New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

At the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, you prefaced the film by saying “It’s not a comedy.” Why did you feel you had to say that and do you feel as if audiences walking into the film should know that, too?

JF: You think the trailer’s a little deceiving? There have been many more deceiving trailers, trust me (laughs). Yeah, I think the subject matter is deceptive. I think people expect it to be one thing and I think that’s what has been so nice about showing the movie in Europe. There ,they don’t have the same connotations and there, they are more used to a complex experience – juggling comedy and drama together. They don’t have hard and fast rules like we do. That’s what was so nice about that audience in Austin, too. There are a lot of online people there who are interested in Internet and music, because it is a three-part festival. So they weren’t as committed to (pounding fist) first act, second act, third act! “Damn it! Why isn’t there this in the first five minutes?” (laughs). You get that a lot with people who do only film and have to see 115 movies a week. And they are seeing mostly big-budget, mainstream films.

Talking about being deceptive, with regard to the much talked about title of the film itself, it is so ambiguous to what the film is about. It really runs the gamut.

JF: I think it is fantastic. I think it is fantastic how irreverent it is and the people remember it. It is almost painful for them to say that and I love that (laughs)! When I first started the movie, everybody would say to me, “You’re going to change the title right?” (laughs). We love it; Mel loves it too.

The movie deals a lot with depression. You have been candid about your own depression at times. So given that texture of your personal experience, what were the key elements that you wanted to bring out in telling this story?

JF: Obviously the main character is chemically depressed and that means he requires a lot more than just talk therapy. This is a man who is really suffering from a medical condition and he needs help that is beyond his abilities. He’s a guy who cannot stop sleeping and can’t get out of bed, has difficulty speaking. That’s serious. But what we know about everyday life is that it gets heavier and heavier as life goes on. There’s a lot of tragedy mixed in with the comedy of our life that many of us, myself included, go through a spiritual crisis where they feel alone, terribly alone. I think there is an interesting phenomenon about artists, perhaps a cliché, that we are very often obsessive ruminators. Great writers are people who just don’t type into a typewriter and it comes out fabulous! They think about it and say, “Why did this happen? Why did that happen?” They re-write it and think that it can be better like this or that. They add those details and the process of ruminating is beautiful. It’s also incredibly painful. But it is the one thing that allows you to get through the spiritual crisis and evolve through it. So it’s important to know that depression has a function. I think in a weird way, I feel lucky that I have the ability to find that in myself.

Continued:       1       2       3       4       5       6