CHRIS NEUMER: I was actually trying to get in touch with you after I saw The Terminal. Normally I’m not a big fan of biopics, or based-on-a-true-story, but this worked. And I realized that you’re the king of based on a true story.
JEFF NATHANSON: Yeah, three in a row.
CHRIS NEUMER: Not only are you the king, though, but you do it better than other people. And by that I mean, it’s not Monster. We’re doing a cover story on Charlize, but that’s not because of Monster, it’s because she’s Charlize. It seems most people want to inflate or hyper inflate the story material and create a Frankenmovie to create the best possible environment for the actors. In your last three films, to the audience's eyes, maybe you are hyper-inflating it, but it doesn’t come across that way. Is this something you chose when writing?
JEFF NATHANSON: For some reason, when writing, I’m attracted to things that have some basis in real life. I don’t know what it is, but, like I said, lately it’s been three in a row and all of them have one thing in common for me: the characters are kind of searching for their own identity in all cases. That’s something I’m searching for myself, so I’m attracted to those kinds of characters. It’s sort of like writing with a net. When you have truth as part of it, it keeps you honest and forces you to never cross that imaginary line and go into the realm of ridiculous or silly or pull the audience out of something. You always have this safety net under you causing you to focus on the reality of what once took place. SO I don’t know, I’m in a phase, we’ll see what happening.
CHRIS NEUMER: You talk about how it’s confined within reality, but when I was watching The Last Shot and really any movie about making a movie, I’m always think they should go further because real life Hollywood is so much worse. When I tell my friends about the things I have to go through with publicists, they swear I’m making it up. I go no, I’m really not. Did you ever find that you wanted to make it hyperbolic in order to compete with the real thing?
JEFF NATHANSON: There’s a danger in doing that because ultimately you’ll get into farce or some other territory. As easy as it would be to push the line, especially in this movie, this could be a Farrelly brothers movie, this could be a very silly movie, I wanted to keep it real. In this case, moreso than with the other two, I wanted to stay true to what happened and, believe it or not, almost everything in this movie did happen. The FBI did go to Providence to make a movie. They did ultimately decide that they were going to make three movies, one in Boston, one in New York and one in Vegas. They were going to become their own little production company. They started casting the process, they had the whole crew at the Biltmore hotel in Providence in Rhode Island gearing up to make the film. They had the two guys–the real two guys who the movie is based on–thinking that made it and that they were going to be the next Spielbergs. Everything sort of happened and I came in and told the little story that I wanted to tell in the middle of all that reality.
CHRIS NEUMER: There was actually a movie similar to this in concept of making a movie based entirely on alternative reasons by Joel Walsh. It had Martin Donovan and Mary Stuart Masterson in it.
JEFF NATHANSON: When was it released?
CHRIS NEUMER: 2001, 2002. Martin Donovan is a plumber and wants to meet women, but he finds that being a plumber gets them turned off quickly. So he has a client, a casting director, who owes him money and he says, "Set up a casting session where you’ll tell the girls that I’m a director and we’re clear". So the casting guy says, "well we need a script." So Donovan steals a script and it starts morphing into something where they actually started shooting. Then they all had to play the parts that they had in the initial casting session to keep the ruse going. There’s a whole scene of Martin Donovan perfecting his "and cut". Finally he decided on the most sing-songy version which was basically "AAAAAAAAAnnnd CCCCCuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuttttttttttttt".
JEFF NATHANSON: (laughs)
CHRIS NEUMER: There was a moment in the movie later where, from off-screen, where you hear Martin Donovan just yelling "and cut" like that. Was there ever a thought on this of little things on the side, maybe not everyone will notice, but we’ll have the crew guys doing this, or the boom mike guy will be wearing a smiley face T-shirt and always angry.
JEFF NATHANSON: There is certainly inside humor in this film, some people might find it too inside. I don’t think you can be too inside right now. I think people are so far ahead of the game. So I have scenes where the FBI is giving script notes, which obviously mirrors the way the studio head gives script notes. People fault me on that. They said who’s going to get that? But I think people really understand the movie making process. Even if they don’t know the details of it, they have such a clear-cut understanding of the larger realm of how movies are made now that they can fill in the blanks on their own. I kind of embraced that. I didn’t really set out to make a Hollywood movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: Can you escape from that with this as your subject matter?
