Hal Hartley & Parker Posey Interview, Fay Grim

MoviesOnline recently caught up with writer/director Hal Hartley and actor Parker Posey at the Los Angeles Press Day to promote their new film, "Fay Grim.” The espionage thriller offers a stylish, surreal, and highly entertaining escapade that cleverly combines satire, reality, irreverence, and classic Parker Posey on an international scale.

Fay Grim (Parker Posey), a single Mom from Woodside, Queens, is afraid her 14 year old son, Ned, will grow up to be like his father, the infamous Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan), who has been missing for seven years. Fay's brother and controversial poet Simon (James Urbaniak) is serving ten years in prison for aiding in Henry's escape abroad from the law. In the quiet of his cell, Simon has had time to think about the tumultuous years of Henry's presence among them--chronicled in Hartley's earlier film "Henry Fool” (1998). He has come to suspect that Henry was not the man he appeared to be. His suspicions are validated when CIA Agent Fulbright (Jeff Goldblum) asks Fay to travel to Paris to retrieve Henry's property. Her mission turns into a sprawling con-game, pitching Fay deep into a world of international espionage.

Hartley keeps the new movie’s head in the same literary firmament he celebrated in the first. But in the years since Henry Fool arrived on the scene and turned Woodside, Queens on its head, New York City, the United States of America and our standing in the world have all undergone radical changes and somehow, quite astonishingly, Hartley has managed to thrust these characters and their narratives into our absolutely contemporary – and absolutely terrifying – geopolitical circumstances.

"I was motivated to pull the characters in this direction – into an international espionage farce – because the world was feeling crazy, mixed-up, and very dangerous,” Hartley said recently. "As with "Henry Fool,” I wanted the on-going story of this family from Queens to provide the occasion for a wider consideration of the world as it is.” And while "Fay Grim” certainly reflects the current state of world affairs, current events didn’t actually motivate Hartley to make the new film. Indeed, the director says he recently came across a note in his 1994 journal that said "Henry Fool, first of an indefinite series.”

"It was interesting for me to find this,” Hartley says today, "because I really did forget this note to myself. The earlier reference to a sequel I remember was in 1996,when we were rehearsing ‘Henry Fool’ and an updated version of the script was missing some scenes that Parker, James, and Tom were sad to see go. I tried to console them by saying those scenes would be in part seven. And from that time on there was always this running joke that ‘Henry Fool’ was kind of our local version of the ‘Star Wars’ epics.”

Just as the character of Fay Grim has evolved over the last eight years, so has the career of the actor who plays her. In 1998, Parker Posey was an indie darling. In 2006, she is a movie star. Fay Grim reunites Posey with her "Henry Fool” co-stars James Urbaniak, Thomas Jay Ryan and Liam Aiken. In moving from Woodside, Queens to a more global canvas, Hartley had to populate the new film with a few new faces that included Jeff Goldblum and Saffron Burrows.

"I always knew Part Two would be centered on Fay,” Hartley explains. "Fay is intended to be the representative well-intentional American who is, however, ill-informed,” he offers with typical candor. "That was my aim. I like to think that what I do in my writing most of the time is to present characters in situations that force them to push aside abstractions like, for instance in this case "patriotism,” "civilization” or "terrorism,” and witness things concretely, for what they actually are.”

Here’s what Hal Hartley and Parker Posey had to tell us about their new film:

Parker Posey: Can I doodle on your press notes?

MoviesOnline: Sure.

Parker Posey: It’ll keep me awake.

MoviesOnline: Okay.

Hal Hartley: So should we just dive in? I guess they’ll come and stop us right?

Parker Posey: Hal Hartley why?

Hal Hartley: Just because.

Parker Posey: Exactly.

MoviesOnline: Did you always know that you wanted to do a sequel to Henry Fool or was it something that hit you a couple of years later?

