On this edition of INTERVUE, I got to talk to writer/director Paul Weitz about his upcoming film “Grandma” which tells the tale of granddaughter Sage (Julia Gardner) turning to her grandma (Lily Tomlin) trying to get their hands on some cash as they spend the day trying to get the cash while seeing grandma’s old friends and flames. Check this out.
How did the idea of Grandma come to be?
It came from me hanging out with Lily Tomlin on the set of Admission for which she plays Tina Fey’s mom. She was so funny and so edgy. It really struck that there are people in their 70s who are way more subversive and vital then a lot of people in their late teens.
I have done a couple of movies about mentorship before, particularly the movie About a Boy. It kind of helped being someone’s mentor really changes you but I haven’t done one about female mentors.
Can you emphasized about finally doing a movie on female mentorship?
I really liked the idea that this granddaughter is showing up at her grandmother’s house and she wants $631.00. The grandmother doesn’t have it because she had just got out of debt. To prove a point to herself, she had just cut up her credit cards. The grandmother just wants to get out of there but instead she gets stuck in a car with her grandmother and during the course of this crazy day they have, she learns how to stand up for herself for her grandmother is an a**kicker.
This ideal in doing this, standing up for her granddaughter, Lily’s character had moved on from certain things that are very upsetting in her life and constructing to start a relationship with her daughter, played by Marcia Gay Harden, who she has lots of issues with.
Did you have Lily in mind for the role of Grandma?
Literally nobody else.
That’s good!
I literally heard her voice and it helped me write the thing, which is a terrifying position to be in once you actually written it because you got to go. I mean, I felt like a stalker for a little while (we both laughed) because I gave her the script and she asked me to write anything for her. She had to really think about it because the character is a lot like her. It’s really her sense of humor. It’s really a lot like hanging out with her and there are stuff coming out of her mouth. I had to convince Lily and twist her arm. She was beyond perfect for the role.
The cast in this film is amazing. Among the actors you have Marcia Gay Harden, Sam Elliott, Laverne Cox. How did you assemble this wonderful cast?
This is the tenth film that I’ve directed and I have a lot people’s phone numbers now. (laughs) I didn’t have Laverne’s. Laverne was the only one that I have sent the script to and I think she really liked Lily like the idea of doing a different kind of role, playing a rockabilly tattoo artist in it.
For Sam Elliott, my brother had done The Golden Compass with him. He already had Sam’s number. Sam told me that my brother called him up and said that I want to tell you two things. 1. My brother, Paul, is not crazy. (We both laugh) and that he’s written something for you. I know what my brother is saying. Chris and I, over the years, when we first came to Hollywood to meet these stars and we have these meetings. Basically, we determine that all the meetings were about was whether you or they were crazy because everybody’s not on good behavior. If someone’s is crazy enough to act like a jerk in that meeting, then you know you should not work with them. So that’s what Chris meant.
Sam was really sweet because he phoned me up said Listen, it said here that the character has a pigtail and I have short hair right now. So I am going to pay for a wig to be made up for the movie. I said to Sam that you don’t have to have a pigtail for the movie. It’s not your hair that I want. With Harden, I worked with her on a movie called American Dreamz. Nat Wolff who plays the worst baby daddy in America to Julia Gardner, we did the movie Admission together. John Cho, I first worked with him on American Pie and a bunch of other movies. It was just really getting a troop together.
What are your favorite moments of the film?
My favorite moment was this sequence with Sam where it starts out as sort of a fun meeting between these two people in a relationship for many years then it gets more out of control. You have to realize that during the course of this they are not just friends, they lived together on a boat. Lily, as you have seen in the beginning, there’s on implication that’s she been with a man. She’s a lesbian in the movie. She lived with this guy and they had a romantic relationship and he’s still kind of holding a flame for her. She sensed that still has some unfinished business between the two of them. That whole sequence was really fun to do.
I love Marcia Gay Harden’s character because she’s very funny. At first, she’s really mean to her daughter but it doesn’t leave it at that. Later on, she shows up and kind of comes through. You understand that she will change over the course of it. We have lots of exciting moments because it’s a road movie. So, every couple of days, we’ll have a new actor come in, it’s like a shot in the arm of energy for Lily and me. It’s like opening a present every couple of days.
This movie really touches on mentorship. Did you have a mentor that you looked up to?
I would say my grandmother actually. She’s now 105 and still alive. She has a glass of tequila every night. She starred in the first talking picture in Mexico called Santa and she starred in the Spanish version of Dracula. Her nickname in the Mexican part of the family was “The General”.
Why “The General”? I need to know.
She was really tough. I mean she would order people around and she didn’t put up with any crap. She was this 5’2″ woman. That what really stuck in my mind that this grandmother could be really formidable person. She was the opposite of a sweet old grandmother.
This is a rare moment where you have three generations of women represented in one story. Did you intend to bring the dynamic into the fold while writing this film?
It was a nice product of it. The ideal that clearly the daughter is in reaction to her mother. Marcia’s character is a corporate lawyer who shows no nonsense while her mother is an extreme liberal artist and then the granddaughter, she hasher grandmother and mother who are so powerful. She’s like a fish flopping out of the water. She doesn’t really know how to stand up for herself. It was really exciting for me because I got the chance to cast these brilliant actresses.
Since you have written and directed many films, do you prefer one over the other or both since they intertwine with each other?
They fulfill different things. Writing is lovely because you can go do it on your own. Basically, I wrote this movie while Admission had come out. I was stressing out about what people would think about it and how it was doing. The only thing I felt I could do was to go write another movie and luckily for me it was this one. So that’s great to be able to go to a cafe and enjoy doing something. Then I really love directing because I’m that type of person who has a really hard time deciding what to have for lunch on any given day but when you’re directing, you have to make decision rapidly because that’s your job. You can’t just stand around and say “I’m not sure” or everything will come to a crashing halt. I love working with actors and the crew.
Can you elaborate on that? Why do you like working with the cast and the crew?
I love working with actors because they are doing the same thing when I am writing which is this character they are becoming and they are forgetting about themselves. That’s really a wonderful thing to do is to get sucked into something. I think everyone has done this when they were a kid when they pretend to be something and also, they are crazy. (We both laugh)
Who, the actors of the crew?
The actors, the crew is not so crazy. The crew are around a bunch of crazy people. The crew I love because they’ve gone from movie to movie. They’re skilled. I like to consider myself a crewmember when I am directing. The job of my position is to inform what everybody else is doing and to create an environment where they can do their best. There are very few jobs where you can actually affect someone in the workplace and I have one of those jobs. I love the crew. I love being around them.
Thank you Paul for the wonderful interview. Check out his latest feature, Grandma, starring Lily Tomlin – in theaters TOMORROW
About The Author
