< Home / Interview / Critic / Bio / My articles in Japanese >

Another Happy Day

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story :A family weekend is fraught with emotional landmines for mercurial and sensitive Lynn (Barkin) as she arrives at her parents’ Annapolis estate for the marriage of her estranged eldest son Dylan (Michael Nardelli), accompanied by her three younger children (Ezra Miller, Kate Bosworth, Daniel Yelsky). Lynn’s hopes for a joyful reunion are crushed as her wry but troubled middle son Elliot (Ezra Miller) lobs verbal grenades at his mother and her relatives while daughter Alice (Kate Bosworth), a fragile young woman, fights valiantly to keep her longtime demons under control. The weekend quickly unravels as Lynn demands to be heard by her aloof, disdainful mother (Ellen Burstyn), ailing, distant father (George Kennedy) and ever-judgmental sisters (Siobhan Fallon, Diana Scarwid), but most especially by her ex-husband Paul (Thomas Hayden Church) and his hot-tempered second wife Patty (Demi Moore) .

Opened November 18, 2011 (NY, LA)

Runtime:1 hr. 55 min.

 

Interview with Actress Ellen Barkin, Director Sam Levinson

 

(Q): So Ellen, is this serendipity that you starred in "Diner" with Barry Levionson and you're starring in this film with Sam Levinson(Barry's son)?

(Ellen Barkin): Yes. I'll tell it quickly before Sam gets here, and I've told it before. I was working with Sam for a week and a half on another project that he had rewritten, and he was on this shoot of this genre movie, it was a big comedy cast, spectacular cast, and he was there, there were a lot of improvisational geniuses. So it was dialog tweaking and also work with the actors because we kind of had a non-director.

I was sitting in my chair, my canvas chair one day, and my script was closed on my lap and I was in between scenes so I was in my bad villain girl costume and Sam was sitting next to me and my script was closed. Now I had spent every day on the set with this man basically as the director-writer even though he wasn't and he had nothing to do with directing camera because the movie sucks. My script is closed and I looked down and I said "Wait, Levinson?"

And he said "Yeah." And I said "Are you Barry's kid?" And he said "Didn't you know that?" I said "No." And so it was amazing. It was amazing. And what I will say to Sam and to his father's credit is both men at very different points in my life – this makes me cry because "Diner" was a very hard thing for me to access – gave me roles that were so close to the surface of where I was at the time, and so raw and true just in terms of the work I needed to do in order to succeed for myself. That's not lost on me. Now in "Diner," it was my first movie, I played a support role, and Sam gave me like the whole orchestra to play with.

(Q) : One of the things that's so great about this movie is its rhythm. It has this sort of constant rolling process there. You've got all these characters in and out and all this and that.

(Ellen Barkin): I've got to say, Bradley, you really go it, because I sat next to you at that screening and I didn't realize it was you right away and I was whoever's sitting next to me is so getting the structure of this movie. And then I looked over and I said oh it's Bradley.

(Q) : That's one of the things that was so great about it. It has this ebb and this flow and it just fascinated me about how you structured it and then fascinated me about how you knew where it was in the process. The movie's not made right then and there, but it feels like it's really like a documentary, it's like happening right then and there.

(Sam Levinson): There's a rhythm to storytelling, there always is a rhythm to it. I would say that studying theater was a great benefit for me in not just writing this film but also in communicating with my wonderful cast. I look to writers, and forgive me for saying it, like Chekov, who navigates sort of the lines of comedy and tragedy so well. And I spent a lot of time thinking about what that means, and what affect that has on storytelling, and essentially what I tried to do was anytime there was a dramatic scene was to immediately sideswipe the audience with a comedic scene.

So by the time they approached the next dramatic scene they would feel like they didn't have all this baggage that they had carried through the whole film until they got halfway into that dramatic scene and realized "Oh, shit, I'm carrying a heavy load." It was something that was in the script and something that I also tried to accomplish in making the film and in the editing process of it, because it's a very delicate balance because you don't want to undermine the great sort of dramatic and emotional moments and you don't want to trivialize them. But you don't want to allow anyone to sort of wallow in them either.

(Ellen Barkin): And I think for every actor, because we were really the most functional version of a family as a cast. I feel so comfortable speaking for all of us because we all say the same thing. I think we all had the same reaction. When same gave me the script the first day and I just went right back to my hotel room and I read it. I was really shredded on my bed and I was sobbing with tears and snot. Like I don't think I've ever sobbed in life, like it really got it me.

