Directors Chris and Paul Weitz

DATE June 5, 2002 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Chris and Paul Weitz discuss films they have directed
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guests, Chris and Paul Weitz, directed the new film "About a Boy," which
they adapted from a novel of the same by Nick Hornby, who also wrote "High
Fidelity." Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel has called "About A
Boy" `the smartest, funniest and most winsome big-studio release of this
so-far dismal year.' The brothers seem like an unlikely pair to take on this
sophisticated comedy, since they were best known for directing the teen
comedy "American Pie." They also wrote the screenplay for the animated film
"Antz."

"About a Boy" stars Hugh Grant as a single guy living on the royalties of his
late father's hit novelty Christmas song. He enjoys the uncommitted life--no
job, no family--but he does like having relationships with women as long as
they don't require a deep commitment. He's figured out that single mothers
are easier to score with. There's less competition from other men and the
mothers are so angry at the men who walked out on them it's easier to be the
good guy by comparison. So he pretends to be a single father, which is his
ticket into a single parents' group where he hopes to meet women. Here he is
at a meeting, putting on his act.

(Soundbite from "About a Boy")

Mr. HUGH GRANT: (As film character) I have a two-year-old, Ned. He's got
blue eyes and sort of sandy-colored hair and he's about 2'3". Um--and his mum
left.

Unidentified Woman: (As Susie) Really?

Mr. GRANT: Yeah. Yeah. I mean obviously, it was a very big shock, because
we were so happy. Sandra's neurology practice was just up and running, and
then one day her bags were packed and my best friend was waiting outside in
his Ferrari. Yeah. You know, the Moderna, the one with the supercharged
engine, where you can actually see the engine through the back window?

Unidentified Woman: May I ask, does your ex see Ned at all?

Mr. GRANT: Well, sorry, I didn't catch your name.

Unidentified Woman: Susie.

Mr. GRANT: Susie. She doesn't see much of him, no. No.

Unidentified Woman: How does he cope without her?

Mr. GRANT: You know, he's a very good little boy, very brave. They've got
amazing resources, don't they? Just the other day I was thinking about my ex,
and he came crawling up and put his little pudgy arms around my neck and he
said, `You hang in there, Dad.'

Unidentified Woman: God, that's amazing for a two-year-old.

Mr. GRANT: Is it?

Group: Yes.

GROSS: Chris and Paul Weitz, welcome to FRESH AIR.

Mr. CHRIS WEITZ and Mr. PAUL WEITZ (Directors, "About a Boy"): (In unison)
Thank you for having us.

GROSS: Is there anything that you related about the scheme of this single guy
to create an imaginary kid so he can make it with single mothers?

Mr. C. WEITZ: The fact that we've done that before, I think, really...

GROSS: I knew it.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. They're method actors, we're method directors.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, I think that every man at some point or other has come
up with some cockamamy scheme to meet women, whether it be a haircut or a much
larger kind of con, so I suppose I could sympathize with that, but more so
with the character who essentially does nothing because he can afford to do
nothing, and is trying to occupy his time on the way to the grave as
entertainingly as possible.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I think, I mean, in a larger sense, I certainly can identify
with the idea that you pretend to be something before you actually are that
thing. I mean, when we first were getting the chance to direct, we had no
idea what we were doing, and we actually didn't pretend all that much. We
pretty much told people we didn't know what we were doing, but this is a guy
who pretends to have a child, and during the course of the movie he actually
finds that the one thing that he's pretty good at is being a mentor, or father
figure. He's not particularly good at anything else.

GROSS: Did you read this book when it was first published?

Mr. C. WEITZ: We didn't actually, no. It had already been published for
three years by the time I got around to reading it, and I read it on vacation,
and Paul and I had been looking for a book or a movie idea with a kind of
Billy Wilderesque theme to pursue, and I thought this was the one.
Unfortunately, it had already been bought by Robert De Niro's production
company, by New Line Studios. So it had been knocking around for a while
before we came to it.

Mr. P. WEITZ: There was another director attached, which was the
unfortunate part, and there was another script which had changed the character
to be an American living in London. We read it and we thought that Hugh Grant
would be perfect for it, because it was supposed to be somebody who's sort of
gotten by on their charm through much of their life, and I think you can
really believe that with Hugh. And it was also incredibly funny in a very
verbal way, and Hugh's great at that kind of thing, so we just sort of hovered
around like vultures until the project fell apart, actually.

GROSS: And how did you convince the people you needed to convince, who I
imagine included De Niro's production company and Nick Hornby, the author,
that you were the guy?

Mr. P. WEITZ: I don't know that we ever did convince Nick Hornby. Hopefully,
once he saw the film--no, he's been very kind about the film, and I think that
he feels like we were really true to the spirit of the book.

Mr. C. WEITZ: But I think that both he and Hugh had their doubts about
whether the directors of "American Pie" could make this kind of book into the
kind of movie that it is. I think they were so rabid about getting a chance
to do it that eventually they just gave up on trying to put us off.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I mean, how...

