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The Descendants

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Native islander Matt King (George Clooney) lives with his family in Hawaii. Their world shatters when a tragic accident leaves Matt's wife in a coma. Not only must Matt struggle with the stipulation in his wife's will that she be allowed to die with dignity, but he also faces pressure from relatives to sell their family's enormous land trust. Angry and terrified at the same time, Matt tries to be a good father to his young daughters as they too try to cope with their mother's possible death.

Opens Friday, November 18, 2011

Runtime:1 hr. 55 min.

 

Interview with Director Alexander Payne

 

(Q?: How did you go about assembling the cast?
 
(Alexander Payne) : What an honor it was to direct those cats.
 
(Q) : How did you line them all up?
 
(Alexander Payne) : Just asked them if they'd be in the movie and they all said yes.
 
(Q) : Was that before or after they read the script? Was it you that got them?

(Alexander Payne) : Well everyone in the movie auditioned except for Clooney, that was an offer, and the two old lions, Bridges and Forster I met with them. So they don't need to audition but they read the screenplay and then we talked and then I was able to consider them. Shailene auditioned here in New York in December of '09 and just knocked my socks off. She was the only one of hundreds of girls that I considered even remotely right for the part. My mental model had been a 17 year old Debra Winger, who would have been really perfect casting for that part. That fire and that vulnerability.

(Q) : She's so open and honest and so direct about who she is.
 
(Alexander Payne) : She's been well parented. I mean she would have turned out well even with hideous parents, but she's had very good parents.

(Q) : Could you talk about the process of adapting Kaui Hemmings' original novel? I heard that the perspective is a little different from the original novel.
 
(Alexander Payne) : How so?
 
(Q) : The young daughter was his perspective was taken rather than the George Clooney character.
 
(Alexander Payne) : The young daughter has a lot of, there are many more episodes with the younger daughter in the book. Also with the older daughter, but it's a book so there's more time to spend with this, with that, and with this. But for the purposes of a two hour commercial American film I obviously had to make a choice in whom am I more interested, and I was far more interested in the relationship with the older daughter than with the younger one, because there's a real relationship. Plus because I have to make my movies on a certain budget when you work with a minor, someone under 18 you only have eight hours per day, and I didn't want to have those limitations.
 
(Q) : Can you talk a little bit about the tone of the movie and getting that right, because it really comes across perfectly.
 
(Alexander Payne) : I’m so glad.
 
(Q) It's so human and so natural and not ham-handed at all where it could be in other hands. Can you talk about striking that balance?
 
(Alexander Payne) : Well, as they say in French, the style is the man himself. Questions of tone, questions of style always speak to just what occurs to the writer or to the musician or to in this case the director – I don't work alone; I have many, many, many collaborators before I make the final decisions – as what he or she would like to see. That tone is just what I would think comprises a good movie. And I've gotten questions before about oh, it's got comedy and pathos or comedy and drama, and sometimes in very close proximity. I would just say I don't think that's me, I think that's life.

Life has a thick tone like that with constant hairpin turns from laughter to tears, and if I'm able to achieve that somewhat in my films then I'm happy about that. But on a more concrete kind of practical level, I spend a lot of time editing. I don't overshoot but I obviously shoot more than I need so I've got flexibility in editing. And then in directing as well, when it comes time for the actor to do something in many cases there isn't one way I see correct. "Try it like this. Good, good, good. You know what? Try it this way. Don't lay into him so much. Let it affect you. Be a little bit more vulnerable in your response." So that I have choices in the editing room to play; I've got wiggle room.

Directing is only harvesting things to edit, and then in editing is where the editor and I, and this is our fifth feature, sixth film including the pilot for the TV show "Hung," our sixth project together, we spent months and months and months calibrating that tone down to the frame. And also questions of exactly where does the music begin, exactly where does it end. I think film is comprised of fragile things, not broad strokes. Everything in a film is fragile and very unique and particular to kind of whip this thing up and also to tone and storytelling and rhythm, because your question has a lot to do with rhythm.

Rhythm's increasingly important to me in filmmaking. It takes a long time because you're there with a loop in your eye and stitching it, and then you have constantly to stand back and look at the whole tapestry, which is screening for friends or screening for one of those recruited audiences, getting a sense of it. "Oh no, that part is still kind of crappy. Let's go back in there."
 
(Q) : Why did you pick this particular project?
 
(Alexander Payne) : I in general am attracted to good stories about people. And a story about people that I would believe could really happen in real life and free of movie contrivance. And then that it would happen in a place and among a class of people who make it even more interesting, someplace I'd like to go. I'm so grateful to Kaui Hemmings, the writer of the book. I could have never thought of a story like this in a million years. Even that basic story of a man whose wife is dying and the he learns that she's been cuckolding him and then he discovers that he sees "Well I have to go tell the lover that she's dying so that he can say goodbye. I want to kill him, but she would want him to know that act of difficult love."

And then going to find him, and the daughters; I never could have thought of that. And that story you could put anywhere. Any country, any class, any race. But then that it's among this upper class of Hawaii makes it interesting, gives it a little visual pizzazz. What is that social fabric, and so all these other layers of things come in that make me interested as a filmmaker, because as a filmmaker it's not just about the narrative story. I also have a documentary itch inside of me and I like to do emotional and then visual reportage.

