My favourite of his is Swimming to Cambodia.
JOSH: That's his masterpiece.
I like Demme's filmed version as well.
JOSH: It's the height of both Demme and Gray.
JACOB: Absolutely.
JOSH: As to stylistic influences, though, I really don't know. I tried to learn stuff as I went along from people I admire, but I wouldn't presume anything. People like Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Lily Tomlin. Richard Pryor especially--his concert movies had a big affect on me in that they combined stuff that was really moving and really funny within nanoseconds of one another. There was a confessional quality--you don't feel like he's hiding behind anything and I try to do that in my own way.
Are there any directors whom you emulate in the same way?
JACOB: The biggest influence on me cinematically, for both of us I think, is Mike Leigh. Just his idea of telling stories of characters who don't normally get stories told about them. Not just the subject, but his whole style--the way he approaches his characters.
JOSH: It's a resolutely idiosyncratic style that doesn't do a formula or resemble anyone else's. It's very raw and very straightforward at the same time.
JACOB: After Leigh, it sort of bounces from all over, a little Scorsese, a little Coens, Peter Jackson
JOSH: Raising Arizona is our favourite film.
JACOB: I think we draw a lot of inspiration from people who work to do something specific. To do something that you look at and say: "That's their film," no matter what style or shape. The Coens are amazing--no matter what it ends up as, you feel like...
JOSH: Like it's a Coen Brothers film.
JACOB: You can agree or disagree with that sensibility--but you know that it's a Coen Brothers film. So that's something to strive for, for us. That distinction of vision is something we really admire and strive for.
What was your shooting schedule and approach to rehearsal?
JACOB: There were a couple of phases--the first was a theatre development process where we cast many of the main parts of the film and worked with the actors for three weeks separately before putting up three weeks of staged readings. We had a chance to try different things with the script, get the parts in the actors' hands, and really get to know the actors and the material in a unique way. It was a really great way to work. When went away from that, though, and I think it had become a little too stagy and it hadn't yet become a film but we'd really taken great strides.
Then we really worked on the screenplay intensively. Time went by to allow us to raise money--the final shooting schedule was 18 days with 2 days to shoot what we call the "non-descript room" (where Josh narrates from) so it was originally a 20-day schedule and we added one day. It was really short, really fast, but with six weeks half a year previous, just working with the main parts. We're really rehearsal intensive--as much as we could rehearse, we did rehearse.
Did the script evolve further as you shot?
JOSH: I don't know that it even could have because it was so fast, going from set up to set up and getting the lines down. There were some lines that were worked on a bit in very specific scenes--in a couple of scenes like the ones where I'm leaving stuff for Marlina's voicemail, that I really wanted to improvise. You actually don't hear a lot of it in the film except for little remnants of it--some Jewish stuff and weird shit--but almost everything else in the film was performed word for word from the script.
How did you get Harry Shearer to jump on board your project?
JOSH: He saw me do the monologue in LA and that was during the end of the Miramax time and he said if you ever get this made, gimme a call, I wanna be a part of it.
JACOB: A great guy.
JOSH: An incredibly sweet person.
Did you make him do Mr. Burns?
JOSH: (laughs) Principal Skinner, mainly.
JACOB: We did have the opportunity to introduce him offscreen as a voice before you see him and I get sort of a special tincture of pleasure.
JOSH: You hear the cadences: genius.
Did you have any people unhappy with being fictionalized in your monologues and now your film?
JOSH: My head secretary, when I did the monologue, the head secretary said that she liked the monologue, but if possible could I do no more pieces in which she was a character. So she limited me to that one but aside from that, no. Besides, I think that people come off well. I both try to do that in the stuff that I do and I think that people tend to be nice to me, and that comes off in the film. I mean Bob Shelby doesn't turn out to be so bad. He saw a review, by the way, the real Bob Shelby and he said there was one review that mentioned that the Shelby character was "arrogant." And so he sent me a thing after he and his wife saw it at Berkeley saying that he liked the film but he and his wife were going to see it again to make sure that he didn't come off as arrogant.
I tried to assure him that the critic didn't know what he was talking about.
I enjoyed the sound production on your film, particularly the gust of cold air that preceded every appearance of the head secretary.
JOSH: That was one of the pleasures of post production--how that organically developed
At Skywalker Ranch, right?
JACOB: That was great. One of the real pleasures of making this film was that the script got to a certain point and people started to like it. There's not that many people in the film business that get a chance to work on things they like--they're generally working for money.
JOSH: Strangely enough, right? What a way to run a business!
JACOB: But here came this project where people who are really talented artists at Skywalker ranch really wanted to work, to be a part of something that they're doing that's not Pearl Harbor. They came in and brought themselves--
JOSH: And their world class abilities--
JACOB: Into it. We were on the foley stage where they did Star Wars!
JOSH: Where Chewbacca had trod!
JACOB: Chewbacca had walked through this foley stage--that's unbelievable, that's fantastic. And they have llamas out there, and a herd of deer. . .
JOSH: And peacocks, maybe an ostrich too, some kind of big bird, they made a real fantasy place. Plus we could make our own cappuccino. Coppola had given Lucas his own cappuccino-making machine and it was in the commissary there and Jake and I would go over and (makes the sound in unison of a cappuccino machine)...
JACOB: That was really cool.
JOSH: They were really great. Mike Axton was the coordinator of the postproduction sound at Skywalker and they came up with just wonderful sounds. It was a tremendous experience for us learning as we were doing. It's pretty incredible to make a film at this budget and to be so fortunate. Our cinematographer Don Matthew Smith who is fantastic told us before we shot, "I think sounds on low, low budget films--if you're gonna have one thing that you can't skimp on, it's the sound." And that was from the cinematographer!
JACOB: There are certain times when you make a film of this size that people are more or less competent--it was amazing to be in the mix room with all of the buttons where the film comes together and is being mixed. That was just phenomenal. That was just something.
JOSH: There were just more buttons than could be.
It's a very exciting time for you.
JOSH: It really is, but it's stressful, too. You go out in the world and it's your baby and it's a very exciting but a very vulnerable feeling. It's really one of the most stressful times of our life.
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