JEFF NATHANSON: Most Hollywood movies that get made are very cynical. You look at The Player or Sunset Blvd. They take a very direct arrow right at Hollywood’s heart and go after it. That wasn’t the goal for me. Almost everyone in the film isn’t in Hollywood. They’re wannabe Hollywood people. More than anything, they’re all people who are just desperate to be special in some tiny way. From the mobsters to the struggling director to the FBI agents, they just want to find something in their lives to make them feel and be, even for a few minutes, something different than what they are. I think that was the concept for me that right now in society, it feels like Andy Warhol’s prophecy has come true. It’s not in the future that everyone is going to be famous for fifteen minutes, it’s now. It’s American Idol and it’s television and it’s reality TV. It’s an obsession. It’s not just entertainment, it’s sports, it’s people walking into schools and opening fire. It’s a desire, it’s a human, American desire to somehow separate yourself from the rest of the world. It is something about our culture. It used to be more with money, but now has gotten down to some sort of bastardized fame that people are desirous of. That was what the movie was for me.
CHRIS NEUMER: Is there–I’m sure the people you’re hanging out with in Hollywood are different than the people I’m hanging out with in Hollywood, writers, actors, producers who have only one or two credits to their names. However on the periphery of that, there are these people who really want to be actors and as soon as they find that I run a film magazine or that you’re a writer/director with ties to Steven Spielberg, they glom onto you. In my eyes, I don’t think there’s anything anywhere that is this depressing.
JEFF NATHANSON: (laughs)
CHRIS NEUMER: Watching this film and watching Matthew Broderick’s character, with the unfortunate moniker or Steven Shatz, no less, you go, "C’mon, you sad, pathetic little man. Look where you live."
JEFF NATHANSON: I’ve got to say, I took a lot of my own life when creating Steven Shatz. I was an usher at a movie theater. I worked at a video store. I worked —during a six year period of struggling, did everything I could. I brought coffee to numerous producers and hauled refrigerators and cleaned apartments.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now when you say you brought coffee to producers, you mean as a PA or something?
JEFF NATHANSON: Yeah. Actually the producers of the TV show, Perfect Strangers. I have to say, even though you may look at that and say, "Omigod, he’s so bad," or "He’s so pathetic," for me, that time in my life was very exciting. There was an incredible rush to every day waking up and knowing that you were going to hand some stranger your script that day, that you were going to go home and check your answering machine and pray that somebody had called. The time before there was any success was very key to me wanting to write this film. Ultimately I wanted to capture, what I think the movies deals with, is the hope that Hollywood does give to people. Now, You might say that’s just hope and those people are never going to make it and that’s ridiculous–
CHRIS NEUMER: Actually, there’s a subtle difference that I want to point out here. When I hear people are working as PA’s or as assistants to agents or producers, I think that’s great. They are striving towards something, a goal. At least in the presentation of the film as it was, it didn’t seem as though Steven was actually working at anything that would further his career. That was the sense I was getting at.
JEFF NATHANSON: It’s interesting when you say that because those scenes do exist, it’s just when you’re putting a film together…
CHRIS NEUMER: They hit the cutting room floor?
JEFF NATHANSON: They hit the cutting room floor. Again, I gave people the benefit of the doubt and said, "I don’t need to show him doing that.’ I show him going to a wake and trying to pitch his idea for a movie, this is something he does early on in the movie. He’s at a wake trying to sell his idea. I thought there’s no reason to have three scenes like that. That was, to me, such a clear idea of who he was; if you’re willing to go to someone's funeral who you don’t even know to try to make it in Hollywood, I thought that was defining. Ultimately, I don’t feel bad for Steven Shatz, I don’t feel sad for him. I like the fact that there are people who are desperate and trying to make it. Even the two real guys from the story that are to this day, trying to sell their scripts.
CHRIS NEUMER: Have they done anything? No matter how much I looked I couldn’t find anything about the story that inspired this.
JEFF NATHANSON: They were–There was an article in Details magazine, probably in 1996, this was Steven Fishman. That was sort of the only thing that exists, probably.
CHRIS NEUMER: This was something I wondered when Emily French is peeing in the glass at the restaurant. I was sitting there going, "Who is this?" You have some people who are themselves, like Pat Morita and Russell means. Was there ever the thought that we should throw the audience a bone so they stop trying to figure out who these people really are?
