Your new film The Baltimorons, about an improv comic who teams up with a divorcee dentist, has a very “yes and” energy. What’s been your wildest “yes and” moment?
My most memorable “yes and” moment is when I went home to New Orleans, where my friends who I grew up with were spending their weekends breaking into the local zoo and swimming in the tank with the sea lions. Not the seals – the sea lions. We had been out, it was one in the morning, there were many alcoholic beverages involved, and it involved waiting for the security guards to be looking the wrong way, finding the sea lion exhibit, climbing fences and diving in. Apparently when I jumped in, a sea lion had just swam right under me as I was hitting the water. I had no clue.
The Baltimorons is a Christmas rom-com. What’s your favourite Christmas movie?
I have not seen Bad Santa in a very long time, and my instincts are that it’s not OK to love Bad Santa any more, and that it might actually not be a great movie. But I saw Bad Santa at Christmas when it released theatrically, and it was the most explosive, irreverent, exciting antidote to Christmas. Because we would often go to movies on Christmas Day, and you’re just so done with Christmas. And this was just destroying Christmas, frame by frame by frame. I loved it at the time – I’ve washed my hands of it now. I don’t want to get cancelled because I liked a movie 20 years ago.
You and your brother wrote a book about film-making. What’s the one most important thing you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out?
We have a philosophy: make movies, not meetings. It’s very easy to confuse talking about movies with making movies. And, you know, there’s just so much hemming and hawing and so much thinking and perfectionism. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. You’re never going to line everything up just right. If you want to make a movie, you need to make a movie. If you don’t, you’re not making movies. It’s that simple.
What’s the most chaotic thing that’s ever happened on set?
Luckily, I haven’t had anybody get injured on a set – no big real-life stuff. But the scariest thing that I’ve done – and I’ve done it on tiny movies, I’ve done it on big movies – is [say], “Hey everybody, we don’t know what we’re doing right now. Hello, A-list, Oscar-winning actor. I fucked this up, and I don’t know what this is. And what I need to do is take a walk around the block for 20 minutes and figure out what this scene really needs, because what we’re doing right now isn’t going to cut it.”
People don’t like that. They want you to always have all the answers and know everything.
What film do you always return to, and why?
The original Rocky. It’s the best underdog story. It’s got great plotting, the love story is wonderful, it’s moving, and so subversive. When I tell people that Rocky is my favourite movie of all time, they’re like, ‘Oh, God, how can you watch that?’ And my reply is always, ‘Well, who do you think wins?’ They’re like, ‘Obviously Rocky.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, now you need to re-see Rocky. You clearly have not seen that movie, really.’ I’ve seen that film probably 20 times.
What are you secretly really good at?
I’m secretly really good at doing 14 hours of work inside of a freelance day. That’s probably my biggest superpower. I can teach you how to do it: it’s called the high school schedule. It’s like when you went to high school and you woke up at 7am, got to school at 8am and did seven subjects from 8am to 3pm and then you went and did a sport afterwards, and then you went home and did three hours of homework. I mean, that’s what I did – I went to a Catholic prep school, and that’s how I built my schedule.
All of us freelance artists, we are just swimming around in all this time and all this freedom. I don’t have any any more, because I got kids, dogs, a mortgage, a company to run and a bunch of movies and TV shows, but that’s how I do it. At a certain point, I was floundering and just trying to organise myself – I think that’s probably the biggest challenge of every independent artist – and I came up with this idea of a high school schedule, and I just started scheduling every hour. You’re on my high school schedule today: 4pm, do this interview. I was just working on a script right before then, and then my alarm went off. I set alarms. I think it’s my best skill. It’s the same as “make movies” – there is no replacement for just doing tremendous amounts of undeniable work.
You studied psychology and were planning to make a career out of it. Care to share any psychological advice?
The best single thing that I learned in therapy is: “I’m going to be OK, no matter what.” I’ve dealt with some very challenging things over the course of a 52-year life and once I got on board with this idea that I’m going to be OK no matter what, it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Every day I wake up with anxiety and when I can come back to that place – “I’m going to be OK, no matter what” – and really believe it and know it to be true, it really does change everything. You bring a sense of calm and forward momentum into everything that you’re doing, no matter what the circumstances are.
You started acting later in your career in shows like Transparent; what’s the best lesson you learned from working with other actors?
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I heard an actor one time ask a director: “What is the event of this scene?” It was a gentle way of saying: nothing’s fucking happening in this scene, and there’s nothing to play. A common problem with independent films is that there’s not enough story; a common problem with studio films is that the story is trite or arch or overdone.
What’s been your most cringe-worthy run-in with a celebrity?
I was drunk at a party, and I pitched a movie to Wanda Sykes on the spot, which is that I would like to make a movie about the second coming of Jesus, and Wanda Sykes is Jesus. She was like, “You’re fucking crazy, dude.” She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were like Mm-hmm. I think it was just because I was coming in hot. But I didn’t make it up in the moment – I had been thinking about it: the second coming of Jesus, and Jesus is a black lesbian. If you’re listening, Wanda: I’m sorry – and my offer still stands.
If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why?
A dolphin.
That was an unexpectedly quick answer.
I don’t really know why, but I’ve been obsessed with dolphins since I was in kindergarten. I wrote several book reports on them. I just love them. They are loving and kind and creative and social and playful and, for the most part, very peace-loving, magical beings.
People should be more like dolphins.
I fully agree, except for the unwanted sexual harassment, which apparently they are prone to, which people have informed me of. I’m like, let me live my dreams.