Quint has a fun conversation with Adam Brody and Jon Kasdan!!!

Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a rather curious interview I conducted last week with Adam Brody and Jon Kasdan. I say curious because it was done in a bit of a weird way. I was put on the phone with Adam Brody first, then the phone was passed to Kasdan, so it’s two one-on-ones that are bridged together, by, of all things, my dirty joke question. So, instead of breaking them apart (which I was advised to do by Harvey Weinstein… said I’d get more readers that way), I’m including them both as almost one continuous interview. They were talking to me to promote IN THE LAND OF WOMEN. Now, I know… you’ve seen the trailer. I was a little put off by it as well, but count me completely surprised by the film. We talk a lot about how the film is being marketed in the below interview, but I will say that the movie is very different than what you’re expecting. Kasdan (son of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK writer/BIG CHILL director Lawrence) makes his directorial debut here, with a well cast and well executed dramedy, in the sort of GARDEN STATE genre that Zach Braff created. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the movie, and a little relieved since I had already agreed to talk to Brody and Kasdan before seeing it. Here’s the chat, starting with Brody! We cover some lite-spoiler areas, but when I start talking with Jon, the spoilers get bigger. Enjoy!!!

Adam Brody: Hello?

Quint: Hey. What’s going on, man?

Adam Brody: Not much.

Quint: Well, I write as Quint for Ain’t It Cool News and…

Adam Brody: Oh, fantastic.

Quint: … and I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.

Adam Brody: Oh, I’m sure it’ll be very painless.

Quint: Cool. I saw the movie last week and I really dug it.

Adam Brody: Hey, thanks!

Quint: I have to say I was a little surprised because the trailers are selling it as a different movie.

Adam Brody: Absolutely.

Quint: Do you think people would be less into it if the advertising focused on your connection with Meg Ryan?

Adam Brody: I hope not, but I do think it’s a much trickier sell because it’s sort of a complicated movie. It’s really a love triangle about three people at different cross-roads in their lives. I think that if you look at the poster… and I love the poster. Even if it is a bit disingenuous… I’m such a fan of that poster. I think it’s such a harder sell if the poster was, say, Meg and I walking and talking and everyone’s heads in the clouds above us! I just don’t know what the other trailer and poster is exactly. If it’s anything, it feels much smaller of a movie, potentially. Listen, I think it’s a good movie, so I’m all for whatever they want to try to do to get people into the theaters. Hopefully they’ll leave happy and satisfied even if there is no girl specifically for me to get in the end. It’s funny because ordinarily I take issue with that, but in this case, maybe because I have something riding on it (laughs), I have no problem with it. More power to ‘em. I saw the trailer and poster and I thought, “Thank God! Good idea!” you know? (laughs)

Quint: Well, the movie did surprise me, for the better, so I guess that could end up working in your favor.

Adam Brody: That’s the other thing. Because I think the movie’s good, hopefully it doesn’t disappoint. Maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe it could be a little smarter than what people are expecting. It’s funny because, ordinarily, when people haven’t seen the trailer or the poster… I’ve seen it with an audience that didn’t know anything about it and after Meg and I get romantically involved… when her daughter kisses me it’s like a gasping moment. Now I think it’s going to be the opposite. The other part comes first. I don’t think anybody’s going to feel that that’s coming and when we kiss they’re going to lose it a little. Hopefully. And hopefully in a good way. Hopefully it’ll be shocking in a good way. They’re sort of underselling Meg a little bit in the advertising, but I think that ultimately, because she’s so good in it, I think it’s going to actually be a really pleasant surprise because I think this is the best she’s been in a while. It’s really nice to see her come back with a really nice, solid performance.

Quint: I grew up with such a massive crush on Meg Ryan…

Adam Brody: Sure, sure.

Quint: …I mean, INNERSPACE and JOE VS. THE VOLCANO… I couldn’t get enough of her. What I liked about her in this movie is that it’s the first film she’s done where it doesn’t feel like she’s trying to hide her age. In the last few movies she’s done it felt like she was trying to hold on to…

Adam Brody: Absolutely. She’s been trying to hold on, yeah… the romantic comedy. Yeah, absolutely.

