interview page 1 | e-mail Chris Neumer
JENNIFER BEALS: I knew there was something I had to do yesterday. I couldn't remember what it is. I can't figure it out. I know it's a holiday. I know I don't have a meeting. It's very confusing.
CHRIS NEUMER: That's OK. Don't worry about it at all. Are you at all familiar with our magazine?
JENNIFER BEALS: No. I'm also on a cell so if I cut out I'll call you back.
CHRIS NEUMER: OK, fair enough. I had actually originally been given your phone number by Victor Skrebneski, here in Chicago. He said, ‘Do you know Jennifer Beals?’ I said, ‘Of course I know of her.’ He said, ‘You should talk to her.’ Then he just handed me a phone number that I assumed was your publicist, but I guess he had mistakenly given me your home phone number.
JENNIFER BEALS: No, he doesn't have my home phone number. It's probably my cell number. There's about three people in the world that have my home phone number and they are all related to me by blood.
CHRIS NEUMER: I had called his assistant or his partner Dennis. Dennis had called you, apparently, and they put me in touch with Daphne, and here we are.
JENNIFER BEALS: It was so nice to hear from Dennis, period. I have known him since I was 16, I guess.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was just excited that… I thought it said something nice that Victor, kind as he is, had thought enough about the magazine to hand over someone's number like yours, regardless of where it was ultimately ending up. Then I was thinking about how I could possibly tie this in with anything that you were doing. With Roger Dodger coming out on DVD in March, I figured that here was a pretty solid movie that she is a part of and we can sit down and talk turkey. When Daphne told me that you were going to be driving at 5:30 in L.A., I thought that was the perfect situation to get into something in a rational and calm fashion.
JENNIFER BEALS: Seeing as the car isn't moving, it's not as unlikely as you might suppose.
CHRIS NEUMER: I can't stand driving there! You figure living in Chicago, I'm up in Oak Park, actually, you know big-city driving. You figure you know it's going to take a little while to get anywhere at rush hour, but seriously, it took me two and a half hours…
JENNIFER BEALS: In L.A., the distances are longer to start with anyway.
CHRIS NEUMER: Just from Beverly Hills to Pasadena it took me like two and a half or three hours at rush hour. That was ridiculous. I was ready to kill somebody. People were telling me that they do this all the time.
JENNIFER BEALS: It's a very good place to practice patience.
CHRIS NEUMER: You kind of have to, otherwise the foundation of humanity and civilization tends to break down.
JENNIFER BEALS: You could be shot.
CHRIS NEUMER: Or that. Either way. Thank you so much for giving me the call. It is much appreciated and, as I said, I had originally seen this film last fall when it was playing up here at the Chicago International Film Festival. It was such a dark kind of script – both literally and figuratively – that you don't see very often. I figured, let's try to get to the bottom of this one. Now, when you had originally seen the script, what were your first thoughts on it?
JENNIFER BEALS: Originally, I got a phone call from Campbell Scott saying that he was doing this movie and that there was this part that he wanted me to play in it. While I was reading the script, knowing that Campbell was playing the part, and knowing how much I love Campbell and wanted to work with Campbell… so I was reading it with that context.
CHRIS NEUMER: I've read stories that you've told about how Campbell is a very giving actor. I know there was one instance you spoke of where he had insisted on another take for you and that was very kind. You don't often hear about that. You hear about the generalities of trusting another actor, but it doesn't seem there are very many specific examples of why a certain actor is giving or charming. It seemed that this role – working with him and other friends of yours on the project – that this must have been a more comfortable type of setting to work in.
JENNIFER BEALS: Oh definitely. You automatically are trusting because not only is the person a friend, they are so incredibly gifted that you know someone is going to be able to hit the ball back to you across the net.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was there anything in particular that happened during the production that stood out in your mind as being the result of this camaraderie that you had, both with Campbell and with Elizabeth Berkley?