I like my films to be very much documentaries at the same time. I'll get some confirmation next week when I show it out in Honolulu if I got it right, but it's a document. When you make a film you're not just trying to please the audience of the day but you're leaving a document of the times. You have to take that seriously.
 
(Q) : Bob had mentioned that's one of the things that appealed to him most about working with you. He was saying that that really appealed to him about your work. He felt like whenever he watches one of your movies he's been transported to a place and he sees a world that he never knew existed. Or not that he didn't know existed but that he didn't personally live. Is that a responsibility too, or is that something that intrigues you, that you want to show something that's not the same old thing?
 
(Alexander Payne) : Well I guess I'm showing it but I'm also learning it. I'm just making the moving that I think are A, the type of movie I myself would want to see, a B, that would involve an experience that I would like to have making the film, because that's my life. My life is not the resulting film; I actually don't care very much about the result of the film. I mean I do, but there's a way in which that doesn't affect me. What affects me is the time I spent making it, the fun I have, who I get to meet, the comradery with that crew, getting to work artistically with those actors and those creative collaborators behind the camera.

But I am complimented if each individual film presents a world of its own. And people between films when I do interviews and so forth or read stuff about my work, the ongoing themes, or whatever they say about through lines that they look for. But at the same time I would hope that each film is in a whole other very lived in world that feels and kind of smells lived in.
 
(Q) : Shailene coined actually a new word that's really quite an interesting one; atmosfeel, she said. It was a mistake but it's a beautiful concept actually, and you do do that and you create an atmosfeel for different places. Each one of your films is a different, as you say world that you've created that's a real place. I'm sure you're asked this a lot, but I think I'm looking for something a little bit different from you. What is it that makes you want to be that specific in location when you're working on a film? Does the location do you think feed you creatively in some way?
 
(Alexander Payne) : I like this world. I like seeing it and getting to know it and showing it, getting the rhythms of the place right. It has to do with what I was saying before. I don't know why; I just like it. I just know as a film viewer I'm never so crazy about films which are kind of Anytown, USA, or where it's supposed to be New York but it's really in Vancouver. I could will myself to forget it and just watch the story, and sometimes I can, but a lot of times I can't. I just notice it.
 
(Q) : Is there a documentary in you, you think?
 
(Alexander Payne) : Oh yeah. I actually think documentary is the superior form, and I think in as much as many filmmakers start in documentary and this is sort of a stepping stone toward narrative I'm starting to detect myself the opposite, that narrative is a stepping stone to documentary. Where I don't have to put up with actors and hair and makeup and second and third takes and all the egos and all the big money of the studio and all that stuff.

I spend so much time, effort, and millions of dollars to come up with a pale version of reality when the real thing surrounds us everywhere with no take twos, no second takes, everybody knows their dialog. I'm getting there. I like narrative too because there's also selection and order to present a different truth. I get that.
 
(Q) : Do you have a subject in mind?
 
(Alexander Payne) : I've just begun shooting one last week, which I'm not going to mention, but it's a very personal documentary.
 
(Q) : What do you think the different challenges are? You're speaking about one take and not being able really to direct anything. You're an observer there, and I think probably most of the work then in storytelling comes in editing as well as having chosen an interesting subject and being able to follow it and convince people that you're not there for all intents and purposes.
 
(Alexander Payne) : Well the biggest challenge would be if you don't shoot it quite right and you want to do it over again. When I think of whole worlds that you enter and then just slosh around in you think of Frederick Wiseman documentaries. Boy, that guy's unstoppable. Just throw a stone at any one of his films and you enter a whole world with no narration or anything, just there.
 
(Q) : Where is your documentary set?
 
(Alexander Payne) : Kind of all over.
 
(Q) : You don't want to talk about it. You don't want to ruin it for yourself.
 
(Alexander Payne) : For myself. It's too inchoate.
 
(Q) : What's fascinating about this film is it's basically tackling Hawaiian high-class society rather than the surfing community, which is often presented in a Hawaiian film. That was the key element that you find interesting for this film because it's a whole new perspective on another Hawaiian family that's not presented at all.
 
(Alexander Payne) : Although I have to say another reason I wanted to make the film is that I haven't really seen Hawaii at all. You suggest how it's presented in other films but I really haven't seen Hawaii or anyone attempt to present a family story. I mean I can't point to a single film that is a family story set in Hawaii other than that version of James Michener's "Hawaii" in 1966.
 
(Q) : "Blue Crush."
 
(Alexander Payne) : Yeah. Okay, yes, "Blue Crush," yes. Surfing film in Hawaii. But that's not what the book was. I was very faithful to the book, and I entered it not thinking about I’m going to do something different from other Hawaii movies. I have to say part of my interest in it wasn't just Hawaii, but rather the city of Honolulu, because I like cities and I have seen most other well-known American cities presented in films; New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Miami.

Omaha I've even seen, but I'd never really seen Honolulu and I thought why is that? And I never used to watch the old "Hawaii Five-0." I mean for all in know it was a good location film, I'm sorry series. I was interested in getting a sense of that city and life in that city, and I think it gets some of that right.

End.