Quint: And here just the fact that she’s fully embracing her age… and she’s still an attractive woman… it just makes her more attractive than her trying to pretend she’s still 20.

Adam Brody: Absolutely. There’s something much more attractive about embracing it, you know? There’s something much more attractive about embracing it and being sexy for your age and owning it versus trying to pretend you’re one of the kids or what have you. And something’s sexy about that maturity. Like I said, I think this is… hopefully, in an accidental way, really, Jon (Kasdan) and I are both hoping people are taken aback by her performance in this movie and are shocked that she’s in it as much as she is and she’s as good as she is in it.

Quint: Someone else I’d like to talk a little bit about is Olympia Dukakis. I always loved her as a character actress and my favorite part of the movie is the relationship between you and her, grandson and grandmother.

Adam Brody: Oh, cool. Thanks. Yeah, she’s just a wickedly talented comedian. Our stuff is so fun to watch… some of the other stuff is so heavy, it was so nice to go do these scenes with her and have it be nothing but fun. She’s also pretty brave to… You know, I tend think less highly of this stuff than most people because I think it’s a no-brainer, but I think it’s pretty uncommon that an actress will play not only their own age, but 10/15/20 years older and look purposefully terrible as she does. To her credit, she had no problem doing it. She looked as bad or worse than we ever could have imagined and she’s great in it. Then it’s funny because if you see a picture of her now… You know, 90% of the time I saw her in the wig and that outfit and extra wrinkles added on… Then I’d see her in the hotel lobby every now and again and she’ kind of a knock-out. Seriously. I mean, she looks a lot more like Helen Mirren than she does that character.

Quint: You brought up an interesting point. Without that lighthearted relationship, the movie would be a little monotonous.

Adam Brody: Yeah, I know. It’s nice. It’s definitely a needed light tone.

Quint: The trick is that it doesn’t feel like it’s just there to keep the story from being too serious.

Adam Brody: Right, right. Jon wrote a fantastic script. Every part feels fully realized, nothing feels like a tool. It all feels like part of a whole. I think he did a fantastic job. Especially, if we can get kind of technical for a second, most movies… I mean, I’ve read a few of Jon’s scripts and what I really like that I think most movies lack is that… you know, most third acts feel sort of forced. They figure “it” out and they’re kind of in a happy place and now they’re encroaching on the hour and a half or hour and fifteen mark, so they’ve got to force something bad to happen or force a misunderstanding so that they can force a reconciliation and the movie can be over. In this one specifically, it doesn’t feel like that at all to me. It feels like he knows where it’s going the entire time and it feels like it was never headed anywhere but there. It’s not a forced ending, but everything comes full circle a little bit. That’s one of my favorite things with his writing.

Quint: Have you known Jon for a while? Is that how you…

Adam Brody: Well, we did this movie… I met Jon when he was kind enough to give me the part, but I had 8 more months of the second season of THE OC to film, so the movie was written and there wasn’t anything else to do, so we just became fast friends during that time. He’s one of my best friends now. We did this movie a year and a half ago and we’ve been good friends going on 3 years now.

Quint: This was his first film out. Was he a good collaborator?

Adam Brody: You’d never know it was his first film. In ways… the family he grew up in… I sort of feel like, and I’m sure he does, too, that he’s been training his whole life for this.

Quint: He lived a film school.

Adam Brody: He said the funniest thing, and I’ll always repeat, but we were talking about DPs (director of photography) once and he knew all these DPs names. I said, “How the fuck… I mean, I consider myself sort of a film buff, but how do know the DPs of these random B movies?” And he said, “Growing up DPs were my baseball cards.” (laughs) This guy, he was so confident, not in a dickish way. He’s the sweetest guy imaginable. The way he was talking the first day onset, he was like, “I want color strips across her face,” and he hand-picked the colors of the flowers he wanted for her front yard. He was so specific. No one ever had any doubt that he didn’t know exactly what he was doing and I think the movie speaks for that. That’s the thing, too. We were 25. He was 25 when he directed it. It’s such a confident, tricky movie for a 25 year old to do. I mean, there’s no music video cuts… Not to say that it’s harder or easier than any other kind, but it’s a pretty mature film for a first time director, it’s a pretty classic film for a young guy such as himself to write and direct. It’s fairly old-fashioned in that way. When you see it, it has such a confident hand between the writing and directing, that’s really a testament to him.

