Rom-Coms, Romance Novels, and a Baby Genius: Joe Swanberg and Melanie Lynskey Talk "Happy Christmas"

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The most prolific director in the game right now discusses working with his most intimate collaborators on his most revealing film to date.

Where did you get the idea for Happy Christmas?

It came from conversations that my wife and I were having after our son was born. There are a lot of cultural demands placed on women, and there are a lot of complicated issues surrounding being a mom, especially these days. Being a supermom means being totally invested in your kid, cooking organic food, choosing the right programs to send your kid to. Additionally, there’s a sense that women should be independent, and this sort of “having it all” kind of concept that the characters talk about in the movie was a real struggle for my wife.

And there’s a lot of guilt around talking about that. In our culture, motherhood is supposed to be magical, and it’s also supposed to be really easy and the most natural thing in the world. When you are questioning what it means to go from being an independent artist or businesswoman to being a stay-at-home mom, it’s hard to talk to anybody about it because you feel bad complaining. Even the idea that you might be complaining about your child is really tricky.

What do you think is the dad’s role, or the male’s role, in all of this?

It’s tricky because you don’t always get to decide. In the case with my family, at the point where we had Jude, we had just bought a house. We made the decision to do that, and that comes along with a lot of financial responsibilities. It just was the case that I was able to make more money at the time than Kris was, so she ended up spending a lot of time staying at home with Jude while I was working. Our hand was sort of forced in that situation. We’d been working towards trying to figure out the most equal balance, but we’re at a point now where Kris is gonna make a movie in the fall, and I’m taking time off and staying home with Jude.

It’s different with every relationship, but talking about it is always helpful. If husbands and wives are in a position where they can’t do anything about it, they can at least acknowledge it. With Kris and I, we split it up as much of the responsibility as possible. We trade off putting Jude to sleep and waking up with him, we give each other space to go out with our friends while the other one stays home—it’s that balance of trying to be an individual and also be a part of the family.

Another thing that this movie is being praised for is its messy female lead Anna Kendrick’s Jenny. Was intentional on your part?

I did this movie called Hannah Takes the Stairs several years ago and it was interesting to talk to people about that movie because one of the things that Greta [Gerwig] and I talked about while we were making it is that women are not often allowed to be unlikeable in movies. There’s a lack of complexity to female characters because you have to go one way or the other: they’re either the bitchy villain or the idealized hero. With the Hannah character, we were excited about having a central female character who was sometimes really great and other times really terrible to the people around her. It felt progressive to just let her be a human. That’s a lot of what people are talking about with Anna’s character. It’s nice to see some complexity there; it’s nice to have these characters be allowed to be irresponsible and shitty to the people they love, but also loveable and redeeming. That whole range of emotion historically hasn’t really been on display for women.

Since this movie was improvised from your basic outline, were those the kinds of things you spoke to Melanie Lynskey and Anna Kendrick about, to help them tap into their characters?

Definitely. Melanie talked to a lot of her friends who had kids. She talked a lot to my wife about specific things. And with Anna, we talked a lot to each other. My little brother lived with my family for a little while when he moved to Chicago, so some of the dynamics there were based on my own real situation. I gave Anna as much of that as she wanted, but she was having a lot of conversations with friends and family, and drawing from her own life and figuring out dynamics.

How did Kendrick and Lynskey develop their chemistry?

They knew each other a little bit. They had done Up in the Air together and they both really liked each other and admired each other’s talent.

Especially with the heavy improvisation, I’m always trying to make educated guesses about the kinds of chemistry actors have, and the kinds of ways they might interact. Just from knowing Anna and doing Drinking Buddies with her, and meeting Melanie in the spring of 2012, and it just seemed right. They were each bringing the right vibe where you could believe the antagonism early on, but you could also believe in the friendship and how that might feel.

What was it like directing Jude?

It was really fun! I tried not to direct him. A lot of the work from the actors and the crew just went into getting him comfortable with all of this being around the house, but we caught him at a really nice time. He was really open to new people and wanted to connect with people and be part of the group, so he was happy to play with these actors.

There was just a real love from everybody on set and a desire to make him comfortable and part of the process, and he responded to that. It was also nice that I was in the scenes with him, which really let him be comfortable.

