FAMILY AFFAIR: An interview with Lovely & Amazing director Nicole Holofcener. By Warren Curry 6/26/02 Part 1 of 2

It's been a long six years since director Nicole Holofcener's debut feature Walking and Talking, but her follow-up, Lovely & Amazing, proves to be well worth the wait. The director assembled an absolutely top-notch cast including Catherine Keener (click here to read an interview with Keener), Brenda Blethyn, Dermot Mulroney, James LeGros, Jake Gyllenhaal, as well as relative newcomers Emily Mortimer and nine-year-old Raven Goodwin. In the movie, Holofcener takes a look at a family of women, the struggles they endure and the bonds they share, in a moving slice-of-life film that makes the wise decision of putting people ahead of issues and plot conventions. Lovely & Amazing is another film that is destined to be a contender for my top ten list at the end of the year.

CinemaSpeak had the opportunity to sit down with Holofcener at Lovely & Amazing's Los Angeles press day, which took place just prior to the film's premier that kicked off the 2002 Los Angeles Film Festival. Lion's Gate will release the film on June 28.

(Note: This interview was conducted as part of a press roundtable, therefore not all of the questions were asked by CinemaSpeak.)

Since your scripts don't follow the traditional guidelines of screenwriting, what is the germ that sparks your writing process?

Syd Field would be appalled by my work. (laughs) The germ is usually something that interests me or is in my life presently. Things like my relationships -- my relationship with my mother and my sister. A lot of it ends up being very different in the movie than it is in actuality. The personal stuff is what gets to me. I do have a twelve-year-old black brother, who my mother adopted twelve years ago. So his relationship -- again, it's very different from what the movie is -- but growing up in a family of white women, I thought, "God, that must be interesting." All of the times that I empathized with him and his confusion about that. I then made the character a girl for my own purposes, because the film is so much about female issues that I thought that would be more interesting. People laugh at me; I always used to try and save dogs that weren't lost. There are little bits of me all over the place. I used to sell my artwork to stores.

What kind of art did you do?

I used to do watercolors, draw very primitive watercolors and write poetry under them. It was the 70's and it was very 70's stuff. I'd sell them to some stores in LA and Beverly Hills and they bought 'em. But, I had a lot of rejection too.

You wrote the character of Michelle specifically for Catherine Keener. What about Catherine made you want to write a character just for her?

She's good! Pretty much, Catherine's just really good. She's nothing like the character she's playing; in fact, she's not even very much like the Walking and Talking character she played. She just can be anybody that I want her to be. I knew she would bring the character of Michelle, who has a very caustic and hard nature, some softness and heart, especially at the end. Catherine's acting to me is so heartbreaking and inside out, and I just think she's so good.

The rest of the cast is perfect too. It seems like all the characters were written specifically for those actors.

I know ­ I'm very proud of myself for casting those people. (laughs) I had a lot of wonderful offers from a lot of great actors, and some were more famous than the ones I used. When I met Emily, she was just so heartbreaking and gentle and beautiful in an accessible way. I had trepidation about her figure, because I'd written this nude scene for someone who had more of a normal body. When she does shake her arms, I thought, "Yeah, there is a little flab. She's not that nuts." Brenda is just a brilliant actress and we just sent her the script. Dermot was perfect for his part. He's gorgeous -- drop dead, movie star gorgeous -- and I knew he had the humor and the talent to pull off the character and be interesting. Jake -- when he walked in the room our knees just went weak! I needed a guy who was young enough for it to be appalling, but sexy and manly enough to be understandable.

But he's totally goofy looking too, with the hair and all.

Well, he's got the Bubble Boy hair in it and the Bubble Boy eyebrows. That was not planned, but that's what I got and he looks great.

How do you get a movie like this made?

You have sex with everybody you can! Doesn't that work for you? (laughs) You get this movie made by making one first. If this were my first movie, it probably wouldn't have gotten made, because I think it's even a little bit tougher to market than Walking and Talking was. That helped and low budget helps and having really great producers, Good Machine, who really were behind me. They sent this script to Blow Up Pictures, and they said that if I did it on digital video they would be able to make the movie for a million dollars. I was disappointed at first. Digital video -- is this going to look like a porno movie or a soap opera? And then we did tests and it was beautiful, and I got a great DP. (It takes) a lot of perseverance.

But you didn't direct any differently than you would have if the movie were shot on film.

I directed worse! No, it felt the same; I forgot. I was like, "Is anybody going to check the gate?" It was a big camera, a big crew, a lot of lights, the days were too short -- it was very similar.

One major issue that your tackling in this film is people's dissatisfaction with their bodies.

That's something that I know nothing about. (laughs) I've never known anybody like this and I've never felt that way myself and, by the way, how do I look? (laughs) It's such an interesting thing -- you know, doing press today, here I am talking about this film and I'm spending a lot of time worrying about how I look. It's just the nature of the beast. I'm being photographed and this premiere and my hair. Yet, here I am -- I've directed a feature film and why do I care about the way I look? Does Joel Coen care? He just shows up who he is and I want a little piece of that. However, that dichotomy in me also inspired the movie and I'm trying to embrace it, not hate myself for it. That's who I am and many intelligent women are this way. I know a lot of them, who have lives and careers and focus so much on their appearance. As you get older that's a big thinghow to remain whole and sane and feel o.k. about yourself in this society. It's a challenge and I don't want people to walk out of the theater feeling bad about feeling bad about themselves -- that doesn't do any good. Hopefully, they'll feel a little bit of compassion for themselves. It all comes from myself, my own insecurities, my family and friends. When I did press for Walking and Talking, it was the first time I was being faced with being photographed and having a public image. I would go to a photo shoot for a magazine and I thought I would be photographed just like me, and then they'd have a hair and makeup guy and have designer clothes. At first it was kind of fun -- this is cool, I'm going to look great -- but before you know it, I felt just like Emily did in the beginning of the movie, which is what that scene is based on. I would be really intimidated by stylists and photo editors and photographers, and ended up feeling really terrible about it. Those experiences led into the Emily character.

Click for Part Two

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