Super Doc on Iran at the Right Time

The Iran Job is Playing in Theaters

Super Doc on Iran at the Right Time

(from brinkzine.com 10/12/12)

Till Schauder and Kevin Sheppard,

photo by DP

I'll make the wild prediction that Argo will be the biggest-grossing Iran-set movie this weekend. But that film might whet your appetite for The Iran Job, a more intimate, sympathetic, and up-to-date documentary--set in Shiraz--about the people of that country that is also opening in New York today, at the IFC Center. Directed and photographed by Till Schauder (who has made award-winning films in his native Germany and America, where he now lives), it tells the unusual story of American professional basketball player and Jacksonville U. star Kevin Sheppard, who travels from his home in the US Virgin Islands to Iran to play point guard for the new A.S. Sharaz, in southwestern Iran. He experiences culture shock--in a good way--as he becomes close not only to his teammates but also to three special, brave women, Elaheh, Hilda, and Laleh, and much happens on the political landscape. Schauder says in the press notes, "This film is a story of people coming together to learn from each other. It shares our shared humanity and it points toward what unites us, rather than what separates us." It's a major message at a time when our political candidates debate about who is tougher toward Iran and "when" Schauder says, "we muse about going to war with people we often know too little about." I recently had this conversation with the engaging Schauder and Sheppard in anticipation of their film's timley release.
Danny Peary: Till, I read that you met Kevin via Skype when you were searching for a basketball player to follow.
Till Schauder: I did in-person auditions with some players and I literally shot footage with them. I had them come here, or I went to where they were. They were all okay, but I really needed somebody special. My wife Sara Nodjoumi, who co-produced with me, told me, "I don't care about basketball, so you've got to find somebody who's going to entertain me--and by "me" she meant everybody who doesn't care about basketball. So it had to be a basketball player who had something more to offer. I had gone on one research trip and made some connections with coaches and scouts in Iran and put them and Sara in touch because she speaks Farsi. When an American player got signed, they would let her know. Unfortunately, because of the quick way contracts work there, there was almost no way for me to prepare. Kevin got a call on Monday and on Wednesday they expected him to be there. That's how quick that goes. So that's why we had to meet on Skype rather than in person. But you can tell a lot on Skype, and with him, I could see his curiosity and that he is someone who doesn't try to please anybody and doesnt try to censor himself. He never tried to say anything to please me because he thought it was what the filmmaker wanted to hear. I loved that quality. He would joke about Iranians and about Americans. That was very important.
DP: Kevin, did you know about the Iranian Super League before they offered you a contract?
Kevin Sheppard: No. It was really ironic because when my agent called me, he was like, Do you want to go to Iran? I thought he was punking me or something--"Are you serious? Do they even have basketball?" I had this perception of the country as it was portrayed in the media, that there was mass destruction and Bin Laden types over there. It never crossed my mind that they played basketball until I did a little research.
DP: Had somebody scouted you?
KS: Yeah, I had played in Europe, South America, Israel, and China. They could follow my progress. I had a pretty good track record. Before you go over, they have to offer you a certain amount of money. My agent relayed the message to me and I thought about it for a couple of days before saying yes.
DP: Is there any specific reason they wanted a point guard rather than a big man?
KS: I think I actually changed the process. Most foreign teams can bring in only two foreigners, and normally they bring in two big guys. A lot of the time, the big guys are less skillful, but the little guys come a dime a dozen. I actually broke that mold when A.S. Shiraz brought in a point guard to be the leader of the team. I think once owners saw my effectiveness as a leader on and off the court, a lot more point guards started coming over. We started a new trend.
DP: Did guys you met there want to be point guards or did they all want to be forwards?
KS: A lot of the guys really wanted to be point guards. But someone who doesnt play basketball doesn't understand that the point guard has to be the extension of the coach. He also must be someone who leads by example. And he's gotta be able to sacrifice his game to help a lesser players reach their potential. For example, I knew I was a better shooter than a lot of my teammates but I gave up a lot of shots because I had to give them an opportunity to get involved in the game. If another player is going to play harder for me and is going to play better for the team, I have to sacrifice my shot to give him a shot. A point guard has to know all of these things.
DP: Did your Iranian coach understand that too?
KS: Well, I dont know if he understood that or not because we didn't understand each other. I had played college ball and in so many different countries and played all these different styles, so I could tell what kind of play and feel the coach wanted. He was right up my alley. All he needed to do was just show me the play and give me the options--one, two, or three--and my instincts would take over and I'd take the best option. I did it very effectively, so he just let me take the lead.
DP: Till, you include documentary footage of what was going on politically in Iran while Kevin was playing ball there. It makes the film more political. Was it always your intention to do that?
TS: I wanted the film to be mostly action-based, meaning no talking heads, no sit-down interviews. Everything had to come out of Kevin and the people that he meets. My background is in feature films, so it's always about the character--all drama comes from the characters. However, I was also documenting a period in history--the Green Movement, the presidential election in the US and the presidential election in Iran--and it was clear that events were going to happen, and I needed to document them, to at least give the audience a frame of reference. I used as little documentary footage as possible, but enough to give people a sense of time and where they are.
DP: Kevin, did you know that was going to be in the film when you were making it, that he was going to be make it into a more political film than it would be if he just followed you around?
KS: I didn't know anything, I'd never done a documentary film before, I hadn't watched many documentaries before, so I didnt know what to expect. He basically just told me, "Be natural, I'm just going to follow you around. Not just on the basketball court, but everywhere you go." So it wasn't anything that was planned or rehearsed or scripted. Nobody knew that these things were going to happen. I didn't know.
DP: Till, you sort of vanish in this film. Kevin calls attention to you only a couple of times. But when you turned off the camera, what conversations would you two have during this period?
TS: I would always try to leave the camera on. Always. Even when we were just casually talking.
KS (laughing): I'd be coming out the bathroom and he's standing there with the camera. It was pretty annoying!
TS: You never know what comes, and those casual conversations can be the most interesting and enlightening. I would always learn something new about him, so as I was making the film, he kind of revealed himself, like an onion. There's this layer, that layer and another layer and so forth. We talked about almost everything. You name it. At some point we talked about our families and we realized that we both have four siblings, we both are in the middle, we both had fathers that didn't necessarily approve of what we were doing. Weird similarities that made me really comfortable with him, beyond the fact that he was being very gracious for letting me into his life. We talked about everything: politics, women, sports. We talked about football because it was football season. We would talk about basketball, which was fun for me because I used to play. That was actually great because it got my mind off the more serious parts of this movie. We talked about soccer.
KS: When Germany was playing, get out of his way!
TS: This is not untrue.
DP: The film is a lot about your enlightenment, Kevin, how while being there you saw this world that you never saw before.
KS: All that was natural. When he first told me about the film, I thought, this is going to be pretty boring, just watching basketball all day--especially my team play basketball.
My team was not really the most talented team, as you could tell. One of the things that I learned overseas is they put all the best players on three or four top teams, and the rest of the teams are so mediocre they just fight it out.
DP: If you hadn't had that mindset that your team was going to win the title--which was an impossibility--would you have even made the playoffs?
KS: That's a great question. Thinking back, I didn't even think we were going to make it to the playoffs, really. I didn't tell anyone that, I just had to see how I could motivate those guys to go beyond what they were thinking. A lot of the time when we would play those top teams, we would lose, but we would play well. Against one of the best teams, we lost by only two points. I was so mad and disappointed, but these guys on my team were jumping around happy, because they couldn't believe they played so good against this super-team. I was like, "Man, this culture is crazy!" I'd rather lose by fifty, knowing I got my butt kicked, than lose by one or two. That tells me I had an opportunity to win and didn't. That struggle itself was something.