Quint: Would you like to continue making romantic dramedies or is there a particular genre out there that you’d like to sink your teeth in to?

Adam Brody: Well, it’s funny. You wouldn’t know it… Well, first of all I’m kind of a sucker for romance. Really. I wouldn’t mind even doing a more of a straight ahead romantic comedy where you do get the girl in the end. But it’s funny. You wouldn’t know it from this movie, but what Jon and I want to do maybe most and what I think he will excel at completely is we would love to do a comic book movie. We’ve been trying to find one to do.

Quint: Like a traditional superhero comic book?

Adam Brody: Yeah. Find a property that we both like and think would be quite cinematic. As good as Jon is at this sort of thing, you know… his dad wrote a couple STAR WARS’ and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, I think Jon absolutely has that quality in him as well. I know he does because we’ve been talking about it for three years. The ideas, I think, are fantastic.

Quint: So, what’s next for you?

Adam Brody: I don’t know. I have some really small parts in a couple indies coming out this summer, but I’m just sort of on permanent vacation until I find another job. So, yeah.

Quint: I spoke with Jason Reitman right after seeing THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and one of the first things he said was, “Did you see Adam! He’s so good!”

Adam Brody: Aw, man. I’ve been so fortunate. He’s been so sweet to me. He really, really has. To offer me that part… I feel like I’ve gotten some undeserved credit. Not to say that I’m not good in it, but I can name ten other of my peers that could have done the same thing, no problem. The same goes for Rob Lowe’s part. They’re both great parts. I know a lot of people that could have nailed it and I’m going to be forever grateful that he let me be in his movie, which is just the hippest thing around.

Quint: So, who’s the next great director’s son you’re going to work with?

Adam Brody: I know! Gosh… who is the next great director’s son? I don’t know. I don’t know… I don’t know who that’s going to be. I don’t know any, but that is my niche.

Quint: I usually end all my interviews asking for a dirty joke…

Adam Brody: I’m going to think of it… I’m going to pass you to Jon and I’ll get back to you…

Quint: Okay, no worries.

Jon Kasdan: (to the publicist) He should go ahead. I’m going to talk to him for an extra couple of minutes, so just send him on in there. (To me) How you doin’, Eric?

Quint: Hey, man.

Jon Kasdan: So, before you start… I just have to say a couple of things.

Quint: Alright.

Jon Kasdan: I genuinely, truly… to call me a zealot of the site is a profound understatement. Seriously, I read you everyday, I read the site everyday. I’m completely obsessed. It’s how I start my morning.

Quint: You’re going to give me a big head here…

Jon Kasdan: No, no, it’s true. Seriously, every singe day of your MIST visit… Oh, God. I could talk to you, seriously, for 5 hours. It’s how I begin, you guys loom so large for me that it’s a big deal.

Quint: Ah, you say that to everybody.

Jon Kasdan: No! That’s a lie! That’s a lie!

Quint: Trust me, I’m not that interesting.

Jon Kasdan: You were hangin’ out on THE MIST!

Quint: That was cool, yeah.

Jon Kasdan: You’re like a… Listen, I feel like I’m trying to date you, but you're like a serious Stephen King guy and so am I, in like a really major way. But I have a joke for you before we start talkin’. It’s terrible because I made it up, but I lifted it from another joke.

Quint: Alright. Let’s do it.

Jon Kasdan: Alright. Knock-knock.

Quint: Who’s there?

Jon Kasdan: Premature ejaculation.

Quint: Premat…

Jon Kasdan: Ohmygod, I’m cumming! Terrible joke. It’s not that funny.

