Q: The Coffee and Cigarettes segments were like riffs, and this was more like a full-on movement.
JJ: Yes, and it’s a complicated character for an actor. Because Don isn’t a character that you’re intended to connect with immediately. He’s disconnected himself, but the empathy accumulates. It was a tricky thing for Bill. He did such a beautiful job, and brought so much to it.
Q: How did you approach the actresses, most of whom hadn’t worked with you before like Bill had? Did they all see all of the script, or just their scenes?
JJ: The four main ones – Frances, Jessica, Sharon, Tilda – saw the complete script. What I did with them was to have each one write a letter – the letter – so that I could plant in their minds the possibility of each being the mother of this son. I wanted them to write in-character. I saved the letters, which were beautiful and each very different. That was the first insight into their characters between me and them. And then, for the filming, I rewrote the letter, using pieces of their own language, pulling things from their letters.
Q: In this movie, you got Jessica Lange and Bill Murray into another movie together, 23 years after Tootsie. Actually, I don’t think they have any scenes together in that movie –
JJ: No, but I think they were on the Tootsie set at the same time. They did meet, and knew each other from that time.
Q: So what was the dynamic like between them now?
JJ: Bill was very respectful and excited to work with Jessica on this. And Jessica seemed pretty particular about maintaining her character as much as possible while working. Her – Carmen’s – letter to Don was really funny; she said in her letter, “Under no circumstances will you insult or do anything rude toward this boy, if he does appear.” [laughs] So I kind of took a lead from that on how to work with her as this character, and let her keep that resentment toward Don.
Jessica is a class act; she was very warm and lovely with all of us. I would occasionally tease her by saying, “Let’s not forget, you were the Acid Queen of San Francisco in 1968!” I’d try to make her laugh at some points to break tension, being appreciative of what she was going through – what any actor goes through – to be a pretend person on command, with a lot of history that’s all made up in their head. It’s a difficult thing.
Q: One of the surprising sequences in the film is where Don visits Laura (Sharon Stone) and meets Lolita (Alexis Dziena). How did you stoke the chemistry among these three?
JJ: We didn’t rehearse, but we all carefully went over the scenes together – hung out in Sharon’s trailer for a few hours – and talked through them. I did try to get a playfulness going, because it’s the first stop on Don’s journey – and the least abrasive for him, emotionally. Laura is not a victim, yet there’s a lot of tiny sad things about her that Sharon was aware of and helped to bring out. We tried to get that tone of what we wanted the scenes to feel like, what the mood would be. I never wanted to talk about the meaning of the scenes, because it means different things to each character.
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