Hal Hartley: No, I think I did. I used to joke about it even when I was writing the script and like most jokes, it was half serious. I think by the time we were shooting I thought about it more, and then when we finished it I thought about it more, and there were a couple of years there from 1998 to 2000-2001 where I’d often be found after supper trying out different scenarios, verbally trying to entertain people. At a certain point, I did that one too many times and James Urbaniak who plays Simon said "You know what? I don’t believe you anymore. This is not just a joke. You’re serious about this. You’re going to do a number 2.” That just irked me—kind of pushed me. I called Parker in April 2002 and said ‘Do you want to do this?’ because I think by that point I actually had the story in my head that I liked, but I wasn’t going to write it down if she wasn’t interested.

MoviesOnline: Well, the first movie wasn’t necessarily a big hit. How did you get the financing to go make a second one?

Hal Hartley: It was the biggest hit at the time, the biggest money maker of my films, and it paid off my mortgage in New York.

Parker Posey: But you’re not a millionaire. What’s wrong with you? Wait a minute, I’m not a millionaire either.

MoviesOnline: But so many years later, was it hard to get the money for it? I mean, this has a much bigger scope than the first movie.

Hal Hartley: Yeah, no it wasn’t tough at all. People read the script and they got excited and wanted to do it.

Parker Posey: Okay!

Hal Hartley: See, she agrees. Yeah, surprisingly it wasn’t difficult at all. I had taken some time to do more experimental work and to teach and to do theater and stuff like that, so I think me and my friend Ted Hope probably did anticipate a little bit more struggle, but really once Parker said that she was on board and we had to work on her availability, that had a lot to do with it and the script was a good read I think. People could get on board.

MoviesOnline: Parker, at what point did you know you would see Fay again?

MoviesOnline: It’s an indie film sequel. Those are pretty rare.

Parker Posey: Except for Kevin Smith.

Hal Hartley: That’s right. We were up all morning trying to make lists, trying to figure it out. There have been. You don’t think of them that way.

Parker Posey: Well, the 7 Up films.

Hal Hartley: Documentaries.

Parker Posey: Yeah but still those are major sequels.

Hal Hartley: But it’s true; you don’t see it much I guess, but it’s exciting. Sometimes I look at bigger, more mainstream kind of films and think that would be fun. People in my position—you go to see a James Bond movie. You say God, what would I do if they gave me that job.

Parker Posey: I would love for you to have that job.

Hal Hartley: James Bond #27. What are you going to do? How would you….because that’s what you do with your life is tell stories and adapt stories. Anything is almost as good as anything else on some level.

MoviesOnline: So that begs the question. This movie sets it up that there could be a third?

Hal Hartley: There could be many.

MoviesOnline: Do you have any idea for a third movie already?

Hal Hartley: Yeah, I do and we’ve talked about it a little bit amongst ourselves.

MoviesOnline: Do you know which character it would be based on?

Hal Hartley: The son, Ned. I’ve got to invent a name for Ned. But you think it’s like a couple of years later. Well, I don’t want to get into it but….

Parker Posey: And Liam can play music, so that’s a cool element I think because Hal’s movies are so musical.

Hal Hartley: Yeah, Liam Aiken’s got a band and he’s a very gifted guitarist as well. That’s why I asked him at the Toronto Film Festival when we premiered this. I asked him point-blank, I said "You’re not going to become like a rock star or something, are you and get out of the business? Because I had this part three in mind,” and he’s like …..he’s 16 so he’s like "Sure.”

Parker Posey: He’s so cute.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about working for Magnolia Pictures?

Hal Hartley: In distribution? So far it’s a nice fit. They’re kind of…I think I’ve worked like this since "Simple Men,” really going on the road like this. There’s a way this is done. Everybody does it the same way really. You set a date, you send us out on the road and organize. It’s pretty much all the same.

MoviesOnline: I was more curious about Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner.

Parker Posey: Also the movie experience is you can buy a DVD and have a little home theater in your house.

Hal Hartley: Which is also better than the projection in a movie theater. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie projected in focus.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about what it was like using that grocery bag in all those beginning scenes and what it symbolizes, if anything?

Hal Hartley: I thought she was destroying it second by second.

Parker Posey: All the things a woman has to carry, a single mom.

Hal Hartley: She was the only one who knew it was continuity. She knew where the cereal box was and how high it was.

