Q: Do you think Don is optimistic, or pessimistic?
JJ: I don’t think Don, at the beginning of the film, is either. He’s static; he has a big hole inside himself. If I were interested in backstory, which I’m not, I would have an answer to that. I don’t want to know where the hole came from; the film starts and it’s in him. At the beginning, he doesn’t have a sense of himself, and therefore I don’t see him as knowing whether he would be optimistic or pessimistic.
Q: Since you don’t dictate to the audience how to feel and what to think, ideally what do you hope they take away from the movie?
JJ: Since I’m not interested in moralizing or teaching anybody anything, I don’t want to say “The film is supposed to have this effect – “ Because I’m not exactly sure. I know I don’t want to close curtains at the end of the film, and have it all tied up. I want the character of Don to still exist in audiences’ heads when the credits roll; I want the guy to still be out in the world, in their minds. Any kind of storytelling is partly a diversion for people; it’s a way to enter another world that isn’t theirs and watch people interrelate with that world and each other.
When Don’s asked, “Do you have any philosophical advice?,” his first reaction is, “You’re asking me?” And then he comes out with the only thing that he’s learned – which is, I think, the only thing one can ever learn, philosophically: “The past is gone, the future’s not here and I can’t control it, so I guess it’s just this.” To me, if you can live that way, then you’re a f—kin’ Zen Master. The highest thing I could aspire to is to be in any given moment, at that moment. Real easy to say, real hard to do.
Q: That’s proven by what happens in the last moments in the film.
JJ: Yeah, he wants something. I think the film is somehow about yearning – and I don’t know where that came from. Yearning for something that you’re missing, and not necessarily being able to define what it is you’re missing. I don’t want people to feel despair or tragic at the end; I also don’t want them to feel like it’s a light romantic thing and, “let’s go get a pizza.” I’d like the audience to carry that moment around somewhere in them for a little while.
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