How did Lena Dunham get involved?

I’ve known her since she was a college student. We’ve worked together in very minor capacities over the years, but I wrote this part for her. I started watching Girls and was blown away by what a great actor she had become. I felt that it would be fun to, in a lot of ways, make her the responsible one, to not have her be her character from Girls.

Speaking of working with people you’ve known for a long time, you have Digging for Fire coming up with Ben Richardson, Anna Kendrick, Melanie Lynskey and others from your past films. How do you keep the collaboration going?

Well, Jake Johnson and I had such an amazing time working on Drinking Buddies, and I just really love that guy and think he’s so great. We were trying to figure out what fun project we could do together and he called me one night with an idea back in the fall. We kicked it around for five months, until a window opened up in our schedule where we could do it.

I just think Anna and Melanie are two of the best actors working right now, so it just makes perfect sense to me to call them and write roles for them into these movies. Olivia Wilde would’ve been in the movie too, but she was super pregnant and about to have her baby. [Laughs.] If she wants to, she’ll be in a lot more of my movies as well. Ron Livingston’s in this new one too, and Kent Osborne and Megan Mercier, and some other people that I’ve worked with on older movies.

It’s important for me to have those ongoing relationships. We can keep making better and better work together if we have more chances to build that and go a little deeper and understand each other better. From my position, as long as Jake or Anna or Olivia or any of the people that I’ve worked with want to keep making movies with me, then I’m gonna have to keep writing roles for them.

Can you talk a little bit about Digging for Fire, or is it top secret?

Well, it’s not top secret, but I’m still editing it and wrapping my head around it. It’s a love story. For me it’s about a marriage and a couple. Jake Johnson and Rosemarie DeWitt are the stars of the movie. It’s very much a movie about the complications, but also the tremendous pleasures of being married to somebody and trying to build a life with that person.

You’ve collaborated with cinematographer Ben Richardson a few consecutive times now. How do your visions align?

From the moment I met him, I felt philosophically connected to him just in terms of how we think about life, camera movement, and the speed at which a day should go—a lot of the bigger picture but also nuts-and-bolts aspects of filmmaking. As we’ve worked together, he feels now to me like a totally essential part of the team. I love the way he moves the camera; I love the way he frames; I love finishing take and just knowing what he’s thinking, whether we’re gonna try it again or not. It’s that feeling that you always hope for in meeting a creative person who you feel makes your work better, and also sort of completes a big piece of the puzzle. There’s a trust there that, as a filmmaker, you’re always looking for.

With Ben, I found a cinematographer who I wouldn’t even have to double check the shot. I know he’s doing the best shot and also that he’s getting the best shot for my movie. There’s a real lack of ego there, and a lack of somebody who’s working to make pretty pictures or make cool shots for their demo reel. It’s like he’s really working in service of the film, so it’s been really amazing. In a way, I feel a little bit lost without him now, so I’m desperately hoping he remains available to shoot my movies. [Laughs.]

The New Zealand-born actress is all about authenticity—which means calling bullshit on Hollywood’s double standards.

Joe Swanberg mentioned that the film was inspired by his wife, Kris Williams, after having their son, Jude. What kind of conversations did you have with her?

I had a really long conversation with her actually. I felt nervous because I was acting in her house with her husband and child. I was improvising so I couldn’t make it be her words; it had to be my own thing. I’d just just check in to see if we were on the same page. She’s such a great person and she’s also a filmmaker, so she understands collaboration and people bringing their own stuff to the film.

Speaking of improv, you have a really long scene with Lena Dunham and Anna Kendrick discussing where your character was in her life. How was that set up?

We didn’t really talk about a whole lot. Joe was like, “You need to tell them that you feel like you don’t have enough time to write.” That was all he wanted to communicate in that scene. For me, the reason I did the movie is because I have friends who are mothers and who are also accomplished career women, and they were having a real issue with trying to balance those two sides of themselves. Balancing their maternal instinct, which totally kicks in when you give birth, but also their jobs that they’d worked their whole lives for, it’s a real complicated thing.

When I started to bring the topic up, I felt a little awkward, like, “Am I trying to just go off on my own agenda here? Is it actually working? Is there enough in the scene that supports me talking about all this stuff?” Then, when I saw the scene, I felt like it worked.