Parker Posey: Oh yeah I’m good at that. I take a mental picture. I’m so used to doing independent movies. "What’s it like to work with Parker Posey?” "She’ll totally get…” What do they call those stands? A C-stand? "She knows how to operate a C-stand.” I hear something fall and I say "I’ve got it.” I reach over to some guy and like pull out this gaffer’s tape and say "No, we’ve got it. Just keep the camera rolling.”

Hal Hartley: I have a photograph of you from Amateur—asleep like a child on a big thing of cable.

Parker Posey: Just exhausted, oh yeah. Jason has a really good picture of me on some movie getting makeup put on on a milk crate outside on the corner somewhere.

MoviesOnline: Parker, how did you react to the storyline—such an extraordinary storyline compared to a much more contained version with "Henry Fool”? Were you concerned at all about exploding into such a big international thriller from small little Queens?

Parker Posey: I loved doing the kind of mapping your character out to how she is in the beginning to what she goes through in the middle and what happens to her by the end. It’s kind of like...it’s a neat kind of space that you put yourself in and she becomes more calm and more resigned I think by the end of the film because she knows this kind of truth. She kind of always knew that Henry would come again somehow, you know, and she’s kind of haunted in the film I think. But she finds herself being her own superhero, and all of a sudden she’s in these situations, in over her head, but not even wanting to know what the problem is and not able to understand the problem. But she knows she loves her husband and even though throughout the entire movie she hates herself for it and she’s denying it and all these guys are trying to flirt with her, by the end, you know, there he is. Yeah, there he is again. I’m not seeing him, he’s not seeing me. It’s just mythological, it’s really a heavy mythological…

Hal Hartley: It’s not so heavy but it is mythological.

Parker Posey: Well, in a sense that it’s not like "Broken English” doesn’t have a weight that "Fay Grim” has. It’s not as….I don’t know what the word is but anyway, I like that. I like carrying movies. I think it’s much harder to do a little part than it is to do a really big part.

MoviesOnline: You just did a small part in "The Eye,” right?

Parker Posey: Yeah.

MoviesOnline: So was that harder than the work you did on this and "Broken English”?

Parker Posey: I like to feel utilized. I don’t want to feel like just some person who’s used for some plot thing you know?

Hal Hartley: So you mean it’s not as much fun?

Parker Posey: It’s not as much fun. Sometimes in movies like that, even if you want to be a full character, they say "What is she doing? Don’t do that!”

MoviesOnline: So are you going to be in the next Superman?

Parker Posey: No, I don’t think so. I don’t know though, I haven’t heard. I don’t think so. I would love to be there if only briefly.

MoviesOnline: So that’s not the sort of thing where you feel underutilized?

Parker Posey: No, with Superman? Not at all. I enjoyed Superman a lot.

MoviesOnline: Can you talk about the evolution of the story from "Henry Fool” which was in this booming internet age with globalization bearing down and this film which is very post 9-11?

MoviesOnline: Could you talk about what else you guys are both working on right now?

Hal Hartley: I’m working on staging an oratorio in Amsterdam next summer 2008 of Louis Andriessen, the composer. He’s done Dante’s opera—comedy. Dante's Divine Comedy is a five part oratorio and I’m staging it.

MoviesOnline: Amsterdam for the summer, huh?

Hal Hartley: June 13, 2008.

MoviesOnline: You’re going to have a tough summer.

Hal Hartley: Oh, yeah.

MoviesOnline: What about you, Parker?

Parker Posey: I just finished shooting a pilot and I’ll see in a couple of weeks whether or not it goes.

MoviesOnline: What network?

Parker Posey: Fox. Amy Sherman-Palladino who did "Gilmore Girls.” It’s with Lauren Ambrose, we play sisters—estranged sisters. It’s called "The Return of Jezebel James.” I find out I can’t have children in the episode and I try to get her to carry my baby. We’d shoot in New York.

MoviesOnline: So if the show gets picked up, that’s a big commitment to TV. Is it a one-hour? 30-minute?

Parker Posey: It’s a half-hour. It’s very Norman Lear in tone. Very 70’s television. Serious and funny elements. I like it.

MoviesOnline: Thank you.

"Fay Grim” opens in theaters on May 18th.