Matthew Weiner is accustomed to anxiously guarding the secrecy of “Mad Men.” Talking candidly about his feature film directing debut, “You Are Here,” goes against his practiced paranoia.
“It’s weird,” he says, laughing. “I guess in this case, you really kind of want to tell people what it’s about.”
Then, after a pause, he’s himself again. “But I do think, like all entertainment, on some level: the less you know, the better.”
At the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday, Weiner premiered “You Are Here,” a contemporary comedy about a Maryland weatherman (Owen Wilson) whose best friend from childhood (Zach Galifianakis) is bequeathed a lucrative country estate by his deceased father. It forces both friends to grow up and face some things in their life.
“Male friendship is so complicated and you sort of wonder: What is the purpose of it?” Weiner said in a recent interview. “That’s kind of what I was writing about, these two characters who are bound together by not growing up, and what happens if somebody starts to move on?”
The film, a mix of comedy and drama, doesn’t bear any of the stylish severity of “Mad Men,” his AMC cable TV drama about a Madison Avenue advertising agency in the ’60s. But its characters do have some of ad exec Don Draper’s melancholy. However, “You Are Here” is a much more earnest story, one that Weiner first wrote (with Wilson in mind) in between his first two seasons as a writer on the mob drama “The Sopranos.”
He spent years trying to get it made, then had to shelve it when “Mad Men” became an Emmy-winning sensation. But his new status also enabled him to finally get financing for the film.
“This is not a graduation for me,” he says. “It’s hopefully just a continuation of my work in a different form. Getting your own TV show, that is really, really hard to do. I’m greedy for even asking to make a movie.”
But, like David Chase did after “The Sopranos” with the 2012 film “Not Fade Away,” Weiner is in some ways going against the currents of pop culture. Because of shows like “Mad Men” and “The Sopranos,” television is where a lot of movie talent is flocking, drawn by its potential for longer, more in depth storytelling, and pushed out by the recent movie industry pull back on medium-sized films for adults.
“I’ve never really understood the hierarchy,” says Weiner. “They’re very different forms to me. I had been encouraged during the many years to get ‘Mad Men’ made to turn that into a feature, and I knew that was a television show.”
For his transition to moviemaking, Weiner, as he says, “cheated a little bit.” On the North Carolina shoot, he brought almost his entire “Mad Men” crew, from his cinematographer (Chris Manley, ASC) to his prop master.
“You Are Here” is seeking distribution, but meanwhile, Weiner is writing the seventh and final season of “Mad Men.” For him, the difference between TV and movies is ultimately about their end points.
“It’s really about how much resolution it has,” he says. “Lots of movies end with a here-we-go-again or a sequel, but a lot of the movies I love — especially some of the movies I was sort of trying to emulate here, like ‘Five Easy Pieces,’ or some of the Billy Wilder movies I love, or a lot of movies about friendship, ‘The Last Detail’ — when you try to look at these movies, they drop you off at a very different place than where they started. TV shows can do that, but you really don’t want to close any of the knots.”
“As I’m saying this,” Weiner adds, “I’m like, ‘Oh, man. I need to end my TV show.’ Oh, God, I really have to.”
Review: “Novocaine,” A Bloody Action-Comedy From Directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen
Nathan Caine may not be able to feel pain, as the tagline for the new action-comedy "Novocaine" reads, but the same does not apply to audiences.
Although he doesn't scream when his leg is impaled with an arrow or when he sticks his hand in a vat of frying oil, you might. I certainly did. Out loud. In a theater. With other people. There may have been some phrases uttered entirely involuntarily too. Were other people reacting in the same way, I wonder? I couldn't hear them over my own groans. Hooray for the communal experience, I guess?
This is, in some ways, a film for people who thought John Wick wasn't stabby enough. It delights in the relentless mutilation of its hero, a regular guy (played by Jack Quaid ) with a rare condition that has rendered him immune from feeling any sort of discomfort to bodily harm. Unlike such high concept premises as "Crank," congenital insensitivity to pain analgesia (or CIPA) is actually real. But it's not exactly a superpower, Nate explains. He can still die; it just might be because he hasn't emptied his bladder in many hours. Or because he's accidentally bitten his tongue off eating a sandwich. These are real concerns of his.
His entire existence is devoted to preventing these kinds of crises, mostly through tried-and-true baby proofing techniques like using tennis balls on sharp corners. Like Kelly Ripa before a show, he only consumes "non-chewing food."
Work is stable and dull as an assistant manager at a bank. And dating is out of the question; He spends most of his free time playing online video games. Quaid, even with his two movie star parents, is somehow believable as this cautious introvert, though everything is played with a light touch and a wink. The movie, written by Lars Jacobson and... Read More