JENNIFER BEALS: Certainly from the rehearsal process with Elizabeth I think it was very clear… Well let me start again. Our characters were originally written as… (I'm negotiating traffic right now so I don't want to kill anybody.) We were initially supposed to be more combative.
CHRIS NEUMER: With one another, correct?
JENNIFER BEALS: More unkind with one another. It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so, not negative, but …
CHRIS NEUMER: Antagonistic?
JENNIFER BEALS: Yes, antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around. I said, wouldn't it be nice, instead of having these women fight with each other over men, which seems to be more of a cliché, wouldn't it be wonderful if they were the true comrades and it took these men much more time to infiltrate their friendships rather than making it very easy for them? If they were combative, it would make it much easier for the men. Not being combative, it makes it much more difficult for them to penetrate the veil.
CHRIS NEUMER: When you say 'penetrate the veil,' do you mean just of women in general or of women's friendships?
JENNIFER BEALS: No, I mean, I'm just talking specifically of women’s friendships. If two women go to a bar and they are fighting over men, it makes it much easier for the men. If two women are very close and they act as… it makes it very difficult for the men to pull one over on anybody.
CHRIS NEUMER: Ah, OK. It's an intriguing notion too, because despite the fact that this movie is about men – I mean it's named Roger Dodger – and that Roger and Nick are at the course, somehow the women are always the ones who stand out.
JENNIFER BEALS: I don't think it is really about men. I think it is more about relationships and about how you present yourself, not only to the opposite sex, but to yourself. What lies are you going to tell yourself in order to get through the day? I think the central metaphor of the movie is this notion of what the advertising industry does. In order to make someone want to buy something, they first have to make them feel bad about who they are in order to sell them that thing which will make them whole again, and happy again. I think the same is true that is played out in the film, is the idea of relationships.
CHRIS NEUMER: That idea is played out?
JENNIFER BEALS: Yeah, in terms of annihilating someone in order to have them love you. Because you are the annihilator, you are also the person who can restore their integrity. Can you hear me?
CHRIS NEUMER: You're really kind of garbled. I'm having trouble hearing some of the things that you are saying.
JENNIFER BEALS: Let me call you back in about two seconds. [calls back]
CHRIS NEUMER: Much better.
JENNIFER BEALS: There are certain little pockets in the city where it's just impossible to have a conversation.
CHRIS NEUMER: That was a very interesting take on it, too, with the whole circling around the way advertising works and how it's subtly woven into the script.
JENNIFER BEALS: A couple of things that play out in that regard is that by annihilating somebody else in whatever way, then that person feels that they also have the ability to, then, restore the person.
CHRIS NEUMER: So in other words, you could make yourself feel better about yourself by making someone else feel worse about themselves.
JENNIFER BEALS: Also, you can make yourself feel better about yourself if you project your shadow side, if you project your own potential for evil onto someone else. By annihilating them and, therefore, your shadow, you bring yourself into some state of purity or reformation.
CHRIS NEUMER: And by that logic, Roger must have been one of the most deeply scarred individuals on the planet.
JENNIFER BEALS: Definitely.
CHRIS NEUMER: It's also interesting to see a character like that. A lot of it had to do with the way the camera just got into the character and just no fear towards anything, just went with the role. You don't see very many characters like that, lead characters that are offensive to just about everybody.
JENNIFER BEALS: Well, what's interesting about the character and what's interesting about the way Campbell played it, is that in every moment of his offensive behavior, it's very clear that it comes from incredible insecurity. There's this huge wound that he is walking around with. As the audience, you are waiting to see what the wound is and how he will heal himself. You are waiting for him to heal himself, which is what you get a hint of at the end of the movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: Now your specific role… obviously, I have no idea what you are like off screen, but it seemed just like the type of role that would provide slightly more vulnerability, just in your acting, because it does resemble a conversation that a person might carry on with someone else. Did you find that any of this material…
JENNIFER BEALS: Why would that be more vulnerable?