DP: But the thing is they werent going backwards.
KS: Definitely, they were improving. And I saw the improvement, because they let me in, into their lifestyle and how they live. Which is pretty weird, because as overseas players, we could get fired at any time and be sent home--it's not guaranteed like in the NBA. So if you don't produce you could be gone on the next plane.. So the job is so not secure. All the overseas players know this, so they stick together. And the locals on the team stay together, because the locals are going to always have a job. But I was mingling with these guys, and then I started getting caught up emotionally with them, and it really opened me up because it made me understand why they do some of the things they do on the court. A lot of the time their personal lives were getting triggered by and intermingled with their court performances. I'm coming from America, I'm coming from Jacksonville University, a structured society. I go to practice at three oclock, practice starts at three, I'm getting ready, I'm swearing, three oclock hits, boom, practice starts. But in Iran, the players are coming to practice with their shoes in their hands at 3:15, and the coach is reading at 3:45; it was just total chaos. I'm like, what is going on here? It was mind-boggling to me that this was a professional team. This is crazy! But then I started seeing how they live. Everything for them is so nonchalant. Dont worry, were just going to get it down. Insha'Allah, God willing we're going to do it. And that goes for everything. Insha'Allah can turn into one day, into two weeks, into one month. I'll never forget Insha'Allah. Tomorrow, God willing. Everything is tomorrow.
DP: In the movie, there's a line by you explaining why you agreed to play in Iran--"God said to go to the unfamiliar." Soon you were in a strange world
KS: I'm actually spiritual. I don't like to associate myself so much with religion because I know that a lot of the time religion is among the causes for the biggest problems we are having in the world. Whether it's Muslim or Christianity, when you do go back and read the text itself, you see it's the same God that all of us are praying to. The one thing He asks us to do is love. So if love is supposed to be the antidote to everything, we should love each other no matter who we are. So I took the opportunity to go from the familiar, my normal surroundings in the Virgin Islands, and go to the other, where everybody thinks they have weapons of mass destruction and terrorists. Maybe they do, I don't know. But at least I wanted 

to find it out for myself.

  Kevin meets Iranians who love Americans.

