So what do you think makes the best screenwriter-director
collaboration?
Obviously, every director is different.
And you've worked with so many amazing directors.
And you have to, I'm sure, turn yourself
into a pretzel for some of them.
Well, I think these are shotgun marriages, as I often
say.
You know, you're thrown into this intense situation.
And you've just spent all this time with something.
And now, somebody-- usually, most often, the director--
comes in later in the process.
And now, they have their own ideas.
And it can be rejuvenating.
It can be inspiring to have somebody see into your world
and have these ideas that make it better.
Ideally, it's one and one is three
once the director comes on so that you hope, like
with all relationships, that you both want the same thing.
And you may disagree about specifics, tiny specifics.
If we're talking about "under her breath" and things
like that, that's fine.
But if you're talking about huge character
issues, and the direction of the story,
and the tone in particular-- because a lot of directors
don't understand the tone you might have,
or you might just have a simple disagreement.
But if you're all, if you're in sync,
I find that I try to, in every department,
let the racehorse run, and see what people
want to do, and try and understand what they're
trying to say, and process it.
Because you can be defensive.
But then, you're killing the conversation.
You're not enabling collaboration.
And I may be listening to something
I know I disagree with or have an issue with,
but I want to see where they're going.
Sometimes I'll be so instantly annoyed though,
and I will make the mistake of jumping on something.
And when-- you know-- when you get jumped on, you shut down.
So now, you're both--
I'm annoyed.
They're defensive.
There's no conversation.
So it's better to just take it in
and listen and try and understand
where they want to go.
Yes, full agreement.
I've worked with a lot of writer-directors.
And sometimes it's the best possible scenario, right?
It's a real auteur the way you work.
And sometimes I find, as an actor, I find that--
especially inexperienced writer-directors--
is that they tend to feel like the movie is
that idea that they had in their hotel room
when they were all by themselves, and especially
writers who are really used to sitting in a room
and typing all by themselves and laughing hysterically
at what they've written.
Movies don't work that way.
There are 125 people.
Also, some writers really get bogged
down in dialogue and structure because those
are the two big components.
And it's hard for them to be free enough
to see that movies aren't really about what people say.
They're about behavior, and about complexity,
and about how people do things that are against their nature
sometimes.
It's hard for them-- sometimes they get very syllogistic,
and it's hard for them to see that human behavior doesn't
always work syllogistically.
Sometimes people just do something
because they're impulsive, and it's out of their pattern.
To do all those things and to convey all those things,
and what's so difficult about screenwriting is,
you only get two senses.
You get sight and sound, and that's it.
And so it's very, very difficult to convey all of that stuff
with just sight and sound.
And I think what gets lost in the conversation--
because I understand a writer's frustration if they
don't feel understood.
Because what they're focusing on is the specifics of the thing.
You know, I wanted a blue shirt.
This is what I think she should have.
Instead of, there's a different kind
of deeper intention that they're talking about.
And the conversation, what is it-- and there are
times where changing the dialogue changes,
really changes, the intention.
And there are times for me, whether I'm just
writing or writing and directing,
where someone will change it, and it will be better.
There are times where they'll change it and it will be worse,
and that's not OK.
And there are times where they'll change it
and it's just different, and that's also not OK.
Because why change it just to change it?
Right.
But that doesn't mean that I'm not open to change.
Because an actor may figure out a way to do it in a way
I didn't think about.
And their first instinct might actually be really interesting.
Or it might be to do without the dialogue, which
is almost always something worth pursuing.
So what gets lost in the fight to control is the idea of,
what is the intention, and what is the story?
And let's keep telling each other the story
instead of fighting over minutiae.
We'll keep telling each other the story,
and see if we both still see the same story,
and talk about the characters and motivation, and you both--
what's behind everything.
And I think those conversations, even if you're at odds
sometimes, are fruitful.
Yeah.
Yeah, even as an actor working with a script,
I mean, sometimes something has resonance for me personally.
And some things don't.
So for example, when I'm given a story--
In "The Beaver," I was given a story.