And then I'd burst out laughing out loud, and emotionally I literally did not know what to do with myself. And I think it's the experience you have as an audience member. It's life, it's an amazing accomplishment. Look, I do have to say that Sam pretty much across the board got his first choices in terms of his cast, and I think everyone had the same response. I mean the script got sent to Ellen Burstyn, she had a meeting with Sam within a week and she was in two days later, and the same with Demi. This movie, the brilliant film that he directed is exactly the brilliant script that was on the page.

(Q) : Can you talk more about how this character really touched you emotionally to where you are now? It just seemed like it was in you. Those gut wrenching scenes were so real, so was she a reflection of where you are now?

(Ellen Barkin): Yes, in the big picture I think she is representative of certainly every mother I know, and probably 98% of the population of mothers if not 99.9% I don't know Susan Smith, I don't know that woman. I do know mothers just like me who only want to do good for their children. They want to do better than their parents, and sometimes to the point of damaging they want to protect their children from the outside world. If you do that too much you're not giving them enough tools to protect themselves.

And I think that within that framework mistakes are made all the time. Big ones, small ones, profoundly traumatic ones, and you just hope that as they go into adulthood and these mistakes start to resonate in their lives that then they do better than you do. So the idea of giving voice to that, which I do think is one of the last taboos in movies. Like we can watch the brilliant Mo'Nique break our hearts in "Precious," because that mother is abusive and she cracked my heart open.

And we can watch a caricature of a kind of crazy, maybe I have the good intentions but I'm like hysterical. But we can't watch like me. Like where am I in a movie? Like a mother who wanted to make the right choices, and guess what, I fucked up, like more than once.

(Q) : But you were gut wrenching.

(Ellen Barkin): Because I do feel that look it's really hard. I'm method trained, and I did have to sit there for three years and then every day all day, because she never has a scene where it doesn't happen. Like George Kennedy when we played that scene and his first line is "Does the grass look overgrown to you?" He might as well have just stabbed me in the heart.

I didn't plan it that way, but I thought "Oh wow, I bought the house, I paid for the landscapers, it's my responsibility, he's criticizing me, I'm not taking care of my family right, and they hate me. And I think to some extent don't we all feel like, I mean everybody in the fucking universe feels unappreciated at some time in their life.

(Sam Levinson): Or not heard.

(Ellen Barkin): Yeah, just what I was going to say. Totally right. Like everybody feels like just listen to me; how loud do I have to yell? And this movie doesn't catch this woman 15 years ago or 22 years ago, it catches her when the milk has been boiling over in that pot for quite some time, so she has lost any ability to filter, to see clearly, to understand the result of her own actions. There's too much pain and too much hurt, and so it's like a baby just acting out.

(Sam Levinson) : As a writer I have an enormous amount of sort of sympathy for the very simple idea that as a parent you can try to do the best you can, and really try to, and that is your intention, and make a mistake that may reverberate more than you'll ever know. I mean that is such a terrifying idea to me, who is not a parent. I don't quite know how to fathom that.

(Ellen Barkin): But you did. I think it's the case with every one of those female characters.

(Sam Levinson): It's a point in time in Lynn's life, the character's life, where I think she's not just dealing with not being heard or listened to by her family. But it's also a time I think in a woman's life, I think any woman's life, where the sort of existential feeling of that is starting to really weigh on them.

(Ellen Barkin): What do you mean?

(Sam Levinson): In the sense that just from my naïve observations about life that there is a certain point in time when a woman becomes a ghost essentially, when she feels like she is not heard and not seen and not listened to. And it is something that I explicitly wrote in the scene with Ellen Burstyn, except I put it on the rest of the family rather than on herself because I think it resonated more when she said "When did I wake up to an empty house filled with ghosts?"

And so I think that those two elements, the idea of a woman feeling like she is disappearing in the world itself, in the eyes of society coupled with the idea that she's disappearing as a member of a family, as a mother, as a parent, and not being heard is a kind of a very complicated and devastatingly brutal combination.

(Ellen Barkin): Can I address this issue since I am possibly that woman you're talking about? I do have to say that there are many ways in which emotionally look, my connections I think are up there for everybody to see. There are ways in which this woman, like she's maybe the least like me of any character I've ever played. I understand this idea, but only as an idea, of the host egg female. So the minute you can no longer reproduce your function in society is negated and you become invisible.