DP: What did you find out about the Iranian people?
KS: They are so genuinely nice. They won't let you pay for nothing, even when you try to sneak it in. They cursed me out when I paid and made me take my money back. They go at every level to make you feel welcome. And thats something that I'll never forget, because these are the things I never hear, growing up in America and the Virgin Islands.
DP: The great thing about this movie is that it shows you, intimately, the very people some people in America want to bomb. Till, can you talk a little about that, and how your film is about people coming together to learn from each other?

TS: What you just said is true, about how we must make sure we know who were getting into a military conflict with. Our executive producer, Abigail Disney, who I cant praise enough, just wrote a blog that will be on the Huffington Post. She used an LA Times quote about the film where they call it a "remarkably apolitical political film." The whole blog is about the personal versus the political and how you can't disconnect the two, so when we in America look at these satellite pictures and just see these dots and say, "Okay, that's Baghdad, if they dont do what we want them to do well bomb them," it is all extremely abstract. Its simple then to go and do something because you really have no concept of what it actually does to real people. This may sound like a very obvious thing, but to a lot of people it just is not. With Iran for example, the overwhelming perception in America is that we need to fear these people. They are the biggest part of the Axis of Evil or whatever is left of it. It's always about fear and is based on a lot of missing information or misinformation. I always like to point out that Iranians have a very high opinion of Americans as people. The polls there, when they ask about the favorability of Americans, are incredibly high, 60%, 70% in favor. You would never get that in any other country in the region, including Israel. That needs to be told. People in America need to know this. Why are we wanting to go to war with people who have such a good opinion of us? That's not to say that there's not an issue with the regime. But it's very dangerous to lump the regime, or the government, with the people. You just cannot do that.
DP: A'' Obama has to say is, "The people there are very much like us, they like us, and they're against the regime too. So we dont want to bomb them." That's enough. But we don't hear that.
KS: No, we don't.
TS: There's something else that's important. There is often the perception that Iranians are nice but since they have a government that is the problem, we need to go help them and make their country like ours, because that's how everybody wants to live. That's just not the case. One of my favorite lines in the film is when one of the three young women Kevin befriends says, "I want to see the changes here in the country, I don't want to go anywhere and enjoy their democracy. I want to have it in my county." Iranians love their country and their culture. They don't want to live in America, or Germany or whatever. They want to live in their own country, where they have their people, their culture, their food, their music, all the rest of it; they just want to do in circumstances that are agreeable to them. That's important, because some elements of American political circles, they have this idea that we are the saviors and bringing them something that's not always wanted by those people. Also, I think it's crucial that they figure out their own mess. They can't rely on somebody else to do it for them. It doesn't work, there are very few exceptions where that has worked, with Germany, ironically being one of them.
DP: Because of Abigail Disney's involvement, were you planning on having a woman's point of view? You were fortunate enough to meet these three very interesting, candid young women--Elaheh, Hilda, and Laleh, the most political--who even sneak into Kevin's apartment at great risk to have conversations.
TS: You cant plan on that, and I didn't plan on it, but I have to point out once again that the producer of this film is a woman, my wife Sara. She was born here but her parents are Iranian. She, of course, influenced a lot of about this production, including the point of view that we're taking and the elements that we're focused on. It's really hard to make a documentary, and I asked her, "Are you cool with us doing this because this is going to take a few years?" As I said, if it was just going to be about basketball, she would have said, "No way. It's not interesting unless you can make it about more than that and use basketball to really get into the social fabric of the country." It's a really good opportunity to do that, with other characters rather than just the basketball player, and we were so blessed when these three women entered the film, because that gave us an opportunity to tell the story of the Iranian people through the eyes of women. I love that we made what could potentially be a jock film, about a guy playing a man's sport, and yet what the audience takes away from this film, overwhelmingly, is the story of these three women. Once I met them, I realized I had to find a way for them to like me enough to let me work with them, because it was clear that they would be great assets to the film.