GROSS: Well, I can understand that they would think that the directors of
"American Pie" are the wrong guys to do this, so what did you do? I mean, did
you show up and say, `Well, we made that movie and it did really well, but
that's not who we really are'?

Mr. P. WEITZ: Well, not really. I mean, just by being mildly articulate, you
know, you get a lot of credit. I mean, the lower the bar is, in a certain
way, it was as if they were dealing with a talking chimp, you know--the fact
that we directed "American Pie," but, you know, had some degree of
sensitivity. I mean, the thing is that our approach to "American Pie" was
pretty much to try to make it as humanistic a telling of that genre piece as
possible.

But no, we also stuck around. I mean, the project didn't get made for a
little while, and I think that we could clearly articulate what we wanted it
to be like, which helped the studio get its head around it, and we said we
wanted to try to make a movie that is akin to "The Apartment," which
actually--I mean, the character in "The Apartment" has a similarly ludicrous
scheme to get ahead, which is that he thinks he's going to get ahead in the
corporate world by loaning his boss the keys to his flat so his boss can have
affairs, you know; not a particularly wise, you know, way of climbing up the
corporate ladder. But that's a movie that also has some really dark sort of
things happening in the middle of a very funny comedy, so I think that if
you're able to articulate the tone of what you're trying to do, then you're
ahead of the game.

GROSS: There's a sequence in "About a Boy" in which the Hugh Grant character
is at the home of a single mother and her 11-year-old son, who kind of wants
to adopt Hugh Grant as his father, and she's at the piano playing a song, and
she and the boy are singing together with their eyes closed, and the Hugh
Grant character is thinking that he just really hates it when people do that
whole sincerity thing, singing with their eyes closed, and that's actually a
really kind of a significant moment in the movie that, like, resonates in
ways that I won't explain--later on in the film. But I really liked that
moment a lot. I don't even remember whether it's in the book or not, so maybe
you can talk about that scene.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, to give credit where it's due, it actually is in the
book. I mean, transferring it to the screen in some ways makes it more
powerful because you can read the expressions off the actors' faces and it
demands less verbal explanation. It is a really important scene to the tone
of the film, because for one--you know, there are these very, very deeply
sincere people that Hugh Grant's character is dealing with, and Hugh is going
through absolute torture seeing just how--you know, it's a kind of a
sing-along moment.

Mr. P. WEITZ: And the song is "Killing Me Softly," and I mean, you're very
graciously not bringing up the fact that later in the movie, Hugh is put in a
position where he has to be equally sincere and ends up singing, basically.
But I think that Hugh Grant's character in the movie has tried to anesthetize
himself. The conditions of his life can lend themselves to depression, and
he's not America so he's not on Prozac, and he doesn't want to get himself in
a situation where things mean things to him, and during the course of this
movie, the sort of friendship with this kid ends up meaning a lot to him, but
at this point in the movie, when Toni Collette, who plays the mother, and the
kid are sort of singing their hearts out around the piano, it terrifies him.

Mr. C. WEITZ: He has a real scorn for sincerity, which the English have in
general, the appearance of sincerity. But I think part of that is a fear of
deep waters.

GROSS: The Hugh Grant character has never had to work because he lives off
the royalties of his late father's one-hit song--his father was one of these
one-hit wonder songwriters--it was a Christmas novelty song called...

Mr. P. WEITZ: "Santa's Super Sleigh."

GROSS: "Santa's Super Sleigh." Yeah. Now, that song exists in the book, but
you actually had to find a melody for it because it's a movie and people sing
it to each other and so...

Mr. C. WEITZ: Yeah, we did. It was written for the movie. There was a great
parody show in England called "Spitting Image" in which puppets enacted
political figures, and they often had great parody songs, so we hired this
guy, Pete Brulis(ph), to write the worst possible Christmas jingle ever, and I
thought he did a pretty great job. It's a real standout disastrous jingle.

Mr. P. WEITZ: And--yeah. And he's u...

GROSS: Would one of you like to sing it?

Mr. C. WEITZ: I don't think either of us would like to.

Mr. P. WEITZ: ...(Unintelligible). It goes, `Look who's coming 'round the
bend. It's Santa and his reindeer friends. With a ho, ho, ho and a hey, hey,
hey, it's Santa's super sleigh.' And Hugh Grant is sort of haunted by this
song. He hears it, you know, every November, basically. It starts to play in
supermarkets and in Muzak all over the place so it really tortures him,
although this is how he sort of, you know, pays his bills.

GROSS: Nick Hornby's novels are filled with pop culture references. He wrote
"High Fidelity," and even in "About a Boy," one of the ways in which the main
character mentors the boy in his life is by giving him the right CDs and
buying him the sneakers...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and it's just a lot of pop culture stuff. How did you find a
visual language that you thought would work with the kind of pop style of Nick
Hornby?

Mr. P. WEITZ: I mean, for one thing, when you're following Hugh at first, we
shot it sort of like a very slick commercial, and the color tone is all blue,
and when you're seeing the kid, the camera's fairly static and there's a lot
of sort of warm earth colors. I mean, the other thing we did...