For me, at 57 I have never felt more visible, more present, or more deserving for the first time in my life of just the fact that I'm here. And I've never felt more listened to. And I've been feeling it over the last five years just when I'm supposed to be receding into the background. So this was a way in which, like I understand the feminist idea of it, it is not my personal experience. So it was a beautiful and really challenging thing for me, so I said I'm going to become one of those women. And yeah look, obviously when you're 30 years old and you walk down the street people look at you. Anyone with breasts, men look at you.

And when you're over 50 they don't. We all know that. But that does not define me. Like I'm right up there with the menopausal power pack. I am like really there saying no, wait a minute, this thing of my kids are grown, they're on their way, I'm not having any more babies, I've got nothing but me, and yes I will raise my children until the day I die and be there for them, but they are not children, they are their own people, and I am so empowered by that. I just feel like okay let's go, because now it's my turn. And I know it's cliché, but when it was my turn in my 20s and early 30s I wasn't ready. That's when I was a fucking ghost.

(Q) : You mentioned earlier that you found it really challenging to get to the essence of this character. Can you talk a little bit about what you think the essence of this character is, and what was probably the most difficult decision that you made in terms of shaping this character and bringing her to life?

(Ellen Barkin): I knew I was going to play the part the minute I read it, but the most difficult decision was obviously to say if you're going to do this you're just going to do it, and it's not going to feel good.

(Q): What do you think defines the essence of the character?

(Ellen Barkin): And maybe you come out the other end having learned something. I think one of my fundamental building blocks was that was I was looking at the ways in which she wasn't like me, and I looked at her character traits, her personality traits, I thought okay so she's someone who is always constantly never a moment in her life where she's not looking for approval. Always looking to see what the reaction of her action is.

And I don't have that in me, and I don't know why because I was not a confident adolescent, I was not a confident young woman, I just never gave a fuck what anybody thought about me, and I don't know why. And I think most actors say this and maybe that's why you become actors. I wasn't popular, but I just didn't care, and I think that this woman is the opposite of that. So as I started to explore that I said right, so she's like a baby. So when a baby takes its first step the first thing they do after they're not focusing on their feet is they pick their head up and make sure that somebody's seen them, hopefully their mommy or daddy.

A baby breaks a plate and a baby looks around to make sure someone's seen them. I don't think babies probably wouldn’t have temper tantrums, I mean if something's hurting them they would, but like a full on temper tantrum, that's because somebody's watching you. So this whole movie is some version of a temper tantrum for Lynn. You're catching her at her temper tantrum moment. And I thought okay, she's a baby pre the age of reason, and not only under five but under two.

So that's a good jumping off point for me. So she didn't look like me, she didn't dress like me, she certainly didn't move like me, and she didn't talk like me, and I think that was something that you said you were so surprised at.

(Sam Levinson): Because I offered the script to Ellen three years prior to shooting and we worked very closely together as director and producer, and also as director and actor, that we really discussed the script and we discussed I mean just everything. How it was going to be shot and the character and all this stuff, and in my head I thought I knew exactly what she was going to do when she got on set.

(Ellen Barkin): Because we had no rehearsal.

(Sam Levinson): We had no rehearsal, so by the time she got on set I thought I know exactly what's going to happen here and maybe I can tweak that and maybe I can tweak that. And it's like suddenly she just throws down a fucking royal flush and you go oh, wow, I didn't see that coming. I have to really adapt to this because for three years in my head I assumed she was going to play this role more like the character of Doris, Ellen Burstyn's character. For some reason that's what I felt.

I don't know why, I don't know if it was because of a certain conversation or anything, it's just what I assumed to be the case. And I think what's interesting is I believe in having a very strong dialog with actors before shooting. I studied method acting for four years and it really helped me develop that sort of language of communication. I think she made an incredible choice, because this film sort of operates in such a morally grey landscape, and because her character teeters on being sympathetic and being just painfully annoying at times and self-destructive I guess, you have to compensate for that.

And what she brought to the character, which thank god she did, and something I hadn't imagined was a very demonstrative quality in the way in which she touches her son Ben. Even in the way in which she talks to Ezra Miller's character, Elliot, after that brutal, brutal fight, she sits there and tries to understand it in a very emotional and connected way.

There was no distance between the two, and it was something I had to adapt to not just as a director in terms of how I communicated with Ellen, but also in the way in which I shot the film. I thought they're so close in this scene after this fight that I don't ever want to see them in the same shot. I want to separate them to create this feeling because it puts them almost in their own space, but it allows us to form that bridge ourselves in our own mind.

