Bob Odenkirk on directing “Melvin Goes to Dinner”

How did you get connected with this project, which started out as a five-person play called Phyro-Giants!?

BOB: I saw the play a couple times -- I think five, all told -- and I felt that if all I do is shoot this play in some form, then that would be worthy of the effort. It was so well played, so well written, and the cast was so perfect. It was just worth shooting. And I thought I had an idea of how to shoot it and keep it lively, which was multiple, handheld cameras."

Are you happy with how that approach worked – shooting it simultaneously with five cameras?

BOB: I think the cameras moved far too much in the first half. There was a learning curve that our cameramen were on, and they had to move from the traditional, handheld, "Homicide" super swishy camera moves to a gentle, kind of float that I tried to get them to from the beginning. 

They only approximated that, and then got better at it as they gathered the rhythm of the dialogue and the tone of the piece. And since we shot that whole conversation in on night, there wasn’t time to re-shoot it once they figured it out. 

In an interesting way, that kind of works for us, because as the cameramen are finding the movie, you're finding the movie. So it worked okay.

Did you have to do a lot of directing with the actors?

BOB: I didn't have a lot of notes for the performers, they'd done it as a play for months, which is one of the reasons we kept that cast together and one of the reasons they're so good."

So they didn’t have any trouble bringing the performances down for the camera?

BOB: It's an intimate play. So even as a play they did it quietly.  I thought they were pitched just right, even with a camera two inches from their face.

How did you go about transitioning the story from a stage play to a movie?

BOB: I had some ideas on what I thought would help make it feel and work like a feature film. It's a very good performance piece for the stage, and one of the reasons it's so good is, it's very much alive every night that you do it. One night it could be a little more comic, another night it could be more dramatic. It all depends on the tone of performance and it depends on the audience and it depends on their interaction. That's what a great play does: it lives on stage every night, and it lives a little differently. 

When you're making a movie, you're committing to one performance. Unlike a play, where your eyes can move around and the energy can shift in this interplay between audience and performance, you're committing. You're saying to everybody, “Look at this person and look at this performance and this is the right performance.”

We used five cameras, so everybody is on camera at all times. And we tried to layer it so that you can follow everyone's performance throughout the movie, even though we commit to singles angles at any one time. When a person's talking and telling a story, we cut from them to watch the people listening, because the way that anyone of those persons stories is affecting the other people is the depth of the piece. 

When one person tells a story about infidelity, clearly there is an issue there with some of the other people, and you can read that, I think, subconsciously. And, if you watch the movie a second time, you can read it consciously. You can see people getting uncomfortable at certain topics, and now you know why.

What was the thinking about focusing on Melvin as the center of the story, which isn’t how it works in the play.

BOB: I felt we needed to commit to one person's story a little and see them go at least in some way on a journey.  In the play, it's like the audience goes on a journey; they discover something they didn't know at the beginning. The excitement comes from their own journey of learning who these people are.

There had to be the feeling like somebody up there went somewhere, from the beginning of the movie to the end of the movie, otherwise it wouldn't be rewarding enough. So, we decided to concentrate on Melvin, who is the one character who is as clueless as the audience is to the true relationship of all these people. He's the last person of that group to learn what is really going on. So we asked ourselves, “How can he get something out of this conversation? How can he grow or change and make a different choice somewhere in here?” And at the very end of the movie, I think he does change a little. But I don't think he changes in an organic, traditional story structure way. I think that what he does is much more human and real and a little bit unexplained.

The change that he makes in, literally, the last few seconds of the movie, is really stunning.

BOB: To me, all the stuff that in that last moment, in the course of 20 seconds, that does give us a feeling of change and movement in a movie that's an hour and twenty minutes long and suddenly at the end there's this movement. And I think it makes the movie rewarding and it makes it feel more like a movie, even though it's the last 20 seconds, and it's earned, and even though it's not -- in an overt way -- in that dialogue, I think inherent in the story are all the elements that he needs to get his back up against the wall in that last moment.

That's why you write a movie. You write about the times when people grow and evolve. You don't write about the times when they don't. That's what we write about when we write anything. You write about times in people's lives, you write about dramatic times.

What were the advantages and disadvantages of using the original cast?

BOB: The disadvantage is that they're not name actors. Annabelle has done a couple of things, but in general they're not name actors, and as a result, that's why we didn't sell it, that's why it didn't go into theatrical release. I think the script is up to par, and it's interesting enough and it's certainly attractive enough and entertaining enough. But bookers and people who distribute, they need a poster, and they need a name for the poster, and we just didn't have it.

And if you’d had name actors?

