Pictures in the Snow
Talking About Angels, Pineapple Express and Emotional Truths with David Gordon Green 

After a few tough projects, David Gordon Green was looking forward to doing a job strictly work-for-hire, adapting Stewart O’Nan’s novel Snow Angels for fellow director Jesse Peretz. But something happened, as they so often do in Hollywood, from script to screen, and by the time the studio was ready to roll the feature’s original filmmaker had moved on to other projects.

Writer and Director David Gordon Green on the set of Warner Independent's Snow Angels

Which was just fine with Green. “I knew after my second draft I wanted to direct the film myself,” said the acclaimed auteur behind such works as George Washington, All the Real Girls and Undertow. “I realized I was in love with all of these characters and that it would be an interesting challenge to let them go. I mean, I was up for it. I was ready. I think the [original] director was being real smart in the way he was going to take it. But I knew I was quickly becoming too attached to these characters and every scenario they could be put through. I knew I wanted to be the one to bring their stories to life.”

I got the opportunity to speak with Green one sunny Seattle afternoon at the downtown W Hotel, the two of us sitting in a conference room going back and forth about his new film for a good twenty minutes or so. We also took the opportunity to speak a little about his first foray into big studio Summer filmmaking, the upcoming Warner Bros. action-comedy Pineapple Express co-written by Superbad scribes Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg.

But it was the former the took up the majority of our time, the film revolving around an unsual triangle featuring a bittersweet divorced couple, Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Glen (Sam Rockwell), and a teenage boy facing his own familial uncertainties, Arthur (Michael Angarano), who knows them both. With that in mind, part of the director’s initial statement couldn’t help but make me wonder if there was a point where loving your characters begins to become dangerous. “Yes!” says Green with emphasis. “It’s scary. Because you love them so much you wonder what will happen if you can’t do them justice. What if you’re not provided the technical [necessities] for them to elevate to what they have the potential to become?”

To achieve those goals requires trust; trust that your actors can make these characters come to life, trust that your producers will provide you with the funding to make their world come to life, trust that your technical team can bring your vision to the screen exactly as you imagined it would be. Coming from the world of independent film, this is a word Green has come to no very well.

“Each [film] is an enormous battle,” he says. “But that’s why you do it. You don’t make movies like this for paychecks; you make movies like this because they provide certain chances for technical and artistic excitement. That’s where that trust in your cast and crew is paramount.”

Michael Angarano and Olivia Thirlby in Warner Independent's Snow Angels

With that in mind, I point out to the director how wonderfully the picture straddles both the then and the now. While the book is set during the 1970’s, Snow Angels never feels like a period piece, elements of that decade running all the way up to our almost decade-old new millennium found in almost every frame.

“These are universal themes, universal concepts,” explains Green, “and I didn’t want anything within the art direction, costuming, design or dialogue to pinpoint something that would make it fleeting or insignificant and alienate anyone. I want this to be a movie our parents see sparks of themselves in, that friends of ours that are in High School can see reflections of themselves now. [I want] people to see the time capsules, the cautionary tales and all the varying elements of the evolution of relationships.”

“By having things that play more timelessly I think there is more for people to emotionally engage in because they’re not going to be distracted by some slang some kids is saying because it isn’t like something they said when they were that age. I think that’s important.”

All this lends the film an ethereal quality making it play like a half-remembered dream. It’s a delicately haunting esthetic, and one the filmmaker felt was the key for the projects success. “The book is like that,” he says. “It’s all told in flashback by Arthur as an adult. I wanted to keep the ethereal element of that but I didn’t want to capitalize on that sentiment. I think it would have been too easy for it to become the ‘this is then’ version of [the story] instead of the ‘this is now’ version.”

“One of the scenes that nobody has ever really commented, I was watching it again last weekend,  and remembered what a potential element it was to me in the script and in the book is when Arthur, after the tragedy is revealed, he doesn’t know how to talk to Annie. He doesn’t talk to her. He doesn’t say anything to her. He’s washing the dishes and she comes over to him and asks, ‘Are you okay?’ and he just looks over his shoulder and then gets back to washing dishes. To me that [scene] is huge. It gives him a perspective, and to me that unspoken, naïve, lost perspective of his is far more interesting then is one-the-nose exposition or narration or something similar.”

For my part, I felt Arthur, Annie, Glen and everyone else’s respective stories revolved around the idea of second chances. Some take advantage of them. Some do not. Some don’t even know they are there leading to frigidly cold tragedy. I ask Green about this, and while he agrees in part, he’s not so sure all is as desperately tragic as I made it seem.

