Molly Shannon and writer-director Mike White on the set of Year of the Dog
After scripting successes both critical and commercial including Chuck & Buck, The Good Girl, The School of Rock, and Nacho Libre, Mike White took directing duties into his own hands for the first time with Year of the Dog. For White whose Spirit Awards wins include Best Feature Under $500,000 for Chuck & Buck in 2001 and Best Screenplay for The Good Girl in 2003 directing wasn't a move out of the blue given his experience as a show creator on Pasadena and Freaks and Geeks.
Year of the Dog is a quintessential example of White's twisted humor and gives Saturday Night Live's Molly Shannon the opportunity to take center stage with a range of pathos as well as the comedy for which she's best known. Playing off a captivating cast that includes Laura Dern, Regina King, Tom McCarthy, Josh Pais, John C. Reilly, and Peter Sarsgaard, Shannon's performance plus White's vision bring forth a creative and heartbreaking story of self-discovery with a bunch of cute dogs as a bonus.
Were you writing the script with it in mind that you would direct it?
Sort of and sort of not. I knew I wanted to write something kind of contained that I could just go and make. The process of bigger movies always takes longer to get the gears in motion and I wanted to do something that was small and manageable. I wrote it with an eye toward how I would see it visually so I had it open to direct. I actually had given it to some director friends and then at some point I was just like, "This is insane it's time to put up or shut up and just do it!"
So directing a feature had been something you had planned to do for a while.
Well, it wasn't so much that. I've had a lucky run in terms of being able to really be part of production as a screenwriter, whether acting in the movies or having good relationships with the directors and really collaborating on the movies and running TV shows. After a while, you have the experience to just do it. I always just thought it was gonna be really stressful to direct, so it was kind of like, "Ugh! I'm not like an extroverted, bossy person, so maybe I wouldn't be able to be myself and also do that job." But as time goes by, you realize there are many ways of being a director, so at some point I realized there was no mystery to it and it was time to just do it.
I know a lot of screenwriters are like, "They've destroyed my movie!" and I dont have that I've had really good experiences. I've had bad ones but mostly good ones and in the future I don't think I'm gonna have to direct every script I write. I think I come to it as a writer and will probably want to direct again, but not every single script.
You had Molly Shannon in mind from the beginning so how did that affect the writing process?
I definitely had written it with her in mind so that was part of it, even when I was showing it to directors. I was like, "This is for Molly and that's important to me." I had an idea of creating a character that was more of a listener, somebody who's everybody's confidant and kind of keeps her problems and enthusiasms more to herself one of those people who in life you just kind of glance over. I wanted to let that person be front and center, then other characters constellated around that idea.
How did it affect the casting to have Molly in place and then try to find other actors who you wanted to work with or who would click with her?
I wanted a mix you know, people who were familiar and some less familiar. I also felt like Molly brings a big comedy-like association with her and I wanted to make sure that the other people in the movie didn't have that same kind of baggage. I was already feeling like with me and Molly, people would think this was going be some big knee-slapping comedy. There's funny stuff in it, but there's a lot of less funny stuff, too. I didn't want people coming in with huge expectations that this was going to be a rip-roaring comedy, so it was trying to find people who could get the humor but also don't necessarily scream comedian. Laura Dern is so funny and there's John Reilly who's always funny, but they've done a mix of different kinds of movies so you don't necessarily know exactly what it's going to be.
And everybody was stoked to work with Molly. Besides being a really precise and gifted actress as well comedian, she's one of the more pleasant people you'll meet there's just something very winning about her and that was partly why I wanted to write something for her. I just really like her personally and she has that kind of sweetness that Peggy exudes. I wanted to show that side of Molly, too, because people associate her with the girl that's smelling her armpits [on SNL] and it was exciting for her to show this other side.
Did you feel like you had to know her personally in order to realize that she had the capacity to play this range?
Absolutely. I'd worked with her on a very ill-fated, disastrous TV show; it was such a bad experience, but the best part of it was getting to know Molly and realizing how gifted and versatile she was. It was like you're throwing a party and then it sucks and you feel bad that you invited all these people to a party that you said was going to be fun but turned out not to be. So I kind of wanted to just do something for her that would take the bad taste out of our mouths just have a fun, creative experience together. Hopefully with this movie, people will see some of the other colors to her and it seems like they are. That's a big pleasure for me, to see people be really blown away by Molly. I always thought she was funny in Saturday Night Live but really getting to know her, I was like, "Wow, she's really a very capable actor and has so many different colors to her!"
I like working with comedians, even if it's a more serious story. I've had good experiences whether it's Jennifer Aniston or Jack Black where you feel like comedians have less vanity and are willing to get the comedy of it while at the same time they have such a good sense of timing. When somebody shows those different colors, it's more exciting than when you just cast one of the usual suspects. I feel like with this part, because she's kind of a sad sack for a lot of it, you wanna go with somebody where the seventh time she breaks down into tears, it's not punishing. You can laugh, too, and it doesn't hit such a dark register. With Molly, even when it's sad and you feel sorry for her, she brings a little bit of levity with her face and what she does with it and who she is.
