CheekyChicago

A hit at the Sundance Film Festival with rave reviews currently coming out, The Kids Are All Right features buzz-worthy performances from a star cast including Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. In a modern interpretation of the family movie, Nic (Bening) and Jules (Moore) are a married lesbian couple with two teenage kids, Joni and Laser, who decide to seek out their sperm donor father, Paul (Ruffalo). The introduction of the absentee father creates a ricochet effect, upending a delicate family dynamic and re-establishing the roles of everyone involved. Directed and co-written by Lisa Cholodenko, it’s a nuanced look at the humor, pathos and complicated love inherent in every marriage, and the challenges of raising children. Cheeky met with Lisa to discuss accomplished actors, telling the truth and the first Oscar for a female director.

Cheeky: Is there a lesson to be learned in the movie? Everything was “all right” for the characters until Joni and Laser decided to find their father. Is it better to let sleeping dogs lie? Or you should always seek the truth, regardless of the consequences?

Lisa Cholodenko: You know, I think all those ideas are in there and I like them all – not to let sleeping dogs lie – but to seek the truth. I’m a big believer in transparency. I think we felt at the end of the day that it’s not a lesson but a theme that’s kind of Wizard of Oz-like…there’s no place like home. So the family that raised you and made you is the family that made you who you are and that’s your family. The question of biology is a good question – I think it’s valid and belongs in the equation – but I really wanted to honor the family that raised these two kids.

Cheeky: I thought Jules and Nic were incredibly well-developed characters. I wondered if you identify more strongly with one or the other? Or are they both facets of your personality?

LC: First of all, I wrote it with Stuart (Blumberg) so it’s facets of his personality too. They’re facets of me, they’re facets of our moms, they’re facets of people we know, they’re facets of those actors. They’re kind of iconic in a way. We really spent time – the script took a long time to develop – so we kept digging into the psychology and once you hit the main artery of who someone is, other things are just intuitive about character development.

Cheeky: In terms of the casting, what did you think Annette Bening, Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo each brought to their roles that you wouldn’t have expected?

LC: I think it was very specific when I cast Annette – I knew exactly what I needed and wanted and why I pursued her. I think what she brought to it that I didn’t expect was a kind of improvisation. She has a real spontaneous, sardonic and whimsical humor that I just loved. She came up with some zingers. Annette was really in the character and she felt free enough with me that she could do that. I thought she brought a layer and a kind of humor that was beyond what we wrote and imagined.

I think Julianne really tapped into the earthy-hippie thing that I didn’t really write – I thought of her character more as a confused airhead – but I think she grounded it which is really good. She found this thing in the character that I didn’t write but made sense. In lesser hands the California hippie thing might have seemed arch, but she found a really cool spin on it that made sense.

For Mark Ruffalo, I can think of very few actors who could have pulled that off and made that character sympathetic. It’s partly how we wrote it, but it’s partly just that Mark Ruffalo’s the kind of guy that even if he f*cks up there’s something really lovable about him and it’s just intrinsic to who he is. He was always someone I wanted to work with even before I wrote this. I can’t think of anyone who could have done it better so it was a slam dunk for me.

Cheeky: Has Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win for Best Director had any positive repercussions for you as a female director?

LC: That’s a good question. I think there’s no way that it can’t be positive, in the sense that it’s another step towards leveling the playing field in people’s minds. Women can make films that win Oscars. Little films can win Oscars. If there’s any subconscious reservation in people’s minds – the people who are developing projects and studio people – about offering movies to women and financing films written and potentially directed by women, it’s one step towards making that less of an obstacle. So there’s nothing to complain about…I think it’s awesome. I wasn’t 100% on that movie [The Hurt Locker], but the parts that worked were amazing. I loved that movie and thought she did an amazing job.

Cheeky: Do you think being a gay female director has been more of a challenge or hasn’t affected you at all?

LC: I think it’s been interesting because there are a lot of gay people in the film business, especially gay men. I think it makes me part of a special society in some way. So in that sense, socially in the film business and having a kinship with some of the people that are running things, it’s been a positive. You know it’s nice…I don’t feel like my gayness has been something where people are like, ‘Oh she’s gay,’ in a marginal way. My sense is that people just look at it as something that’s interesting or part of my personality that isn’t negative or positive. It just makes me distinct.

Cheeky: Is there a story that you’re dying to tell next?

LC: I get that question a lot and I wish I could say that there was. I know I should be proactive and think about these things before I finish the films that I’m working on, but I don’t. There are ideas for films that I’m kind of percolating and television things that are kind of interesting to me – potential for series – and I’m open to studio films and TV stuff. It’s a really interesting time in cable television right now. But this was big for me…I really felt like, ‘Wow, a lot of what’s gone on in my life in the last few years is in this film.’  A lot of my feelings about family, relationships, child rearing and all that stuff is thrown in here. It consumed a lot of me.