Mr. C. WEITZ: So there's a distinction, initially, between the kinds of
worlds in which these two people operate. The first sequence, you never see
Hugh's face in the credit sequence. You just see things. You know, we
decided his apartment was very much about the things in it, so it's a lot of
shots of very glossy, shiny objects that people might like to have, so when we
do see him in the trappings of pop culture, it's often in a, you know,
gigantic record store or a superstore.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. and in the movie, we try to put him in as many sort of
gigantic consumer venues as we possibly could. I mean, the other thing, too,
is that, I mean, when he buys the kid these sneakers in the movie--because the
kid is dressed horribly by his mother and given a horrible haircut--he buys
the kid these sort of cool sneakers, but I mean, in the usual way you'd handle
that, the kid would be transformed and there'd be some sort of, you know,
musical montage where he's making the kid look cool. In this version, the
next thing you see is the kid's standing barefoot in the rain because the kids
at his school have stolen the sneakers that Hugh Grant has given him.

I think that going back also to "The Apartment," there's this fantastic shot
of Jack Lemmon at the insurance company where he works, surrounded by tons and
tons of uniform desks, which is actually, I think, a quote of a film called
"The Crowd," which was a great silent film about sort of the American dream.
But nowadays I think that, to intellectualize somewhat, we've gone from being
a manufacturing culture to a consumer culture, so in this case we were trying
to put him in these sort of gigantic consumer venues that would depersonalize
him.

GROSS: My guests are Chris and Paul Weitz. They directed the new film "About
a Boy." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Let's get back to our interview with Chris and Paul Weitz. They
directed the new adaptation of Nick Hornby's novel "About a Boy."

The first movie they directed was the hit teen comedy, "American Pie," about a
group of boys in their senior year of high school who vow to lose their
virginity by the end of the senior prom. The film starred Jason Biggs; Eugene
Levy played his well-meaning but clueless father. In this scene, Levy goes
into Biggs' room for a father-son talk about the facts of life.

(Soundbite from "American Pie")

Mr. EUGENE LEVY: (As Jim's father) Oh, I almost forgot. I bought some
magazines. You want to just flip to the center section? Well, this is the
female form, and they have focused on the breasts, which are used primarily to
feed young infants, and also in foreplay.

Mr. JASON BIGGS: (As Jim) Right.

Mr. LEVY: This is Hustler, and this is a much more exotic magazine. Now they
have decided to focus more on the pubic region, the whole groin area.

Mr. BIGGS: Uh-huh.

Mr. LEVY: Look at the expression on her face. You see that? See what she's
doing? She's kind of looking right into your eyes, saying, `Hey, big boy.
Hey, how you doing?' You see?

Mr. BIGGS: Right.

GROSS: Now you didn't write "American Pie." You...

Mr. P. WEITZ: No. I thought it was a wonderful screenplay by Adam Herz, who
did indeed grow up in Michigan, and his personal experience was much closer
to the experience of those characters than Chris and mine was.

GROSS: Yeah. No. This is a teen movie about several guys who kind of make
this pact that they'll lose their virginity before college, hopefully by the
time of the senior prom. And the movie is their adventures in virginity
losing.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: I mean, is that the kind of movie you felt like, `Yeah, this is it.
This is what I really wanted to direct?'

Mr. P. WEITZ: Well, the thing is, to me, it was a very human contained story.
To us, what it was really about was guys going through a rite of passage, not
the rite of passage of losing their virginity, but the rite of passage of
graduating from high school. And they have this incredibly close friendship,
and they all sort of know that they're not really going to be able to be that
kind of friends anymore, so in order to not dwell on that, they become
obsessed with losing their virginity. I thought it was a terrific thing to
try to do as a first film, because it benefited from not being particularly
pretentious with the camera, and it was really all about the acting. And also
what we were consciously trying to do is to make the film less misogynistic
than most of the films of that genre tend to be.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Yeah. I think there are a few genre conventions that we had to
satisfy. There have to be some breasts on display at some point or other, and
people have to be caught in compromising positions. But that seemed to be the
easy thing to do, all the gross-out humor. What felt harder was to portray a
kind of updating of certain what had been stereotypes in teen sex comedies and
to realize that a film like "Porky's" was, in fact, incredibly misogynistic
and ugly and to try to put women a bit more in control of the situations in
this film.

GROSS: I thought it was interesting. Most of the guys in "American Pie" are
actually revealed to be very vulnerable, even though they're putting on this
big front.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Yeah.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. No. It's a film where pretty much everybody is trying
to be nice to each other, and yeah, so I agree.

GROSS: I've got to ask you. There's, you know, a couple of like gross-out
kind of scenes in it, and one of them, like one of the guys needs the bathroom
so desperately that he ends up using the ladies' room.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: And, you know, he's really got to go, but first, he puts down sheets
of toilet paper on the seat...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: ...to keep it clean.