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, the reason I mention this is because I've spoken with several other people who are… I was recently talking with Josh Lucas and he was talking about how the hardest role that he had ever had was his role in Sweet Home Alabama. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, he had said that the role was closer to that of what he normally is off screen. The toughest thing for him was to be an actor portraying someone who actually comes across like a real, live person, who is a good guy and is vaguely like he is off screen. He said that the boundaries between acting and just being are much thinner that way. Not having any experience in at least the acting trade myself, I said that that seems to make sense.
JENNIFER BEALS: The thing is… well, two things… The first thing that I want to address in terms of the question is that I'm not like the character at all, in terms of running around in a Chloé coat and going to clubs and having that kind of life. It could not be farther from my existence. Second of all, when you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliché, is to find where their weaknesses are. What is their potential for evil; what is their potential for wickedness? That's the only time that those characters become interesting to watch.
CHRIS NEUMER: When you approached your character, what did you see in Sophie that was her ‘shadow,’ if you will?
JENNIFER BEALS: Oh, this absolute loneliness and the game – loving to play the game, loving to go and tell stories to men that certainly weren't true, just for the sport of it, just to see how they would react. I think that the two of them have been doing this for a really long time and it is more like sport. Yes, they would love to find a lasting relationship, but it's not likely to happen the way they are going about it.
CHRIS NEUMER: So in reality we actually should hate the player not the game. I'm being facetious there but that is a good point. Now, this was a much smaller production than some of the other things that you have worked on, just in terms of scale and scope. I know that Dylan shot just about everything on hand-held cameras.
JENNIFER BEALS: Except, if you notice our sequence. Our sequence, by and large, when we get to the park, is all on sticks. The film kind of settles down.
CHRIS NEUMER: For the one part that you were in, in the bar/club, did the smaller production in any way add or heighten the experience, in terms of just making it easier to fall into character?
JENNIFER BEALS: No, not really. It doesn't seem as if there's that much of a difference between a big production and a little production, other than you have a smaller space in which to get dressed and you have a shorter waiting time.
CHRIS NEUMER: Maybe less cramped services.
JENNIFER BEALS: No, I've had some of the best craft services on independent movies, actually, because they get more creative, generally, with a smaller budget. The work is still the same. I didn't really notice the difference other than I was getting dressed behind a curtain, basically. Other than that, I don't think it was a huge factor in the film. It's nice, certainly, to have more than a skeleton-like crew, but once you are in front of the camera, it's still the same.
CHRIS NEUMER: Did you ever get the sense when you started looking at dailies… did you ever think about the lighting scheme – that everything was very dark – or think the entire camera is shaking here, what's going on? Was there ever a sense of something along those lines?
JENNIFER BEALS: I saw some of the dailies before I started the film and I loved the way the camera was moving. The dailies that I saw were the sequence where they are in the street and he is trying to teach him how to look at a woman basically. I liked it. I liked the sense that you were trying to find them and that these were people who could be on the street at any given moment. There was a sense of all the things that go on on the street, particularly in New York, that you are just completely unaware of, that that conversation could be happening at any time. I loved the instability of the camera. It's just an unstable world.
CHRIS NEUMER: There are certain times when all hand-held or mostly hand-held filming can be a distraction. It will jiggle or it will take you away. I didn't think that was necessarily the case here. It just seems that coming onto it and maybe… Did Dylan give you the sense that this was supposed to be a very dark and looking as if it was shot with a hand-held type of project?
JENNIFER BEALS: I don't remember exactly how he described it, but he did talk about the star of the movie and the look of the movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was there ever a conscious effort on your part or that you know of on any of your fellow actors’ to make your performances more vibrant or more cinematic to sort of counter the very dark nature of the lighting?
JENNIFER BEALS: No.
CHRIS NEUMER: I don't know if that makes any sense at all.
JENNIFER BEALS: I'm not sure… Could you give me an example of that?