The writer had kind of gave me a story about,
I was trying to convince my husband of something.
And I was telling him about that story.
Remember when we were on the Colorado River,
and our son fell in, and you fished him out,
and he was sopping wet, and then the ambulance came?
There was this whole long story.
But the story was so--
required me to think so much.
And it required the other characters
to think so much that it wasn't emotional to me.
And I wanted it to not be about the writing.
So the story that I said to the writer,
I said, I need this story where I say--
remember when our son was born, and he was so small,
and you picked him up, and he was so small?
There was something so not literary, not intellectual
about that kind of resonance that that had for me.
And it allowed the audience to enter into the movie in a way
where they didn't have to be thinking.
They could just be feeling what the character was playing.
And sometimes those are my problems with writer-directors,
is that it's hard for me to explain to them
why words get in the way.
Anyway--
They can.
But that give and take is a healthy give and take.
And I don't think people need to be afraid of it.
I don't think they need to be threatened by--
especially if it comes from a place of people
are trying to interpret what you're doing.
And because there are so many people
that you need, and we don't all get infinite budgets,
and we can't do hundreds of takes and spend as much time
as we want so we can get it exactly the way we see,
it's very hard.
You want to just, there's that sweet spot
where you feel what you know you need to feel.
And for me, that feels good enough,
not like even a compromise.
That feels like it's actually working.
I think we both have the same understanding
of what's at the heart of this get not a shorty movie
that we've created.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't feel--
I think there are specifics that we may disagree on.
But how important is it to the overall what matters?
And I'll speak up if I think something will actually
work against--
--right.
--what I think you want to do.
But this is a job I'm doing to serve a vision you have.
It was your idea.
It was your-- so I'm actually the [INAUDIBLE] here coming
in and trying to execute something you have very
specifically in your head, which is a slightly
different thing than something I've created
and we've come together on.
Well, but it's also grown from my original memory
that I brought to the table.
I mean, that's the beautiful part
of the process is that it moves and shapes and evolves.
And you bring the next person into the puzzle.
And we're going to bring a location scout.
Then, we're going to bring the production designer.
Then, we're going to bring the DP.
Everybody brings their life story to the table.
And suddenly, you have this organic character
that started with an idea that you had,
this big idea that you had, that has now changed and shaped
and evolved.
And I think that's the most beautiful thing about making
movies, is not--
I don't want to make a movie in my hotel room all by myself.
I really love the sharing process
of watching this child that we've
created together grow and change in ways that I'd never
anticipated.
It's really a joyful thing.
Yeah.
And I think the line is, there's a tricky line that you're
walking when you're working with a director,
or even with producers or a studio.
You're always trying to improve it.
And this happens on the set too, where
you're trying to improve a scene,
but you can improve it into a failure.
You see it in the cutting room too
where you're cutting and fixing it, and fixing it, and fixing
it.
You've just fixed it into a mess.
And so it's tricky walking that line.
And so you have to have a give and take.
And if your ego is another factor in all that-- and mine
frequently is.
I don't want to dismiss--
sometimes I feel a kind of ownership,
and I don't want to compromise just to be a good boy.
I've done that too.
So you're walking a line between,
this is what I really believe, and also trying
to be available to these other ideas that might actually
be great.
It's all very hard.
And you can only, it just takes, it's a constant practice.
It's like meditation or yoga.
Yeah, it's a meditation.
You're just always practicing.
You never master it.
It's a meditation.
I think that's a theme that's come up
a lot, which is this sort of meditation about balance.
On the one hand, it's structure.
On the other hand, it's freedom.
On the one hand, it's being sure about what you have
and fighting for it.
And on the other, it's like, be flexible and give and take.
I mean, it is this just balance of back and forth.
And I guess that you just gotta put your tennis shoes on
and just keep doing it enough to appreciate how that feels
to balance those two things.
And accept that being out of balance
isn't a larger message that everything's wrong.
It just means that the conversation continues.
Yeah.
Bye, Scott.
Love you, lady.
Thank you again for doing this with us.
Love you too.
Bye.