INTERVIEW: Lisa Cholodenko

Lisa Cholodenko's well-received 1998 debut High Art was a major landmark for lesbian filmmaking in the '90s, even if the writer-director makes films more to please herself than to fill any LGBT niches. After moving from New York to Los Angeles (where she shot 2002's titularly set ensemble drama Laurel Canyon—which, coincidentally, was centered around straight people), dealing with distribution troubles and working in television (directing episodes of The L Word and the short-lived Push, Nevada), the 46 year-old auteur returns to the big screen with her finest and most widely released effort yet, The Kids Are All Right.

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening star as a lesbian couple raising two teenagers. It's the final summer before their daughter (Mia Wasikowska) goes to college and her younger brother (Josh Hutcherson) wants to meet their sperm donor dad (Mark Ruffalo), creating more drama than anyone might've anticipated. (Life certainly imitates art: Cholodenko and her partner are raising a four year-old son, also helped by a sperm donor.) Working for the first time with co-writer Stuart Blumberg (The Girl Next Door), The Kids Are All Right is a superbly written, vivid character study with a genuinely erotic texture, a warmer and more humane summer movie amidst a slew of soulless blockbusters. While visiting San Francisco, Cholodenko sat down with me to discuss the film.

Julianne Moore and Annette Bening play a convincing onscreen couple in all their shorthand and chemistry. How much time did the actresses spend together?

Not much. They're great actors, and were passionate about doing the movie. The script had been developed over a long period of time, so there was a level of depth to the writing. I didn't have to explain so much, it was really on the page. Julianne had been involved [with the project] for several years. She said she wanted to do it and was waiting for us to get it together. Annette Bening came on later, partly because Julianne and I agreed she'd be a good person for it. We had maybe five days together [before shooting]. I spent two or three afternoons with them, just reading through.

How did you know Stuart Blumberg, and what was that partnership like?

I'd known Stuart in New York. He was an old, dear friend of a guy named Craig Wedren, the composer on my first two films. When he came to L.A. to do his own writing, we just happened to run into each other. I think I was just hoping to draw somebody in. Psychically, I had my antennae up. I had done my first two films by myself and was not up for the loneliness of doing another solo, but also I felt like I had things to learn, and wanted to grow and be challenged as a writer. I knew that would happen if I wrote with somebody else. I was about 20 pages into a first draft when I ran into him, and pitched the idea. He said he was a sperm donor in college, and I said, "That's the sign I need! How can I argue with that?"

There's a line in the movie about how meeting the donor father can be a disaster. Did you research stories along those lines?

Yeah. There's not that much literature on it, and obviously I haven't done a PhD's worth of research, but I was curious and needed to have my facts backed up a little bit. There are kids who say, "It was exciting and I'm so glad I got to meet him. I have half-siblings and that's great." Then there are other kids who are like, "This was really hard and I wanted to have a relationship with this person and it just didn't work." So you have to take it at face value. What else does that person bring to the picture? How was that person parented? What kind of family did the donor kid come from? There are so many pieces to the puzzle. In the grab bag of experiences, I'm sure there are lots of donor kids who are like, "This sucks. I wish I wasn't a donor kid."

It's interesting that you end the film with Mark Ruffalo's character.

We spent a lot of time thinking about that character and his arc and what to do with him. It was important to feel sympathetic to him and give him a throughline. He's a type. He's that Peter Pan guy who's just doing his thing. You peel away the layers and he's probably got some hang-ups about going to the next step with somebody, intimacy and being trapped. Now he's got gray in his beard, he's getting older and it's scary to be that guy. It takes this seminal experience to wake him up and realize that he's in that place. He bottoms out, but it's not signed, sealed and delivered.

Are you concerned about how the film will be received in the lesbian community, given that one of the characters experiments with straight sex?

I don't feel like this movie comes with a political agenda. It's an auteur film. Fortunately it has mainstream potential to it, but it's my vision and Stuart's vision. Sexuality is so fluid and ambiguous. I'm certainly a sympathetic person. I can understand politicized lesbians being put off that there's this transgression with a straight man, and having a whole dissertation on that. But I think any lesbian should be frickin' glad that I could figure out how to package these characters so that it could be delivered to the theater in their neighborhood and not get hung up on that stuff. Getting hung up is what keeps people stratified, closeted and segregated.

Also, it's not about "is she straight, or is she gay?" She sees this man, she's vulnerable, he's telling her that she's cool, he's attractive, and they've made a child together. That's pretty sexy and intoxicating. It's a soulful thing. It goes beyond sexuality.

The question came up after the screening: Will anyone be offended by this?

Bring it on! People need to drop their stuff. How can you speak for everybody? I don't feel like I'm selling out. This resonates for me. If people really open themselves up, it's cool that we get to see these lesbian moms and their teenage kids on the big screen.

Ruffalo plays a restaurant owner, and I really like how food is integrated—it's a terrific foodie movie, and even Los Angeles feels special here. It's not a mall-scape. There's a real texture to it.

I have a lot of gripes about L.A. Trust me. But there are things about it that are sensual, singular and very cool. One of them is the kind of relationship that people can have with their personal outdoor space and just outdoor space in general—highways and sunsets and mountains and weird, craggy landscapes. It's all very evocative. There are really not that many actors in this, so I think it's important to have that openness and sense of place. It affects the characters in a subliminal way.

[The Kids Are All Right opens on July 9. For more information, visit the official site. Top photo (Cholodenko) courtesy of Danielle Taormina-Keenan.]

Posted by ahillis at July 6, 2010 1:14 PM