Laura Linney Interview, The Savages

Time for another interview, this time with Laura Linney at the Los Angeles press day for her new film, “The Savages,” written and directed by Tamara Jenkins. “The Savages” is an irreverent look at family, love and mortality as seen through the lens of modern life’s most bewildering and challenging experiences: when adult siblings find themselves plucked from their everyday, self-centered lives to care for an estranged elderly parent.

The last thing the two Savage siblings ever wanted to do was look back at their difficult family history. Having wriggled their way out from beneath their father’s domineering thumb, they are now firmly cocooned in their own complicated lives. Wendy (Academy Award nominee Laura Linney) is a struggling East Village playwright, AKA a temp who spends her days applying for grants, stealing office supplies and dating her very married neighbor. Jon (Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a neurotic college professor writing books on obscure subjects in Buffalo. Then comes the call that informs them that the father they have long feared and avoided, Lenny Savage (Tony Award winner Philip Bosco), is slowly being consumed by dementia and they are the only ones that can help.

Now, as they put their already arrested lives on hold, Wendy and Jon are forced to live together under one roof for the first time since childhood, rediscovering the eccentricities that drove each other crazy. Faced with complete upheaval and battling over how to handle their father’s final days, they are confronted with what adulthood, family and, most surprisingly, each other are really about.

Featuring nuanced performances from an extraordinary cast, “TheSavages” marks the return of writer and director Tamara Jenkins who won acclaim for the humor and humanity of her previous film, “Slums of Beverly Hills.” The film stars Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe and Cara Seymour.

Laura Linney was nominated in 2000 for an Oscar, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Golden Globe Award and an Independent Spirit Award for her performance in Kenneth Lonergan’s “You Can Count on Me.” In 2003, she appeared in Clint Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” for which she received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and in Richard Curtis’ ensemble romantic comedy “Love Actually.” In 2004, she starred opposite Liam Neeson in Bill Condon’s “Kinsey,” and again garnered Oscar, Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations and won an award for “Best Supporting Actress” from the National Board of Review for her work. In 2005, Linney starred in “The Squid and the Whale” for which she received another Golden Globe nomination. In 2006, she starred opposite Robin Williams in “Man of the Year” and Rupert Grint in “Driving Lessons.” This year, she has appeared in “Breach” opposite Chris Cooper and, most recently, “The Nanny Diaries” with Scarlett Johansson.

Here’s what the award winning actress had to tell us about her latest film, “The Savages”:

Q: Did you see this as a companion piece to “You Can Count on Me?”

LAURA LINNEY: No I didn’t. Some people have mentioned that to me and before I made the movie, some people said you don’t want to make that movie, you’ve already played a sister. I was like, what? Do I never play a wife again? Do I never play a lawyer again? But they feel so different to me. The only thing that I do feel a kinship between the two of them is the remarkable experience I’ve had working with both of these fictional brothers. Both of them are amazing people. It was a deeply satisfying working relationship with Mark (Ruffalo) and Phil (Seymour Hoffman).

Q: What attracted you to this project?

LAURA LINNEY: The script. You hear that over and over again but there’s no way around it. When a script is undeniably good, you pay attention. It becomes very clear to me there’s something going on when I’m reading the script through for the first time and I start working on it before I finish reading it. Your actor brain just turns on. You can’t help it. All of a sudden ideas start coming and you start hearing the rhythm of things. For a script to be that evolved that early is very rare. It’s happened a few times luckily for me. But it’s not typical.

Q: Were there similarities between the character and yourself?

LAURA LINNEY: No. Not really.

Q: How was it working with Philip Seymour Hoffman? You worked so well together as brother and sister, did you know each other from before?

