Legendary character actor William H. Macy made his directorial debut with Rudderless, which earned a spot as closing night film at Sundance. Billy Crudup stars as Sam, a grieving father after a school shooting, who finds his son Josh’s music and begins to play it. The success this music brings him creates even more complicated conflict.
I had an unusual for Sundance experience interviewing Macy. Since I saw the film on Friday night, I was asked to meet Macy while Rudderless played again on Saturday morning. Between his intro and the post-film Q&A, Macy spoke with me in the green room. I don’t know how many people who don’t have a film at Sundance get to see the green room of the Eccles theater.
Because we were both speaking as people who had seen the film, I did edit some spoilers out of a quote or two, but the rest should be good to build anticipation of Rudderless or revisit after Rudderless comes out in theaters.
CraveOnline: I had thought you’d directed before, but you had co-written The Wool Cap and Door to Door.
William H. Macy: Yes, I did technically direct something many years ago when I lived in New York. Crikey, I was in my 20s and I directed a Howard Korder thing for HBO that was part of what they called their Showcase Series, so it was under an hour. It was for telly and I was so young, I couldn’t even understand the questions much less know the answers, so this is I would have to say my feature film debut. I’m calling it the first.
Was it a long time coming?
I only really set my sights on directing about 10 years ago and there was another script which I chased all the way to the finish line three times. It was at the 11th hour when the financing would fall out. So I put that one on the shelf as a heartbreaker and when Rudderless came along, we worked on it for perhaps two and a half, three years and then Keith Kjarval came on board, and then I was behind.
You must have acted on a lot of films that did not have two or three years to work on the script. Was that a real luxury?
Well, as an actor you don’t need a lot of time. There is great value in doing a rewrite or doing a polish and then putting it away and allowing it to just sit there for four or five weeks, pull it back out and read it again. There’s great value in that but mostly what takes the time really is just putting together a cast which will finance the film.
Why did you and your partners decide to make a school shooting the inciting incident?
Billy’s character, Sam, has lost his son to violence, to shooting violence. We talked about all the permutations of that. The script was getting better and leaner and the characters were getting more defined, but it was about midway through that process, which was about a two month process that we were working, the three of us. Casey said it was my idea. I think it was Casey [Twenter]’s idea. He called up and said, “Okay, whacky idea…” And that’s when it fell into focus. That’s when we realized we had a story to tell that was much more compelling, has never been told as far as I can tell, and all the work we had done before that we could keep. It was still part of the story.
But was there a reason school shooting was more relevant than a car accident or something else?
Yes, because a school shooting is so random, it is so stupid, it is so unnecessary. It’s something we’ve never had to deal with before. It’s emblematic of our times but no one knows what it means or why it’s happening and no one has a clue as to what we can do to stop it.
How did you make Josh’s songs sound different than the one Quentin (Anton Yelchin) eventually writes?
I’ll give credit for that to Simon Steadman and Charlton Pettus who wrote the music. I was very specific about the songs. I without apology told them that they’re pop songs. Rock/pop but pop songs nonetheless. I told them, “I want you to be able to hear this song one time and then sing a couple of phrases.” I wanted the songs to be funny and ironic with a wicked sense of humor, nothing sad. I wanted them all to have a verse, a chorus and the middle 8 as the Beatles called it, because at a point I was going to cannibalize these songs and do the score from, which I later abandoned.
They wrote a lot of the music and I think the song that Quentin does was something that Simon had in a drawer someplace. So I think they accomplished that by using different instrumentation, different voicings. I think the beat, it’s got sort of a funky backbeat on the song that Quentin’s writing. Those guys were just geniuses, it was great to watch the whole musical thing evolve.
Did you have to hold back on the earlier performances so they can get better?
No. We shot at least the portions that take place in that bar, they were roughly in order and those guys took to it. Billy and Anton are not professional musicians and they were staying up every night all four of them playing music. I finally had to chastise them a bit. I felt like the grown-up saying, “You know it’s a school day. You’ve got to work so go to sleep. You can’t stay up ‘til four o’clock in the morning every night?”
How did you know when to bring the story back to humor?
It evolved somewhat organically. I don’t recall that sit had a specific notion that at this point we need a joke. More to the point it just evolved. I think it was Mike Nichols who said, “You want to get your audience to cry? Get ‘em laughing first. Set ‘em up. You want ‘em to laugh? Get ‘em crying first.” It’s a good rule. The humor came out organically. Sometimes the situations are just so absurd. I tend to gravitate towards humor in everything I do anyway. It’s just the way I am.
It’s not even about “a joke.” It’s about tones of scenes. You can feel when it’s moving back towards something serious and then when it’s coming back to levity.
Yeah, I love comedy but as you said, I like it when it’s funny without telling a joke.
You must have learned from a lot of the directors you’ve worked with, but did you specifically learn a lot about camera movement from P.T. Anderson?