How did the experience you've had on other sets both TV and film inform the way that you worked with the actors? And how did you figure out for yourself whether you're a hands-on director technically or not?
Originally, I started writing plays so working with actors was definitely not the anxious part of taking on the job. That's the part that I knew I was going to have a good time with. I also got actors who were fun and collaborative and easy. One of the reasons that I wanted to direct it was because it's so tonally varied; it's got a pinch of this and a dash of that and was very specific to my own personal aesthetic. Whether it works or not, it's my own tone. So that part of it I do get specific about because I'm trying to create characters that are funny and you're having fun with while at the same time you don't want to feel like it's just a satire or too hollow or too broad. So I focused more on that and let the visual style which was a very simple kind of straight-ahead portraiture take some of the onus, having a lot of it be top-two shots. Even writing it, I felt like, "This will let me focus on the stuff that I think is fun and not have to worry about the tracking shot in the restaurant as they enter."
Then you consciously removed really technical elements or logistics so you wouldn't have to deal with them.
Yeah I mean, I wanted it to look cool and I wanted it to be inviting; I wanted it not to be just a big dull movie. At the same time, I felt like the visual style that I would go back to was like the early Errol Morris documentaries very simple and almost sort of Japanese in their sense of very flat, simple portraiture. But hopefully it's visually interesting enough so that if you stay on it for longer than ten seconds it's not going to lull people to sleep.
How did you collaborate with DP Tim Orr in terms of shooting that style?
Tim was great because not only is he just a great lighting designer, he's worked with a lot of first-time directors and is just a good resource. Some of my ideas were extreme at the beginning in terms of how I wanted to shoot it and he was able to go for what I wanted but at the same time bring me back down to earth about stuff that would've probably destroyed my movie.
What were some of those extremes?
There was a part of me that really wanted the Errol Morris thing where it's even more of a sense of [other actors] just talking to [Molly] and not cutting away to her more. I just wanted to do the coverage in the most economical way possible and really not use any footage. And within two days I was like, "This is silly!" (Laughs) "We have time to shoot both a master shot and a two-shot and it's better to be safe." Part of it was my editor, too, but at first I just had these enthusiasms of a freshman director deciding that he was going to do some things to reinvent the wheel. After a while you're like, "Yeah, maybe just tell the story you don't need to invent the wheel."
At the same time as we're talking about how you tried to minimalize and do things to make yourself feel comfortable as a first-time director, there's the complicated fact that you wrote a movie about dogs. One of those cardinal rules of filmmaking is never work with animals and children. How difficult was it to pull off?
It had its challenges but we got a healthy schedule in case of disaster. Actually, we had great trainers and the dogs were amazing. In my experience the dogs were great it was the babies that were a nightmare! I'd rather work with dogs again than babies because at least the dogs have trainers and babies just have wranglers, which says it all. (Laughs) The most stressful days on the shoot were when the babies were acting out.
Did you have any trouble getting funding and support for this project? I imagine that because of your experience it might not be a problem, but you never know since it was your first time directing.
It actually happened pretty quickly. The Molly part of it was complicated because people are reluctant to fund movies with female protagonists anyway, for whatever reason. And when you have a script where they think that the character could warrant snagging one of these few actresses that can really shoulder a movie, then you say, "I wanna do it with somebody who's kind of an unexpected choice and who hasn't really been a lead in that way for an independent movie," there's a lot of people trying to convince you it would be better with somebody else. So that was some of the discussion. But it ultimately worked out.
Did it make you more determined to say, "I really will get this done with Molly!"
When we cast Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, it was at the time and it's hard to believe now because she is such a big movie star as well as a TV star there was resistance to her. Some of the actors that people wanted instead, you would be shocked to hear and say, "Oh, really? You wanted that person and not Jennifer Aniston?" I feel like it's always more interesting and even from a commercial point of view, there's more of a story when someone who is already in the public consciousness busts out with something new. It's a more interesting story than if it's just somebody who you know always is the go-to person for this kind of a movie.
But it also takes a special kind of person to initiate a risk like that.
Well, like I said, it came out of a bad creative experience and the inspiration was to do something that was fun, that it could be a sort of healing creative experience after that really bad one for me and for Molly. I wasn't going to do the movie without her, basically. It's easier when you go into it saying, "This isn't a conversation. It either is this or I can walk away from this." You have a lot more power and people are more receptive, in a sense, if you just don't negotiate and say, "Look, it's this or we'll do something else another time."
Not everybody's that strong, especially when you're starting offalthough, you're hardly starting off.
Yeah definitely in the beginning of my career I would've been more equivocating.
But would you have been able to live with yourself?
(Laughs) Who knows?
