Celebrity Interview: Little Men Director Ira Sachs and Star Theo Taplitz Talk On Hollywood Endings, Casting and Actors

Little Men, from Magnolia Pictures and Directed by Ira Sachs, brings to the screen a contemporary drama on life, death, love, family, friendship and the realities of economic minded decisions in the real world.

Co-written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, Little Men stars Greg Kinnear, Jennifer Ehul, Alfred Molina, Paulina Garcia, Theo Taplitz and newcomer Michael Barbieri.

Little Men Director Ira Sachs and Theo Taplitz who plays Jake Jardine, a boy on the edge of carefree adolescence and the beginning of demanding teenager, recently participated in the Media Day for the film.

Having the opportunity to speak with them below is an excerpt of our interview.

Janet Walker: Congratulations in the film. Before we start my first question, I'll start the beginning with the end. I felt the end was not the typical Hollywood resolution, no magical moment where everything was happy and everyone came back together.

Ira Sachs: I thought about doing that.

Theo Taplitz: We actually shot it.

IS: Um, the end of the film is in line with everything that came before and it hopes to achieve a certain level of authenticity about it and these characters and the gravitas of the events that have taken place.

It also reflects for me and for a lot of people who have sent he film, a certain friendship from childhood that are either destroyed or transformed by time by adult issues. I think one of the most beautiful thing about childhood, and feel I've gotten more familiar with this watching and working on this film, is how kids are able to cross differences and make friendships across race, and class and backgrounds in a way that adults don't seem to be able to. I think really, if there is a learning curve or a moment of reckoning in this film, it is learning what happens to relationships when you become an adult. It's about loss and about reality. I think that is the discovery of Jake, [Theo].

JW: So what was the magical ending moment or the Hollywood moment?

IS: The Hollywood ending was inspired by a wonderful Hollywood film titled The Wonderful World of Henry Orient, where two girls in New York fall in love with Peter Sellers, and they manage to pull off a resolution where everything got tied up. And so the ending was more of that nature. It really felt like an affront to the seriousness that had taken place in this film. It felt like I would sell these characters out. I also found there was a level of richness, with this ending which is more meaningful.

Actors Are Actors Aren't They?

JW: Okay Theo. People say that playing a kid in a film or being cast as a kid in a film, being cast as a contemporary of your own age, is probably the easiest role to get. Describe some of your challenges and how you feel about that statement.

TT: I'll have to concur with that. There is so much going around about kid actors. They're just being themselves and granted Ira does cast characters, but it's not all "I'm just playing myself in front of the camera." It's a lot more challenging.

I mean because a kid actor, grown-up actor, teenage actor, we're all actors; we all have emotions that we have to get under, connections, feelings, and there's been a lot of different things, feelings, losses in the movie that I was a bit scared of at first such as the last scene when I start breaking down and crying and that was a scene that I was really, really scared about and Ira suggested "Don't worry about it. It's all going to be fine. It's not the first thing we're going to shoot."

You know so we had a couple of scenes before that and I got really go to know the characters and understand who they were and they could understand who I was and that connection. And getting to know everyone and who their characters were and who I was in that way at the end when it is all falling apart and suddenly everything is not going as perfectly as I thought, I thought it was really great. I thought it was a dream, it was amazing, I mean it all had to come to an abrupt ending because of economics.

In that moment, it was just sort of like "well it shouldn't be that the break up this thing that is so beautiful, so amazing, it shouldn't just be because of a money thing that everything should be thrown out the door."

I think that is especially where . . .I try to solve it and there is a tiny little thought in my head 'maybe it can't be helped' and I think that is where I started crying. I wanted it all to be how it was to continue on like that.

IS: Really what he is describing is the enormity, the emotions these five characters, in a film that kind of catches you by surprise, because there is a lightness and openness to how the story is told and gets more and more focused on this kind of great drama that is happening between these two families.

JW: I expected the women to have a letter or some sort of grandfathering into a lifetime lease or something. It's New York, you never know.

IS: The relationships are about emotions and about certain shifting forms of morality and about the choices we make that don't have a letter and a lease.

JW: There was another question I wanted to talk with you about, when you get into LaGuardia High School [For the Performing Arts] and your friend who suggested it to you doesn't. Explain that emotion. I was wondering what was the emotion that you were grabbing.

TT: Well, I feel like it was more like I'm seeing someone I haven't seen in so long and kind of the memories flood back of the good times we had rollerblading and going into the Actor's Studio. And then there is the part where its past and what happened there cannot be recreated. And  . . .

IS: Deep kid.

JW: Yes. It is deep.

TT: And so in those kind of famous words, "if you love something let it go."

Casting in the Electronic Age

JW: Tell me a little about the casting process:

IS:  We wrote the part of Leonora for Paulina Garcia, Mauricio Zacharias, my co-writer had seen her in Gloria, a Chilean film, luckily she liked the script. And then I really was so fortunate to get Greg [Kinnear] and Jennifer [Ehle] involved. There is something people do to which is create a history of a marriage, otherwise the film is about a marriage, and how a couple sees through a difficult moment together. The film is about a community and a city, Brooklyn, ultimately it is about chamber piece five individuals who are in great conflict.

JW: And you tell me about your casting process. Did you read, Did you . . .  

TT: Okay. So what originally happened, my agent sent me these sides, it was the "Green Sky with Yellow Stars" scene, now of course at that time it was a bit different because Tony was supposed to be a Capoeira dancer instead of an actor so I read the sides, I did the sides; I put myself on tape for it; I sent it in and then a few days later, Ira said he would like to have a skyping session.

So we talked about who this character was, what he was sort of looking for and what maybe I could bring to it as well, then I had read with a couple of people they were thinking of to be "Tony" and then a few days after that I got an email saying that, "'I got the part!'" It was like 'yes!'

IS: I saw that audition. We saw a lot of kids it was like I was watching a documentary he was so connected to the text it was like I hadn't written it.

JW: And is it all electronic now?

IS: He was here and I was there. Michael [Barbieri] was cast at an open call in NYC. He saw an announcement on the board at Lee Strasberg in NYC where he is training to be an actor. And that is his acting teaching in the film, Mauricio Bustamante. And he also got into LaGuardia.

JW: Nice. So what's next for you?

IS: I am writing with Mauricio for HBO. Writing a feature about family, three generations of family who climb a mountain on a day trip.  

TT: I also make my own short films. I've been editing some of my films. I'm preparing to shot the second half of Requiem for Mr. Cromwell. I'm auditioning, I've got a few things going acting wise.

IS: And he has 8th grade.

TT: And I'm going into 8th grade.

JW: Congratulations! Thanks so much.

Little Men opens August 5, 2016. Check local listings.

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