DP: They certainly don't fit our stereotypes of completely suppressed Muslim women. They even wear jeans underneath their burqas, when theyre watching the basketball games.
TS: For the record, they're not burqa wearers--that's in Saudi Arabia. They wear hijabs. I'll never forget this one guy, at a big film festival, saying, "We've already seen all these women with their burqas." He was saying that the film was "a base-level introduction to Islamic society." But if you call it a base-level introduction, you should at least know the difference between a burqa and a hijab. I'm not saying this to knock you, but that is why a film like this is so important, because people always assume that they know the people --"they're Muslim, there's a little bit about Shiites, the other funny sect there, Sunnis, etc."--but you can't really know them until you meet them. That's why a story like this, where Kevin allows an audience to be with the Iranian people on an everyday--sometimes mundane, sometimes very substantial--basis, can be useful and benefit people.
DP: Kevin, were you open from the beginning to the women enlightening you? Or did it take a while for you to say, "Hey, they are more than just attractive women, they have a lot to say that I can learn from?" You seem very receptive.
KS: Obviously I had to put them through a testing phase, because I didn't know much about their culture. I'm a very curious guy, so I tried to figure out what these women were like. Because even I had prejudices with these women. Like what you guys are talking about in regard to what they wore? I didnt know what that was. We used to say they wear ninja suits--and stuff like that. I'd say that if I was living over there I'd have twelve wives. Because those were the kinds of stories we heard. So I had my own built-in prejudices, but then I said, I'm going to try to figure out a little more about these women. And the more I talked to them, the more I realized that these women were even smarter than my teammates. There was only one guy on my team who spoke English; these three women spoke English and French. All of them had very high degrees, even in chemical engineering. It was amazing that they had degrees and this intelligence, but they cant excel at the highest level there. If these women were in America, the sky's the limit.
TS: Wha'ts interesting is that more than fifty percent of college graduates in Iran are now women. That is actually a product of the Islamic Revolution. That's not to say that the Islamic Revolution was good in any way, but it definitely had some aspects that benefitted large parts of the society. However, there is also, of course, a weird contradiction with that. They give women that opportunity but then when they get that degree, they can't go any further. In regard to your asking Kevin if he was willing to let the three women open his mind--I think it's so evident that they achieved it, whether he was willing or not. Just that fact that when he came back home, he related differently to his girlfriend, who is now his wife.
DP: Kevin, did your learning from these women affect your relationship with your girlfriend so much that when you came back you finally proposed?
KS: Well, I had all that in mind before I met the women, really. Even though there was a struggle between the Iranian people and their government, you could see a second struggle between the women and the government. The women were fighting two wars, basically. It touched me more, being African American, because I heard stories about the Civil War in America, and I saw the movies about what African Americans had to fight in America, so I saw there was a parallel between their lives and mine. Just sixty years ago, my forefathers had to fight for our right to have equal opportunity. A struggle within a struggle. It really connected me.
DP: Did they connect to you because they understood the African American background?
KS: Definitely. One the reasons we got so close was that we kept explaining situations we had to each other; that's how we learned even more from each other. I wasn't just listening to their problems and telling them how to fix them, I was telling them my problems, too. We were just bouncing ideas back and forth, and the conversation became easy. These women didn't have the opportunity to speak to Iranian men in this way, I think it brought them the type of stimulation, not sexual but intelligent stimulation, that they were missing.
DP: I'm not sure if Till intended to show that there was something flirtatious between you and Elaheh, but at very least you had a strong connection. Did you expect her to eventually leave her parents and pursue acting in Tehran?
KS: I felt she was pretty enough, she was very intelligent--her English was very good--but they're so respectful to the father figure over there. They seek approval of the fathers and I didn't think he'd give it to her. So I knew she was not going.
TS: I want to add to what Kevin said about how his being African American bonded him with the women. They share the experience of being second-class citizens with Kevin's forefathers. It was so ironic to me to see that Kevin was connecting to these women at the same time the first African American president was elected after running in the Democratic primary against the first woman, Hillary Clinton, who had a legitimate shot at getting elected. That was an interesting mirror image of these people bonding.

DP: Kevin, you weren't as excited as the Iranians were about Obama being elected. You had a wait-and-see attitude.
KS: I was excited. Till came in when the celebration was going on. I started sitting down, thinking, everybody's going to love you now. I just put myself in the athletic mode, because Im an athlete. In the professional sports world, you should know that it's not what you did yesterday, it's what you're going to do for me from now on. When things start going bad, you're going to see the people come after you. So I said that going to happen to Obama, too, because even though you're cheering right now, that economy is not looking promising. You're going to be throwing stones.
DP: When you returned to play ball in Iran the next two years, had the people's attitude toward Obama changed because the US-Iranian relationship hadn't changed under Obama?
KS: I think they're still optimistic. It's not as heightened as it was when he became president and there was celebrating in the streets in Iran--even the doctor I used to go to was celebrating. That was really exciting to see, because it showed that Obama really broke a lot of barriers, worldwide.Elaheh

TS: You asked about the flirtatious moment between Kevin and Elaheh in the film, that everybody always asks about. I thought it was a really great to have cultural flirtation going on, and that was represented so well by Kevin and all of the three ladies, particularly Elaheh. When I make feature films, I always think of how I'm going to orchestrate my characters. You have the hero, the nemesis, the seduction and all of these things. In many ways, Kevin's journey is like a hero's journey, including having temptation for a guy who's away from his wife and around beautiful women for a couple of months. The fact that he didn't take advantage of that attention but used it more as an opportunity to grow, I thought was part of his growth. You don't always necessarily know what's happening with you as you grow. As personal growth happens you're not aware of it. But you can look back and see you grew.
KS (laughing): Till's just lucky because he got a lot of information the producer wouldn't have dreamed of writing. Everything just happened with perfect timing for the film. One of the biggest things is that I told him I didn't want my personal life in the film. I like to keep my personal life away from basketball; that's like my safe haven. He kept pinching me every month, saying, "I have to put this in." He'd show me and I'd say, "Alright, you can do that." So he got it all.
DP: Kevin, at the end of the movie we learn that you and your wife have had a baby girl and they you are the founder and president of Choices Basketball Associations, a non-profit youth league in US Virgin Islands. But I noticed that you still play.
KS: I'm retired now, I coach. I do play with the national team, but I only in the summer league when they need help. We won the gold medal in 2011.
DP: I read that you scored 28 points in one game against the Bahamas!
KS: I still got it!
For more info:
www.theiranjob.com
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/554272471/the-iran-job-bring-it-to-a-theater-near-you?ref=email

