So much of whether a film is commercial has to do with the money behind it. “Precious”, which I think is a fantastic, brave film, could have sunk without a trace if it didn’t have the millions the distributor is spending on its behalf. Good films can get lost if they don’t have the support, and with our distribution business in such disarray–so many of the distributors that put out alternative film have gone bust in the past couple of years–the chances of audiences actually getting to see alternative film, let alone large numbers of people being made aware of them through advertising or award campaigns which themselves cost thousands upon thousands of dollars, really millions if you are going to actually get anywhere, are slim to say the least. However, I count myself extremely lucky that I have been allowed to make four  films with artistic control. That in itself is a miracle. I have to confess though I wish I had a little more muscle behind the films. I think often it’s muscle–power and money– that makes the difference. “Personal Velocity” was put out by United Artists, a studio (now gone bust). It made money, because it had a little muscle behind it. A studio would never buy Personal Velocity no,  because of this climate of fear and caution that pervades the industry. Anyway, it’s a tough world. When I made “Angela” I was totally naive. I knew nothing. Each time I make a film I learn more about the business, more scales fall from my eyes, and I have to say, I liked my ignorance better.

Additionally for “Angela”, I workshopped the script in acting class with John Ventimiglia playing Andrew (he was my scene partner in the class and I always knew he would be the right person to play Andrew, the father of the girls). So in a sense he rehearsed a lot–he developed the character with me.

But normally I don’t rehearse actual lines so much. Partly it isn’t feasible–normally people arrive a day or two before they are scheduled to shoot–but also, I don’t like to exhaust the lines. I want to see them said for the first time on film. I adjust the performances on-site. This involves a great deal of trust of the actors and their characterizations but I have always worked with them individually, whether through auditions or conversations or video to find looks and maybe accents–just not the actual lines. I worked with Daniel Day-Lewis for months on what Jack Slavin in “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” should sound like, as well as the rest of his charac ter. I worked with Robin Wright for a year, mostly through conversation and one day of video when we were trying to find her look. That might sound superficial but the look of a character of course tells you so much and so costume fittings tend to be very deep, they are a big part of creating a character and I always leave hours and hours for them.  What I do sometimes do is rehearse relationships. For example, Daniel Day-Lewis and Camilla Belle spent almost two weeks together just living during the day in their house on the abandoned commune for “The Ballad of Jack and Rose”. I think you can see the closeness they developed on film.

Someone asked me about shooting in Ireland and my answer is, yes, I would certainly do it. I tried once, I had a film that fell apart in preproduction.

It was called “Gone to Earth,” based on the book by Mary Web. A period film which was actually already made into a film by the great Michael Powell. Originally Samantha Morton was to be in it, but she had just had a baby and couldn’t make it work, so we limped on and finally the whole thing collapsed. It was a terrible feeling walking into a room full of people thinking they have a job and telling them the factory is closing. It was a depressing moment–I sort of decided to stop trying to get films made at that time and sank myself into fiction, finished writing the book of short stories “Personal Velocity”, got them published, which then led me to make “Personal Velocity ” the film, and off I went again.

My problem with writing an Irish story is I haven’t felt I had the authority to write about this culture, this place, because I am still really a visitor, and my passion has been for telling American stories. I do have a couple short stories that take place in Ireland though, so maybe I’m inching up on it. I am working on one of them now.

Someone asked about rehearsal. I will write about that tomorrow if I can.

A word in defense of the cliche: In Pippa, I tried driving straight into cliche’s rather than doing everything possible to avoid them. Cliche’s are often cliche’s because they are true. And they are so true they get worn out. I wanted to face certain cliches –like the one about the man who keeps leaving for younger women, or the woman with a past–and find a fresh way to organize an old story.

On another note, I saw the best Christmas movie recently. It’s called “What Would Jesus Buy.” It’s a documentary about this man called Reverend Billy who was running for Mayor of New York, and the head of the “Just Stop Shopping” party. In the film, he and his choir cross the country in a bus going to malls and trying to get the people of America to buy less crap made by underpaid children in foreign lands. You should see what happens in Disney World. It sounds didactic, but it’s a brilliant and moving film.

The premiere, by the way, was a lot of fun, Robin,Blake, Keanu, and Julianne were all there, and sweetly Marion Cotillard and Penelope Cruz and Billy Crudup and Billy Connelly turned up, none of whom I know, I mean I have met some of them, so it was especially kind of them to come, because I know the last thing well known people want to do is go to a premiere, but they were there to see Robin’s performance and support the film. And my Daniel was there which made me so happy, and my dear friends from New York. It was a funny little theater, with air conditioning blasting noisily out of enormous ducts (in November). My hands were like blocks of ice by the end of the film.

So The Private Lives of Pippa Lee comes out on the 27th of November, there isn’t much more to be done. The actors have been so supportive, done lots of interviews, Blake is even hosting Saturday Night Live on December 5th, which will be hilarious I am sure because she is so relaxed and game for self-parody. Now we just sit on our hands and hope that the film finds an audience. Whatever happens, we know we did our best.

The next months will be exciting and hard. The cycle of work that is The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is coming to final fruition–there was the novel, the screenplay, making the film, and now at last, the film is coming out–and the book is emerging in paperback in the US. It’s been 8 years since I started thinking about Pippa as a character and five years since I started writing in earnest.

The film will be a limited release initially, New York and LA, and I have a feeling a lot of the audience may be women in the south or midwest. So we–Screen Media (distributor), me, Lemore Syvan, Dede Gardner (producers) are going to struggle to reach them by whatever means we can.

It’s doing pretty well in England–been out for more than a month, anyway, and in Greece, inexplicably, it opened number three, ahead of Transformers, and behind the Hangover and IceAge. What I wonder is, how did the Greek distributors sell it?