for their roles. Simple, Lisa said. All three actors have been married a good while now. All they had to do was bring their life experiences, which is what Lisa did when she wrote it.
An older woman in the audience was confused about how Julianne Moore's lesbian character could suddenly like a guy. "How could she suddenly turn bisexual?" she asked. I'm paraphrasing, but not by much. Lisa shot that down, albeit politely, as did Ari. They're both gay and said as nicely as they could that what Julianne Moore's character does is, in fact, very believable.