CHRIS NEUMER: Just the type of thing where you have a very realistic movie, and by that I mean shot on location. You're right there. You're doing it. It's very realistic in the sense that it's hand-held. That often gives a more realistic feel to the proceedings. You have a lot of times where the camera looks almost as a voyeuristic point of view like the scene you were just talking about. Was there ever the sense that as an actor you would try to play anything other than just a real person, where you would actually come out and be a little bit more, I don't want to say over-the-top, but to give it an extra layer, to play it a little bit more cinematically. To do something so it's not just watching a real person. Of course, that sort of contradicts the whole nature of just pretending to be a real person in the first place.
JENNIFER BEALS: No, not at all, and I don't think any of the performances are like that. I like what you are describing.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was not suggesting that they were. I was just asking if there was ever the sense that we have to take this up a level or take it down a level. Where you think we can't be Hannibal Lecter here. We have to take it down a bit.
JENNIFER BEALS: No, no. Nothing like that.
CHRIS NEUMER: Nothing like that. Now where did you shoot the overall schedule? Where was your segment shot? Do you know how far into the production it was when you first came on board?
JENNIFER BEALS: No. I think it was probably midway, but I'm not positive.
CHRIS NEUMER: Did they shoot chronologically, in order?
JENNIFER BEALS: No.
CHRIS NEUMER: No, it did not. OK.
JENNIFER BEALS: That would be a very expensive movie.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was thinking about it and it seems almost as though it would make sense in this particular project because all the scenes, with the exception of his bosses' apartment, are pretty much… The one at the bar is at the bar. They don't return there. The park is the park and they don't return there. In that respect it seems that it could be shot somewhat chronologically.
JENNIFER BEALS: I think we did it the opposite way. I think we shot the park before the bar. It's a matter of what location is available when and how much things cost, too.
CHRIS NEUMER: That's true too. You had mentioned before that when we were talking about the scene where Roger and Nick are talking about how to look at a woman, it seemed that something could actually happen, and it was something that you could see in New York. It just felt like this was a New York kind of story.
JENNIFER BEALS: I think it is an urban story and it is obviously more of a kind of peripatetic kind of story. By saying that that could go on in New York, it has to go on in a city where there are a lot of people on the streets. In Los Angeles, there are certainly not a lot of people on the streets. It's all about your car, as this conversation would attest to. By that token, it's got to be a major city.
CHRIS NEUMER: With an urban center where people actually want to live. I'm assuming you have seen the film a couple of different times since its completion?
JENNIFER BEALS: I've probably seen it twice since the time that it came out. It's been a while since I've seen it.
CHRIS NEUMER: OK. It's always better to ask than to assume and then have somebody be forced to answer without knowledge. The lighting scheme was different. Now, when I saw this in a theater, there were a couple of times where it was so dark and so dimly lit and things. It took me aback for a minute, but at the same time it seemed to put me more into the film. When you saw it, did this strike you as an interesting technique?
JENNIFER BEALS: I don't remember it looking that dark.
CHRIS NEUMER: Hmmm. Maybe this was just me.
JENNIFER BEALS: Apparently, there were a couple of different prints that came out, some which were more luscious than others. I'm not sure which print you may have seen. I remember when I saw it, I didn't feel that it was that dark. It's not lit like a comedy. I don't remember thinking, ‘Gosh, this is so dark.’
CHRIS NEUMER: Well, it was almost a wet print that I did see. I mean it was rushed out because they had that problem with the first print and for the second showing, they had to have another one sent out.
JENNIFER BEALS: So maybe that's it. I remember hearing that there was a problem with some of the prints.
CHRIS NEUMER: And I got the post one so that would explain not reading into things. Now, did you guys shoot a lot of coverage on this? Meaning did you guys go through take after take?
JENNIFER BEALS: No, not at all.
CHRIS NEUMER: Was this pretty much if you got it that was it?
JENNIFER BEALS: Yeah. Probably a couple of takes, maybe three if you were lucky.
CHRIS NEUMER: So it really was, in that sense, an independent project.
