Cholodenko is Doing All Right

Lisa Cholodenko burst onto the scene in 1998 with her independent hit High Art, an erotic drama about an intern at a small magazine entering into a torrid affair with a drug-addled lesbian artist. Her 2002 follow-up Laurel Canyon didn’t meet with near as much success, and even with actors like Frances McDormand and Christian Bale the film couldn’t help but feel like a step backwards.

Lisa Cholodenko (left) on the set of The Kids are All Right © Focus Features

Eight years later Cholodenko is back, and to say The Kids are All Right is the director’s best effort yet would be one of 2010’s most massive understatements. The story of a pair of children (Mia Wasikowska, Josh Hutcherson) who set out to discover the identity of the sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo) who allowed for their lesbian parents’ (Julianne Moore, Annette Bening) pregnancies, this is one of the smartest, funniest, emotional and gloriously entertaining motion pictures of the year.

A hit at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival and platforming around the country to rave reviews, I had a chance to speak with Cholodenko about her very personal motion picture and what it means to her that it is being embraced with such open arms. Here are some of the conversation’s highlights.

Sara Michelle Fetters: I’d heard that The Kids are All Right is your most personal effort yet. Why is that? Where did the idea for the film come from?

Lisa Cholodenko: It’s one of those things where I was really immersed in my own family situation. My girlfriend and I wanted to have a kid [and] we were spending a lot of time talking about the pros and cons of anonymous donor versus obtaining sperm from somebody we knew. We decided to go with an anonymous donor and then after that step there was the step of finding the person that was going to be the father of our child – we have a four-year-old now – and I was just totally consumed in that world.

When I sat down to write a script at first blush it just made sense. I’d been sitting here going through all of this and I thought, 18 years from now what are things going to look like? What will they want to know? From that point things just splintered off from my own experiences and I just hooked into that idea and went from there. So that’s where [the story] started, it started someplace personal and then went into complete fiction.

Sara Michelle: With that in mind, how do you do the research for the ‘what-if’ portion of this scenario? What was it like trying to look those 18 years into the future?

Lisa Cholodenko: When we decided to go with an anonymous donor I asked a lot of questions. I was naturally interested in what the future would be for my kid, so I went to the people at the cryobank that we used and asked what would it mean for him when he turned 18. I wanted to know how he would go about making contact with this person if he wants to.

Mia Wasikowska, Cholodenko and Julianne Moore on the set of The Kids are All Right © Focus Features

So, around the time when my co-writer [Stuart Blumberg] and I were writing the script, I’d discovered I’d already done a lot of the research. Additionally, it seemed like there were lots of articles and news programs, a few things in the New York Times, about donor kids coming of age and seeking out their sperm donor fathers or seeking out their half siblings. I just became a kind of fiend for information.

Sara Michelle: A fellow critic here in Seattle had the oddest reaction to the film, stating that he didn’t understand why the lesbian family wasn’t all that different from a straight family other than there were two moms. I almost couldn’t believe his reaction. Have you heard that before? How important was it for you to show that this family was just as loving, nurturing and, yes, quote-quote ‘normal’ as any so-called straight family would be?

Lisa Cholodenko: Yeah, I’ve definitely heard it a lot. In terms of the understated presentation of the family, and the fact it is a gay family, I think that some people go in with these odd preconceptions as to what that presentation is supposed to be.

Our intention was to keep things rather simple, to keep things understated and typical, which in our minds was a stronger sort of political position, that it was kind of subversive in a way because it is so normalized. You’re not consumed with the gay themes or the issues of a gay person but more allowed to become consumed inside this world of humans, of parents trying to keep their family together while dealing with mid-life marriage and of kids trying to make their way in the world as adults; there was power in keeping that [part] of the film as restrained as we could.

Sara Michelle: Talk to me about casting. All five actors are just extraordinary here, but especially Moore and Bening. Their chemistry just sort of flies right off the screen, doesn’t it?

Lisa Cholodenko: They were great. When you’re making a film like this you don’t have much time to shoot and nobody is really making any money so [the actors] are just doing it because they really care about the material. You come and you just throw yourself into it and that’s what they did. They both had the same processing of [the script] and the same approach, I think, as to how to make a movie like this and the same feeling as to why they were making it. I think that shows on the screen.

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore in The Kids are All Right © Focus Features

Sara Michelle: When you cast the kids, how much did you worry that they’d be able to pull off their respective character’s emotional journeys? I mean, Josh does have a lot of credits under his belt at this point but nothing quite like this, while with Mia for all intents and purposes she is still essentially a newcomer.

Lisa Cholodenko: It was scary. With this kind of film it really is about the ensemble. There’s a world around these characters but it is really the world of the family that the [viewers] are in so I felt strongly that the kids’ roles were as every bit as good as the moms’ roles and that those actors were also up to snuff. Part of me wants to be honest and say it was just a lucky thing. The other part of me wants to say that I was really clear as to what I wanted when I started casting for those parts and when I saw [Josh and Mia] I just knew they had that something-something that was going to balance their halves of the mix. I just thought they had unique talents that were going to be compelling.

Sara Michelle: Why is there so much time between your films? Your television work aside, three films in 12 years isn’t a lot. Has it to do with your creative process? Or is it just another reminder of the state of the independent film world, another signpost signaling just how difficult it is to get these kinds of projects off the ground now?

Lisa Cholodenko: That’s a good question. In all honesty, I spend a lot of time on these scripts, I am really possessive of [them] until I feel like they are ready. With films like this you just don’t have that many resources and I have found making sure the script is in great shape is my best defense in making sure I am working or I am not. Apart from that, I just feel the pressure of the casting because sometimes that gets tricky.

And then, with this film, it probably took that much longer because I was trying to get pregnant and then did get pregnant so kind of put the breaks for that year and a half while we were in the middle of all of this. That slowed things up considerably. Then the economy crashed and that sort of became another variable forcing us to find alternative financing. But once I thought the script was ready to go and that this was a movie I wanted to cast, we just kind of took our foot off the break and it all came together.

Sara Michelle: This film has done extraordinarily well at festivals, including Sundance. That has to make you pretty excited as to its prospects.

Lisa Cholodenko: I’m the kind of person who kind of holds onto their seat until they see it and don’t rend to get prematurely exuberant, it’s just not in my nature. But everything is leading me to believe that there’s going to be a sweet spot for this film, I think it’s coming out at an interesting time in our culture in terms of current events. It’s timely. But I also love that it’s coming out during the summer. It’s a summer film. I also think there’s a real reception out there for these actors and for these types of characters and this kind of filmmaking, which was beloved in the 1970’s, for sure. Personally, I don’t feel like I get to see enough of it so if I have anything to contribute I want to give people the opportunity to see these kinds of films that I grew up on and that I adored. 

Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson in The Kids are All Right © Focus Features

Sara Michelle: Now that the picture is leaving the festival circuit and making its way into general release, what do you hope people are talking about when they leave the theatre? What do you hope is on their mind? 

Lisa Cholodenko: I want them talking about how much they identify with what the family has gone through, that they found some sort of confidence or buffer in looking at a marriage 20 years into its life. I want them to have an idea or be reminded about what it is like to say goodbye to your kids. I really do think in a way this [film] is a very traditional, all-American style of experience, that the variances that this family goes through and the things that threaten their unity are really common the sperm donor stuff aside, and I hope people can find comfort, humor and drama in that. I hope that the movie is a great ride for them.

- Portions of this article reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle