David Gordon Green

[March 26th, 2008]

David Gordon Green is a master of the mash-up. The 33-year-old director of All the Real Girls weaves together humor and pain into unexpected patterns, as if selecting favorite moments from his characters’ lives. This year he’s pulled off another surprise mix: As he debuts Snow Angels, a small-town tragedy starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale, he’s preparing for the August release of Pineapple Express, a big-budget stoner comedy produced by Knocked Up’s Judd Apatow. Green sat down after a Portland International Film Festival screening of Snow Angels to reveal how “happy accidents” make his movies better.

^Web Exclusive Extended Interview

You make very low-budget films, and there’s only so much film you can shoot. And yet one of the things I’ve always liked most about your movies is that they feel lived-in, as if you’re taking slices out of the characters’ lives, almost chosen at random. How do you make those moments happen if you can’t just keep shooting?

I think you [make] it happen by getting to know the people that are involved in every element of it, from the production designer to the DP to the sound guy to the cast. And if you know everybody, you know how to push the buttons. Everybody’s looking toward making the same thing, everyone’s looking to make—what’s the word?—everyone’s looking for happy accidents. And so from the moment they walk on the set, they’re immediately vulnerable, intentionally vulnerable. They’re emotionally checked in, that’s how they clock in is by becoming a vulnerable entity. No matter what your artistic or technical contribution is to the day, you show up ready to stumble and ready to rise. I talk about rehearsal process, but it’s so much not sitting around a table memorizing lines, that it shouldn’t even be called a “rehearsal process.” It should be called, like, “drinks with Sam Rockwell.” But it is just getting to know how everybody can get charged up and have a good, healthy experience but also bring some balls to the table. And I’ve just been really lucky, honestly, to work with good people, and not have any of those combative relationships where you’ve got to wait for a diva to get out of her trailer. So it literally is you’re waiting there in gear for those opportunities.

You really like mistakes in your movies.

When Nicky [Katt] walks and slips, when he’s coming in from the car, it’s so good. And there’s one really funny way to edit that, where he falls on his ass and he plays it cool. People that play it cool when they do something that’s not cool is my favorite thing in the whole world. Like the other day I’m walking in New Orleans—I live in a pretty rough end of town—and there’s this dude, this gangster, just walking by, and he’s giving me the what the fuck you looking at? look—and he trips. And I was like, “God, don’t laugh.” ’Cause it was funny. He did look pissed. I don’t know where he was coming from or where he was going, but he had an agenda, looked a little bloodthirsty. So I just didn’t want to say anything, and it was so funny. I swallowed it. And then he just looks up and he’s like, “How y’all doin’?” And then he smiled, and I was just like, “Good, thank you,” so I laughed my ass off. But it was such a great relief to have something of that potential and that kind of intensity—and that four seconds of “Aw, shit, I shouldn’t have looked him in the eye, and now he’s pissed”—and then he trips. I love that kind of shit.

Doesn’t that kind of thing also help to relieve Snow Angels from melodrama?

Yes, you could take that same script and do a TV movie of the week. But it’s also more realistic. And people like Amy Sedaris and Nicky [Katt] being in the movie—and every actor in it brings comedic baggage to it. So you like them because they made you laugh in other movies and other situations, so you immediately have a positive, subconscious acceptance of them. And then when you’re dealing with something that’s really harsh, that’s when it should be the funniest stuff. It’s when you do have those conflicts of emotion. It asks something interesting of you as an audience.

Do you find you laugh more making a tragedy like Snow Angels?

Yeah, you have to. When I was done with that movie, I was like, “I have to make a comedy now.” It was a really funny experience making that movie, and you do rely on those laughs. There were days in the editing room where you’re just like, “God, Jesus.” We were working for like three days on one of the ending sequences, and…you just don’t talk when you go home. My girlfriend would be like, “What’s wrong?” and I’d be like, “I mean, nothing. It’s great.” You can’t talk about it. You don’t want to talk. I’m just hearing gunshots and screams all day. I feel like I’ve been yelled at all day.

