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We Bought a Zoo strives to be Cameron Crowe‘s biggest crowd-pleaser yet, and it’s coming after two of his most splitting features. Elizabethtown was not met kindly and Vanilla Sky either blew your mind or frustrated the hell out of you, despite being a film that made one of the most likable movie stars a total narcissist whose face is mostly hidden — how many directors do that to movie stars? Not many. Crowe doesn’t exactly disfigure Matt Damon in his Christmas release, but the film does what Crowe usually does best: showing good-natured people simply trying to do their best.
While speaking to Crowe, he reminded me a lot of his films — someone who clearly wears his heart on his sleeve, and not in an artificial way. In fact, the first thing Crowe said to me left a big goofy smile on my face for days, which is what his films usually do as well. The man was kind enough to give me extra time, and even by the end I felt like we could have gone on for hours.
The writer-director and I spent more time than I expected but hoped on Vanilla Sky, as well as his writing process, how old films are like diary entries, and why it’s easier to make cynical films nowadays.
At what point did Fox suggest doing the early screenings?
I’ve never been in a position of entering the holiday fray quite in this way. When they said, “We’re going to date your movie,” I didn’t know what it meant [Laughs], and it was that they wanted to put it out two days before Christmas. I think it was a bold move of their’s to say, “Let’s sneak it early, put it out there, and hopefully the movie itself is the best spokesman for what it is.” Luckily people showed up, and it seemed to really effect them. I like that the studio seems to believe in the movie so much that they just want to show it and be proud of it.
As I wrote, the film is the furthest thing from cynical. Like everyone else, why haven’t you become cynical and jaded yet?
[Laughs] You know what’s funny? Right now it’s actually harder it seems to make a movie that is uncynical, because people are going through such a tough time. So many of the movies and stories are reflecting the grief, anger and rage, and it’s kind of easier to make that movie now. A movie that wears its heart on its sleeve has a rocky birth, so I was really proud to make it. Like, Billy Wilder is one of my favorites of all time, of course. He’s a guy who had clear eyed — I wouldn’t call it cynicism — whimsical view of all the pain, strife, and backstabbing in the world. That’s a really great way of filmmaking, too. This one, for me, felt like an expression of joy. Sometimes you can’t experience joy without grief or loss, and that’s in there too. It’s that great happy-sad feeling that I love about music, which I thought this movie could catch. That’s my favorite thing in movies and songs. We Bought a Zoo felt like a great happy-sad story. When we got Jónsi‘s music in there it took that joyful feeling to another place.
My mom went to see an early screening on sneak night. She went to the bathroom, and there was a woman in there. She walked up to the woman and asked, “So, what’d you think?” The woman just put her hands up and said, “I’m still in the feeling!” [Laughs] She blew my mom off. My mom told me that story and I was like, “Yes! That was the goal, to create that feeling.” You can stay in that feeling a little longer than the movie.
[Laughs] That’s always a nice and rare experience.
Yeah! I remember seeing Close Encounters a long time ago, and it was an early screening. All these people were waiting to get in and they were like, “What’d you think? What’d you think? What happens?” I was like, “I must go for a walk! I can’t speak!” [Laughs] I was a little bit that way after seeing The Descendants, and that’s my favorite thing. When the movie takes you a little bit outside of your experience and you gotta still breathe that air, that’s my favorite.
Not to make a bad transition, but I think both The Descendants and We Bought a Zoo find those little human moments which mean a lot. What’s the process of getting that down in the writing process?
Often it comes from real life, because that’s generally the stuff that comes out of me when I’m writing. The thing you’ve just gone through just bubbles to the surface and says, “Write me! Write that feeling you had yesterday when this and that happened.” Pretty much down the line, that’s what people respond to — the stuff that came from real life. That’s a good signal. Writing at its best can be authentic and create a universal feeling, ya know?
Does that type of searching also make the writing process more difficult? I’d imagine you sometimes think, “This could be a great scene, but it probably wouldn’t be realistic.”
Yeah, also you don’t want to be looking inward all the time. I think it’s kind of a dance you do with yourself. Like, what’s the story that’ll mean something to you? Your life is the research for anything that you write. Generally, in writing, there are little things that become bullies you swim to in a project that just make you go, “Well, there’s this scene and that scene.” I remember in Say Anything it was Lloyd talking into the tape recorder about his lost relationship with Diane. Everytime I didn’t feel like that was on firm footing or where we’re going with the movie, I’d always think of that scene with the tape recorder and we’d get back on track. When we started showing the movie, that was one of the scenes where people just really responded. I think Pauline Kael, in one of her last reviews, was like, “I don’t get everything with this movie, but I love that sad John Cusack talking into a tape recorder!” [Laughs] I remember reading that in a mall when I had just got the New Yorker and I went, “Yeah!” It’s never changed — it’s always been about a handful of scenes that have been your bullies. In this movie, it was the argument with the son in the hallway and the last scene of the movie, where Matt reenacts when he first his wife.
Was that process different at all on Vanilla Sky? Did the trippy feel of that movie affect that process?
