Kenneth Lonergan Talks about His Films
I'm a massive Kenneth Lonergan fan. I just think he writes some of the most lively characters. They feel like people he knows and talks to. And there's a deep beauty in that.
When asked about You Can Count on Me and how it exemplifies tragedy within life and his other movies, Lonergan said, "I think you tend to write about things that are troublesome to you, or I think things you worry about are things that you end up working on. So I’d say that’s part of it. Then one of the obvious differences between a religious viewpoint and a secular one is that the religious viewpoint provides some kind of a purported answer to what our lives are all about and what happens after we die, and why bad things happen. Even if the answer is “nobody knows, but there’s a reason.” To me, it’s a totally unsatisfactory answer. But if that means something to you, it seems to feel better than “there seems to be no purpose to anything and you have to figure one out for yourself,” which isn’t always easy to do."
This is such a good extrapolation of the emotions within the film, and it digs into how you get those ideas out of your head and onto the page.
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Opening Scenes
Another quote that really floored me was when Lonergan talked about the initial meeting of brother and sister in the movie, when Mark Ruffalo's character comes home to buy money.
He gave a very long and detailed answer about the scene and what the stakes are within it, and then how he directed the actors.
Lonergan extrapolated, "You put your finger on it that she thinks he’s coming home for a visit. He knows he’s there to borrow money, and he knows perfectly well how happy she is that he’s coming home for a visit. So that already puts them at internal loggerheads as they go into the restaurant. On the other hand, he really loves her and he’s really glad to see her. I love that this is all in the performances. I mean, it was in the script, too, but the shot where he’s waiting outside the restaurant anxiously smoking a cigarette—plus he’s gotten stoned, which doesn’t help at all—and then she’s behind him and then he turns around. My father, when he saw that movie, he said, “Boy, that’s when you really fall in love with her because she does this.” She waves at him, with this just [flailing arms around] this excited wave. She’s so happy to see him that he just forgets everything, and he’s just happy to see her, too. It’s this really nice moment, but it doesn’t hold because he’s in trouble and needs money, and it makes it even harder for him to be back in town."
So, how did he get those performances out of them in that moment?
Lonergan said, "Another thing that was really important that I wanted to talk through with the actors, just as a fundamental aspect of the scene, is that they don’t have the kind of relationship where he can’t tell her he was in jail. That would be a very easy thing to avoid telling her, so he knows how, and you’re perfectly right, and I was completely wrong, he feels very guilty about letting her down. He says it as much, 'I feel like I’ve let you down all the time.' I think it’s a terrible feeling, and he doesn’t want to be doing that. I said to them, 'It’s not like you can just not tell her. It’s too big a thing not to tell her because you’re very close. You’re always in touch, you know you haven’t written.' But she also doesn’t want to be jumping down his throat. She doesn’t say right away, 'Where have you been?' But he can’t have disappeared for six months without saying why he didn’t write, and he didn’t just forget. He’s been in prison, which he’s never done before, and it is just in the air. So as soon as they get done saying hello, it’s going to come up. Especially since he’s even more uncomfortable, clearly, and more awkward, clearly, than even that would account for. Because then it’s also the money. So it just gets worse and worse. He’s got to tell her he was in jail, and then he’s got to tell her that he’s really here to borrow money because he’s got his girlfriend pregnant. He knows it’s going to be a disappointment to her because she thought he was just coming for a visit, and then also yet another disappointment to her in the way that his life is going."
To keep the actors on pace, he gives them a lot of information, and then also lets them find these characters themselves.
He explained, "That’s all behind the scenes, and then you tell that to the actors and they know what to do. You can point out little moments, and then they also provide moments in spades that you never thought of. I remember they have this blow up and then it dies down. He just yelled at her, basically, like, 'I’m sorry, I’m sorry, get off my back!' Then there’s a pause, and she says, 'Can I ask you something?' and he says, 'Sure.' They both have great instincts, but I remember I gave Mark a note: 'Just find out what she wants to know. Tell her it’s okay. You’re not mad.' Then he does this beautiful rendering. He says, 'Sure, you can. Of course, you can.' He reassures her right away. They’re always coming back to a place of liking each other. Never mind that they love each other, but they just have this connection. That’s what the problem is, because they’re connected enough that they really get on each other’s nerves, and also they’re just not going to find a middle distance, which a lot of siblings find. Their relationship is very intense because they never had anybody else except each other until she had Rudy."
How to Handle Success
In the You Can Count on Me commentary, Kenneth Lonergan says, “My whole life, I’ve been worried if I would be any good if I ever became successful. If that would ruin me artistically.”
But does he still feel this way?
Lonergan has won an Academy Award and has been lauded by actors, other directors, and producers as one of the best filmmakers working.
When asked if he still carries this weight, Lonergan said, "I think it’s possible that I don’t think I’ve demonstrated to myself sufficiently in the last few years that it has not ruined me creatively. I suspect that I had a big fallow period after Manchester, which I don’t know whether I was just out of gas or whether I spent a year promoting the movie, and it did so well that I then became very self-conscious about what I was going to do next. I think it’s the latter. So I think it had an effect on my confidence and my feeling of privacy and autonomy of working on things and putting things out there. I think it put a certain amount of pressure on me that I didn’t feel before."
That's a good way to look at it, especially with how success can change you.
Lonergan openly acknowledges that.
He says, "I’ve also seen so many people, especially in this culture, which makes such a stink over success—where everybody who does well at all is suddenly in every magazine getting attention—it’s great for your ego, and it’s great for your confidence in a way, but it also is weird. It does suddenly give you another identity that you didn’t have before. In the same way that sitting at home worrying that you are terrible and no one’s going to like what you’re doing isn’t healthy, thinking you’re a genius because everybody’s telling you that, I don’t think, is that healthy for the creative process. It stops being a conversation between you and your work, and it becomes a conversation between you and your imaginary friends and enemies, and that’s very different. You’re not thinking about, 'Do I need this scene where she helps them get a job or not?' You’re thinking about, 'Is this one of the great scenes that I’m famous for being so good at, or is this one of those dumb, bad scenes that everyone’s going to hate?' Those are not helpful lines along which to be thinking."
Summing It All Up
I thought this was an inspiring look at Kenneth Lonergan's most underrated work and a journey into how he works on scenes. I'm excited for the 4K release of the film and for everyone who hasn't seen it to check it out.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