Quint: (laughs) I think that’s a first, though. I don’t think anybody’s ever given me a dirty joke at the beginning of an interview.

Jon Kasdan: So, anyway… Sorry. I just had to gush for a minute. I do want to talk to you at more length at some point about anything but IN THE LAND OF WOMEN, but probably that’s what you want to talk about.

Quint: We can talk about whatever you want to talk about, but I certainly don’t mind discussing your movie. I liked it a lot.

Jon Kasdan: Really? I’m thrilled. It’s a funny one because we made it really cheap. We made it with Warner Independent. It wasn’t like a studio movie at all. I sort of imagined it was going to be something very different than I think it turned out to be, you know? I thought that what I was doing was weirder and even less accessible than I think it turned out to be. Something about Meg and Adam… they sort of brought to it a sweetness that I didn’t know I was capable of exactly. Hopefully, I was able to respond to what those performances turned the movie in to.

Quint: I brought this up with Adam, but the trailers really threw me. I was expecting a completely different kind of movie when I went in.

Jon Kasdan: Totally. And it’s been an interesting one. Again, I only have so much control over that, but I will say that it’s the kind of thing where… the movie that it is, and this speaks to the independent aspect of it, is not an easy sell. It’s such a tricky sell and I sort of admire that they’re doing the best they can to get girls in because I don’t know… I hope that maybe it’s a movie that, while not exactly what you expect from that poster and that trailer, it’s something you can kind of you’re your teeth into in a slightly different way.

Quint: And I really liked, not to go into the end too much, but…

Jon Kasdan: Spoiler alerts. Go for it! Just dig in. Just put spoiler alerts!

Quint: Alright, then. I liked the relationship between Adam and Meg, but what I also love that you did with Kristen Stewart… and this is something that I always hope for. Every since fuckin’ PRETTY IN PINK when Duckie didn’t get the girl and you’re like, “That’s bullshit!” You have the guy that’s kind of awkward, that is obviously head over heels in love with her… I like that it takes Adam to point that guy out to her.

Jon Kasdan: (laughs) Absolutely! Yeah! That was something I always wanted to do. Totally, exactly from that particular reference. It killed me that they didn’t hook up in that and this is me working out those particular ghosts.

Quint: You know that they originally did, right?

Jon Kasdan: No!

Quint: He… it wasn’t John Hughes that directed it… he wrote it, but…

Jon Kasdan: It was Howie Deutch.

Quint: They shot the ending with Duckie getting together with Molly Ringwald. They screened it and the test audience was like, “Wait! How come she’s with the dork and not the good looking rich guy?” So, they changed it.

Jon Kasdan: I had never heard that. That makes sense to me, ultimately, because it’s sort of like his sensibility. If you think of SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL as the inverse of that movie, he does end up with the dork.

Quint: So, thanks for giving the hot chick the awkward geek.

Jon Kasdan: Definitely, definitely. I had to.

Quint: How much of you is in the script?

Jon Kasdan: Too much. It’s funny because it’s more than just Adam, which obviously has a lot of parallels to me. Specifically, and this again was in the movie more when I wrote it and less in the finished version, but there was this softcore porn subplot. That was (Adam’s) work was writing Showtime half-hour softcore porn. For me, that was very much a reference to working on DAWSON’S CREEK. (laughs) It was my equivalent, a different kind of porn, but certainly porn nonetheless. So, stuff like that, obviously, but also the Meg character’s story is just as personal. For me, I went through Hodgkin’s disease in high school and it was an experience I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about someone finding out that they’re sick and I wanted to write it not literally about me, you know? Equally, Kristen’s part, which has a lot to do with these ideas about shame and insecurity that has haunted me my entire life. Each one of them. I couldn’t be more in ever frame of it. (laughs)

Quint: I was originally going to ask about how tough it was to find someone brave enough to play Meg Ryan’s part…

Jon Kasdan: Yeah.