LAURA LINNEY: We certainly knew of each other. I’ve always loved his work. We knew each other as acquaintances and would run into each other backstage. I’d see him in New York every once in a while but nothing more than hi, how are you? How’s it going? As actors sort of do. What my expectations were about him and how he would work was pretty accurate and you can see it in his work. His work is so good and so generous. You can see an actor and you can see the kind of decisions they make and (his) priorities are right where they should be. We are somewhat likeminded so it was very easy. When the material is good and the actors are good, it’s pretty easy. It’s when the material’s bad and the actor is difficult, that’s when the work gets hard. It’s exciting when there is good stuff and a great actor. It’s why we do what we do.

Q: What did you think of your character?

LAURA LINNEY: She went after the wrong people. There are reasons for that. Both Jon and Wendy’s lives are so formed by whatever relationship they had with Phil’s character, the other Phil (Bosco). Their childhood is still so much with them and they’re very much in different stages of arrested development. While Phil’s character’s is coming off that sense of abuse, she was just ignored. There was just neglect and you can see that in how they respond to the situation and the crisis of having to take care of their father. My character has this romanticized vision of what their relationship is and what has to be done. I’m going to decorate the room. And there’s this sense of still desperately trying to have a relationship with him (her dad) in a very sort of childish way. And Phil’s character has sort of stopped that long ago. But both of them are going to be better people than their parent was. What do you do when you have to take care of a parent that didn’t love you? And how do you accept the fact that this parent just did not love you?

Q: Was the scene in bed with the dog in the script?

LAURA LINNEY: Yeah. Absolutely. Everything you saw was in the script. The script was in perfect shape. There were maybe two seconds that Phil and I improv-ed.

Q: What were those?

LAURA LINNEY: The end of the fight where we’re screaming at each other in the car, when Phil Bosco puts the [removes his hearing aid] and there was a moment with Phil in the thing where we both started to laugh because it was so silly. Other than that, honestly, that’s all Tamara.

Q: How do you feel about the Oscar buzz that’s surrounding both of you? Is that important to you?

LAURA LINNEY: Important? It’s nice. It’s nice that people seem to think that it’s good. That’s very nice. It’s nice that maybe the movie will have a bit of a life. When you put time into these films, you don’t know if anybody’s ever going to see them. With scripts that are really good, you hope that they do have a life so that maybe then people will make other movies that have scripts that are maybe a little more complicated and will push an audience a little bit. I’m happy for that reason. I don’t wake up in the morning and go, please God! I don’t do that. But it’s certainly nice.

Q: How do you feel about rehearsal? Are you an actor that wants an extended rehearsal process?

LAURA LINNEY: {Laughs] It depends if I like the people. For film? It depends on the material. I said that in a jokey way, but honestly it does depend on the material and then there’s a lot that you just can’t rehearse with film. You can prepare for film. And then you can throw it away. But there are so many things that are not going to be there during the rehearsal so to make decisions on stuff that isn’t there, you can get yourself into trouble. You’re not going to be in the clothes, you’re not going to be in the place, so you’re sort of grasping at straws in some ways. I will take any rehearsal I can possibly get because it allows you more time with the story and you can get to know the story a little bit more, and you can make common references and make decisions about character and background and all that stuff and that’s important. I can go either way, really.

Q: Why was Wendy’s hair brunette?

That was important to Tamara. That it was exactly the way that it was. It was important to her. I was making Nanny Diaries. I had one day off in-between films. You can dye your hair from blonde to brunette quickly but you cannot dye your hair from brunette to blonde. It will not stay on your head and it will turn green. We had an issue because they could never turn the hair around so it was a wig. It was very important to her that the hair was dark.

Q: Is part of your character’s regression due to the fact that she’s the younger sister and when she’s around Jon, she becomes a kid again?

LAURA LINNEY: Oh sure. That’s what so fun about looking at people and how they behave differently around different people; how you behave around a parent as opposed to your child or an old childhood friend or what you immediately slip back into. And I loved those moments where she would fight him like she was 7 with the intensity of an 11 year old, pushing him as far as she could. It was self-righteous…. I mean, it was just hysterical. It was fun. It was really fun.

Q: The whole competitive thing and the fact that she was lying about the fellowship grant made it seem so real.

