Yeah, that was a good thing for me. I was sort of holding my breath waiting for this thing to get right myself. I’d certainly not written anything that many times. I’ve written a lot of scripts many, many times. I think scripts need to be written many, many times. But once it was right, I knew it was right. And more importantly, I had to tell the story. It was a combination of growing frustrated as a screenwriter with the inability to complete the storytelling process. We don’t really get to tell stories in my line of work. You write them but you’re not really even writing stories as much as you’re writing architectural drawings for the story to follow, which are never followed in my particular case. And I was very, very successful. I’m a very successful screenwriter and they made none of my movies, you know? So it was frustrating. That frustration plus the really powerful need to tell the story about this relationship collided at the same time and provoked me to write it truthfully. And then to be given the great gift of having others respond to the truth that I’d finally been brave enough to commit to the paper. That’s how I think of this.
Were there really 30+ drafts?
I sort of regret saying that because it sounds like I’m such a knucklehead (laughing). I believe that Cameron Crowe refers to “Jerry Maguire” being written 25 times. Most of the movies I love, when I talk to the writer, they wrote them 20+ times. But yeah, I think it was probably 30. After I’ve defended myself for three sentences – yes (laughing).
During those 10 years and those 30+ drafts, was there a point where you thought maybe this was too personal of a story to tell?
Yes, absolutely, especially actually the last one. The film, I think, characterizes emotions that I am extraordinarily proud to be putting on the screen. All the people involved did this film – and the actors did not get paid anywhere near their salaries to do this film – and everyone was participating because we liked the story, and we liked the idea of exploring masculine emotions or the absence thereof. And that was always the purpose. That landscape, not only is it a barren landscape – the landscape of masculine emotions – but an under-explored landscape, and there are little secrets in it.
One of the ways in which masculine emotion embodies itself is in grief and in sadness. Not just sadness but in grief and in longing. That’s the terrain of masculine emotion. We’re quite different from women, obviously, and I am both incredibly proud of expressing that longing in an adult man played by Josh Lucas for his father, and also expressing the longing that Chris Walken’s character has for his son. I’m very proud of expressing that. It’s also tremendously embarrassing.
When you first put pen to paper did you intend to direct this? You’re not a director by nature.
No, by the first draft, no. It was a script that was sent around town to sell. What it ended up doing was getting me a lot of writing work. The first draft was good enough to get me a lot of writing work. And frankly, there were a couple different places along the way where people wanted to make it and I didn’t think it was ready. I felt I’d been dodging. I also don’t think I was in a place personally and creatively to direct the film, or even oversee someone else’s directing it. But then as the years went by and my frustration grew as a screenwriter, and my proximity to other productions grew, I just realized that directing is storytelling. If you are a writer, you are a director.
The only hurdle to moving from being a writer to a director [was] the ability to work with actors. Well, I was an actor for 18 years and that didn’t seem to be a hurdle. I directed a lot of theater so I understood how to take something on a page and collaborate with others into bringing it to life. So the camera was the final obstacle and I finally realized that I wasn’t going to let it stop me. I just started this notebook, which I filled with incredibly ridiculous stick figures. Those are the stick figures that we shot off of. My [director of photography] recognized in those scrawling drawings that I was doggedly attempting to tell the story in pictures. And Michael Grady, who was my DP, is a gifted and intelligent enough person to recognize that that’s what cinematography must be.
I doubt I will ever make a fanciful piece of cinema that is self-consciously flamboyant or excessive in its visual style. I just don’t see it happening because I’m a writer and I want to tell the story in pictures.