Hello: Melanie Meets Marx

Hello I Must Be Going is Playing in Theaters

Hello: Melanie Meets Marx

(from brinkzine.com 9/5/12)

You probably recognize the title of Todd Louiso's Hello I Must Be Going as the title of the hilarious Groucho Marx song in Animal Crackers. Louiso's sweet serio-comic third film, with a debut script by his wife Sara Koskoff, actually bears no resemblance to any of the anarchic Marx Brothers comedy classics, but surely by watching them the unhappy conformist protagonist Amy Minsky, played by Melanie Lynskey, is inspired to rebel. Lynskey seems to grasp Amy's need to break away from conventions and expectations because that's pretty much what she has done herself in playing Amy. I've been among those waiting for her to get another memorable staring role since 1994. That's when the 16-year-old New Zealand native and young Kate Winslet received accolades playing real-life murderesses in Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures. Lynskey temporarily went back to school--while Winslet went on to superstardom. She returned to acting and has for the most part quietly played supporting parts, including a recurring role on Two and a Half Men, but it's way past time for this talented actress to move into the spotlight. Now she gets her long-awaited chance and will capture hearts as a broken 35-year-old who is vegetating at the Westport home of her well-off parents Ruth and Stan (strong performances by Blythe Danner and John Rubenstein, with a phone in the photo). She is doing a lousy job of recovering from her split from her husband David (Dan Futterman), for whom she had dropped out of grad school and pursuing a career in photography to marry. She comes back to life when she falls for Jeremy (Christopher Abbott of HBO's Girls), a 19-year-old actor whose mother assumes is gay. But this relationship threatens her businessman's father's chance to close a deal (with Jeremy's step-dad) that will finally allow him to retire and travel the world with his long-patient wife. The film opens this Friday in New York and I hope you see it for Lynskey-and the excellent cast--and also because you'll be discussing it afterward. In anticipation of its September 7 premiere in NY and LA, I had the opportunity to discuss it with the personable Louiso and Koskoff, who met when they acted together on television.

Sarah Koskoff and Todd Louiso  Photo by DP
Danny Peary: You live in Los Angeles, so did you come to New York just to publicize the film?
Sarah Koskoff: My parents live in Connecticut so are here to visit them and to do this.
Todd Louiso: It's a summer trip.
DP: Todd, you did your first film, Love, Liza, with the Sundance Directors Lab. This film you did with the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
TL: I did a film in-between, The Marc Pease Experience, that ended up being kind of a train wreck.
SK: The script for this was at the Screenwriters Lab at Sundance, which is separate from the Festival. We went together to the Lab. Usually they have just writers-directors at the Sundance Institute but there are also writer-director teams, as we were.
TL: I was already attached to direct it. I sort of tagged along to read the notes Sarah was getting, just so when she came back to Los Angeles she wouldnt have to explain everything that had happened there.
DP: Sarah, this your first script. Did Todd tell you to go off and write it or was he always there?
SK: I wrote it separately and then showed it to Todd. He had a few notes and I did a rewrite. Then we went to the Lab and I got just a crazy amount of notes from all the advisors there, who are all screenwriters. That's when a slow down happened because it took a while to sort through them all. I've heard that's common for people who bring their scripts there. It takes awhile to figure out what's yours and what's coming from another screenwriter.
DP: I'd think that the hardest thing for anyone reading the script would be to figure out the tone. Was part of the discussion there about what was supposed to be funny, what was supposed to be funny-painful, and what was supposed to be serious?
SK: Yeah, it was clear to me where the script was off tonally when I'd get notes from the advisors that were so wrong in regard to the story. I'd wonder why I'd get a note that had nothing to do with what I'd written. I decided it was because there was something unclear in the script. So the rewrite was definitely a process of finding the tone. We could tell more when it was off, but it was hard to articulate to the others.
TL: Both Sarah and I always knew the tone we wanted for this piece. We were on the same page with that.
DP: At what point did Melanie Lynskey come onto the project to play Amy?
TL: About a year after we took the script to the Institute,

