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046
Q&A
FEBRUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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Tell us about how you originally formulated
the idea for this project.
DAVID DOBKIN: I had a very complicated
relationship with my mother, and she was ill and
dying over two years between 2005 and 2007.
During that time I was just a little bit surprised
-- my father had passed away prior – that I
was going to have to go through a process of
parenting my parent, and I was not prepared for
that. It was an overwhelming experience, and
at the end of that time period, the week after
she passed, I sketched out this story about this
family and this boy that came home. I think
instinctually, because of the kind of volatility I
wanted to show, it wasn’t going to be a son/
mother story. It was really kind of a much more
aggressive, masculine movie.
Robert Downey, Jr. as the son Hank, and
Robert Duvall as ‘the judge’ father, is a
marvellous pairing. How did you come to
choose these actors?
Downey was the first person I thought of
the week that I sketched the movie. I had met
him and we had really hit it off. It had been a
while since he’d done a drama like this. He fit
it perfectly because he’s entertaining. He’s fun,
and it’s entertaining to watch him go through
these experiences of trying to return home
and be rejected by people and not accepted…
then slowly overcome them and overcome his
own issues to be accepted. Duvall is one of
the few icons of American cinema, and he is a
‘Paul Bunyan’ of a character. You really needed
a mountain for Robert Downey Jr. to climb. You
needed someone that was going to perform the
movie and that character without any BS, who
was really going to go at it and really do it, and
be that hard and that tough on his son. Duvall
has had a track record with that. So I knew he
wouldn’t flinch.
Duvall’s and Downey Jr.’s energies are quite
different from one another; did the rehearsals
start out in a challenging manner, at all?
No. I think there was always some friction
and I think that’s good. They are both masters
of the craft. You get into those first rehearsals
and you’re more studying what’s going to
happen and seeing what’s going on and seeing
what needs to be altered so that there can be
behaviours that come naturally and the scenes
can flow. They’re both super professionals and
they are so talented that we worked for three
weeks in rehearsals on getting it right. They
were the ones that performed it. They had to
get up on that stage and make it happen. I’m
just the coach.
Friction between parents and children is
universal and relatable, but how do you
ensure that it doesn’t end up too heavy,
and the light is balanced with the dark?
A lot of that ends up being in the script and
in the editing room. You’re trying to make sure
that any time there’s something dramatic that
you’re shooting, there’s some way out of it,
out of the pressure of the drama. Ultimately,
you just craft it so that you can take a ride that
is enjoyable and entertaining. I don’t want to
make movies that are miserable for people to
get through. You want them to be fun to get
through, even though they’re deep.
How important was it to you that this story
was set in a small town, instead of a large
city?
That was important to me, and it was
important to me because it represents
less that it was a small town, than it was
something that felt like the perception of the
idea of home. I wanted it to be something
that felt like something preserved in time,
because our memories are preserved in time.
I wanted it to feel like something that was
sacred and important to be protected, because
the judge put his whole life into protecting
this idea, creating this home. I wanted it to
be something that, in the end, when Hank
has the possibility of staying, that you want
it for him. He’s a guy who’s been exiled from
a certain paradise, and when he arrives back
into town -- this small town -- the first time
he’s really not into it and it mak
you wonder about him as a
character. It’s a little engine
that turns on where you are
like, “What is it about this guy
that is out of sync with these
values, with this time, this plac
that he came from?” You learn that over the
course of the movie.
Writer-director David Dobkin has created a compelling new legal
drama starring two Hollywood heavyweights, which cleverly
explores themes of filial respect and suspicion.