Fred Savage Interview, Daddy Day Camp

MoviesOnline recently sat down with Fred Savage at the Los Angeles press day to talk about his new film, "Daddy Day Camp.” This hilarious sequel to the smash hit "Daddy Day Care” finds dads Charlie Hinton (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and Phil Reyerson (Paul Rae) in another zany adventure as they take over running a summer day camp. Armed with no knowledge of the great outdoors, a dilapidated facility, and a motley group of campers, it doesn’t take long before things get out of control. Up against threats of foreclosure and declining enrollment, Charlie is forced to call on his estranged father, Col. Buck Hinton (Richard Gant) to help bring the camp together and teach everyone about teamwork, perseverance and the power of forgiveness.

Fred Savage is making his feature film directorial debut with "Daddy Day Camp,” though Savage is no stranger to the world of directing. His directing credits in television are impressive and include episodes of such series as: "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” "Kim Possible,” "Zoey 101,” "Phil of the Future,” "Hannah Montana,” "Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide,” "Crumbs,” "Unfabulous,” "That’s So Raven,” "What I Like About You,” "Kitchen Confidential,” "Drake and Josh,” "Oliver Beene,” "Even Stevens,” "All About Us,” and the TV movie "Stephen’s Life.”

Savage is a 20-year entertainment industry veteran. Beginning with commercials as a young child in Chicago, Savage expanded to television and feature films such as "Vice Versa,” "The Last Run,” and "The Princess Bride.” In 1988, he began a six-year run as Kevin Arnold on the hit television show "The Wonder Years,” a role that earned him many accolades and awards, including several Emmy nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. His second series, "Working,” ran for two seasons on NBC from 1998 to 2000 and gave him his first opportunity to direct. Other acting work includes roles in "Austin Powers: Goldmember” and "Rules of Attraction.”

Fred is a fabulous person and we really appreciated his time. Here’s what he had to tell us about his experience directing "Daddy Day Camp” and his upcoming projects:

Q: How easy or difficult is it, working with kids? Is it very challenging?

Fred Savage: For me, it was very natural. I felt very comfortable. Given my background, obviously, I really feel very comfortable working with young actors. That’s what I grew up doing, so I felt very comfortable. Given my experiences as a young actor, it really helped to inform how I worked with the kids. When you’re younger, you’re very aware of what approaches work, and you’re really aware of what doesn’t. I tried to take the best of what I liked about working with directors when I was a kid, and tried to eliminate all the stuff I hated. I’ve let that guide me, in working with all actors, in my directing career. Not just young actors, but with adults as well.

Q: What doesn’t work, and what did you hate?

FRED SAVAGE: The set’s got to be a positive place for any kind of work, but particularly comedy. Not just for young actors, but young actors are particularly sensitive to moods that are on the set. When I’d come on the set, from school or wherever I was, and someone was in a bad mood, or someone was ticked off about something, you’d feel that. For me, I just instinctively turned inward. I didn’t want to upset anyone. I didn’t want to exasperate the situation. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I just felt like it wasn’t a comfortable place. I just don’t think that gives any actor -- but particularly young actors because they’re so attuned to that stuff -- the opportunity to succeed and give their best performance. The only way to do that is to make the set a positive place that they feel comfortable going go, where they’re happy to be, where they’ll feel comfortable enough to take risks and make themselves vulnerable, and play and try things. That, particularly, I did not like as a kid. I did not like when sets were not a positive place. Another thing is that you’ll never see me yelling a piece of direction across a set -- and that’s to any actor -- from behind the monitor. I always hated that, when I was a kid. When I was an adult, also. The notes that a director has for an actor are no one’s business, but the director’s and the actor’s. And so, I always felt that that violated some contract between the actor and director. The work they do together, and the process to get that work, is a private thing. You’ll never see me yell notes across a set. I either stay right by the camera -- which is where I prefer to be -- or, if I have to be back by the monitor, I’ll run back and forth. The path has to be clear. I’ll run in for notes, and run back. It’s just no one’s business what the notes are.

Q: How did you keep the parents’ egos in check?