Mr. P. WEITZ: That's the whole thing, is you try to--I think that certainly
gross-out humor, but any sort of broad humor becomes neutralized and boring if
there's not a lot of character imbued in it. So to me, the fact that, you
know, this guy can barely make it to the bathroom, but he's so persnickety
that he has to lay down paper perfectly before he uses it made that scene, you
know, work for me.

GROSS: Now I have to ask you about the actual title scene, the pie scene.
And for listeners who haven't seen it, you know, a friend who claims to have
lost his virginity says--when asked what it feels like, he compares it to the
feeling of an apple pie. So the Jason Biggs character tests this out by
getting intimate with a pie, and, of course, his father, played by Eugene
Levy, walks in as this is happening. What went through your mind in
considering how you should shoot that whole sequence?

Mr. P. WEITZ: Well, the first thing that we said to the studio is, `Look, you
know, we're going to be very delicate. It's going to lose the comedy of this
if you see too much.' And then we got there and we said, you know, `What the
hell? Let's just shoot as much as we can.'

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, it's not just `What the hell?' There's actually no way
to show someone...

Mr. P. WEITZ: That's true.

Mr. C. WEITZ: ...having sex with a pie without showing someone having sex
with a pie. Fortunately, you know, just when we were coiling at the whole
thought, our AD had actually worked for the Farrelly brothers before, so, you
know, he kept us from backing down from the true magnitude of the act itself.
I think to us, the important thing was more the interaction between the kid
and his father afterwards than the gag itself, which is fairly--you know, if
you're willing to do that on film, then you've achieved the strength of that
gross-out gag, but the more important stuff is that his father is actually
willing to cover up for him and, in some way, is actually trying to deal with
his son's--what seems to him is his perversion.

Mr. P. WEITZ: The film was interesting in terms of when it came out, because
it actually came out right after the Columbine shootings. And so the
Columbine shootings led to a huge questioning of the role of the R rating in
society, and our film got sort of swept up in the question of, you know,
should kids be allowed to go see films that are perhaps violent? So to me,
you know, the idea that America sweeps in sort of sexuality with violence and
lumps them together in terms of how it deals with them in terms of its
entertainment was interesting. And in retrospect, you know, you have this
image of American as apple pie, and so I thought there were a few interesting
aspects of that being a central image of the film.

GROSS: What were some of the issues surrounding like what kind of rating you
wanted to get for the film, whether you wanted a PG or an R or...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Well, at first we had a...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. P. WEITZ: No. Well, we wanted an R...

GROSS: Why did you want an R?

Mr. P. WEITZ: ...as opposed to an NC-17.

GROSS: Oh, I see. Right, yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: We knew that it would never get a PG-13, just because...

GROSS: Well, it's about virginity, so how are you going to do that? Yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Yeah.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: It's about sex. But at the same time, we didn't want an NC-17,
which is--if you haven't heard of it, it's because films that get an NC-17
rating never get seen. It's the rating above R, between R and X. And for
about four cuts of the film, we were stuck in that kind of middle territory.
And, you know, you get involved in these rather bizarre horse trading moments
with the MPAA, in which you say, `You know, well, I'll take out one F-word if
you give us this extra thrust on the pie.' And so we went through a rather
surreal period of watering down the film, without watering it down too much.

GROSS: Chris and Paul Weitz directed the new film "About a Boy." They also
directed "American Pie" and wrote the screenplay for "Antz." They'll be back
in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music; funding credits)

GROSS: Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews several CDs devoted to
the music of Hoagy Carmichael. And we continue our interviews with Chris and
Paul Weitz, who directed the new film "About a Boy."

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with filmmaking brothers
Chris and Paul Weitz. They directed the new film "About a Boy" and co-wrote
the screenplay. The movie was adapted from the Nick Hornby novel. The
Weitzes also directed "American Pie," wrote the screenplay for the animated
film "Antz" and made their acting debut in the independent film "Chuck &
Buck."

Now, so, you know, your two best-known films are a teen comedy, a teen kind
of, like, sex and gross-out comedy that is much more--I don't know--sensitive
is the right word than a lot of other films in that genre, and your other big
film is "About a Boy," which is a much more kind of, like, sophisticated,
witty story about adults.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. And I...

GROSS: So compare for us how both of those films were tested and marketed
before they were set forth into movie theaters.

Mr. C. WEITZ: The system for testing a film, any studio film, is the same
nowadays. There's a research company called NRG and they run a kind of market
testing thing in which you invite what's supposed to be an arbitrarily
selected audience to watch the film and grade it, and they have these cards on
which they score the film in various ways and list their favorite scenes and
the scenes they liked least and that sort of thing. You try, as filmmakers,
to bias the selected audience as much towards, you know, what you think is
your hard-core demographic. So of course, we only wanted teen-agers to come
to the "American Pie" test screening, and I think we only wanted bourgeois
mid-30s people to come to this one. And then you wait for this score, which
is a kind of strange compilation of numbers. And on that score rests, to some
extent, how avidly the studio is going to market your picture. And if you do
poorly numerically, people are going to start asking you to monkey around with
the film.