Quint: But at the same time… I even have it scratched out here because it occurred to me that it might not have been that tough to find a good actress wanting this role because there really aren’t that many roles out there for middle-aged women.

Jon Kasdan: No, and that’s the thing. It’s funny that you say that because my dad is actually in the process right now… he has a script that he’s trying to get made. It’s a small movie, kind of like this, but it has three really strong roles for women. You see, as he’s been meeting actresses, there’s such a hunger for anything interesting, anything complicated. (Meg) was the first person I went to. When I finished writing the script, I thought “I sort of wrote it for her,” even though I was not aware of it at the time. At that point the movie had a little bit of momentum and she seemed to understand that it was something she could do and that it might be challenging.

Quint: Not to repeat myself again, but I was telling Adam that I grew up with a huge crush on her from INNERSPACE and JOE VS. THE VOLCANO, specifically…

Jon Kasdan: It’s true. I mean, JOE VS. THE VOLCANO, first of all, I think is one of the most underrated movies of the ‘90s. It’s brilliant in a way. It’s so much more sophisticated than people ever get. But yeah, I have exactly the same feeling about her.

Quint: It was nice to see her comfortable in her own skin here.

Jon Kasdan: Absolutely. I do hope that any positive feedback she gets from this experience only encourages her to try to do some sort of new version of what she does, I guess. She does still have it. There are moments in the movie and some of my favorite stuff is little quirky, very pure Meg Ryan stuff. It’s great to see her be able to do that with a more mature tone.

Quint: Was there a delicate line for you when you were writing the Kristen Stewart/Adam Brody relationship? Because that is a 15/16 year old girl and a mid-20s guy.

Jon Kasdan: Absolutely. And it was, again this is what I’m saying to you, this thing… I thought it was this indie movie, I thought I was making this indie movie that would be slightly controversial in that way and you’d have really complicated feelings about that thing. And what happened…

Quint: Well, you cast Adam Brody! (laughs)

Jon Kasdan: Yeah, I cast Adam Brody! He was the perfect age, too. Which is one of numerous reasons why it seems like such a perfect fit, but there’s something about seeing him kiss Kristen, you know? Sometimes I’ll go onto the IMDB and look at the message boards and it’s totally divided between like, “That’s sick! That’s dirty!” and, like, “Are you kidding? We should be so lucky as to kiss Adam Brody when we were 17!” So, I think he has that quality and more than that, he has the kind of likeability that makes it seem less creepy than it was written.

Quint: It’s also pretty clear that he’s not interested.

Jon Kasdan: Yeah, it is. And that’s something that we wrestled with a little bit because it is such a conflicted moment.

Quint: If you had him going after her, then you’d be crossing the creepy line.

Jon Kasdan: Yeah, no kidding. It dances with it already.

Quint: The heart of the movie to me is in the relationship with Olympia Dukakis and Adam Brody.

Jon Kasdan: I’m glad. That’s sort of my favorite stuff in the movie, too, to be honest with you. Here’s the truth. My father’s mother is that character. She is that woman. One of the ways this project evolved was that we were having a family dinner a few years back and I was talking to my grandmother and we have a sort of funny repartee. My brother said to me, “You know what you should do, Jon. You should write a sitcom about you and grandma.” That sort of stuck with me and when I went to try to figure out how I could write a movie small enough to direct, it was an idea that came back to me. Her voice is very clearly in there. And so is mine, to be perfectly honest. I’m a little more like that than I care to admit.

Quint: How did you bring Olympia to the movie?

Jon Kasdan: I knew I was interested in Olympia because, you know… all her work, but specifically MOONSTRUCK is a big movie for me. A John Shanley moment between that and JOE (VS. THE VOLCANO). But, her performance in that movie seemed akin to this in a certain way. It’s certainly in the tone of that movie, which I really admire. You don’t really feel like, certainly if you’re 25, you can ask the Olympia Dukakis’ and the Jean Stapleton’s of the world to come in and read. It just doesn’t seem right. And yet you want someone you feel like you’re going to have a good time with and will be able to work with. The way I sort of figured around that was I asked Olympia to come do a reading of the movie with us, that we were doing anyway. She came in and read it and just killed. Almost like it was without effort. She just has the most incredible timing. She’s a true comedian, you know? It was great because she was great and there was never any need to look further.

