One more Interview: Chris Weitz COMPLEX.com

Complex got with Weitz to discuss the affecting A Better Life, shifting gears from Twilight to the anti-Twilight, the importance of authenticity, asking for gangbangers’ feedback, and steering clear of Nickelodeon-type kid actors.

Having been bombarded with CGI-heavy comic book movies and other summer blockbusters, it was quite refreshing to decompress and watch a quieter, more intimate film like A Better Life.Chris Weitz: Yeah, we’re definitely different. [Laughs.] It’s funny, because we’re opening against Cars 2, and my son is four years old and just mad about Cars 2. I know everything there is to know about Cars. So it’s very funny to have ended up opposite that movie, and to know where my son’s entertainment dollar is going.Well, considering that your son is only four, A Better Life doesn’t seem like his kind of movie, anyway.Very true. [Laughs.] We’re not hoping for big money from the parents of toddlers. But, yeah, it is good counter-programming. I believe that there was a barrage of movies that are a certain size and aiming toward a certain quality last year around this time, so hopefully we’ll have our own little niche this year.Were you involved in the film’s scheduling, or is a summer release, alongside much bigger projects, something that the studio had complete control over?It’s somewhat out of my control, because the studio has its own kinds of films and is positioning movies in certain ways. Also, it’s a matter of how quickly we can get the movie done without compromising on quality. I’m very happy with this slot, personally; it’s a good luck for Summit, our distribution company. It’s the same slot where The Hurt Locker opened, and we had enough time to finish the movie. So I’m glad we didn’t rush it out last year, actually.Was it a long shoot?It was a 38-day shoot, which is actually quite a lot of time, as far as I’m concerned. But we had 69 locations, so every time we had to up and move locations it’d cost us time. It was really great that we had Lime Orchard [the production company behind A Better Life] to fill out a budget big enough to give the actors enough time to do their thing, no matter where we were going.With a film like this, location seems so key, too.Yeah, definitely. So many films nowadays are shot in one location that’s supposed to be another—it’s ridiculous. My brother [Paul Weitz] just shot a movie in New York to look like Boston. [Laughs.] It was obvious that A Better Lifecould only be shot in Los Angeles; there’s a certain quality to the light, to the locations, so it just would have been wrong in so many ways if we’d shot it anywhere else. As it happened, we got a lot of support from the state of California, which gave us a rebate for shooting there. There’s also this tremendous upside to having the crew and most of the cast be able to go home after a long day of shooting, which is really great for morale. So how’d you first get involved with this project? Was this a script that came across your desk one day, or did you actively pursue it?A friend of mine showed me the script about three years ago, and I fell in love with it; it’s the best thing I’ve read the whole time I’ve been working in movies, and I include films I’ve written myself. Eric Eason wrote the script, and it’s kind of a marvel. Once you turn it into a movie, it seems like less of a script because it kind of dissolves into the film itself. It’s very quiet, and very measured. I knew I had to make it.I also kind of knew I had to make a film before this one that would allow me to be underemployed, in terms of finances while I was making this one, which is what led me to making Twilight: New Moon. This one has now taken a year and a half to get into theaters, and that’s a long period of time that I’ve been more than happy to put into the movie. But, needless to say, like many, many people who were working on it, I was taking less money than I usually do.Was this a difficult film to get made in the first place?No, actually. I’ve been through really painful green-light processes, where you’re slashing and slashing budgets; in this case, Summit had a certain number that they wanted to make the movie for, that they felt was safe, but we wanted more, in order to have a longer schedule. Fortunately, the folks at Lime Orchard were willing to step up and help us round it out. So, in that regard, it was actually easy.It was actually a bunch of people agreeing to do it, whereas it’s usually some giant corporate plans, like a pre-set release date, and how it’s all going to be synergistically made to be a part of something bigger. This was a movie where Summit didn’t know exactly when they were going to release it, but they knew that they loved the script. They knew it could make a good movie, but they were going to have us make the movie and then see what to do with it.Which seems like the polar opposite of what you must’ve went through to make The Golden Compass andNew Moon.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Both of those were backed up into release dates, which means that, and especially with CGI, you are jamming incredibly hard. In order to do a scene that has visual effects in it, it has to be edited, and you have to choose which plate the talking weasel is going to go into early in the process, so that forces you to think about what a scene is going to look like very early on. Then, it’s always a race to the last possible day to get the effects in as good of a place as possible.

Here, we had the tremendous luxury of knowing what we shot was exactly what we were going to be looking at. The actors weren’t acting opposite green pillows. [Laughs.] They were acting opposite other human beings, and that can really help a performance.

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