Yeah, certainly. Paul whips that camera around like nobody’s business. I guess influences on my would have to be Dave Mamet and Stephen Schacter of course. Stephen Schacter is my writing partner. He’s directed all the films that we’ve written so I’ve been able to watch him up close for many, many years. Mamet the same way. Dave is, beyond being a director and the most brilliant writer of our time in my opinion, he’s also a great philosopher. He is a theoretician about art and storytelling. I guess he’s a huge influence on me. Literally, I love to tell jokes and I pattern myself on Dave because he’s an expert at giving you the setup as succinctly as it can be done so that you’ve got a little time to take a pause before you hit the punchline. He can tell a joke better than anybody I know, with the exception of possibly me. I love to tell jokes.
I guess in the montage of club performances, I couldn’t help thinking of the opening shot of Boogie Nights, how fluid it is. What you did that was so interesting is since it’s a montage, every cut keeps the movement flowing. How did you conceive of that and was it hard to execute?
The idea came from the fact that one of the characters in the film who’s very important isn’t there. It’s Josh, the dead kid. He’s represented by his music and I got lucky in that Simon and Charlton wrote wonderful music and the lyrics when you listen to them are very revealing of this character. So I wanted to play as much of the music as I could. I find it a little frustrating sometimes in a film that’s got music in it, they start a song and you really like it but you only hear a little bit of it. I wanted to play as much of the music as I could and at the same time I wanted to get through the story so the montages are a perfect choice for doing both.
You’re not wrong, we storyboarded two sections of the film. One is all those sailboats because that was hard to shoot. The second was the montage because the camera was constantly moving in a great circle and I wanted those tricky reveals, I wanted the visual to have a musical feel to it also. So we did storyboards on that. We couldn’t shoot it all at once. We had to wait until we got to those locations so it was a bit tricky.
I recognized Kate Micucci. Who are some of the other singers?
We found all those performers in Oklahoma City. Keith and his posse go out every night. They went to a bunch of clubs and they saw people there. The local casting director sent me people. We found a wealth of talent.
Did you call in any favors like Laurence Fishburne and Selena Gomez?
I called in allllllll the favors, and I think I’ll be doing that for the next couple of films. My goal is to be able to pay people. Maybe one more little indie and then maybe I can call up and actually pay people.
They’re named “Rudderless” because he lives on a boat, but Sam is the one who’s rudderless, right?
He’s lost, yes. He’s being washed downstream. It’s a film of redemption. At a point though it didn’t end there. There was one more scene where he starts teaching a young fellow how to play guitar. On paper it looked good but I guess I wanted to send the audience out with a greater feeling of hope that he’s come through, that all will be well because by that time, you’ve really fallen for Sam. Billy Crudup is so winning, you really want him to succeed, but that shot in the trill, it was just clear the film’s over. The redemption is there.
That’s such a great closing shot on the microphone.
Isn’t it? We needed to extend that shot a bunch. It wasn’t originally scripted that way.
Did you have the full take or have to do some post tricks to extend the shot?
We had that take. The only thing I had to extend was I wanted to hold on the microphone a couple of times and there are tricks they can do to double the film and still make it look live and not locked off.
This tends to come up a little more at Sundance for the type of movies they show, but I find I’m really drawn to stories about grief, at least if they’re constructive. I hate movies that are just about being sad, but do you think there’s something to the appeal of dealing with grief on film?
Yeah. Certainly. As an audience, we can share our grief. I guess that’s why we get together at funerals. We need to be together, we need to hold hands. Films can do the same thing. We all gather in a room and we share that experience, but I’m with you. We don’t need no ghost from the grave to tell us that things are harsh. What we need to be told is that there is hope, there is a way out, there is redemption.
The other thing about the film that just knocks me out, and I guess the thing that attracted me the most, is to tell this story. I don’t think it’s ever been told and it’s so blatant. With all these school shootings, you don’t think to ask, “What about that guy? Whatever happened to him?” The parents, the central question that we kept saying was, “What must it be like?”
Casey Twenter and Jeff Robison, the writers and myself, decided early on it would be presumptuous to try to explain what’s going on. I think what’s so frightening about it is that greater minds than us have tried to figure it out and I don’t know what’s going on. I know we’re angry. I know the mental health care system in this country is woefully ill prepared for the number of problems we have and so stuff like this can happen, and we’re all armed to the teeth. It’s a bad combination.
I’m worried that as long as they talk about blaming movies and video games, then they’re not going to be helping the people who need help.
Possibly. I still believe that when you see a movie, you’re seeing a reflection. You’re seeing what is there in the zeitgeist. That’s where writers find their material. They look at the world and they try to tell the story of something that’s going on. So we’re followers, not leaders. Having said that, I’m a little cranky with my industry because I feel like it’s our job to tell the truth. Good, bad or indifferent, our number one task is to tell the truth. That’s an actor’s number one task, tell the truth about the moment. Do it well, do it badly but just make sure you’re telling the truth.
