Family relationships dominate the Centerpiece and Closing Night Films.
My article for Script Magazine
Susan Kouguell
Father Mother Sister Brother
Winner of the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, writer and director Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother is a study in familial dynamics constructed in the form of a triptych. The three chapters all concern the relationships between adult children reconnecting or coming to terms with aging or lost parents, which take place in the present, and each in a different country.
Siblings Jeff and Emily (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) check up on their hermetic father (Tom Waits) in rural New Jersey; sisters Lilith and Timothea (Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett) reunite with their guarded novelist mother (Charlotte Rampling) in Dublin; and twins Skye and Billy (Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) return to their Paris apartment to address a family tragedy.
At the press conference, Jarmusch was asked if he had a particular way of thinking about each story when he was writing the script.
Jarmush: “I always have a kind of haphazard way of writing where I’m gathering small ideas that I don’t quite know the overall structure or picture yet. I write thinking of actors I would like to collaborate with on these characters. I thought it would be cool to make a film with Tom Waits as Adam Driver’s father and really that’s where it started. While writing that story, Mayim Bialik was a host on Jeopardy and I’m a Jeopardy nerd and I hadn’t really seen her acting on TV. She’s a famous TV actor, right? But I just thought, ‘Oh, wow. That Jeopardy host kind of character could be close to the sister.’
I write really fast in like a month. But it’s hard. I can’t exactly tell you how it works because it’s really collecting disparate ideas that I don’t quite know the overall connect the dots picture yet. It’s always interesting to see how it gets connected from the writing to the filming.
I wasn’t really setting out with an intention. I didn’t want it to really say anything. I wanted it to observe people that are flawed without judging them. The thing about a balance between sadness and humor was important to me to sort of allow them both to exist in the film. But it’s an odd film because it’s very quiet and it doesn’t employ drama, violence, action, sex, you know, almost none of the things you expect. I was just interested in empathetic observation really and as far as families, they are very complicated. I thought a lot about how parents are not upfront with their children for a number of reasons; either they want to be guides for them or they don’t want to reveal certain mistakes they’ve made or they want to be a kind of role model or there are a lot of reasons why they’re not really that maybe upfront about who they are.”
Is This Thing On?
Will Arnett and Laura Dern play Alex and Tess Novak, whose marriage has reached an impasse. With amicable sorrow, the couple—parents of two young boys—mutually agree to split up. Their separation leads to unpredictable midlife self-reckonings, most dramatically in Alex’s wild career pivot to become a confessional stand-up comedian in New York City’s West Village, where he finds new direction and camaraderie.
Written by Bradley Cooper, Will Arnett, and Mark Chappell Is This Thing On? was inspired by the true story of British comedian John Bishop.
The opening of the press conference centered on the evolution of the project.
Arnett met Bishop several years ago and was interested by his story of how he stumbled into stand-up comedy when his marriage fell apart. He convinced Bishop to let him and writing partner Mark Chappell take a stab at a film inspired by his story. Arnett brought an early draft of the script to Cooper who signed on to co-write and direct it. Cooper also has a supporting role in the film where he plays the friend of Arnett’s character.
Cooper was interested in exploring the idea of a guy being able to be honest with a room full of strangers – doing stand up – in a way he never was able to do before.
Arnett: “John Bishop’s story was a big inspiration. When Mark Chappell and I brought the script to Bradley, Bradley said I think this is where it could go and that’s how the collaboration started; he really gave us a lot of direction. Bradley ended up doing this rewrite that really shifted the film and took it to places we could only dream of.”
Cooper: “I was sitting at my daughter’s school in the East Village where we actually shot, and life will tell you what to do. We were sitting there and it was the Chinese New Year Festival and that exact group was there and I was looking at all these parents on their phones and I said that’s the beginning of the movie and I called Arnett.”
The decision not to include any scenes of Arnett’s character at his day job.
Cooper: “At least to me as a viewer if I’m watching something I’m always thinking of it in a derivative way like, oh yeah that’s like that movie or that’s that story. This movie is not about a guy who’s unhappy in his profession, he’s not miserable at work and he’s got to find another thing. I don’t want to meet his other co-workers. It’s not what the story is about. All I need to know is that he works in finance. He wears suits. He drops his kids off and goes to school. And it’s also based on people that I know. It’s not so much that they’re unhappy in their jobs. It’s that they’re not really uncomfortable with who they are. And it’s not necessarily just their job that’s telling them, it’s their life. That was the conscious choice. What (Arnett’s character) is going through it’s a bit like a catharsis not a crisis.”