 Sundance asked us to do a staged reading of the screenplay in Los Angeles, which it will do a couple times a year. So we had to go out and cast the reading and we asked Melanie. She was actually in Toronto and flew back for it. I thought she would be an interesting choice for the read, and I wasn't even thinking of casting the movie yet. But it was through the reading that she stole the part. It was hers afterward.
DP: What did she get about Amy that made such an impression on you?
SK: It was the grounded, real person feeling she brought to her. She took it out of sitcom terrain. Even though she's very skilled comically, it's hard to find someone who--again tonally--can do serious as well. Her reading was so sad and funny and moving in a different way, and I just believed her as this girl.
DP: What's interesting is that Melanie Lynskey talks of herself as a supporting character actress and here she's playing the part of a woman who is a supporting character in her own life, particularly when she was in her marriage. Ironically, like Amy, Melanie's breaking out and playing a lead role. Did you think about that?
SK: It was one of the things we thought of about after she did the reading. We said, "Let's do it with her!"
TL: She was kind of perfect.
SK: Yes, there is a credibility in the film that you get right off the bat with her in the role. The film goes to a deeper level instantly with her and that was so appealing to us. You say of Amy, "I know that girl, but where do I know her from?" That's what we wanted because Amy is not a center-stage character.
DP: I read an article on this film that was written when it opened at Sundance and the writer stated that it was told through the female perspective. I don't necessarily agree with that. Do you?
TL: I don't see it as either male or female because I can really connect with Amy's character. I showed it to male friends of mine before going to Sundance and they connected to it just as much as female friends of mine.
DP: Sarah, in writing this I think you're writing from Todd's perspective as well as your own. In all three of Todd's films, the lead character is trapped by the past and can't move forward. It's a prevailing theme. There is also a man-child element where characters cant grow up. Amy fits in with the male characters in those films because she can't break away from what happened to her.
SK: Everyone in the movie has this thing they hold on to, and it's not gender specific. There are a lot of people propping up other people's fantasies. For instance, Jeremy's mom has this fantasy about her son becoming a famous actor and he doesn't want to ruin it for her.
TL: In not facing the truth of their situations, they're doing what they need to do to survive mentally. Blythe Danner's character Ruth, Amys mother, builds up her husband, saying he's going to retire and that they're going to go on a trip and finally spend time together. But somewhere inside her, she knows the truth and that he's not that type of person. Those facades are what Amy is really trying to break through.