JEFF NATHANSON: (laughs) Honestly, she’s not supposed to be one specific actress. There were some actresses that did actually go to Rhode Island, find the two guys and who were really desperate to be in the film, but I don’t really want to mention who they were. It’s a little embarrassing. There were real actresses who wanted it though.
CHRIS NEUMER: Are these actresses who are still in the limelight today?
JEFF NATHANSON: Yeah. They’re not stars.
CHRIS NEUMER: Maybe on The Surreal Life or something?
JEFF NATHANSON: Exactly. Very close.
CHRIS NEUMER: So it was–
JEFF NATHANSON: Look, like you’ve said, I’ve seen actors and actresses and writers and producers do crazy things and Emily French peeing in a cup doesn’t even make it into the top ten of things that I’ve actually seen. It was just something I thought that was cinematic and that would clearly define her. So…
CHRIS NEUMER: I don’t think I’ve ever interviewed anyone else who has stated that peeing in a cup was cinematic, but if it works. Now when you make your top ten proclamation, can you, without naming names, describe one of the situations that makes your list?
JEFF NATHANSON: I think that all the things that people know about behavior in Hollywood, the things they say and do and the little bits that trickles down in the media are just starting to scratch the surface of the reality of how a lot of these people would have–you know. I don’t want to start saying specific incidents, but I will say that I think it truly is a lot crazier than a lot of people realize. So crazy on such an across the board level that it almost becomes normal. It’s like, when I come here to Chicago, I don’t think about how crazy it is back in LA and what’s going on there on a daily basis. It’s nutty. I can see that.
CHRIS NEUMER: Amusing that you just take it for granted. So the character of Emily French was sort of like the character of Conrad Hanratty in Catch Me If You Can, a compilation of people.
JEFF NATHANSON: She represents many actresses that I’ve met over the years and is a combination of all of them. I give Toni Collette a lot of credit because, what she did that I hadn’t really thought of was to come in and play it crazy. I like the take she had. I think given the movie, Emily’s a little nuts. In Hollywood, the actresses never come off as crazy. They always come off, no matter what they’re doing, as very sane. That’s what makes it so strange. But in the movie, Toni–
CHRIS NEUMER: I did an interview recently with the actor Tom Jane. He said that if the director got the camera angle right, just in general, and had the right lighting, then he didn’t have a job. He just went out and did his thing and it wasn’t acting, everything turned out okay, because he didn’t have to do much. When you’re talking about Toni Collette creating this character, is this something she did? Or was this a situation to walk into?
JEFF NATHANSON: As a director, you pray that you cast good actors. This is the one thing I know I did well, I cast a bunch of great actors who came in with their own sense of the characters and their own take. As a director all you can hope for is that you show up on set for rehearsal and they’ve nailed it. They are completely their character. Having said that, the work as a director is not even close to being done, even if the actor does nail the character because you then have to figure out the scene and make sure that all the scenes are working.
CHRIS NEUMER: What do you mean figure out the scene.
JEFF NATHANSON: Well, look. You can have it down on paper. And you can have it in your head, but there is going to come a moment when you’re going to have to physically put it on film and when you physically put something on film and you’ve only got a certain amount of time to do it, it’s a mad scramble. It’s a sprint to try to–in a short amount of time–to capture all the things you want to get across and tell this little story and this little scene. To think that you can just sit back, turn the camera on and let the actors go and be done, I think that’s a little naïve. What it doesn’t speak to is, "Wait, I c an make this better." Or we don’t need that line. Or don’t sit down there, it would be funnier if you stand up at this moment. Or, if he hands you the sandwich and you drop it, maybe that would be funny. All the things that happen in life and you’re scrambling to capture any moment that you haven’t seen before that would be original and that you’ve never seen before and that’s exciting to you. As a director, you’re completely obsessed with the minutia of the moment. The fact that the actors come in and created a great character for you, is just a huge bonus. But it’s only part of what directing a scene is about.
CHRIS NEUMER: You mentioned several little things of things that you changed right before shooting, were there any examples of those that made the final cut significantly better in your eyes?
JEFF NATHANSON: Every scene in the film is altered and changed and it can be from the smallest thing as a word or line change to taking out an entire speech to cutting out a character in a scene because now he’s getting in the way. When you see the two guys going at it, you don’t need the third guy chiming in. Things are happening for you and until it’s going on right there and there’s the set and all the actors are in costume and it’s happening there’s no way to know what that scene is ultimately going to be.