“I don’t know about that,” he shakes his head with a smile. “If you put yourself in the head of every character then it is a romantic ending. Every character’s love story is fulfilled to their own romantic agenda. The last thing we hear Glen say is, ‘Hi.’ There is a purification and a surrender and a renewal to their love story. There is a hope.”

“That’s not obvious. But I think it is intimate, if you get to know Glen and you watch the movie and you see his twists and turns as a character. And, certainly Sam and I discussed what the ending meant to us. But it is a beautiful ending; it’s not a disgusting ending.”

Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale in Warner Independent's Snow Angels

Disgusting would be the last word I would ever use to describe any part of Snow Angels, let alone its climax, but that doesn’t make any of what does transpire easy on the audience. “There is an amazing line from somebody,” states Green, “and I can’t remember who, but there is this a quote from somebody and within the text of it is says, ‘meet me at the altar of surrender.’ Meet me at the altar of surrender is amazing to me. It should have been one of the taglines of the movie. But it’s really heavy.”

“And I like it because I think – in any relationship – it is a matter of connecting with someone and surrendering certain things, making certain sacrifices, compromising certain things, meeting them at the right time, making sure you’re in the right headspace. I mean, I can’t tell you how many relationships I felt if only I was less vulnerable then would be a fun person to engage with. It’s all about timing and about what’s going on in their head versus what’s going on in yours, and I think this movie speaks to that.”

But how to make that sort of thinking on relationships and interpersonal communication work for an audience without spending tons of time on exposition spelling it all out for them? For Green the answer is simple, you don’t. “We start the movie after all the monumental elements of the situations,” he explains. “You don’t see Arthur and Lila stumble into one another and spill their books in the High School hallway. You don’t see them meet. You don’t see Annie and Glen in court having a custody battle. You don’t see Don and Louise deciding they are going to separate and hearing that fight. It’s aftermath. This is whole movie is not about he obvious broad strokes of the subject matter it is about the intimate aftermath.”

In the case of Annie and Glen, this is due and large part to the performances of Beckinsale and Rockwell. Their history unloads in brief little snippets, bits of dialogue-driven asides and crooked glances that speak volumes without spelling the past trauma out explicitly; all of it there, all if it for consumption, but none of it translated in a way that feels obvious or cliché.

“And it’s all pretty vague,” agree Green. “If you listen to the dialogue, they’re not saying anything specific, which I always liked, and they improvised a lot of that. But I think it is more powerful, again, trying to make it more universal because then no matter who we are we can relate to those awesome anxieties of relationships. Just like when you can’t stop smiling and it just fucks you up. You’re smiling and that’s it. You can’t do anything else.”

For the most part, while everyone in the films shines Snow Angels is Rockwell’s show pretty much start to finish. An actor who tends to get relegated to sidekick comedic roles (most notably his scene-stealing work in Galaxy Quest), he’s an absolute revelation here, even better then in his stellar work in George Clooney’s Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

“Sam is right because he’s complicated,” says the director with emphasis. “Through the way we know Sam as an audience, sure we all love him - nobody doesn’t love him - he’s always great. He seals the show. He’s funny and he makes you laugh, or he dances in a scene like in Confessions and life [becomes] cool. He’s got a great wit about him. He’s great.”

“So, to take him to dark territory he becomes an accessible escort. If you had somebody who was just trying to play the heavy note and trying to win an Oscar out of it you’d be riding the clichés of an alcoholic born-again and who gives a shit. But this is a guy you’re like, okay, he’s got a lot of complicated clichés going on in his life, but they’re real, I can see that, I can relate to that. And a lot of the movie is examining the clichés because, that’s why they’re clichés. They happen.”

“Then it becomes, let’s find the broken little boy inside [Glen], not the monster. Let’s look at it in the perspective of youth. Look at it in the perspective of that Glen and Annie used to be Arthur and Lila and now there is hope for [those two] if they can observe at arm’s length and not be damaged but what they are seeing in their own community. They can use that to their own connection. And then there is tremendous hope. And so Sam brings, not just sympathy, but vulnerability and intrigue because we want to see what choice he makes next. We don’t know what he’s going to do because we come to know he’s capable of anything.”

One of the aspects of Glen’s character is his status as a Born Again Christian, and I ask Green if he’s making some sort of statement here about religious extremism and intolerance. “It’s a facet of his character,” he states matter-of-factly. “It’s a facet of a guy who can’t connect in a relationship, can’t connect with his daughter, is dealing with the burden of alcohol and is totally misguided in every part of his life. It was another way to express the danger of someone who is unhappy leaning on something that is not himself.”