You just touched on it getting a bit more personal to you. That said, in the scene where you three start brainstorming what to call body parts in your romance novel, did you at any point have to remind yourself you were making a movie?

[Laughs.] I try to remind myself, but then sometimes it’s just so much fun. Something like that, because it’s so personal and so strange, you can’t really—there’s some stuff that’s not in the movie that has my own sort of sexual point-of-view, and stuff that I invented for Kelly. But everything that’s in the movie feels like me, Lena, and Anna just talking to each other. I think Anna’s the most different from her character in that scene. She’s a lot raunchier in real life. [Laughs.]

But we all have very different lives from our characters. Like, I’m not married, I don’t have a kid, and I have a better sense of who I am. My work is very meaningful to me, so I feel kind of different in that way. Obviously, Anna really has her shit together and so does Lena, so it’s funny to see them play these kind of girls who are just sort of hanging out and going to parties. They’re both such accomplished women.

Do you have any funny on-set, behind-the-scenes stories that you remember?

We all lived in an apartment together, which was fun. Lena came to stay with us for a few days, while she was shooting, so it was like summer camp. I got her a Justin Bieber toothbrush that sings Justin Bieber songs. [Laughs.] I don’t know if she still has it.

Why Justin Bieber?

I was at Rite-Aid or something and I was like, “I need to get her toothpaste, I need to do this and that,” and then I was like, “This is a weird welcome gift.” [Laughs.] I think she liked it.

Did she get you anything in return?

She did not. [Laughs.] But we were welcoming her to our home!

Working with Joe’s son, Jude, do you think he realized he was in a movie?

I felt like he knew when he was being filmed. I don’t know if he has an understanding that it’s a movie or that he’s performing, but he definitely knew when the camera was on. Sometimes he would do things for a take, and in-between takes, he would just be sitting there. Then, when we’d start rolling, he would repeat the action in exactly the same way. It was so crazy. I was like, “He knows what he’s doing!”

What’s great about this movie is that the women are front and center, and they’re all a mess in their own way. What do you think about the idea that men get to play man-boys but women have to be a little more polished?

I did this movie a few years ago called Hello I Must Be Going, where I played someone in the middle of a deep depression. She was kind of a mess and living at her parents’ house, and some of the reviews from professional film critics were so angry. Like, “She’s disgusting, she should get her act together.” I have an affair with a young guy in the movie and they’re like, “Who would want to sleep with her? She’s overweight.” Jesus Christ! The number of movies about men in this situation where they hook up with a model or whatever—nobody is blinking an eye! There really is a complete double standard.

What I really love a lot about Joe’s movies is that he’s really interested in humans and how we relate to each other. He loves it when people are messy, he loves it when women are just kind of people, you know? Nobody’s being put on a pedestal. How do you deal with that kind of criticism? Does it affect the roles you choose? Well, I wouldn’t do a movie if I didn’t feel like I could handle it and bring something authentic to it, because it’s just too hard. All I ever do is independent movies, so it’s not like I’m making a bunch of money. [Laughs.] Having a situation of where I sell out or not, I just—sometimes I’m interested in playing people who are kind of a disaster, and sometimes I’m interested in playing people who know where they’re at and know what they’re doing. It depends on how I’m feeling as well.

How’d you get involved with Digging for Fire? Was there a conversation with Joe about continuing to work with him?

Yeah, he just was like, “Do you wanna come do a scene with Rosemarie DeWitt?” and I was like, “Yeah, I would love to.” It was just one scene and then I think we’re gonna add more stuff to it. I’m not sure, but it was a lot of fun. It seems like if you work with Joe Swanberg, you will have like six more movies with Joe Swanberg. [Laughs.] I hope so. I mean, my dream is that he makes a movie with me and Sophia Takal. She’s my new favorite person. She was so good in All the Light in the Sky, and I know she loves working with him, so that’s what I’m trying to send out into the universe for a wish.

I’ve seen Wild Canaries now four times, I think? It’s so good and I just think her and [Lawrence Levine] are so talented. Basically, I’d say to them, “Whenever you want me, I’m there. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” [Laughs.] Because they’re so brilliant, and they’re both such good actors, and good filmmakers, and good people, and I love her.