Mr. P. WEITZ: And luckily, they both tested really well. And "American Pie,"
you know, it was as if they'd a religious experience or something, these kids.
You know, they'd probably never seen a film before. But I think filmmakers
tend to fear those events, the test screenings. For us, we were a little
lucky, because there were a couple of really edgy, you know, comedic things in
the film that the studio wasn't so sure would go over, but the test audience
sort of singled a couple of those things out as everybody liked.

Mr. C. WEITZ: This is in "About a Boy." There were...

Mr. P. WEITZ: It's "About a Boy," yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: ...moments where Hugh Grant's character seemed, to the studio,
to be on the verge of detestable, which audiences actually rather enjoyed. So
we actually found ourselves benefiting from the process, whereas I think in
certain cases, it could damage a film or at least damage the integrity of the
film, because you start catering to the imagined sympathies of an imagined
audience.

GROSS: "American Pie," which you directed--it was one of the most popular
teen comedies of the late '90s. What kind of teen movies did you grow up
with? Did you go to the teen movies or did you just watch, you know, more...

Mr. C. WEITZ: We were watching Bergman in our teens.

Mr. P. WEITZ: "Wild Strawberries" is hot.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, I was mostly about science fiction, "Star Wars," the
first "Star Wars" trilogy, which, of course, in its own way, was a teen movie.
Luke Skywalker's a kind of space teen, although I guess less hormonal than
Earth teens.

Mr. P. WEITZ: And I remember going to see "Porky's," although I don't
remember anything about it. The film...

GROSS: Did you like it?

Mr. P. WEITZ: As a kid, it didn't really stick with me so maybe I didn't love
it that much.

Mr. C. WEITZ: I liked it a lot at the time. I thought it was, you know, the
Second Coming. But I...

Mr. P. WEITZ: But essentially, I mean, the actors were all in their mid-30s
playing 17-year-olds.

Mr. C. WEITZ: That was the amazing thing.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I think I was frightened by it. But "Fast Times at Ridgemont
High" is a wonderful film that deals from a female point of view with a lot of
the issues and is a really funny comedy. And so I think that that was more of
an influence. And also, "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" introduced a lot of
wonderful young actors to the mainstream. So that was also the thing we're
trying to do, is take unknowns and, you know, bring them to the fore.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Yeah. I remember seeing "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and not
understanding why the two cute girls holding surfboards in the ads weren't
actually in the film. It was my first experience with disappointment with
marketing, because they looked really great. That was a terrific film. Going
back to "Porky's" now, I think, is a pretty mortifying experience because the
actors are in their late 30s to early 40s, have beer bellies and are losing
their hair, and also because the attitude towards women expressed in the
script of that film is so odious.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I mean, just to go back to marketing "About a Boy," I mean, the
thing is for us, "About a Boy" is, in a lot of ways, equally funny to
"American Pie." It's a slightly different tone of humor, but when I'm sitting
in the audience for "About a Boy," I really hear them laughing a lot. And
it's a little hard because people are now used to sort of classifying their
comedies. There's romantic comedies. There's sort of teen genre comedies.
But they don't really have that kind of category of films that, you know, for
instance, Billy Wilder used to make. I mean, occasionally you get one--like
"Jerry Maguire" is a wonderful film or "As Good As It Gets," that actually
manages to be a comedy for adults. But I think that it's a real trick as to
how to market that kind of film.

GROSS: How did you start working together?

Mr. C. WEITZ: Let me see. I was living in England. I had gone to high
school and college in England, and I was working as a journalist. And I
wasn't doing very well at all. And...

Mr. P. WEITZ: His big article was an article about theater seats in London in
movie theaters, so he had to go sit down in like 40 different movie theaters
and write about the experience. And then he was--I don't know why I'm telling
his stories, but I'll apotheosize him. He was...

Mr. C. WEITZ: I'm not dead yet.

Mr. P. WEITZ: ...going to join the State Department actually. He'd come back
to America and he'd live abroad for much of his life, so he thought, `Well,
hell, I'm going to keep on doing this.' And he took an exam for the State
Department and passed and was waiting for a posting. And I, in the meantime,
was working at a bookshop and writing plays and bumming off our dad. And I
realized that I had to do something eventually to make a living, so Chris and
I wrote a screenplay as a gag and realized that we sort of enjoyed doing it,
and then somebody gave us a job to do it. And for a long time, worked very,
very happily making a living off things that we didn't get our names on.

GROSS: What was the screenplay you wrote as a gag?

Mr. P. WEITZ: It was called "Legit,"(ph) and it was about a porno director
trying to make his first legit film, and since he doesn't know any real
actors, he gets all porn actors to do the parts of this sort of art film that
this kid has written.

Mr. C. WEITZ: It has a kind of sweet nature, because it's about people who
are completely incapable of doing what they're trying to do, who had
nonetheless, you know, maintained their dreams.

GROSS: That sounds really funny.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Thank you.