CHRIS NEUMER: Were there any scenes where you can remember asking somebody to drop a sandwich or where you cut a character out of a scene where you look at the final cut and think, "This was the right call."?
JEFF NATHANSON: What comes to mind are just tons and tons of lines. I was driving the actors crazy because every morning I would–I’m a writer at heart and I like revisions. I was handing them revisions on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Matthew Broderick comes from the theater would get this look on his face. He’s done a million movies, but I could just tell he was in pain every time he got these pages. And Matthew Broderick in pain is really funny to me, so sometimes I just wrote these revisions to see the look on his face when he’d come out of his trailer and get these pages and have that look.
CHRIS NEUMER: That seems like it would be a pretty good practical joke.
JEFF NATHANSON: You could say that. But what comes to mind first and foremost was the dialogue of the film, which was constantly being rewritten. Even in the editing room, I was still rewriting the dialogue. For me, the whole process was a giant rewrite. First in my head, then on paper, then on set and then in the editing room.
CHRIS NEUMER: Coming from big productions like The Terminal or Catch Me if You Can, where you were on set everyday, does it come as a big shot to start work on your own film? Spielberg can just throw money at a problem if need be, I’m assuming you didn’t have the same luxury.
JEFF NATHANSON: The truth is there is no movie production where they say, "Just throw more money at it," especially not a Steven Spielberg movie. He refuses to go over budget, he sticks to his budget and his movies are budgeted correctly. If it’s a sixty million-dollar movie, that’s what it should cost. So it’s not like you’re just watching a big wheelbarrow of money and people are throwing it around. What it did was teach me the opposite, the economics of make film.. Watching Steven who moves very quickly and knows exactly what he wants. He expects his actors to be on page and be ready to go. More than anything, I learned that movies don’t have to be this exhaustively slow process. You can actually be rocking and rolling.
CHRIS NEUMER: With camera set ups or…
JEFF NATHANSON: Steven stands next to his crew and makes sure he doesn’t go off set. He doesn’t go into his trailer for four hours and wait for the next set up. He stands next to the monitor and his crews see him standing there and when you go to the next setup, they’re going full speed ahead because they know he wants to get going. So I learned quite a bit from just watching. Unfortunately, watching Steven you can’t learn how to direct because it's kind of like watching Picasso paint. He doesn’t see the set before he comes on at that moment. He doesn’t make shot lists before he walks onto the set. He does things that are just in his head that most people can’t do.
CHRIS NEUMER: Or things that a first time director on a smaller budgeted film like this can’t do.
JEFF NATHANSON: Absolutely. I think what I’m talking about is preparation. I learned preparation and I learned the value of hiring the right people. I hired an absolutely fantastic DP named John.
CHRIS NEUMER: What was his previous style or style of work that attracted you to him?
JEFF NATHANSON: He just had done some really interesting–a variety of films, everything from Field of Dreams to Nora Ephron movies. Across the board different styles. He was somebody who came in without an ego who knew that I knew absolutely nothing about the camera and was willing to serve as something of an intro to film class. He was willing to be patient too. I didn’t know the correct terminology half the time and he’d step in.
CHRIS NEUMER: Any terms that amaze you now? I didn’t realize it was ‘playback’ I said, "Let’s rewind," or something like that?
JEFF NATHANSON: All of it. I’d been on sets before but I truly didn’t know the language of film like someone who has directed movies. I said to the whole crew, "Look, I don’t know all the terminology, I’m just going to tell you what I want and I’m going to try to explain it and then you can put it in your own words and tell it to your own people that way you want." I’m just going to describe this shot that’s moving along the wall and they say, "Tracking shot." So that’s what he wants. Now I want to push in here and end up out here. So they’d show me three different lens and I’d say, "that’s what I want." I couldn’t just say, "Get me a 32," or whatever because I hadn’t seen a 32. I had to, on the spot, teach myself all about the camera and it was truly terrifying to go into a situation like that. The benefit I had was that as a writer they story and the script and the lines and all the other stuff that other directors sit there and sweat about were so in my head and I was so comfortable with them that I could, at times, let go of that and know that I could come back to that and be okay. So it was a trade off.
