Before we dive into this one, I should say two things. The first I’ve said before: in the last couple of years, I’ve gotten a real kick and had some of my best recorded conversations with screenwriters. There is something about being the creator or adaptor, the person there from the earliest stages of a film’s creation, that I’ve discovered is inherently interesting. Sometimes the filmmakers keep their writers close during production, for any adjustments along the way; other times, they take the script, close the door, and the writer simply holds his/her breath and hopes for the best at the premiere. Each story is a little bit different—at times quite rewarding, but almost as often, the story is heartbreaking and painful. And most writers don’t seem to mind telling you exactly what their experience was on any given project.
The second thing I should say is that I’d met the subject of this interview once before, about five years ago in New York City, backstage at a Broadway theater, just moments after her husband, Paul Rudd, had finished a performance of a play called “Grace,” opposite Michael Shannon, among others. Rudd had invited me to come see the show and visit him afterwards, and it just so happens that his wife, Julie, was also there on this particular night.
Julie Yaeger Rudd (as she is billed in the credits of her writing debut FUN MOM DINNER) began her career in Hollywood as a unit publicist, so she has some familiarity with the process of making movies. But it wasn’t until a few years ago that she got an idea for a movie from a phenomenon in her own life (and the lives of millions of parents)—that there are these small groups of friends who only know each other because their children attend the same school. She probably couldn’t have anticipated that a small crop of other movies about a ladies night/weekend out would surface, most specifically BAD MOMS, but the characters in FUN MOM DINNER aren’t trying to escape anything (for the most part); they just want an evening where they can be adults again, in the company of other adults.
The core group of mothers in the film (directed by Alethea Jones) are played by Katie Aselton, Toni Collette, Bridget Everett, and Molly Shannon. Also on hand are familiar male faces Adam Scott, Rob Huebel, Adam Levine (yep, the singer), and, I’ll spoil it, Julie’s husband might make an appearance as well (he is one of the producers after all). The film understands that it’s difficult for many adults to make new friends, but by bringing together people with shared experiences, they can actually make the day-to-day grind of parenting a little easier.
I caught FUN MOM DINNER (out in limited release and On Demand beginning this weekend) at its world premiere at Sundance back in January, and when I was asked recently if I wanted to speak with Julie Rudd, I jumped at the chance and assumed (correctly) that she wouldn’t remember that or when we’d first met. And as with most of my talks with writers recently, I adored this conversation and hearing about the path she took to getting this made, pulling from life but with an emphasis on crafting the best story in the process. With that, please enjoy my chat with Julie Yaeger Rudd…
Julie Rudd: Hi, Steve.
Capone: Hi, Julie. How are you?
JR: Good. How are you doing?
Capone: Good. I would never expect you to remember this, but we met about five years ago. I'm actually friendly with your husband.
JR: [laughs] Yes, I know that you're friendly with my husband; my husband was psyched I was talking to you today. Remind me when we met.
Capone: It was backstage after a performance of “Grace” on Broadway.
JR: Oh my gosh, yes! You came back to his dressing room. I remember. My gosh. That's hysterical.
Capone: It was great to finally meet you. And honestly, I did not realize when I sat down to watch this film at Sundance that you had written it.
JR: By the way, I still can't believe I wrote it [laughs].
Capone: Let's talk about that. I think I read somewhere that you were an English major in college. Where did you go to college?
JR: I went to George Washington University.
Capone: I know it well. I grew up in D.C. so yeah.
JR: Oh you did? So then I can say to you I went to GW?
Capone: You can. Was the goal always to be a writer, or were you thinking of doing something else with that major, like become a teacher?
JR: It was. But more than the goal, writing was always the dream. That was always a dream of mine to be a writer. It seemed hard, it seemed distant, but it was always a dream. Then I had a moment where I thought, "Oh, maybe I'll be a professor and I'll teach and I'll write papers," and then life happens. I always loved movies. My entire life, I loved old movies. My sister and I would make popcorn and get all dressed up every Oscar night in the living room and make our parents leave us alone so we could watch the Oscars.