FRED SAVAGE: It’s two-sided. The parents were definitely proud of their kids, and I liked that. And, I really see the parents, of all the kids I work with, as partners. Certainly, it would be inappropriate for them to pitch new lines for their kids, or things like that. I try to make the boundaries pretty clear. But, if there is something we need from a young actor that we’re not getting, or if it’s a question of preparation the night before, or focus on the set, I see the parents as partners, in that. It was always important to me to make sure the parents were happy there and that they were having a good time, and then make sure that the lines of communication between myself and the parents was open. The kids were such pros, even these kids, who were pretty young. They were such professionals that they’re not going to be as frank or as open with me, as they would be their parents. If they were uncomfortable about something, or they were unhappy about something, or if there was a rift somewhere, I wanted to know about it, so I wanted the parents to come to me so I could remedy it and make sure the kids were as comfortable as possible on the set. On the other side of the coin, if I was needing something I wasn’t getting, I could talk to the parents and say like, "Hey, can you make sure he goes over his lines a little better tomorrow.” It was very important to me that there was an open line of communication between me and the parents, for the benefit of everyone.

Q: How was directing Cuba Gooding, Jr.?

FRED SAVAGE: Directing Cuba was wonderful. He is just as you would imagine him to be on a set. He’s just so full of energy and enthusiasm, and he’s just gung-ho. He throws himself into it. He was wonderful with the kids. He was so patient. A less confident actor would worry about working with kids, or worry about them being too cute. He worked so hard to make the kids the best they could be. He was that confident. He was that self-possessed. He wanted the kids to do a great job. It wasn’t about him. It was about those kids. He was just so generous with them, and just wonderful.

Q: Did you have any reservations about doing a sequel with different actors?

FRED SAVAGE: I felt like the situation we were in with the movie gave us the best of both worlds. I feel like we were part of a franchise that everyone knows, that was very popular, that parents trust, that kids enjoy. Coming into our movie, you’ll know the characters and their background. So, we have all that going for us. At the same time, using new actors for the same characters and aging the kids up, I feel like we were liberated, in that we could make our own movie. It didn’t have to look the same as the first one, it didn’t have to feel the same, we didn’t have to reference it. We had the same characters and the same brand title, so we got all the benefits of that with none of the negatives. We didn’t have to be beholden to the first one. So, I felt like it was really liberating that we could use Cuba and use new kids, and tell our own story. We can stand on our own, as a movie, but we still get the benefits of being the cousin to this huge hit. The ‘Daddy Day’ name means something to the parents and means something to the kids, and we can only benefit from that.

Q: Do you think there will be another film, and would you be interested in signing on?

FRED SAVAGE: It could be You Tube doing this in which case I would turn it down. {Laughs] I don’t know. That certainly remains to be seen.

Q: Do you think the name Fred Savage will forever be connected to projects for children and young people?

FRED SAVAGE: That’s nice. I hope that people remember the work I do now, and did when I was younger. But, like anything, you hope to constantly be tackling new things. That makes me smile. With anything -- which each new job and each new year -- my tastes will change and my life will change. If I can be doing this 30 years from now, I’ll be very happy and I hope that I will have matured in my tastes and, hopefully, my sense of humor. I hope that people link me with quality product and work that is good. That is something I hope to be linked to forever. Up to this point, I think I’ve been pretty successful, in that regard. I want to be doing comedies. I like that. I like comedies that appeal to a wide audience. I like comedies that have a nice emotional heart to them, in a story that serves as a foundation. I just hope I keep doing good work and, hopefully, I can cross some genres, along the way.

Q: Do you miss acting?

FRED SAVAGE: I do sometimes, but I just find directing so energizing. I really love it. I love acting. It was my first love. It’s obviously something I’m very passionate about. But, in a large sense, I feel like it’s a solitary pursuit. You go home and you learn your lines, on your own or sometimes with a tape recorder, and then you go to work and you sit in your dressing room, and they call you, they bring you to set, you shoot your scene -- which is great and fun and wonderful, and you’re working with everybody -- but then, you go back to your room, and then they call you for the next scene. There’s a lot of downtime there. The thing I love about directing is that it’s so all-consuming and so all-encompassing, from the moment you’re on set until the second you go to bed.

Q: Is it better to be a director because you don’t have to go through the rejection you do as an actor?