BOB: There's no way you could have rehearsed it as much as this cast had rehearsed. This movie is all dialogue, it's all about feeling real, like you're really eavesdropping.

In addition to writing the script, and playing Melvin, Michael Blieden also edited the movie. How did you two work together?

BOB: To Michael's credit, he was extremely open to trying different things. I would say, 'Can we try it this way, can we try it that way,' and he would always give my notions a shot. And then we would come to some agreement. I was very much interested in having a collaboration on that film. 

Clearly, Michael wrote it, starred in it and edited it. But, whatever edit I asked, he would try, and that was hard for him sometimes. But overall he was happy with it and we both came to agreement on things. 

Sometimes I let him have something that he just wanted and that I didn't necessarily love. But, again, I wanted to make it a collaboration. I felt he'd certainly earned that with all that he'd done for that piece.

How did you get Michael Penn to do the music?

BOB: I know Michael Penn from around here in LA, he goes to a lot of comedy shows, he and Amy Mann, and I've gotten to know them from that. Michael's work is about a lot of things, but mostly I think it's about relationships and about telling the truth and about love and the challenges of relationships. That alone was a reason to pursue him, but also the fact that I knew him didn't hurt.

I think we gave Michael Penn two copies of the movie: One had the [scratch track] music we'd used, and one had no music. And in some cases, he used that music as a template, and in some cases he just ignored it and came up with his own angle.

How did you come up with the idea of bringing in some name people for cameos?

BOB: I knew that we weren't going to use any names in the leads. And I thought just having a few name people would help the movie, and I do think it did help. Now, some of the people, like Jack Black and Melora Walters, wouldn't let us put their name or their image on the poster, which is fine and understandable. The last thing I would want would be for it to be released as 'The Jack Black Movie.' People would hate me, Jack, and the asshole who made the poster.

I do think the cameos help. It helps people to consider the movie legitimate.

The thing I'm most happy about is that those people were right for their parts, they were funny and good in their parts, and they don't overshadow the movie. When the movie's over, you don't go, 'Wow, that was about Jack Black's scene.' Instead, you totally go, 'That was about this couple who are lying and this friend who's in a bad relationship and this girl's story about ghosts,' and about the ninth thing you mention is that Jack Black's in it. And that's perfect. Perfect.

You like Jack Black, and you like Maura Tierney, and you like Melora Walters, they're all good in their roles. David Cross is great. But none of them overshadows what the movie's about, none of them dislocates the core of the movie.

Shooting the cameos on different formats – where did that idea come from?

BOB: One of the things that I settled on quickly was that I would like everything that happens that day to be shot on the digital camera. And then I would like everything that happened a year before or ten years before to be shot in some other medium. It can be still film, it can be 16mm, it can be a different kind of video. In the case of the David Cross scene, we just put a very strong look on it. 

And then everything that happens that day -- where people are meeting and getting ready for the dinner and leaving the dinner -- all happens in this same media. That was our core concept.

The sequence using only still photos is great.

BOB: I really like the Houston piece, shot on still film, because it feels like a memory, it feels like just pieces that you remember, that you feel when you remember something. And it's beautiful, too. You can tell stories with stills, and I think it should be done a little more often. It can be beautiful and evocative.

One of the right decisions we made was we didn't worry about getting names into the movie. Where it was easy to do, we did it. But we just tried to get the right people in it. Ultimately, you're going to live with your film for a long, long time. And if it's well performed and everyone is aptly cast, that's all that's going to matter in the long run.

What did you learn, as a director, on this project?

BOB: You've got to be patient once you hit the set. You spend so much time preparing and hoping and working toward making a film. You can't get on the set and then hurry up and leave. When you get there, you've got to get everything you want as good as you can, and maybe a couple other things too. You're there, the actors are there, the lights are there, the cameras are there, the set is there. It's all there. It's not going to be there again tomorrow. You've got to get everything now, and you have to think of some new things."

When you're trying to be responsible, and you're making something low budget, you feel this responsibility to move along. And that's good and fine. But you also have to make the most of the opportunity when it's all there in front of you. You've got to get a new wind when you're out there on the set and try to see it as truthfully as you can and also be inventive and come to new ideas on the set and take the opportunity. If there's anything you think of that you think you ought to do, you've got to do it then.

Every time you approach a scene, get it the way you originally planned it. Go ahead and do all that stuff. But don't hesitate to hesitate and go, 'Okay, what else could happen here? What else is really going on?' 

And if there's anything that strikes you as needing to be there, see if you can get it. You're there. There's not going to be a better time to do it. 

So make use of that opportunity.