In a way, this kind of thing happening, the fact that I've written a movie, it blows my mind still. It's like my little-girl dream come true. In a way, given the direction my life went where I started working in publicity in the movies and then I got married and had kids, none of this seemed like it was going to pan out. I had put [the dream] in a little box on a shelf somewhere. So the fact that it's out now, I'm really psyched.
Capone: Well you did get into film PR, so if writing a film was the dream, you were at least there amongst it for a time
JR: I was, I was amongst. The way I got into the film business was literally, when I got out of college, I knew someone, a girl at a temporary job I was working at in a summer who was like, "There's an assistant's job open at Columbia Pictures." So for me I was like, "Columbia Pictures, what?!” So I applied for that job and I ended up getting that job, and it happened to be in the publicity office. For me, it was about an entrée into the film business and the job that was open was the PR job. I wouldn't say that PR was a goal; it was just that's how I fell into the movie business, and that's where I stayed in the movie business.
Capone: The way you just described that sounds like a ’50s musical setup.
JR: But it was! Could you imagine? I was like, "Wait, I'm going to work at Columbia Pictures where the beautiful woman stands like the Statue of Liberty?” and I could hear the Columbia Pictures opening music. That's how ridiculously in love with movies I was. Still, that job, which was a great job where I walked into the Coca-Cola building every day as an assistant, and that behind my desk was a gigantic picture of Peter O'Toole from LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, this kind of stuff was enough for me. It really was in my early 20s. This was enough for me. I was thrilled.
Capone: Let's move forward a little bit. When did the idea for this film start percolating? How far back would you pinpoint that?
JR: It was around the end of 2013. I was very happily being a wife and a mom to my kids, and life was full and life was great. I just had an idea and was like, "God, no one has made a mom movie." I, who was really living this world of moms, and my kids—one kid at elementary school, one kid at pre-school—my life was about pick ups and drop offs. I was just like, "God, nobody's written a movie about this. Nobody's written a funny movie about this.” And when you see moms in these comedies, they're always a stereotype, and it's a little side part of a movie that's about guys. It was this notion that nobody had, in my opinion at this point, accurately depicted a funny movie about moms, but that was real.
It coincided for me with the fact that, here was in my 40s and I had myself, had trepidation when my kids started school about, "What is this going to be like with all these moms?" Because I had seen the stereotypes in the movies. I was like, "What are these moms gonna be like?" Then what ended up happening was, I found a group of moms, and most moms that I came across, I found to be amazing, incredible women. I found myself in a group of mom friends who had enriched my life so greatly and so unexpectedly. I felt so understood amongst them, I felt appreciated, I felt all of these amazing things, and so it was almost like this feeling dove-tailed with this idea. I was like, "It would be fun to write a movie that celebrates moms in a real way, but also celebrates this friendship that's so special. I can't be the only one who's feeling this across America."
I think it also came a point where my kids were a little bit older, and they were in school during the day, and I had found myself perhaps a little hungry for carving out a piece of something for myself. I think it's one of those situations of an idea striking at a moment when I needed it to strike, when I was ready to see it through. I think it was a timing thing as much as anything else.
Capone: Time does seem more precious than gold when you're a parent. Did you go create a schedule for yourself just to make sure that kept up the writing?
JR: I did. Yes, I did, and it really cut into my watching of “Law & Order,” but I got okay with that. Yes, because that's what I found myself. I would do my errands and all the things I needed to do to be a mom and to be Paul's wife. Then I found myself with some time to watch a good amount of “Law & Order” in the week. I thought, "Well, I'm loving this, but maybe I could take this time and work on this idea that I have for the mom movie." And so that's what I did.
Capone: It's tough for adults to make new friends, but you all have this shared experience, even though you all come from very different family lives—there are divorced parents, people in good marriages and bad marriages—but you all have this shared experience around where the kids land up at a certain time of day.
JR: Yeah, and you see them every day. You see them every morning, you see them every afternoon. You're at all these school functions together. Your kids are playing together. You're so enmeshed in each other's lives, I think more so than I’d realized I’d be as a naïve parent before entering the school world. I don't think anybody really understands just how enmeshed you're going to be in the life and the world of your kids' school. For me, that was a really positive thing. It took me by surprise, I think.