JENNIFER BEALS: Sure. I'm working on a studio film right now where sometimes we do three takes. That's incredible! It's like boom, boom, boom. You're out. Oh, OK.
CHRIS NEUMER: Did you find that Dylan's style of shooting things like that was quick and efficient?
JENNIFER BEALS: He is just so secure and he is so grounded that you don't feel like you are rushing. Doing three takes doesn't feel like you are rushing through it and trying to serve your schedule. You feel like, ‘Oh, you got it. Let's go on to the next scene.’
CHRIS NEUMER: So in that respect, there were no – and I know you must have answered this one a lot – outward signs that, as a first time feature director, he wasn't quite on top of everything.
JENNIFER BEALS: No, because probably a more insecure first time director would want fifteen takes.
CHRIS NEUMER: Covering all his bases or at least thinking that he was covering all of his bases.
JENNIFER BEALS: Yeah, exactly.
CHRIS NEUMER: I'm actually trying to line something up with Dylan, as we speak, to get additional perspective on the film. Is there anything else that you can think of that would be important to talk about with him, anything that you think we may have missed in our conversation here? Interesting angles that…
JENNIFER BEALS: I think that in some ways everybody is like Roger. Everybody thinks that when their friends have a problem, that they know the answer and that it's much easier to analyze the problems of other people than your own. I think that we all have that aspect to us and we all have some little bit of insecurity where we would be tempted to misrepresent ourselves. I think that is one of the things that makes watching him kind of fascinating, that we are watching everybody, this person that we assume is a demon.
CHRIS NEUMER: And he does seem to have a lot of elements that you could relate to. I don't know that I would encourage any sixteen year olds that I know to take up smoking, but he does seem to have a lot of redeeming features to him as well.
JENNIFER BEALS: The first is that he is willing to tell what he thinks is the truth and he has a great sense of humor. He is funny. God, is he funny. What does he say about the bar, ‘This is supposed to be a healing place.’ No, ‘This is supposed to be a forgetting place.’ That's what he calls it, ‘a forgetting place.’ When Nick brings up the family and his mom…
CHRIS NEUMER: Oh that's right, and I think my favorite part is where he stands up and asks Nick what he would like to drink and Nick says ice water. Then Roger says, ‘Charming.’ Yeah, you're on the right step, you're listening to me now, we're working here. It seemed like Nick was the perfect foil to Roger in that respect, or almost Roger before he was hurt, if you will. Roger before he turned to the dark side.
JENNIFER BEALS: Right, right. That did make me laugh.
CHRIS NEUMER: You were no slouch yourself. I must admit it was interesting to see how… One of the reasons that I was interested in talking to you was that you actually hold your own opposite Campbell. That's one hell of a performance that he gives. It just seems to overtake a lot of things, but when the four of you: yourself, Elizabeth, Jesse and Campbell, are all on the screen, it seems that everybody holds their own. Everybody seems to be working within another. There's no sense of scene stealing, not that you weren't trying. Don't get me wrong… No, I'm kidding.
JENNIFER BEALS: I think it's also a testament to the writing. The writing is very good. Sometimes writers will get one character, but they won't get the others and the others are not written as well. [Her cell phone dies.]
CHRIS NEUMER: So you had said the other characters weren't just written as well.
JENNIFER BEALS: No, I'm just saying it is a testimony to the writing because oftentimes what happens is that the writer understands one character, but they don't understand the other one, and the other one ends up not being written as well.
CHRIS NEUMER: OK. So the last words you had said were, ‘the other characters weren't written as well.’ I was just quoting. If I have any further questions, should I just contact Daphne? Should I give you a call on the cell phone?
JENNIFER BEALS: Hello. Can you hear me?
CHRIS NEUMER: Yes, are you getting me?
JENNIFER BEALS: Oh, there, I got you.
CHRIS NEUMER: I was just saying that if I have any follow-up questions or can't understand your garbled words on the tape, is there a number I can reach you at?
JENNIFER BEALS: Just call Daphne and let her know that you need me to give you a call.