And you know, Sam [Rockwell] was interesting. Sam would walk around with headphones listening to Barry White. And he had a mix tape of wedding party songs…songs you would play at a cheesy wedding reception. So he’s listening to this all the time. And at first I was like, well, he’s just trying to counter the environment of [his character] Glenn, and the vibe. But then he was like, “No, just thinking about all the good times; I can’t wait to go be with [Kate Beckinsale’s character] Annie. This just reminds me of our wedding. I’m gonna go reunite with her, and it’s gonna be great.” He listened to that the whole movie.

It totally shows in the performance, because Glenn is just overeager.

Even to the very last word that he improvises: “Hi.” He sees her, and then he’s running to her. It’s amazing. When he said that, I freaked out. Like, literally, I couldn’t look at the rest of it. It didn’t know what he was gonna do; I let it roll for another minute, assuming there was something awesome happening. That was the only take, too, where the dog—the dog ruled that take. ’Cause the dog was fucking around that day, but that take, when Sam gets in, he’s like literally beyond reality fucked up in the head; he’s method as hell, he’s in that space. The dog is scared shitless. I mean, dogs have such an amazing sense of human emotion and behavior anyway, the anxieties and stuff like that. The dog was scared out of his mind. Sam was so realistically about to do something drastic that the dog knew it. It was so weird. You can’t describe the tension that was happening there. I was a sucker for it—watching the show, as they say.

I got the feeling watching Snow Angels that a lot of the moments come from Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale interacting with the child.

Yes. That little girl’s amazing.

What’s her name?

Grace. [She’s billed as Gracie Hudson.]

Did you just set Grace up and let Grace go?

Yes, ’cause Grace is not an actress—not trained, and has never been in anything with a camera on her, and didn’t realize that there was a camera on. [Laughs.] So she was just an amazingly human character. Everybody always says, “Don’t work with animals and kids,” but those are the two greatest things. And for a guy that’s looking for a happy accident, it’s every time going to be fucked up. You’re never gonna get what you think you’re gonna get. And it’s great. And Grace had a cool mom, which is really rare in this industry—someone that is supportive of letting her kid emote. It’s gonna be a fun, creative thing, but there’s gonna be points where she’s gonna cry. So it was just like, let’s let Pretend Mommy and Pretend Daddy interact with Grace, and she just bought it and she just went for it.

Did you call them Pretend Mommy and Pretend Daddy?

Yeah, I didn’t want to confuse her too much. I can get in there and make a head game with a lot of my actors, but I didn’t want to mess with a 3-year-old. [Laughs.] I did have that one time…[where] I needed her to say, “Can I play outside?” That was the only thing that I needed her to say in the whole movie, and for that I had to give her Skittles.

So the question I keep hearing about Pineapple Express is, “Will David Gordon Green keep his signature style?”

If you just see [my] movies casually, you would think, “Yeah, he’s lost it, and this is definitely an Apatow-style movie.” But I think if you know the movies and know the sense of humor, it’s totally different from their movies, and it plays to my fingerprints and sensibilities. So I’m really excited about it. I’m enormously proud of what we were able to get away with. I think it works within their conventions, but my sense of humor’s all over it. And I’m not a stoner—that stuff usually doesn’t make me laugh. But I wanted to take the best of that style of humor, and all of my favorite action movies from Tango & Cash to Blues Brothers, and make something just irreverent and insane.

Your movies do have a slightly stoner vibe, though.

Certainly, I’m not against that. I just don’t like the freakin’ Half-Baked, Cheech and Chong—well, I like Cheech and Chong fine. But did I tell you that Huey Lewis and the News is just wrapping up their theme song for Pineapple Express?

Oh, my God. Does it rival “The Power of Love”?

It’s amazing. It’s very ’80s. If you just turned it on, you’d think this was an ’80s song. And it gives all the plot away, which is perfect. Yeah, it rivals “Power of Love.” ’Cause I think it’s been a while since we’ve had those theme songs that tell the plots of movies.