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Tamara Jenkins Gets Savage
Oscar-nominated writer-director beats the sophomore slump
(Page 3)
MM: Fox Searchlight had already picked this up prior to Sundance, right?
TJ: There was an independent company called Lone Star that initially put up half of the budget, with the stipulation being that someone else would pick up the rest and be the film’s American distributor. The screenplay was actually developed at Focus Features; it was written for them as part of a blind deal where I didn’t have to tell them what it was about. Which was a good thing, since the film is a character study and not something that would really come across in a pitch: There are these two middle-aged adults, and they’re stuck in a rut…
MM: …and their dad is slowly dying of Alzheimer’s.
TJ: Exactly! So it was this big leap of faith that the company took in letting me work on this sight unseen. They really liked the script once I finished it, but we could never sign off on actors and eventually they let it go. Even though Laura was already attached at that point, I was kind of out to sea for a while and we couldn’t get the rest of the financing. Then Searchlight finally stepped up to the plate.
MM: It would seem like a good fit, since Fox Searchlight has taken movies like Sideways and helped them find a large audience. But you’d think the fact that there is a market out there for idiosyncratic films would actually make it easier to get something like this financed today.
TJ: Theoretically, that should be true, except it still took us forever to get it made. A movie like Sideways makes a big splash, but the film was turned down from a number of places because studios didn’t want Paul Giamatti. They wanted “stars” in it. Luckily, Fox understood what Alexander [Payne] was going for and got behind him. It’s still the exception to the rule, though. Even though a lot of these smaller companies are arthouse divisions of major studios, they still play the star game. With The Savages, people were scared of the material; they thought it was a movie about death. That’s a hard sell.
MM: Can you talk a little about the opening sequence? It feels like something out of a David Lynch film.
TJ: That area in Sun City, Arizona was one of the first retirement communities built in America. I wanted to do something that emphasized the weird idyllic yet haunting vibe of the place… The dance troupe [in the film], the Sun City West Dancers, actually perform there all the time; they’re wearing their own uniforms and headdresses. All these crew people were ready to pass out in this desert heat, and here are these 90-year-old women hoofing outside for six, seven takes! (laughs) They’re like a Greek chorus of cherubs… They open the curtains and then the show begins. It became this nice little framing device.
MM: It’s also a nice contrast with what comes right after it.
TJ: Right. You’re in this fantasyland, then you go inside the house and—bam!—the reality of the situation hits you in the face. That sets the tone for the rest of the movie.
MM: You’ve had a long relationship with both the Sundance Institute and the film festival, but do you think that the entities still serve the same functions they once did? Should independents still think of the festival as the place where they can get their visions on-screen and in front of a large audience?
TJ: I see why you’d ask that question, but where else would films like Half Nelson get shown? Stuff like that doesn’t get shown in the New York Film Festival and it deserves a bigger venue than YouTube; Sundance still fulfills that market. I mean, you could say that it’s become a lot more commercial, more overgrown and far more intense than it used to be, but I still think it serves a valid purpose. Critics walk away buzzing about small, worthwhile movies like Once, and that helps it find a larger audience. If you get one of those a year, it’s done its job.
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This story was published in the Fall 2007 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
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