Quint: Another actress you have in the movie, who I think will get overlooked because her role is so small, but I really loved seeing on the big screen again was JoBeth Williams.

Jon Kasdan: Absolutely! Me, too. She was great. You know, that was something that we went back and re-shot. Because, first of all, the way I had done it originally was deeply profane. It wasn’t setting up the movie right. She’s been a friend to my parents since THE BIG CHILL. Really, of all those cast members, I think she’s the one that’s remained in their life the most. And she looks a little like Adam is the weird thing. She looks believable as Adam’s mother. So when it came time to do that and we were in that situation, it was like, “Absolutely, that’s someone I want to work with.”

Quint: Gotta give my love to BIG CHILL because my longest relationship, about 4 years, started by me showing her that movie.

Jon Kasdan: No kidding? That’s about four and a half times longer than my longest relationship! (laughs) The other thing about that movie, that I’ll never live down, is that it opens with me singing Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog in the bathtub.

Quint: No shit? That’s great!

Jon Kasdan: Yeah. I’ll never be able to top that moment. (laughs)

Quint: Do you have anything lined up? What’s next?

Jon Kasdan: Interesting question. I am writing something so agonizingly slowly that I won’t be done for another 20 or 30 years. I’m trying to… I’d like to do something very, very different. The kind of movies that I see and, I think, the reason I am absolutely devoted to your site is that’s really where my interests lie in sort of movie movies, I guess you’d call them.

Quint: Adam was saying you were looking for a comic book flick to do together.

Jon Kasdan: We were, totally. In fact, we were looking very specifically to do… You know, I had a version of the GREEN ARROW I was interested in doing and I was very disappointed that David Goyer got to do that! It’s something I love! There are a couple of things like that that I’ve liked. If we can convince someone to let us do it, it’d be a ton of fun.

Quint: You said you were a Stephen King nut. Is there anything of his you’d like to do?

Jon Kasdan: I totally would, but more than that what I’d like to do is something very like… maybe not based on a story, but sort of in the milieu of Stephen King and Lovecraft. I’d love to find a modern take on Lovecraft. That’s my fantasy. He’s a guy that no one’s adapted… I guess, Stuart Gordon’s the premiere Lovecraft adaptor, but on the mainstream scale…

Quint: Even his stuff… it’s great, but it’s not really a direct adaptation.

Jon Kasdan: No. It’s a total reworking.

Quint: Guillermo Del Toro is doing AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS.

Jon Kasdan: I know. I read that, probably from you guys. I wonder, is that imminent? Is he really about to do it?

Quint: Last I heard he was jumping from HELLBOY 2 into it.

Jon Kasdan: That’s so cool! You know, that story… I’ve read in one of the interviews about him and that movie that it’s not really… it has no structure to it. It’s kind of like just an account of this expedition, which Cthulhu is, too. If I was going to try to adapt one, that is the one you always imagine. I guess the biggest thing about it is in a world of huge effects and as that technology gets better and better and the textures of creatures become more and more believable, what an awesome cannon that has yet to be explored. That’s the kind of thing that I’d love to do and if we could figure out a way to do a superhero movie that didn’t seem tired, certainly in four years when it came out and there have been another 15… I’d love to do that, too. I’ll tell you what’s great, that I read, is TONIGHT HE COMES.

Quint: Oh, yeah. The Will Smith thing, right?

Jon Kasdan: Yeah, the Will Smith/Peter Berg thing. It’s because, largely, Vince Gilligan is a brilliant writer and he did a draft of the script and made it irresistible. Anyway, they’re pulling me into this thing, but I could talk forever!

And that was my 40 something minute two-part conversation with Jon Kasdan and Adam Brody. Hope you guys enjoyed it. I have many more interviews I need to catch up on, so keep your eyes on the site, squirts! -Quint quint@aintitcool.com