Danner and Lynskey

DP: The characters in your films--played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Schwartzman, and now Melanie Lynskey--have been hurt by something. And... Sarah, you just starting rubbing Todd's back comfortingly because...?
SK: Because Todd connects to that hurt. I'm being soothing. [*Below, see part of Sarah's writer's statement, written about a week after this interview for the Landmark Theater site.]
DK: Todd, I assume there are things in your past that you have a hard time breaking away from or you wouldn't be making these movies.
TL: Yeah.
DP: Jeremy says to Amy, "Sometimes it's easier to be what other people want you to be than fight it." That applies to both of them. Is that a major theme in your life?
TL: Yeah. [To Sarah] You wrote it.
SK [To Todd]: You kept it in.
TL: Sometimes it is just easier to go along with things.
DP: Obviously these films are very personal to you, so does it help that someone else writes this for you?
TL: Yes, but it's not that it's not my idea. It helps me grow as a person and as an artist.
DP: You want these characters to break through and move forward.
TL: Yeah. I think this film is joyful in that way, in terms of where Amy gets to. I've certainly struggled with that. Her struggle is something I felt from the beginning after reading the script.
SK: We were both trying to keep the story close to us, so that we were always checking in because we've both had experiences where the work goes really far off course from what was intended and the connection between us and the work is lost. The work really suffers when that happens and it's painful to see it. The critics are harsh no matter what but if you at least know you did what you are connected to and set out to do, it's really okay. People can have their opinions, that's fine, but when you put work out that's not what you intended, it's really painful.
TL: It's not connected because you've listened to so many different people during the production.
DP: And you end up saying, "That's not the movie we wanted to make, that's the movie you wanted us to make."
TL: That's right. I have a tendency to listen to what people have to say and I end up losing my instinct about a scene or a full film. That's why Sarah and I really tried to stay in touch with each other and do checks and balances.
DP: So, Sarah, could you remind Todd, "That's not what you wanted to do."?
SK: Definitely. And other people spoke up. It was a labor of love for everyone who signed on to the film; they were invested in it and if something didn't seem right they spoke up. They would say, "This doesn't feel right for this movie." It would be too broad or too harsh or too subtle and they'd want another take. We collaborated and it was great.
TL: When I look at the final film, I feel so happy because Sarah and I kept that connection and I did my best to stay connected. Everyone in the film wasn't doing it for the pay check, they were doing it because they loved the material. Everyone was on the same page with Sarah and me and there was a shorthand between us that saved time, which was so important with our short schedule.
DP: You've acknowledged a Judd Apatow influence on this film--including with the inability-to-grow-up theme--but my guess is that you were also influenced by The Graduate, particularly the beginning when Benjamin is stuck at home without any idea about his future. In your film, Amy can't even leave her parent's house. And there's a party here too, though smaller. There is an age-difference theme as well, although in this case the older woman isn't the seducer. Did that film influence you at all?
SK: It's kind of inverted, isn't it?
DP: Instead of it being Jeremy's story, it's Amy's story.
TL: We talked about The Graduate early on. The Graduate had always been in my brain, but we hadn't thought our film had any similarities to it until Sundance.
SK: Somebody mentioned it to me at the Sundance Institute. And I thought, "Oh! Great!" I was thrilled hearing that because I felt, "Oh, I can write such a small story." We went back and watched it again and a couple of other films and we saw how small the stories really are.
DP: Is it important that Jeremy is young or is just easier to have him be 19 so the 35-year-old Amy can't commit to him and can go off by herself as she should?
SK: I don't know. The age difference was always there in the script, right from the beginning. So I never considered it without that.
TL: It isn't essential that he's young but it does a lot for the film. It adds to the film, but I dont really think that their age difference is what the film is about. It's about two people who are observers and stay in the background. Their connection is that they both are not living the lives they truly want to lead. They give a gift to each other by the end of the film: they give each other permission to express themselves and do what they want to do. It's ignited by their sexual connection. Through Jeremy, Amy goes back to being a kid again.
SK: In that way his age is important. She gets the chance to act out what she probably should have done in high school but then she was such a good girl. It takes this young guy to make that happen. To do what are inappropriate things for her is really big thing. It breaks all her patterns.
DP: Is it good for her to now experience those young things she missed--skinny dipping with a guy in a pool, throwing rocks at his window to get his attention, having sex in a car? She even wears pigtails in one scene.
TL: You caught that.
SK: I think all this connects her to herself and the artist inside her. They connect when she defends Robert Mapplethorpe at the dinner table.
DP: Why Mapplethorpe?
SK: It's part of that same thing. She's trying to fit into a world that she doesnt fit into. She cant go along with the conversation at the table about how Mapplethorpe was insensitive and inappropriate. She has to say that he is a master.
DP: She speaks about how his shocking images are side by side with his beautiful images and that lets us see beauty in the shocking images. Does that pertain to anything about Amy?
SK: Yeah, I think it has to do with breaking rules. That's where the Groucho Marx clips come in, too, from the comic side. It's anarchy and what's underneath the socially conventional, very stratified-status world Amy lives in.
TL: Mapplethorpe is brought up in what was meant to be a light conversation. But Amy comes to his defense.
DP: Jeremy is impressed.
SK: Thats what sparks their interest in each other.
TL: He was in a Mapplethorpe play and discovered things about the artist that he fell in love with. And here it's allbeing talked about very flippantly until Amy speaks seriously about it because she's connected to art also. I don't think either of them can listen to what's being said.
DP: So they get up. I really like the first kissing scene, when they leave the table and start kissing the moment they're alone. He chances kissing her, and she kisses him back. They felt vibes for each other at the table. As a writer, Sarah, were you thinking if you could get away with it?
SK: Yeah, can we do it?
TL: You have to see what the two of them were at the table. They were props being used by the others. Amy's mother says,, "Amy will eat anything you put in front of her." Jeremy barely has any lines at the table because his mother Gwen is doing all the talking for him.
DP: When they are the car, he is touching her and saying "I want to see you cum." The other film that has a scene like that is Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist, where Michael Cera brings Kat Dennings to a climax with his hand. Todd, you cut the scene before Amy's has an orgasm.
TL: You don't want to cum too soon. [Laughing] We're only in the first act!
DP: Sarah, when you wrote that scene did you just keep writing or stop afterward because you realized it was a strong moment?
SK: It was a moment of discovery. I was thinking, "Can I really write this?" It was at the point of writing when I saying, "You know, I'm just doing what I want here." I had gone past the Lab and--this is how it works-everybody's interest had waned after the initial big flurry. I was working steadily by myself for days on end with no influence when I stuck this in. I was trying to track intimacy. There is something pure about witnessing somebody in that vulnerable a stage. It's thrilling. I love that question because it's a moment people aren't really asking about. There's something about that intimacy. Can we be that vulnerable on screen? Can the actors be that vulnerable? Can the audience handle it? The editor even cut it and we said...
TL:.."Put it back in!" I love it.