In other words, it’s a crutch, and one Glen holds on to for dear life but not in a way that could be construed as either spiritually or emotionally healthy. “Exactly,” he agrees. “I look at it in the simplest form, in any relationship if they’re not happy and you’re not happy, if it’s not about two people meeting and growing and learning and exploring and taking risks together and complimenting each other, then the relationship is unbalanced. I transferred that [idea] from his relationship with Annie to his relationship with organized religion. It’s unbalanced. You can’t just lean on something and then hope that’s going to fix it.”

Curtis Cotton III in Cowboy Pictures' George Washington

Backtracking a bit and looking at the broader scope of the director’s now four film career, I wonder aloud if Green feels pressure each time out because of the enthusiastic response to his 2000 debut George Washington. He tries to hide it, but I catch the filmmaker blush slightly when I call that particular film a modern classic, deflecting a bit of the praise before attacking my question.

“You have to laugh it off,” he says with a smile. “I think the greatest thing about my career so far that has been the most beneficial is that none of [my films] have been substantial successes. They made their money on DVD and no one has lost their shit on them, but the fact they haven’t been out-of-the-gate box off hits, that takes the pressure off.”

“I mean, pressure doesn’t exist anyways unless you’re putting it on yourself, reading your reviews and catering to expectations, which isn’t they way I want to work. I want to work with a group of friends and we discuss different kinds of projects and when I have something in development certain people are mumbling or grumbling about something and others get excited about the possibilities and I look to that to help navigate. But without the burden of success you’re able to take risks under the radar. You could fall on you ass and make a movie that’s a flop and nobody gives a shit because it didn’t cost that much money because nobody is going to give you that much money anyways because who’s to say you’ll ever get it back? You’re not taking giant commercial leaps, but you can take giant artistic ones.”

Green pauses for a moment, grinning slightly, almost as if he knows my next question before I get the chance to say it. “Until now...” he says coyly, the two words trailing off into the ether almost without an end.

That ‘now’ is Pineapple Express, the much anticipated action-comedy directed by Green and written by Suberbad scribes Seth Rogan (who also stars) and Evan Goldberg. With the suddenly everywhere Judd Apatow (Knocked Up) producing, a major studio in Sony Pictures distributing and prime August release date beckoning, is the filmmaker finally starting to feel at least a modicum of pressure as he moves into the realm of major Hollywood entertainments?

“Not really,” he says chuckling.” “I’ve got four features under my belt and I thought, if there is a way to make that transition [to Hollywood] – which I ultimately want to because the chance to make some big budget stuff because I want to make some crazy things – then I want to find a healthy way to [do it]. So I found a group of producers that, you know, keep the politics away and they work in exactly the same way I do but they make commercial comedies when I make Indie dramas. But otherwise it’s the same loyalty to crew base and improving of actors, it’s exactly the same manor of filmmaking it’s just different content.”

“As a filmgoer, I like all types of movies. As a filmmaker, I want to make all types of movies, so it seemed like a great opportunity. I could use some of my crew, I could use some of their crew and we could all learn from one another and make some big-ass studio experimental action-comedy.”

James Franco and Seth Rogan in Sony Pictures' Pineapple Express

But Green is known for his intimate storytelling skills and his ability to craft three-dimensional characters whom literally pop off the screen, not exactly a commodity found in great supply in major studio releases, especially comedies. Was this something Green worried about when he was shooting?

“You find great actors,” says the director. “That solves your problems right there. And Pineapple Express is a great example. It’s a love story, but a love story about two friends. It serves all the traditional love story narratives only it’s about two buddies going through all the situations, encounter obstacles, bonding, falling apart and reconnecting, all amidst the backdrop of being stoned and of being chased by drug dealers. But, there is enough of an intimacy there that this makes them emotionally engaging characters, not just comedians riffing and telling jokes which is a lot less interesting to me.”

For right now, however, Green’s thoughts rest entirely on Snow Angels and the hopefully positive reception it will receive from audiences. “I want them thinking,” he says plainly. “I want people to walk out and think and reflect and have highly charged emotions and hopefully have seen this movie in a theater with an audience that’s engaged emotionally and has responded to what’s happened one way or another. I want something that gives us all, as Arthur’s mom says in the movie, a way to feel through something as a community.”

“I think we’re all burdened by the expectation in our culture that says don’t feel, don’t cry, don’t make out with your girlfriend in public, but I’m resistant to that. I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying feel out loud. If you hold it inside and try to cater to the expectation of a culture then it can find its way out in dangerous ways so hang out to the sparks of young love and help transfer that to [your] frustrations when you’re more mature and more experienced and less optimistic. Reengage in that ambition and that wonderfully naïve quality you had when you first saw someone you connected with. That’s what I want.”

Additional Links:

-  Theatrical Review by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  Snow Angels Theatrical Trailer