LAURA LINNEY: Yeah. She’s not your typical protagonist, that’s for sure.

Q: With respect to caring for her dad, do you think she really believed that if he went to a nicer place he’d get better or was that compensating for something else?

LAURA LINNEY: Probably. A lot of it was somewhat ego-driven. She wants daddy’s little girl to do the best for him so it will enhance the relationship that isn’t there. It’s a romanticized view of what’s possible. Of course, you want someone to be in the nicest place you can get them into.

Q: How was Tamara on the set? Did she talk to you and did you ask her any questions?

LAURA LINNEY: Oh, of course. All the time. These films are made very quickly and it often feels like one long day. You become so sleep-deprived when you do these marathon 30-day shoots because you have to get all the material in so you’re working at very strange hours. I’m sure there was a dialogue. Phil put it very well. He said she was like the third sibling. (Laughs) Which I thought was pretty accurate. We were talking all the time.

Q: Do you stay in character?

LAURA LINNEY: Nooo.

Q: Was there anything funny that happened on set?

LAURA LINNEY: [Laughs] No. I always find that question so funny. I don’t remember one particular thing. Like I said, it was very intense. We were all working full out the whole time and we were under a lot of pressure to get it all done, and the material was not easy. It’s not instant pudding kind of material. We were all pretty focused, but you know I will always remember my time with Phil. I just loved being around him; I loved it when he was there. He’s great company.

Q: What do you think about the idea of putting aging parents in a nursing home?

LAURA LINNEY: Is it ideal? No. Is it the way America has gone? Yes. For some people there’s no other choice. Culturally, it’s so different now and people don’t live together anymore. There is this whole thing that has started over the past 25-30 years where in the last phase of someone’s life, people are taken into these homes so that other people can go on with their lives. Do I wish I lived in an era where everybody lived under the same roof and you would see generations come and generations go and people were not as terrified of death as they are now? Of course. It’s not the way life is these days. More than anything, it’s the fear that it creates which I think is a shame, you know, just the enormous fear of death. I mean, I’m filled with dread when I think about it. It’s inconceivable. A lot of us don’t live on farms and we don’t see it (death) happen. We’re distanced. It’s antiseptic. We’re removed from it. It’s something that happens over there.

Q: It was very brave of Tamara to write this and tackle this issue which might be difficult to sell to an audience.

LAURA LINNEY: Yeah. And while that is the context into which this movie is set, it is so much about these siblings coming together. But, you’re right, it’s not good for marketing. (Laughs) It’s not really a slam-dunk for the marketers. Tricky.

Q: Have you ever had to be a caretaker to an invalid or an aging person?

LAURA LINNEY: I was younger at the time. I remember when my grandfather went into a nursing home and we would go visit him there and then my grandmother went into the same nursing home much later. And I helped move her in there and that was brutal. That is hard. She was 98 and she had lived alone until she was 98 years old! She got in there and she was, you know, the mayor. Fortunately, I feel good knowing she had a really nice last few years there. She was cheery and happy and all that. So there was that situation and then my stepfather when he died, there was a period of decline there that was hard to watch. But the dementia part can be so funny. It can be just hysterical. I remember my stepfather was in intensive care and he thought he was in Paris. And it was fantastic. I was so happy that he thought he was in Paris. He was talking about it. [Laughs] And then he thought I had spots all over my face and he was trying to move the spots around. There was something about it that made me feel better that he was in some sort of place that was not painful. It wasn’t in my reality but at least it was in a reality in which he was not in pain and that made me happy.

Q: You’re character is bent on making sure her father knows where he is?

LAURA LINNEY: Yes.

Q: How often do you read scripts? Do your agents screen them and tell you what you should be reading?

