I got very spoiled with a lot of really, really great actors. I feel like they’re doing 90% of the work. There’s only so much you can do in directing someone. They need to come to the table really prepared, and then I look at it as 90% of the job is theirs and 10% is you coming in and not getting in their face too much. I think a lot of first-time directors get in there and they overdo it or they overcomplicate it. I think they can annoy the actors, to be honest. I mean, you have someone like Mary McDonnell who’s been doing this for a long time and has been nominated for Oscars. I don’t need to explain to her how to prepare for a role. I just need to answer all the questions that she has. If she wants to alter a piece of dialogue, allow her to do that. If she wants to improv, allow her that opportunity. Then explain to her who the character is and what the story means.
Having written the screenplay, I think, is also half of the battle in communicating with your actors because you’re not trying to go through the middleman – the screenwriter – because that’s you. You don’t need to bring out the translator. It all comes from you.
How did you decide on the music for the movie?
Mike Andrews did the score. I was very lucky that I didn’t have crew forced upon me by the financiers. A lot of times they force you to hire people because they want the music to sound like music from ‘that’ movie. But with $4.5 million, you can’t afford Thomas Newman or Danny Elfman or any of these guys. You’ve got to just go find somebody who is young and hungry, and really talented.
Nancy Juvonen’s brother recommended Mike Andrews. He’s from San Diego, actually. Gary Jules, who did the “Mad World” cover with him, is also from San Diego. Jim Juvonen, he’s really good at knowing who’s the shit before anyone else knows who’s the shit. He said, “This is the guy. This guy is a genius; you’ve got to work with this guy. No one knows about him.” I met with Mike and I just knew right away that he was really, really talented and that he could come together with a really original score. He would also collaborate with me. He would allow me to be in there and be really kind of editorial with how I wanted the score to be.
Did you purposely write the faculty to be good and evil, with no middle ground?
The movie has this kind of comic book title. We’re sort of delving into archetypes of suburbia, the bullies, the gym teacher... There are definite archetypes – points of satire. Clearly the gym teacher and the principal are nitwits. Let’s not pull punches, clearly I’m mocking curriculum that I remember. The ‘Love and Fear Lifeline’ was all stuff that I was taught. It was plagiarized from personal experience. It was just like that. I guess unless you grew up in the 80’s and experienced that, it might seem like bizarro.
Drew and Noah [Wyle’s] characters were intended to be kind of the liberal, new guard, progressive teachers that I remember. I had great teachers like the ones that I asked Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle to portray. It was definitely a criticism of the educational system, but also showing that there are great people there. There are the nitwits but there are also the really progressive people who often find their voices stamped down and suffocated.
How closely does the final film match what was in your head when you wrote the script?
You write the script and you see it in a particular way, then it all changes when you figure out, “Oh, we can’t shoot this.” You write a script that takes place in Florida and then you realize that you have to shoot it in Toronto. You thought you were going to cast Dustin Hoffman and it ends up being Martin Lawrence. How sudden things change and you have to just roll with it. Sometimes that’s exciting when it’s all of sudden not what you thought it was, but it’s something better.
How close did you stick to the script?
There’s some stuff in the screenplay that was never shot. In the very first draft, he woke up from sleepwalking in a shopping mall. There’s a couple of other scenes were never shot. What you saw on the screen is pretty damn close to what I wrote when I was 23 years old in 1997 or 1998, whatever it was, when I wrote the script. There are changes here and there and things are slightly different, but it’s pretty close.
I don’t think any film I ever make will ever match the script perfectly because I think things evolve on set. You don’t need this scene, or all of a sudden you need a new one, or the dialogue’s going to completely change because the actors want to re-tool it. What’s exciting is to see what comes out different. It’s cool to compare the blueprint versus what you saw up there. I think filmmakers who are slaves to their own screenplays – it’s the Bible, you can’t change a syllable – I think that’s really limiting and a dangerous thing to do. I think you’ve just got to keep it loose and make sure you’re not limiting yourself.
