AVC: Your films contain certain autobiographical elements. Does that make them uncomfortable viewing for you—or for people in your family, or people you know who are being referenced?
TJ: This film is way less… This is such a fiction. If I was to call it autobiography, at all, I'd be like James Frey. It would be fake. You could see seeds of it—my father's in a nursing home, I have three brothers who are all professors—so there's stuff, but I grab things from anywhere I can. For example, a very good friend of mine had told me this story about toes curling. His grandmother was at home, in a home healthcare situation, and he was visiting her in Florida, and she was really at the end of her life. He was going to go out to dinner with his friends, but he was scared that while he was out, she was going to die. The home healthcare woman just sort of said, "Oh, go on with your friends, her toes haven't curled." And he was just like, "What are you talking about?" I just thought that was so interesting, that people that deal with bodies on a much more corporeal level, like the attendants, had a whole different set of criteria than doctors, and that they had this secret knowledge of something. I thought it was strange and interesting, so I took it.
It's a whole construct of all these different things, in terms of my experiences. It's a very personal movie, but it's not an autobiography. But in terms of my family viewing my own stuff, when they do see the parallels… My little brother saw the movie in the editing room, one of my other brothers saw maybe half of it in the editing room and read the script, and at one point, when I was researching nursing homes, he and I went to a nursing home together and posed as if we were putting our mother away—as a research mission. It was great. He lived in Connecticut, and I was visiting, so we went to a nursing home nearby because we wanted to go through what I was writing. So we got the tour and the sense of the place. We didn't tell my mother about it.
AVC: After Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman committed to doing this movie, did you alter it to accommodate them or their own ideas about how their characters should be?
TJ: They certainly had ideas in terms of what they'd bring to it, but the script wasn't changed or rewritten for actors, like they do in Hollywood all the time, like "We've gotta do the Ben Stiller rewrite!" [Laughs.] Like maybe people pump up the jokes for him. I didn't customize the writing to accommodate them.
AVC: Were you thinking about them while you were writing it?
TJ: I wasn't thinking about what flesh would match these characters when I was writing. Obviously, once you're finished, you're like, "Okay, I have to make this a movie now, and I need people—bodies to play these parts, and actors to bring this thing beyond a script." But when I was writing it, I wasn't thinking of actors; I was really thinking about creating three-dimensional characters.
AVC: Do you spend much time watching your films with an audience? Are you curious to see how they play?
TJ: I did at the beginning when we went to Sundance and we screened The Savages there. I watched it, and I was just praying to God it worked, because we weren't even finished. It was an HD projection, and we were doing a temp mix we'd put together the night before we flew. I was just hoping it worked, so half of it was just, "Phew." So there's the "Phew!" viewings. And also in the process of making this movie, since it was made in the studio context, I had to do test screenings, so I had to see it. We did two with [consumer research firm] OTX.
AVC: Was it just a random bunch of people in a mall?
TJ: Not quite. That's what all these studios do: They recruit people who've seen certain films. It's this weird, fake science-y thing the studios call a "tool." That's a very scary process, because it can be used in odd ways. But then there's focus groups and stuff like that. I was so nauseous and terrified, and then you get the cards: very good, good, recommend.
AVC: Was it helpful? Did you change anything?
TJ: It was helpful in the way it always is when you make movies, especially with anything funny. You can find the right edit or the right beat. In terms of cutting and rhythm, I think it's essential to screen your movie before you lock picture. I remember in film school, when we made shorts, you'd sit there and screen them with your peers, which has its own flavor, because everybody's so competitive and evil, and it's a really nasty environment. [Laughs.] It's like a test screening, except you know everyone. I remember you'd just be sitting and—at least when I went to film school—we still did it all on film, and you'd be in the back mixing it live. You'd have a couple different reels of magnetic tape, and you'd have to ride the levels for various things. But you would really sense when it was working or not. It's like having a dress rehearsal: You've gotta see what's working.
AVC: Did you have that luxury on Slums of Beverly Hills?
TJ: Yes. It's funny you use the word "luxury." Ideally, I'd prefer never having to be in a test-screening environment. Some famous director said "The group is smart, the individuals are stupid," about the experience of a test screening. So the feeling of the room and what's happening—that's your information. But the individual, "I don't know, she's an unsympathetic character," or whatever it would be, that's not interesting. It's the group feeling of the audience, how they're feeling, how things flow there. And you can feel it in your ass when you're watching your own movie with a group. You can feel when the film is dying, it's just like an energy in your body. You can feel other people shifting. I don't know, there's just something with your butt in the seat. Your body is just so…
AVC: That's where the directorial instincts come from?
TJ: It's in your ass! [Laughs.] That's really where all of those are. It's true.
AVC: How planned-out do you have a movie before you start shooting?
TJ: This was very planned. I mean, as planned as we could do it. The script was the script; it wasn't improvised or anything like that, and we shot it in 30 days, which is a fast clip, and it was 120 pages. That's a lot of material to get through. We only had six weeks of prep. Once we got the green light from Fox Searchlight, it went from the desert of knocking on doors and nothing happening to "Oh my God, we have to start! It's gonna be summer soon, and we have to hurry up and shoot before the crocuses pop out." So we had six weeks of just running around and trying to pull it together. I wish I had more time. Even if you're officially doing six weeks of pre-production, which is all we would've been able to afford to pay, had it been a different thing, I would've been able to do a bunch of stuff myself in preparation. Maybe even start casting some of the smaller parts and stuff like that. It was just a tight little six weeks to find all the actors, all the smaller parts, running around Buffalo, but there was a looseness to the shooting that I liked. At a certain point—after the beginning of shooting, when we thought we had more time than we did—you really have to be like, "Just fucking document it, make it in focus, and go!" All the dreamy shots that you sit there and plot with your cinematographer in the kitchen… If you stick too hard to these beautiful shot constructions and plans, then you're really just in trouble. Basically, we were in trouble before we started, in terms of time. And eventually, we just have to function forward.
AVC: What's next for you? Do you have anything in mind?
TJ: I'm taking nine years off. [Laughs.] No, I'm just at the beginning of writing in my notebook, and it's very prenatal. I don't even know what it is. Writing is so… I don't know, it's such a practice, and I feel very unpracticed in it, because I'm not doing it every day. And I really need to do it every day. In other words, you spend all this time writing a movie, and then you stop, and then you're shooting the movie, and then you're cutting, and a year and a half goes by, because in the editing room, you're not writing. Maybe some people are; after the editing room, I go and take a nap. I'm not in the practice of writing, and I feel like I'm flabby, and I have to start arriving at the desk every day, and take off one hat and put on another one. So I'm starting, but it's very sloooow.
AVC: Starting something is always hard.
TJ: Starting is stressful and scary and hard, but also, it's just like going to the gym. You're just stiff and weird, and you can't do it as well. I feel like in that time [leading up to The Savages], because it took so friggin' long, I was writing a lot and I just got better at it. But now I feel bad again, like I haven't done it and now I'm scared, and I have to start doing it. But anyway, like I said, I'm writing a script, but it's basically a series of notes in my spiral notebook that I carry around with me.
AVC: Okay. So in four years?
TJ: The next time you see me, I'll be at the Valley View Nursing Center.
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