Capone: I've got to imagine at the time, 2013, you couldn't have anticipated that there was going to be these other films about moms or women older then their 20s letting off steam one night or one weekend. How would you say your film differentiates itself in this new crop of films?
JR: I think and I hope two things. One is, I think the age of these women, for me and for [producer] Naomi Scott, who was my partner through this whole journey. It was really important that these women are well into their 40s, like we are. For this story to work and for it to feel real, these women are long married, they're deep into parenthood, and they're tired. This night out for them is earned over years. That was really important to me, that we don't make them 27 or even 33. I wanted them to represent a certain time in a mom's life where this stuff really feels real. They're deep in the trenches.
I also think that because this movie is written by a woman, it's directed by a woman, it was produced by a woman, and because three of the four actresses are moms themselves. Bridget will tell you she is a mom to her dog Poppy, and it's very true. It is very true, that love runs so deep. I feel like we all came to have fun on the movie, and obviously it's a heightened reality, but we also all came to make sure that it felt like there's truth there. My favorite moments in movies might be just the quiet moments where it's so real and that connection is made.
This is a small, independent movie, It's a wild-night kind of a movie, but it does have a couple of moments where moms and people, and even dads watching it, will feel that something real has transpired, that they will see themselves up there. I think that is maybe what sets it apart. I haven't studied all of the other movies. I saw BAD MOMS, loved BAD MOMS. I'm not sure, in terms of ROUGH NIGHT and GIRLS TRIP, how women-heavy they were behind the scenes. I don't know, so I can't speak to that, but I know this one was, and there was something about that that was really powerful. It was powerful to look at a Video Village and it all be girls. That was cool!
Capone: You brought up Bridget Everett, who I saw in PATTI CAKE$, which also debuted at Sundance, in which she also plays a mom. It's a much more serious film and serious role for her. She's actually going to be in Chicago in a couple weeks to promote PATTI CAKE$, and I am genuinely nervous to meet her because I think she's a genius.
JR: I do too. By the way, I wrote this part for her simply because I went and saw her cabaret show at Joe's Pub while I was in just the thinking stages of this idea. I never have had a better time out at a live show than that. I was so blown away and mesmerized by her that, like a dork, I went back and saw the show several more times. Of course, I had to tell all this to Bridget, too. I had like a lightning-bolt moment at one of her shows where I was like, "Oh my God, this character of Melanie that I am writing, this is who should play it." I really became hellbent on that happening. Luckily, she was game, and Naomi thought it was a great idea. She was the first one on board.
Capone: It feels like another happy coincidence in terms of timing that Naomi and Adam Scott had started up their production company not that long ago, and that you guys are such good friends with them. Were they one of the first people involved behind the scenes in getting you to do this and encouraging you to a degree?
JR: Well, this is before their company was a company. When I had the idea, and the idea at this point was a sentence, Paul and I happened to be in L.A., and I was spending the day with Naomi. We were just driving around in a car, and I said, "Naomi, I have this idea for a mom movie." And I gave her a very bare bones synopsis, probably two sentences. I was like, "Do you want to work on this together?" And she was like, "Yep." And that was it.
What happened is, she and I, from that moment on, spent about a year Facetiming back and forth. I would really work on the characters and ideas for the story, and ideas for conversations and what would happen, and run everything by her. We would Facetime back and forth, and, I kid you not, in the space of this year that we fleshed out the story, we were only with each other in person twice. We did it all through Facetime, and somewhere along the process—I don't know the actual date—this company of theirs formed.
When it really came time to sit down and write the script, I'd never necessarily imagined that I would be the one to write the script. I knew, or I thought I knew, I had a good idea. I thought Naomi and I had come up with some great stuff, and then I thought there was a movie in there, but I didn't know that I had the chops or the guts to take a stab at it. Because this was not a thing, this was just a thing between me and Naomi, so I said, "What if I actually just tried to take a stab at writing a draft of this script?" She was like, “Yeah. Sure. Why not? Do it.” That's what happened.