Abbott and Lynskey

DP: It validates Jeremy as a good, unselfish guy.
SK: In a simple way, I think.
TL: He pays attention to her, which is different from her experiences in relationships.
DP: You have said elsewhere that Jeremy is the first person who is genuinely interested in Amy. For the first time she's the star in her life.
TL: Right. There's a scene when they're driving around town and he's asking her questions, and she becomes very uncomfortable because he's not used to someone wanting to know anything about her. It's almost as if she wants to distract him so he'll stop asking the questions. She says, "Why am I telling you all this, it's very uninteresting." But he says he is asking questions because he is interested.
DP: So are they the perfect couple? Or, in terms of writing this movie, is their relationship a rite of passage that each needs to go through to move forward?
SK: I think they are kind of a perfect couple. That's what I find sad. They're not going to be together because of circumstances--sometimes things don't work out. [To Todd] What do you think?
TL: I think so in terms of how great it is that they can let each other go, because they see it's important to the other person--that's how much they love them.
DP: Why does Amy take photographs of rivers and water? Is it sexual and is it through Jeremy she has a sexual awakening and is ready to take photos again?
SK: It's quite a bit. The images are dense and every time I try to unpack one it sort of feels less interesting than just the full image.
DP: Rivers flow off into the distance and that's similar to what Amy might eventually do.
SK: "You can't step into the same river twice." I can throw that one out there.
TL: We talked about her images, visually, at the beginning of the film. The photographs were very clear but the further she went into her head the cloudier they became, until she lost her focus. She speaks about this in the car ride with Jeremy, when she explains why she didn't finish her visual thesis. At that time, when she was in grad school, she was being taken over by her relationship with David. That was obliterating her eye as an artist and making everything out of focus. You can see that in the slide show she shares with Jeremy. Things start out very clear but when she gets closer to some rocks underwater everything is really out of focus.
SPOILER ALERTDP: And when she travels to Europe at the end, will they be back in focus?
SK: Her mother will be in them and there will be a kind of integration in her photographs. She will be integrating something personal into her cerebral aesthetic. That's her first step to moving forward as an artist.
END SPOILER ALERTDP: Talk about Amy's carelessness, how she's repeatedly caught doing stuff in public.
TL: That's Groucho Marx really.
SK: Yeah, I think so, too. She's trying to shake things up, unconsciously. She's caught between these two worlds. She is careless. That's part of her being. Spilling a milkshake all over herself. She's always just fucking everything up.
TL: That's how she was in her marriage. She was trying to act like a different person.
SK: Like her mother.
DP: Do you think Amy has always wrongly seen the marriage of his parents as the model for good marriages?
SK: I do.
TL: Yes, thats what she is striving for but can't make it work. Then she realizes that it's not what she wants.
DP: She never realized that her mother has actually been as unhappy in her marriage to Stan as she was in her marriage to David.
SK: Yeah, she would have done the same things as her mother probably. But now she can then step outside of the pattern of wanting what she thought her mother had.
DP: The pattern she speaks to David about is how she was content being unhappy in their marriage.
SK: She was comfortable in being unhappy.
TL: It's what she knew.
SK: Sometimes its more comfortable to be miserable than to change, because its familiar.
DP: Why didn't she and David have kids? Did she have an instinct not to have kids with him?
TL: Toward the beginning it's mentioned that she had a miscarriage but its kind of off-camera. So they were trying to have kids. I don't think it was a major issue for her, which is why it isn't talked about in the film. It's just a layer, a formality for the actors to work with that I think helped them. If the audience catches it, it's another thing...which is great.
DP: David seems so much worse than Amy's father. Stan is so low-keyed and less dramatic than anyone else, but he's among the most important characters in the film.
SK: He's pivotal.

John Rubenstein
SPOILER ALERT
DP: He's supposedly the nicest, most considerate person but he turns out to be probably the worst. He does invite Amy to stay in the house to prevent intimacy between him and his wife. Is that accurate?
SK: I think that's one of several ways to look at it. He's stuck in past-pattern with his daughter. She is kind of a buffer.
TL: He doesn't know he's acting out in a certain way. He doesn't know the effect he has, it's unconscious.
DP: I think he does.
TL: Really?
DP: He walks out the door at the end, when Amy really needs him. He can finally act as he really is because his intentions are no longer secret.
TL: I think he's incapable by that point. He has been revealed.
END SPOILER ALERTDP: Did you know the ending before you wrote the script?
SK: No, it ended differently in the first pass, but similarly tonally.
TL: Amy's finally able see clearly what her parents marriage is and see her connection to her mother in her own marriage to David. It's not just that she dodges a major bullet, she's also able to step the other way and change.
SK: It's funny because I kept moving scenes around. That scene in which she thanks David for ending their marriage is a step along the way to seeing her parents clearly. Finding the compassion that she feels for her mother is a breakthrough for her, and helps her move on.
DP: Could you have ended this movie unhappily?
TL: No, no, it had to be this way...for me.
*Sarah Karkoff statement: "When I told Todd Louiso, my husband and the director of Hello I Must Be Going, that I was going to write a script for him to direct about a woman who gets divorced and has an affair with someone much younger than herself, he wasn't happy. I went ahead and wrote it anyway. Thus began our first collaboration as writer and director, respectively, with my radical act of rebellion. I had to ignore him. He was suffering a loss of heart, just like Amy Minsky, the lead character...And like Amy, he wasn't thinking clearly. Somewhere along the way, he'd disconnected from himself and his love for his work. But I hadn't. We had a family to support, by God! We would go back to the beginning, I decided, to what we both loved: to simple and truthful story-telling, the power of connected and committed actors, beautiful and rich photograph, grounded and expressive language, and the more-than-occasional pratfall. Making the film became a regenerative process as much as a story about personal regeneration."