Mr. C. WEITZ: I think it was funny. I think it's actually one of the
funniest things we've written, but it never got anywhere.

GROSS: You think it still might get produced?

Mr. C. WEITZ: No.

GROSS: Why?

Mr. C. WEITZ: I don't know. Well, first of all, I'm not sure that a copy is
actually extant. We try to look for it every few years, and sometimes it
turns up in the back of somebody's closet.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I think I have it.

Mr. C. WEITZ: But it's on some ancient computer that is, you know, in a New
Jersey landfill. Well...

Mr. P. WEITZ: We would only do it with actual porn stars, too.

GROSS: Yeah. I was wondering. Your working together, it sounds like a
mother's dream come true, you know. Every mother hopes that their children
will actually get along when they become adults, but working together, that's
great. Is your mother thrilled that you work together.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I think our parents are thrilled that we work, period, because
it was touch and go there for a while. But, yeah, they're pleased. It's the
opposite of the old Cain and Abel scenario. But she doesn't get to see us in
the editing room.

GROSS: My guests are filmmaking brothers Chris and Paul Weitz. They directed
the new film "About a Boy" and the teen comedy "American Pie." We'll talk
more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guests are Chris and Paul Weitz. They
directed the new movie "About a Boy," which is based on the Nick Hornby novel.
And they also directed "American Pie."

I want to ask you a little bit about your family. You come from a really
interesting family. Your grandfather was an agent who represented Billy
Wilder, who you've referred to, and who else?

Mr. P. WEITZ: William Wilder, John Huston.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Ingmar Bergman.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Charles Bronson, oddly. And pretty much anybody who came into
town with a funny accent had to stop at the Paul Kohner Agency and play gin
rummy and have apple strudel or something. Yeah. So our grandfather had
these great clients. Our grandmother was a Mexican film actress who starred
in the first talking picture in Mexico called ...(unintelligible).

Mr. C. WEITZ: And who's on a Mexican stamp actually.

Mr. P. WEITZ: And then I...

GROSS: Wait, I read that she was in the Mexican version of "Dracula"?

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: She was. Yes.

Mr. P. WEITZ: At the...

Mr. C. WEITZ: It was shot on the same sets as the Tod Browning version, but
from midnight on after the English language crew had finished their day
shooting. It was a really scheme by my grandfather to keep my grandmother in
the country, because talking pictures had just come around, and she had an
incredibly thick accent. And what with the end of the silent era looked like
she wasn't going to get too many more jobs.

Mr. P. WEITZ: So he came up with the scheme of let's shoot Spanish-language
versions of American films at night when they're not using the sets. And...

GROSS: That was his idea?

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Yeah.

Mr. P. WEITZ: As a ruse to keep my grandmother from going back to Mexico.
And then our mother, Susan Kohner, was an actress. She was nominated for an
Academy Award in a film called "Imitation of Life," which was an old Douglas
Sirk tearjerker.

GROSS: Where she plays a very light-skinned...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yes.

GROSS: ...African-American woman passing for white.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Mm-hmm.

Mr. P. WEITZ: And our dad was a fashion designer. In the '50s he and, I
think, Hardy Amies and Pierre Cardin--I'm probably leaving out a couple of
people--were the first people to put their names on the clothing they were
selling and to make it--the whole idea of licensing and of the designer name
for men...

Mr. C. WEITZ: But then he turned basically to writing biographies of
prominent Nazis because he had worked in intelligence in the OSS during the
Second World War. So we've got a strange family, in other words, to cut a
long story short.

GROSS: So you in your family you had two actresses, an agent, a fashion
designer. What was it like when you watched movies with your family? What
would they point out to you? What were they looking for?

Mr. P. WEITZ: Really nothing. No, no. I mean, I think they all had their
own predilections. My grandfather was still--I mean, my grandfather started
out as a producer, so towards the end of his life in his 80s he decided, `I'm
going to produce again,' so he was really looking for properties to produce.

Mr. C. WEITZ: But he had--I mean, in his time, making films, was an extension
of a larger sense of being cultured, which had to do with literature and, you
know, a lot of the great films of his time were made from books.

Mr. P. WEITZ: I think that actually our mother instilled more of a love of
the theater. And maybe on our part, as opposed to I think most directors who
come from a very visual perspective and maybe come up through doing MTV videos
or commercials or something, we, like the old filmmakers of the '40s and '30s,
were really looking to theater and to the written word a lot more for our
inspiration.

GROSS: So what your teen-age years like? Maybe you can compare your teen-age
years to the teen-age years in "American Pie," where the issues are going to
the prom and losing your virginity and...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Well...

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, I was in high school in London. There was no such thing
as a prom. I wore--my school had been in mourning for Queen Victoria for
about 100 years so the uniform was black and gray and white. It was a very
different scenario. I don't think I met a girl until I was about 18. And I
played a lot of rugby and cricket. So not very similar to "American Pie."

Mr. P. WEITZ: Well, maybe I could...