LAURA LINNEY: I hope not. One never knows really what those agents are doing. I hope I see what comes in because I can read a script the way that they can’t. They’re not trained to; I am. Honestly, they’ll read something that they think is fantastic. I love my agents, don’t get me wrong, but they also know me well enough now that they don’t make any decisions on my behalf ever because they know. They’ll see something and say this is fantastic. It’s great and you’re going to love it, and then I’ll read it and say, this is not actable. It’s a great idea and it’s flashy but it’s not actable. Or they’ll get something that they don’t have any hook into whatsoever, and I’ll think, this is fantastic. So I hope that they do not read things on my behalf and pass. That probably does happen in the reality of how this town works. It probably does, but I think they have got to know me over the years in a way that I do trust my relationship with material and how I read it and what I see there and the potential of it.

Q: Do you read scripts all the time or just selectively?

LAURA LINNEY: No. They’re just not coming in all the time. They just aren’t there to read. When it comes in, I read it. (Laughs) I think everyone’s sort of idea that we have scripts coming in the window just isn’t a reality. I read a script every once in a while and if it’s good, fantastic. I’ve been very lucky because a lot of them that have come my way have been pretty good. But there are not scripts all the time.

Q: Whatever happens with the writer’s strike may determine what happens with other guilds, do you have any impressions on how things might be going or do you have any expectation it will be resolved before your guild has to make a decision?

LAURA LINNEY: Who knows how this will go. What I do know is that these issues are complicated and large and it is imperative that they are worked out and that they are worked out thoughtfully and fairly. How they will be able to do this and keep ego outside, in an industry that is very ego-driven, will be interesting to see. I hope that doesn’t catch people up on both sides. These are issues that have been coming for a long time. This is inevitable stuff that has to be worked out because of technology and the way things are changing. I wouldn’t be surprised if it went on for a while. This isn’t easy stuff to negotiate, so we’ll see. We’ll see how they all do. I hope there’s a sense of fairness not only in the deals that are cut but how it’s negotiated.

Q: How do you feel about the AFI FEST tribute to you?

LAURA LINNEY: I’m trying to wrap my brain around that. I don’t know how to deal with that. It’s very, very nice.

Q: What kind of dress are you going to wear?

LAURA LINNEY: [Laughs] One that covers my body. I’m just going to wear a dress.

Q: Can you talk about the experience of making “John Adams”?

LAURA LINNEY: It was amazing. It was a remarkable experience; it was six months and demanding and terrific and a remarkable group of actors and I really loved it. It was rare for me to be on a movie that was so creatively and financially supported by a company. I’ve never had that before. I’ve had projects that were either financially supported or creatively supported but not both. And that was – I couldn’t believe it. I mean every day I just couldn’t believe it.

Q: Was there a lot of rehearsal for it?

LAURA LINNEY: No.

Q: How was it working with Paul Giamatti?

Can I do that for you in March? Because then it will be all John Adams all the time.

Q: Is there anything you’re currently working on or are you taking a break?

LAURA LINNEY: No. I’m going to take a break. And I had already planned from years back to do a play, so I’m going to go and do Les Liaisons Dangereuses in New York. I go into rehearsal in March. Until then I’m going to sit back a little bit and catch up on some reading and mend some relationships that have been neglected because of location and all that.

Q: Is it hard to juggle your home and work life?

LAURA LINNEY: Oh sure. (Your home life) doesn’t exist when you’re working. This movie was sometimes 16-18 hours a day. There’s no other life.

Q: Is that what you see in the future too or do you want to make a resolution to slow down and have more time in your personal life?

LAURA LINNEY: I hope so. That’s not always possible, given schedules and budgets, if it’s the kind of movie that you want to do. I mean it would be nice. I would certainly like that.

Q: With the holidays coming up, do you have any Thanksgiving or Christmas traditions you’re looking forward to celebrating?

LAURA LINNEY: The food. It’s the food. My family’s from the south so there’s Senator Russell’s sweet potato soufflé, which is always really good.

Q: Now I’m hungry.

LAURA LINNEY: [Laughs] Yeah.

“The Savages” opens in theaters on November 30th.