I don’t like the way we deal with violence in films because I don’t think it’s true. I think there’s a lot of horseshit out there and I think it’s bad for us. Violence is ugly. It’s so dramatic in its non drama. I’ve never seen anyone shot but I have seen films of it and it is not dramatic. A living, breathing person who has a mom and a dad and a love life is standing there and crack, he falls down and he’s gone, he’s dead. No muss, no fuss, it’s not dramatic, there aren’t a lot of speeches. He’s in shock and then he’s dead.
Well, that’s the truth of it and I find it more dramatic than the Hollywood version of it. Also I feel like filmmakers are squandering stories because I feel like there’s nothing more dramatic than someone dying, being murdered, dying in a war, dying in a car crash. Someone dying is the most dramatic thing that happens to most of us in this world. But you kill 25 people, that’s not dramatic at all. One is dramatic. 25 is just carnage. It’s a cartoon.
I don’t know much about that genre because I don’t like to see it, I’ve never wanted to act in it so I don’t know about it but I just do see the trailers and it’s horseshit, and it’s time for us to stop doing it. We should start telling the truth about violence because it’s not funny anymore. There’s no such thing as funny violence. There’s no such thing as sexy violence. It doesn’t exist.
Are you talking about the PG-13ification of it where they take out the blood or shake the camera so they can get the rating they want?
Well, you put your finger on it. The ratings board, as far I can tell, the people who make these decisions about the ratings need therapy. They need to get into therapy quickly because they’ve got it just completely bassackwards. I did a film that was here at Sundance two years ago called The Sessions. That’s the loveliest movie. It made you proud to be a human being. It made you love humanity. Well, guess what? It got an R-rating.
That Batman movie came out at the same time and they decided 13-year-olds could see that. That Batman movie had pure evil in it, and the body count, I don’t know, it’s got to be in the hundreds. So people are protecting our children from The Sessions and saying it’s okay for them to watch Batman. That’s mentally disturbed. Sex is good. Sex is always good. Even the bad sex I’ve had was pretty good, but violence is bad. It’s always bad. It’s never not bad.
When you talk about funny violence, you’ve been in a Coen Brothers movie. Do they have a way of dealing with it the right way in that tone?
I hear you and touché. Yeah, there is an irony sometimes to it, but boy that’s a thin line to walk. And if you’re not the Coen Brothers, maybe you’d better stay away from that line.
Do you think if Rudderless were a Hollywood movie, you would get the note, “Does it have to be a school shooting?”
[Laughs] Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure.
Have you heard about the new “Fargo” TV series?
No, nothing except that it’s happening. The whole world will be speaking Fargese pretty soon because it’s so addicting.
What do you think of the idea of extending that into a TV series?
I think it’s a great idea. Loved those people. I love those characters. Joel and Ethan really put their finger on something. I did a season at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and just fell for that part of the country hook, line and sinker. Such good people, hard working, funny, good looking people.
I realized you also co-wrote a movie I really liked called Above Suspicion, which had a really cool twist but unfortunately was prescient about what happened to Christopher Reeve immediately after. When you wrote that, was it sort of a sample to show your writing ability, or was it ever meant to be bigger?
No, Steven Schachter who I write with, we carved out a lovely little niche of doing made for television movies. We knew Chris from New York and I guess we’d been doing a bunch of them at that point. I think we’d done about 15. It’s been a great training ground for us. I love television. You know I’m doing a series right now.
I know, I haven’t seen this season of “Shameless” because I’ve been here. It’s waiting for me at home.
I love what’s going on in television. It’s the new Golden Age, isn’t it? Some of the best stuff being done anywhere is on television.
While you’re at Sundance are you looking for both a distribution deal and a soundtrack deal?
Yes, I guess we are. As I understand it, we’re circling the wagons here and that’s going to close pretty soon. I have decided to keep myself kind of out of that. First of all, William Morris is doing it for us and Keith Kjarval who produced the film, they’re smart. I don’t need to worry about that. I’m in good hands. I do love the music. It came out so well and I think the soundtrack might be worth as much as the film. We’ve burned some CDs and I give them to my friends. They stay in the cars, man. They just play them over and over.
Do you know what you might direct next?
I do not. I have two films that I’m attracted to, two scripts. It depends on casting if I can just get some movie stars to read my script. It’s hard to do. Boy, it’s hard to get them to read it.
I saw The Sessions at a press and industry screening here, so how did it go over with the Sundance audience?
I had never seen the film so I’m sitting there watching the thing and it just destroyed me and I’m weeping like a baby and I did everything I could to get myself back together because the lights were going to come on. Thank God they roll all the credits. So I got myself together and I don’t know who was moderating came out, and he said, “Ladies and gentleman, the writer and the director, Ben Lewin.”
Nowhere in the publicity does it say that Ben had polio as a kid. So out he comes, he gets to those wooden steps to get up on the stage, the audience stops dead. You could hear a pin drop and Ben puts his crutches and climbs three steps expertly, walks to the center of the stage, composes himself. He says, “Well…” and 1200 people weeping like babies leapt to their feet in a standing ovation. On my watch, it went on for a minute and a half. It was such a thrilling moment.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