GROSS: Now you both had parts in the independent film "Chuck & Buck"...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: ...which is kind of nothing like the other films that you've made.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, it's nothing like--I mean, it's one of the strangest
films ever made I think, so...

GROSS: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mr. P. WEITZ: It's very...

Mr. C. WEITZ: ...it doesn't share much with other movies.

Mr. P. WEITZ: It's very funny, though. I mean, I find it really, really
hilarious.

Mr. C. WEITZ: I think part of the reason for its individuality is that I
don't think anyone involved with the film, except for Miguel Arteta, its
director, actually believed it would ever be shown in theaters. And so there
was a degree of abandon in some of the performances, mine included, that
reflected the fact that we thought it would never be seen. You know, I just
remember getting a voice mail from Miguel, who had previously directed a film
called "Star Maps," which was an indy--him saying, `Would you like to be in a
movie?' And I thought he meant a sort of 10-minute student film, so I said on
the scene I accepted a role which, as I learned on Page 70, required me to
have sex with a guy on screen. I mean, not for real, of course, but that's
certainly the implication. I'd never done anything like that, let alone in
front of a camera. So it was a bizarre experience to say the least.

Mr. P. WEITZ: It was easy for me. I got to play this--Chris' character is
stalked by an old childhood friend in the movie, and when Chris rejects him,
he sort of turns his affections to this moron misogynistic actor, who I got to
play, so it was really fun for me.

GROSS: And the character who's stalking your brother in it, writes a play in
which you play...

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: ...the part of the guy who he's stalking, which is your brother.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah.

GROSS: This is confusing to describe, but basically you get to play your
brother in a play.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Yeah. Exactly. I get to a play a moron's version of my
brother.

GROSS: Yeah. Right. Which works, because you look like brothers, so it...

Mr. P. WEITZ: A little bit, yeah. Actually...

GROSS: Even though I didn't realize it when I was watching the movie. So do
you think acting helped you as directors?

Mr. P. WEITZ: I mean, the thing about directing actors that's interesting and
daunting is that each of them really has their own process. You can't really
subject them to the exact same process. I think that we really love working
with people who haven't done acting before, so this 11-year-old kid, Nicholas
Holt, in "About a Boy" has a really huge part and I think does a really lovely
job. But that aspect of like, `OK, we're going to put on a show'--I mean,
'cause Chris and I hadn't acted before we did "Chuck & Buck" and a lot of the
kids in "American Pie" hadn't really done much at all, so I think that, I
mean, there is a great precedent for that in sort of Italian neorealist films
and French New Wave films. But that's something that's very dear to our
heart, the idea that you don't have to be an incredibly trained actor to give
a good screen performance.

GROSS: So do you know what kind of film you will be doing next or that you
would like to do next?

Mr. P. WEITZ: Not really. It's going to have to be ambitious in that I think
that it can be either ambitious on the level of just being truthful or
ambitious on the level of scope and sort of the visual task set before us.

Mr. C. WEITZ: I mean, I think that--well, I've certainly decided that the
process of making a film is so incredibly draining that you may as well
overreach yourself slightly; otherwise you're sort of wasting your time. The
last thing we want to do is another version of what we've just done. I can
never understand the position of a sort of jobbing director. And fortunately
we don't have to be because we can kind of write to keep body and soul
together while we're waiting for the next thing to direct. So it's really
hard to say exactly what. I only know it would be interesting if it were some
kind of leap in genre. It would be amazing to do a science fiction film or a
thriller. I think the only thing we wouldn't do is an action film, since I
think there are enough things blowing up in real life without blowing them up
on screen.

GROSS: Well, I want to thank you both so much for talking with us.

Mr. P. WEITZ: Thank you very much.

Mr. C. WEITZ: Well, thanks for having us.

GROSS: Chris and Paul Weitz directed the new film "About a Boy" and the teen
comedy "American Pie."

(Soundbite of music)

Unidentified Man: (Singing) No sign of life pulsing through these aging
veins. I bet at your age that's easier for you to say. Forcing answers into
questions. I'm worrying that you might stop breathing. On and on we sift
throughout the bets of life that never get us anywhere anyway. I'd like you
to feel we have the best intentions. I want you to know that I know it's not
easy. I want you to know that I know it's not easy, easy, easy
(unintelligible) completely in reach. I'll just...

GROSS: Music from the soundtrack of "About a Boy." Coming up, jazz critic
Kevin Whitehead reviews new CDs featuring the music of Hoagy Carmichael. This
is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: New releases of Hoagy Carmichael autobiographies and CDs
TERRY GROSS, host:

Singer, songwriter, pianist and memoirist and screen actor Hoagy Carmichael
died in 1981, but this spring he's back in force with a new biography, plus
three related records. Carmichael is best known as the composer of "Stardust"
and "Georgia On My Mind." But he also wrote jazz evergreens like "Skylark"
and "Rockin' Chair," and movie songs like "Hong Kong Blues." His film
appearances include "To Have and Have Not" with Bogart and Bacall and "Young
Man with a Horn" with Kirk Douglas. Jazz critic and Carmichael fan Kevin
Whitehead surveys the field.