Capone: What was the toughest nut to crack in terms of the script? What was the thing you kept getting stuck on, as a first-time screenwriter?
JR: I always had thought I had a good idea of how the movie should start and how we're going to introduce everybody. I really think we had a good ending right from the get-go. I love the way the movie ends. Then it was everything in between [laughs]. It really was. It's really hard, you can say, “A movie should start like this. I have a great ending for a movie." You kind of put pieces together, and we need to speak to people, so I think one of these women should be at maybe an ebb in her marriage, and that should play a part here. One of these women should maybe be divorced and just at a moment where she's coming alive again, because I think that's an important piece and that's an important thing to explore.
You have lots of these ideas that you start scribbling down in a notebook. Then I thought, “Obviously, they're all going to go out together to a dinner, so that's fun. But then stuff has to happen, and it has to be wild enough or crazy enough or not a normal night enough that these women bond together." Because I always knew that, regardless of what happens or how crazy it gets that the takeaway from the movie, I want you to leave knowing that these women are going to be friends with each other, their lives are all going to be better because of the friendship they forged on this night. They're all going to help each other, and this is like a love letter to this friendship. That was important.
But figuring out what the hell happens on the night was tough. My first iteration was more like a caper. I'm like, "Maybe it should be a caper, and these moms solve it with all the crazy stuff they have in their bags," because moms have insane things in their bags. It was the middle part.
Capone: There’s certainly a version of this story where you don't really even have to address what the husbands are doing while all this is going on, but you actually did include that. That would seem tougher than figuring out what the moms are doing.
JR: I know. Well, I loved the idea. In the end in the final analysis—and now seeing the movie and seeing Adam and Rob Huebel, I love them both so much in this—the dads are one of my very favorite parts of the movie. One thing that was I really wanted, that I thought was really important because there’s a version of this movie that most people would assume is going to happen is that the dads are going to be left home alone with all the kids, and they're going be terrible, right? The dads are idiots, they don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to take care of the kids. That is the obviously thing to do. What felt really important to do was to maybe make you think for a moment that it's going to go something like that, but ultimately I was like, “I want the dads to be great.” I want you to really like the dads. I want the dads to maybe do things differently than the moms would have done it, but it's still all good. It's still totally fine.
I also thought it was important that they talk about some real stuff, because I think that men do, maybe not all men, but I do think some men, they talk about real stuff. For me, the really fun part of the Rob Huebel's character is, for me as the writer, writing him was so fun because it was almost like me writing a guy who's simply telling men out there how easy it is to make their wives happy. He's just a guy who, if you just listen to what he says in the movie, if husbands would just listen to what Andrew says in the movie, their wives would be happy. Just be nice to them, appreciate them, say a few nice things to them every day, and your world will be so much easier. It just needs to come from a dude, because nobody listens when you say to your husband, "Can't you just say a couple of nice things to me?”, it doesn't mean anything.
Capone: Do you have the writing bug now? Do you have a whole notebook full of ideas that you're going to maybe turn into a script?
JR: Yes, I do.
Capone: You’re ready to try it again?
JR: I don't have a whole notebook, but I certainly feel lucky that maybe I will have the opportunity to write something else if I want to and I have ideas. I still have my kids, and I have a husband who's away a lot, and we have an interesting life where we pick up and go different places. That's always going be the priority. But I feel really lucky that this thing that I found, it doesn't confine me to a place or a time, and that I can, no matter what's happening, I can always, like I said, cut out some “Law &vOrders” and write something else.
Capone: Well congratulations on this and best of luck, obviously.
JR: Thank you. Thank you so much.
Capone: Is this premiering on Netflix, or it is actually get into theaters. I thought I read something about theatrical dates.
JR: It opens in theaters on August 4th. It’s in theaters and On Demand on August 4th, so you can also watch it at home on cable and get it on iTunes. Then at some point later, I don't know exactly when, but something like 90 days later, it will premiere on Netflix.
Capone: So it is going to be in theaters. I'm really glad to hear that because I think it’d play well with an audience.