(Ellen Barkin): You split us up in that room, that's right. Because I thought we were going to both be sitting together. Look, for me it's also her shining moment in the film after that scene, where not only does she try to understand, but actually after what he does to her what she really has to say by saying the line "That's because they don't know you, Elliot," is that they don't know what a wonderful, vulnerable human being you are. And that's some serious parenting.

(Q): Part of that separation thing was also you and Ellen Burstyn for most of the film because there's such a dynamic thing that's going on there, and I wanted to ask two questions real quick. First of all, congratulations on the Tony and the Drama Desk. In any case the question has to do with there you are, the two icons of the method acting school and not being in scenes together until the necessity of it. So did you guys ever talk together?

(Ellen Barkin): Constantly. I felt, and I said it once before to someone on the phone, I felt acting with Ellen, aside from her guidance, her support, the courage she gave me, I felt that it was like playing jazz with Miles Davis and I'll just keep saying it, and all I had to do was follow her and that she would bring me there. And there was a moment, and I don't know because Lynn has nothing but those moments, where I just was sitting with Ellen, and yes our communication was constant.

(Q): Did you say "I'm going to do this in this scene?"

(Ellen Barkin): No, but there was the method kind of talk. But there was a moment where I just thought okay, as they say in Yiddish. It's like, it's enough already. I just got to like not cry or become hysterical. And I said something to Ellen and I said "You know it's like enough, I've got to just like pull it together for this scene," and she said "Go ahead. Go do it. Now you must hold on to the reality of your character. Not necessarily the scene, but just hold on to the reality of your character. Go do it. He's going to cut after about three seconds because it's not going to work," and she was right.

(Sam Levinson): And it was also the way, just to elaborate briefly on it, it was also the way that this film was sort of set up is that with the help of Ellen as the lead actor and producer we were able to set a very egalitarian sort of tone and mood on the set, so no one was treated any differently. Everyone had the same thing, whether it was the 13 year old, Daniel Yelsky, or Demi Moore. I was successful in getting rid of Video Village, where you can look through the camera and all that, and also making the house a closed set.

(Ellen Barkin): We had a closed set for 23 days.

(Sam Levinson): So what happened was is it allowed for the entire cast and crew to really explore together as a group and to not judge one another. And I think it's the main thing a director must do is to protect their cast and crew. And what happened is we would be shooting a scene with Burst with Barks, as they wanted to be called, in one room.

(Ellen Barkin): Ellen made up those names.

(Sam Levinson): And in the other room Jeff DeMunn would be running lines with Kate Bosworth. We were in an environment I think where it was okay to fail, to make a mistake, to try something, to be vulnerable, to do this, because that is how they flourish as an actor, as an artist. And everyone stayed for the entire 23 days.

(Ellen Barkin): And everyone has someone to take care of and had someone taking care of them. And when we would shoot scenes, whether you were in them or not pretty much every actor showed up on the set. Like they'd call up and they'd say "Can someone come pick us up? We just want to come." So when Ezra Miller and Ellen Burstyn are shooting that scene we were all there.

When I was there with Ellen alone in the kitchen they were all there. I mean most of the scenes we're all in, but in the scenes that weren't everybody was in the house. And it took us 23 days to shoot the movie and for 23 days there was a closed set. You weren't allowed in that house if you weren't a functioning crew member or in the cast.

(Sam Levinson): And if you had a cell phone it was getting thrown out.

(Ellen Barkin): So if you were on the crew and you were the set decorator you were out once shooting began, like your job was done. And it was welcomed because Sam knew that he was asking a lot of every cast member and he was very protective.

(Sam Levinson): And with 11 sort of principle characters unless a very clear tone was set from day one the film could very easily just fall off the deep end. The cast and the crew, it could devolve into complete chaos.

(Ellen Barkin): And I would say that there is not one person on that cast and crew who at any given moment did not know who their daddy was, and that was pretty amazing considering you've got the fucking Mount Olympus of acting that is Ellen Burstyn and George Kennedy, and then you have a little 13 year old prodigy genius, and everybody looked to Sam who was at once so open and collaborative, and at the other time "Great, thanks for your input. I'm the director."

(Q): Are we going to get you back on stage?

(Ellen Barkin): Yeah.

(Q): Anything soon?

(Ellen Barkin): I hope so.

(Q): Are you going to be doing some theater? Directing?

(Sam Levinson): I have a film in the works that might incorporate some elements.

(Q): Do you think you're going to do all your movies like this, or this is just special?

(Sam Levinson): I very much believe in working in that way. But the next film I'm doing is wildly different.

End.