FRED SAVAGE: Well, rejection never feels good [laughs], in any respect. It’s definitely less vulnerable. The big difference that I like about directing is that it’s much easier for me to be a self-promoter, as a director, because you’re talking about and selling a thing -- this movie. When you go in for a meeting, you’re selling your idea about this movie. There’s some distance between you and the work. It’s obviously very personal and you pour yourself into it, but as an actor, you’re selling yourself. You’re the product. And, there’s something that’s really vulnerable and humbling about that. It’s hard for me to promote that. I can go to you and say, "I’ll shoot the shit out of that movie. I’ll do a great job, shooting that.” I feel comfortable saying that. But, I don’t feel that comfortable saying, "I’m a great actor!” There’s a difference between when the product is you versus when it’s something else.

Q: What caused the switch? When did you decide you wanted a career as a director? Did you have a bad experience as an actor?

FRED SAVAGE: No, absolutely not. Since I was a kid, I was interested in directing. I was always interested in the camera and how it worked and the creative choices directors would make, as to why a camera was in one position rather than another, or why one scene would require a lot of coverage and a scene of the same length required very little. It wasn’t born out of anything negative. It was something very positive. I always wanted to try to do it, and I enjoyed it. I’m never going to get a part that they want Leonardo DiCaprio for, but they’re also not going to say, "Oh, we can’t get Scorsese? Let’s get Fred?” There’s always going to be role models, and people who you look to and aspire to and who are going to be better than you. I’m certainly not hiding in directing because I can’t compete as an actor. It doesn’t come from a negative place. I just enjoy the work more.

Q: How different is it to direct a feature film, compared to directing television? And, which do you prefer?

FRED SAVAGE: Television directing was a great training ground for film. The schedule and the pace of television directing is just brutal. There are huge page counts and you’re just going all day. There’s no not making yours days. You’re shot out of a cannon, from first call. So, you learn to be very well prepared, you learn to roll with things, you learn to improvise very quickly. There’s really not a lot of time to mull things over. What I liked about feature directing was that, even though our schedule was very tight and the budget was tight -- everyone could use another week and some more money . . . Television served as a good training ground, but film was more relaxed. You could breathe a little bit more. The page counts were smaller, so you could take more time with a scene, in rehearsing it. You could find things a bit more. You could cover a scene a little more properly. You just could finesse things a little bit more than you could in television. But, I love working in television. I find the pace kind of exciting. And, it served as a great training ground for features.

Q: Did you go to summer camp as a kid?

FRED SAVAGE: I did. From when I was about 5-10, I went to day camp. I loved it. Those experiences definitely helped inform this, that’s for sure. It was probably like what Driftwood will be next summer. It was not the fanciest of places, but a place where you could still have a good time. I went to a camp outside of Chicago, where I’m from, called Tamarack. Their colors were green and yellow and white, so I used that. That was my nod to my days at Tamarack.

Q: What was your best experience directing for TV?

FRED SAVAGE: I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had a lot of great experiences. In building a career with a new hat on, as I’ve been, each gig brings some new challenge and some new excitement because it’s something you’ve never done before. The last thing I just shot was a ton of fun, only because it was so different from what I’ve been doing. I did a show for FX called ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ that is not family fare. For me, it was a great way to exercise another side of my sensibilities and my personality. It was something that was kind of adult and off-color and a little more sophisticated. Danny DeVito is a guy I’ve admired for many years, not only as an actor, but as a director. ‘War of the Roses’ is something I go back to again and again. I try to steal as many shots as possible from him, in that. That was a great experience. That was my last directing experience. We just finished up this Spring. It’s great to work with people your own age. You have a lot more common experiences. It’s fun to get a little raunchy, now and again.

Q: Do you direct non-stop, or do you take breaks?