(Soundbite from "Washboard Blues")

Mr. HOAGY CARMICHAEL (Musician): (Singing) Washing in a shanty on the shore,
the river swingin' on by the door. Hear that river lowly calling, I's a
shiver, night's a-fallin'. Hear that river lowly moaning, moaning low.

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

Bix Beiderbecke on cornet with Hoagy Carmichael on "Washboard Blues," 1927.
Bix was the early jazz hero whose floating phrases and unusual notes gave his
solos a wistful, faraway quality. Early on, Hoagy set out to write the way
Bix played. "Washboard Blues" is a good example with broad skips more suited
to horn than voice, though the tricky part's slow enough so a singer can still
sound relaxed. That's almost a requirement with this composer.

Hoagy and occasional collaborators, like Johnny Mercer, then wrote suitably
evocative lyrics full of yearning for some idealized or just fondly remembered
past. Here's Carmichael in 1956 with a '20s number that sounds like a spoof
of pre-Civil War Stephen Foster.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. CARMICHAEL: (Singing) Old rockin' chair's got me, cane by my side. Fetch
me that gin, son, 'fore I tan your hide. I can't get from this cabin. I
ain't goin' nowhere, ain't goin' nowhere. I'm just sat me here grabbin',
grabbin' at the flies 'round this rockin' chair.

WHITEHEAD: That brand of nostalgia sounds distinctly white Southern to me,
and Carmichael did write "New Orleans" and "Memphis in June" besides
"Georgia." But he was a proud son of Bloomington, Indiana. Whether he
composed there or in New York or Hollywood later, his songs had an amiable
bluesiness, as American as corn pudding, if easier on the ears. His voice
wasn't much, but by the '40s it took on the warm, soothing tones of a
small-town doctor with competition.

As told by Richard Sudhalter in his solid new biography "Stardust Melody,"
Hoagy was rather cooler up close, but the book's less about dishing dirt than
explicating the music in light of the life. Sudhalter's a jazz trumpeter who
knows these tunes from the inside. Carmichael got in touch with his inner
mensch via sympathetic character sketches like "Washboard Blues" or "Little
Old Lady." They gave singers something to dig into besides the usual romantic
ups and downs. This is Hot Lips Page, 1938; the lyrics are by Frank Loesser.

(Soundbite from "Small Fry")

Mr. HOT LIPS PAGE (Singer): (Singing) Small fry struck by the pool room.
Small fry should be in the school room. My, my, put down that cigarette. You
ain't a grown-up high and mighty yet. Oh, small fry dancin' for a penny.
Small fry counting up how many. My, my, just listen here to me, you ain't the
biggest catfish in the sea. You practiced peckin' all day long...

WHITEHEAD: The current boom in Hoagy-ana owes a lot to his cross-promoting
biographer, who's responsible for two tie-in CDs. Sudhalter edited one, an OK
collection of 1920s, '30s and '40s sides from the RCA catalog, including that
"Washboard Blues" and "Small Fry" and other covers by Mildred Bailey and Ethel
Waters. It's named "Stardust Melody" after the book, as is another dedicated
anthology of new recordings which Sudhalter produced and plays on. That one
features singers Barbara Lee and Bob Dorough among others. It's uneven and
sometimes kind of corny, but there is one newly discovered song, the pretty
good "Big Town Blues." Dorough's typically half-spoken delivery owes a bit to
our hero.

(Soundbite from "Big Town Blues")

Mr. BOB DOROUGH (Singer): (Singing) I ain't got a dime in my pocket. But
here's a match that could light the fuse. So here I go all aglow like a
rocket, leaving behind me my big town blues.

WHITEHEAD: There are some better covers on Bill Charlap's new all Carmichael
disk on Blue Note. "Stardust" is built around the pianist Fine Trio with
guest shots with guitarist Jim Hall, saxophonist Frank Wess and singers Tony
Bennett and Shirley Horn. They all understand that with this stuff, it's
better you don't get too riled up, but it's almost too quiet.

For the man himself, the best thing available is 1956's "Hoagy Sings
Carmichael," which we heard from earlier and which has some great alto sax
playing by Art Pepper. With any luck this mini-revival will prompt someone at
Universal to dig up the brisk pop sides Hoagy made for Decca in the 1940s and
'50s. There's nothing in the works, but they can always change their minds.
Meantime, we'll manage.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. TONY BENNETT (Singer): (Singing) I get along without you very well. Of
course, I do. Except when soft rains fall and drip from leaves, then I recall
the thrill of being sheltered in your arms. Of course, I do. But I get along
without you very well. I've forgotten you just like I should.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for the Chicago Reader and the Chicago
Sun-Times.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of song)

Mr. BENNETT: ...or someone's laugh that is the same. But I've forgotten you
just like I should. What a guy, what a fool am I to think my breaking heart
can kid the moon. What's in store? Should I phone once more? No, it's best
that I stick to my tune...
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