Madeline Carroll, Rebecca DeMornay and Penelope Ann Miller Flipped Press Conference
What was the most challenging part of working on Flipped?Rebecca DeMornay: "It wasn’t very challenging. It wasn’t very challenging with Rob Reiner. Rob Reiner is truly a gifted, relaxed director and man, and really understands that I guess what Hitchcock said that 90% of directing is casting. When he casts the people he casts, he just trusts them from the second they walk on the set. That’s a certain kind of hammock to fall back in as an actor, regardless of what you have to do as an actor. When the director sets the tone like that, it doesn’t seem so challenging. I’m just saying that because, well, A), it’s true but B), it’s funny that all of us actors couldn’t think of anything that challenging. In other words, it was a really great experience."
Madeline Carroll: "The most challenging thing for me I think was having to sniff Bryce’s hair. That was really weird."
Penelope Ann Miller: "It was a joy to come to work. It really was. It felt like summer camp and we were all together and we were staying in these kind of smaller hotels that weren’t fancy, and we would all get together for dinners and have barbecues. Even when we weren’t working on the set, my daughter would come and she’d ride bikes with the kids in the movie."
Madeline Carroll: "It was literally fun all the time."
Penelope Ann Miller: "It just was fun and Rob, like Rebecca said, he knows what he wants. He trusts his actors. He makes you feel safe and secure. Therefore, you don’t worry. You don’t have the same insecurities or fears that we do a lot of the times, I think, when we go into other experiences. So I think setting it in a different location, I think us all being away in Ann Arbor created a great vibe and we all got close as a result."
"He just has a gift and he has a love of life and people. He was always laughing when he’s watching the monitor. It was just great. You do sometimes one or two takes and you move on. 'Are you sure? Do you want another one?' 'No, we got it. Move on.' So it just was relaxed, but also it moved."
The film also is able to make decent people look interesting.
Rebecca DeMornay: "Absolutely right. That’s what’s interesting. I think our society has become very enamored with the evil and the bad and ooh, the worst. The stakes get higher and higher of what you have to see to be shocked or scared. In fact, it’s a challenge to live an ordinary life and it’s a challenge to play the ordinary people and show what’s really going on underneath, the conflicts that are in them and yet choices that are being made by good families like the Bakers that are hard sometimes."
Penelope Ann Miller: "But we had challenges too. As much as we’re considered the good family, we have a big fight about the fact that we’re renting our house and all the money’s going to take care of his mentally disabled brother and why is our house dirty, and the embarrassment of the fact that they’ve thrown away the eggs for fear of salmonella. So there’s still challenges. We’re still complex people. It’s just simpler. It’s simpler ideals and issues that we’re dealing with. That’s what’s so great about the movie. It’s not about 3-D or explosions or sci-fi. It brings us back to what we all are living for. Are we following our dreams? Are we going after love and passion? What’s holding us back? Are we missing out? Can we get that back? All the themes, I think, just remind us of what’s important in life and that’s what I love about the film. Everybody’s part, as much as we’re an ensemble, obviously Madeline and Callan have the big roles, but everybody was a piece to this puzzle. Cody [Horn's] role, she brings so much to it. There’s so much complexity going on. Everybody brings that to those pieces and I think that’s why Rob, with the casting and just with the story..."
Rebecca DeMornay: "I was researching - I had to play in another film, a criminal investigator - and I was talking to this chief of police somewhere who said, 'You know, with what you see on TV and what you read about and what films are about, you kind of think that people are always just sort of breaking the law. In fact, about 90% of people in the city don’t break the law at all and are really trying to just be decent people.' So that’s sort of the gross majority of us."
"You wouldn’t really think it, but it’s hard to be a good person and to not break the law. It’s hard and to not lie and to not raise your children with lies or cowardice or being in denial that what you’re giving them is love when it isn’t necessarily. So I think that the film is sort of in the pocket of the people actually can be good, are good, I believe as did Anne Frank. I think the film sort of celebrates it without being saccharine. I think people are moved, when I’ve seen screenings, because it sort of reminds us of ourselves. Actually, yeah, I feel that. There’s concepts of love, what is love, loving someone, knowing who they really are, what means something to them and then finally giving it to them as her boyfriend, my son comes to realize with the sycamore tree. They’re deep things that you feel. They seem simple but they’re deep when you watch the movie."