That’s a really good question. Again, it’s the stuff that’s grounded in the personal. I’ve always loved the idea of Noah Taylor saying, at one point, “Am I blowing your mind?” [Laughs] I love that. That was dialog I thought would be really fun. Or when that guy says, “This is the revolution of the mind,” that was a big thing. Also, sad Tom Cruise watching the Thanksgiving parade go past him his window in New York scene was another one of those bullies. It’s fun, it’s fun to think about it now.
It’s interesting how, unlike the rest of your films, that film is about someone very narcissistic and there’s some cynicism to it. At the time, did you see it as going outside of your wheelhouse?
I did, I did. I love Abre los ojos and liked that this was a movie that could shake it up. It was kind of a way I read other people talking about their punk rock experiences, where there would be one record they made and didn’t think about. They went in with a producer who knew how to work fast and just banged up this thing that may have rough edges, but it was a snapshot of how they felt at the time. That was Vanilla Sky — a chaotic look at an internal life through a prism of pop culture. You’re getting bombard with all these images of paradise and pain, and everybody’s throwing their images at you. Where’s the personal in the middle of that chaos? That was the idea. So we were going to make the movie the way the movie felt, with the search of meaning. You know, I saw Vanilla Sky not too long ago, and I gotta say, there are things here and there that make me go, “Whoa, that could’ve been different or you could’ve done that.” Overall, it completely matched what we were going for. It felt like a cry the inner-caves of pop culture [Laughs].
I like how you described it as being similar to punk rock. At the time I remember my Dad seeing it, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but he hated it.
Oh yeah.
But, to me, it had that punk rock feel of, “He doesn’t get it, but I do.”
You know, Jack, when they first showed that movie I think people were still upset about 9/11 and it had been advertised a bit like it was a Fatal Attraction story. When it became obvious that it wasn’t that and was more risky and psychedelic, they would send people up the aisles of the theater saying, “This is not the movie you think it is! This is a warning!” I was like, “Wow, that’s like what they do for smell-o vision or something.” [Laughs] It’s like, “We did something different here.” I gotta say, through the years, that is the movie I hear about the most, that and Almost Famous.
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It almost seems like a post-9/11 movie, actually. There is that theme of finding meaning in a terrible situation.
Yeah. We made it, you know, right before 9/11 and it came out after 9/11. It was kind of like a message from pre-9/11 to post-9/11, and it was disturbing. I love Noah Taylor. Also, underrated Tom Cruise.
I love the idea of casting a movie star of that caliber, and then making him an asshole whose face is behind a mask for a lot of the film. When making that film, did you ever get a note saying, “What are you doing?”
No, no notes at all. Tom really wanted to bravely go right to that. [Pause] They’re handing me notes that I got to go, but we will hold them off! Tom was constantly driving the protective element of that movie in such a great way. Not only did he not want the paparazzi not to get a picture of him in the disfigured make-up, he didn’t want anyone to know much about what we were doing. We ramped up fast, similarly to We Bought a Zoo. It was, “There’s a feeling, and let’s go quickly and catch it.” Tom was really a big fan of us doing something different and surprising people. You know, not unlike going to the top of the building in Dubai for Mission Impossible, he was like, “Man, you wanna clear Times Square? Let’s do it!” It was that kind of spirit of adventure that we were into. Again, when you get an actor like Tom or Matt Damon — who are just skilled, experienced, and trust you — you just feel like you can go, go, go. In the case of Vanilla Sky, it took years for people to understand what that movie was trying to do. Now, they get it. The Roots are obsessed with Vanilla Sky! When we were on the Jimmy Fallon Show, I thought they were kidding at first. Man, they’re working on a tribute album with samples from Vanilla Sky! I just love it. It makes you feel like everything you do is like a rocket you send out, and sometimes it lands way, way off into the future someplace.
When a movie like that and Elizabethtown get those type of divisive reactions, how do you approach that? Do you see them as being movies not for everyone or do you begin to wonder if there’s something wrong with them?
I think you have to ask yourself, “Is it authentic? Are those songs meaningful to you? Did you write it from yourself heart? Did you tell that story from an authentic place?” The answer is such a resounding yes, for both of them. You kind of have to say, “If you’re lucky enough to do a bunch of stuff, some of them are going to affect people differently.” No, I don’t really rethink it. Elizabethtown was for my Dad, and that is really a souvenir of the feeling my dad left behind. In the way the personal stuff tends to resonate really strongly, it resonated strongly with the people it affected. Like, I love it for that. Yeah, no regrets.
You mentioned how, when recently revisiting Vanilla Sky, that there were a few things you thought could’ve been done differently. When you rewatch your films, do you try not to think too much about that?
Oh yeah, definitely. We did this book on Billy Wilder and he was still recasting his movies, including like Sunset Boulevard into his 90s! [Laughs] That’s a part of the, “I would’ve changed that or that chord.” But, really, it is exactly what you meant to do at the time. It’s always a snapshot of where you were then. It’s like a diary. When you go back and read a diary you think, “Oh man, was I really feeling that?” It’s the same with going back and changing a classic album for remastering. You think, “No, don’t do that!” I wouldn’t really, but it is fun to play the parlor game.
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We Bought a Zoo opens in theaters on December 23.
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