FRED SAVAGE: You try to fill your schedule up as much as possible, but it doesn’t always work that way. So far, I’ve been pretty fortunate, staying busy. But, I have a new son, who is a year old. Any downtime I have, I really relish. I enjoy that time. My wife was nine months pregnant when I got the job to direct ‘Daddy Day Camp,’ so I was really nervous about it. I didn’t want to leave my family and miss the birth. We were shooting out of town, in Park City in Utah. My dad told me, "In your business, you’re really on. It’s all-consuming. You eat, sleep and breathe work. But, when you’re off, you’re really off.” You take the good with the bad. Even though you’re off, you want to be working, but you relish that time with your family, and it’s really time with your family. It’s not like I get to leave work early that day. I’m there, with my wife and son, in the morning, and I put him to bed at night.

Q: Were you there for the birth?

FRED SAVAGE: I did. I made it. We were scouting locations and I got the call saying, "Honey, you might want to come home.” I made it, was there for a few days and then had to leave. I had to go back and start the movie, which was hard, but you get times where you’re off. I’m probably with my family much more than any of my friends who have a more traditional 9 to 5, where they’re up before their kids are up, and down after the kids go down. I relish it.

Q: What were the safety nets that kept you straight? What advice can you give today's generation?

FRED SAVAGE: Take cabs. But honestly, I was very fortunate in that I had a really great support system. I think you can trace the difference between someone who is making good choices and bad choices in anything. I don't care if you're a young actor or if you played little league or on the school debate team. I think if you don't have a good support system behind you and a strong family and good friends, you're going to run into trouble. So I don't think that's anything unique to young actors but I was very, very fortunate and I have a terrific family who's been very, very supportive of me, kicks me in the butt when I get out of line and I have friends who do the same and a wife who does that now. I have a lot of people who care about me and make sure I'm making good choices.

Q: Did you see people going wrong when you were a teen?

FRED SAVAGE: To be perfectly honest, in my experience, it was never part of my life. I never was involved in the Hollywood scene. All my friends, I wasn't friends with Showbiz kids so it was really never part of my life. The kids that I worked with, it wasn't part of theirs either so we weren't around it a whole lot nor did I really seek it out. But I think that the people that were on TV the same generation I was, we really learned from the previous generation because I think a lot of the people when they talk about young actors getting into trouble, they talk about the kids who were on TV maybe 10-15 years before we were. And it was so well publicized and people talked about it so much that I think we really learned. As unfortunate as it was that they had to go through those troubling times for them, one of the positives is that I think the generation that followed, we benefited from their missteps and learned the bad choices you could make that are out there. So if you look at the kids who were on TV the same time I was, I think everyone turned out pretty good.

Q: What's wrong now, too much money?

FRED SAVAGE: I don't know because I look at- - I think we're taking the same examples here and I look at that and then I look at kids who grew up at the same time they did and I see Reese Witherspoon winning Academy Awards and Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst and Anne Hathaway and Elijah Wood. A whole host of kids who came out working at a young age doing great things. So it's more the individual I think than the environment. I think that it's definitely hard and one poor choice is magnified a thousand times, much more than when I was younger but I still don't think there's a cause and effect between celebrity or working at a young age and trouble later on because look at the matinee when you go by your movie theater. It's tons of people who started out as kids. And forget that, forget people who are successful in show business. There's plenty of young kids I knew who went on to be lawyers and vets and architects. So I don't think you measure the success by still staying in show business, although those are pretty good examples.

Q: What's next?

FRED SAVAGE: What's next for me, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia comes out next month. I kind of went back to my roots. I went to Disney Channel and we started a new show over there called The Wizards of Waverly Place and that comes out in November. I'm actually shooting the season finale of that show next week. A bunch of television, up to Vancouver to shoot some shows for The CW. I'm there to shoot a show called Aliens in America, a show for The CW, then back here to shoot Cavemen for ABC. Trying to stay busy whether it's in features or television, just trying to keep shooting, keep shooting, keep shooting.

Q: Cavemen, don't mess it up.

FRED SAVAGE: [Laughs] I won't. People say that to me every time I start a job. That's what Cuba said to me here before we did this movie. "Don't mess it up." Everybody tells me, "Don't screw it up." I don't know, I hope I don't but I don't know what I've screwed up to make people always tell me that.

Q: Well, Cavemen might not last to your episode.

FRED SAVAGE: Right, right, right. Let's see. I think I'm directing episode nine or 10 so my hope is that there'll be a job for me.

"Daddy Day Camp” opens in theaters on August 8th.