I guess I should rephrase the question. When you’re sitting down, and you’re writing your next project, does it give you more confidence as a writer to go for your gut or go for an idea that maybe five years ago you might have said, “Oh, I don’t know if I should include this”?
Well, not necessarily, because now it’s offset. Now, it’s offset by the feeling that this thing has a greater chance of being made, irrespective of its quality. So no, I’m not really sure what to think. I’ve always written from my gut because I don’t make a living as a writer. I never was hired to write anything. So, everything I’ve written has just been very personal. I write in email. I don’t write scripts and final draft. I write in email. So, it never feels like a real professional movie until I’m finished with it, and then I transfer it into final draft. But basically, I’ve always just written very personal things with the assumption that no one will ever read it or publish it. So now, yes, I guess I could say, yeah, now when I have an idea for something. In some ways, these applauds have been receiving this attention from my script. Again, I’m wired in such a pessimistic way. The way I filter it through my head is that, “Oh, now I’ll get something else made because they think it’s good, and maybe it’s not actually good enough.” You know what I mean?
Wait, I’ve never heard you talk about this before. So you write in email. You email yourself scenes and then you go back and find the emails and put them all together?
Yeah, it’s a complete mess. Yeah, it’s a complete mess. I write at the library next to my friend Jim Begerly, and that’s where I write every day. And he writes his own scripts. We help each other, so he’s writing his own scripts next to me, and he always makes fun of me because when I’m putting together a final script, I have files and 17 different places on my computer, and I often actually lose things, but I’m just so suspicious of writing in a screenwriting software program because there’s something that seems so kind of constrained, but also presumptuous that, “Oh, of course, this thing I’m writing now is going to be in a movie script.” And then I think I would also censor myself because I’d be thinking about maybe the practical considerations of making a movie rather than just writing. What I try to do is I think about things for years, and these characters in this movie, I’ve kind of written different versions of them in different contexts and plays, and so I’ve been thinking about these characters for years. Then, when I finally put them in the same room for this movie as though they had been talking forever. So, I wasn’t really calculating what they say to each other as much as just kind of allowing it to flow from a more unconscious place. I know that sounds pretentious, but that’s the only way I could describe it. It feels a little more natural than, for example, kind of conceiving of a plot and characters at the same time.
I’m going to be honest, it does not sound pretentious at all. It actually sounds like you were making it so much harder on yourself.
Maybe that’s true. Maybe that is true,
But as someone who writes 24/7 in some manner, of course, it is so impressive to me that you can do it that way.
The difference is no one has any expectations for me. No one’s expecting a script. In fact, you know what I mean? If I was doing your job, I would probably, yes, have to figure out some more controlled way to manage it.
I wish, but if you find out, you let me know. In that context, how did you write your upcoming project which has been reported to be a musical?
Yes, it is. We start shooting really soon, actually. It’s about a woman who joins a community theater musical. So, it’s a musical in that sense. It’s a musical in, the characters in the movie are putting on a musical, not a traditional movie musical.
The show they are putting on is original?
Yes, yes, yes. I’ve been recording the music all day. Yes, exactly. And so yeah, they’re putting on a new show. It’s not a new show. They’re putting on a show that does not exist.
And you already have distribution for this, right? Isn’t it Universal?
We’re actually in, it’s preliminary, but actually we are greenlit by Topic.
Oh, right. O.K.
So that’s actually how we’re making it in terms of distribution. There are certain ideas that are being batted around, well, this week actually, but we had such a great relationship with a topic on “A Real Pain,” so we thought we would just kind of produce it independently.
And you’re shooting in New York.
Exactly.
Well, I’m excited for that. Before I let you go, I want to ask one more question about “A Real Pain.” You’ve been to so many screenings, and I know you’ve talked to a lot of people about it afterward What is the one sentiment that you keep hearing that moves you the most, or maybe you weren’t expecting when you were making the film?
It’s one very specific thing, and I heard it this morning when I dropped my kid off from school. A mom at the school said, “We’re going back to Austria this summer. I can’t believe I haven’t done that trip. I can’t believe my sister and I haven’t done this trip, but we’ve been talking about it. But after we saw the movie, we realized we have to finally do it.” But I’ve heard that not just from American Jews, I’ve heard that now from Irish people, from Japanese people, I’ve heard it from somebody from Haiti who said, “when things settle down in Haiti we’re going to go down there, and we’re going to make the trip to see where our family is from.” So, this is something I’ve heard now and is just the most thrilling thing for two reasons. One is that it means the movie has touched people and made them think about their own lives. But even more interesting to me is that it’s people outside my specific community, American Jews from Poland, who are relating to the journey of these characters, and that is the most thrilling thing. I was really hoping that this movie would play beyond the kind of narrow confines of my own community.
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Trust us Jesse, it absolutely has.
“A Real Pain” is in theaters and available for digital download on Dec. 31.
