Interview: Director MIke Mills on the Endgame in ‘Beginners’

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CHICAGO – What would be the circumstance if after a mother dies, the father suddenly comes out as a gay? Writer/director Mike Mills had that situation occur, and created the new film “Beginners,” featuring Christopher Plummer and Ewan McGregor.

The highly personal but unusual story is sublimely handled by the two leads, and given sure guidance both through Mill’s story and direction. His resume includes graphic designer, filmmaker and artist. In 1996 he co-founded The Directors Bureau with Roman Coppola, which included Sofia Coppola.

He then directed advertising campaigns and music videos, and worked in the short documentary form with “Deformers” (2000) and “Paperboys” (2001). His first feature film was the highly acclaimed indie favorite “Thumbsucker” (2005), which won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance. He is married to another indie film director, Miranda July [”You and Me and Everyone We Know”].

The Father (Christopher Plummer) and the Son (Ewan McGregor) in ‘Beginners’ Photo credit: Focus Features

Mike Mills was in Chicago last month to promote “Beginners,” and sat down for an interview with HollywoodChicago.com. He related the sensitivity of his personal story and how it was formulated into a feature film.

HollywoodChicago: This is an autobiographical film. What elements did you change about the actual story and how did Christopher Plummer handle the character that was different from your father?

Mike Mills: It’s really two different things. The autobiographical facts are true and Christopher acted upon them. But when I see Christopher I don’t necessarily think of my Dad, and that makes me happy. The intention was not to make a memoir, the intention was to take some concrete details, then reach out and make it a story. That was the first thing I said to the actors.

Even when Christopher is doing something similar to my Dad, some things I really remembered and tried to make a portrait of, it is still Christopher. It’s a character named Hal, even though it’s a collaboration between my real Dad and me as a writer. It was turning that story into scenes, plus Christopher doing his own work. I really pushed him to make it his own, to do his own thing. Christopher is so aware about audience, a genius about audience. He understood that this was his job and to talk to them and not to me.

HollywoodChicago: In regard to directing Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer, with their distinguished careers, did you feel more pressure or was it just an honor to work with them?

Mills: It’s a huge honor because they really liked the story, and liked it for the right reasons. A guy [Plummer] who had worked with John Huston and Elia Kazan wanted to work with my script. And I love directing, I feel in love and most comfortable with the world when I’m directing. Plus both those guys are quite nice, Ewan is the most down-to-earth, normal dude. Christopher has so much experience, which could have been intimidating, but I had bigger fish to fry with my Dad’s ghost walking around. They both just really liked to work. They don’t take it for granted and they don’t take good work for granted.

HollywoodChicago: Much of the film’s thesis is about how we’re taught about relationships by observing our parents ‘relating.’ As role models, what do you believe is the hardest thing for them or anyone to hide regarding the relationship parents have with each other?

Mills: I think parents can’t hide anything from their kids. Maybe the kid can’t put words to it and it may take him a while to figure out what is going on, but I think a kid can feel it. They are totally psychic when it comes to their parents, they sometimes understand that subconscious better than the parents themselves do. There is no hiding with kids. Don’t mess with them, they can see right through you.

HollywoodChicago: How has the notion of the nuclear family, so much a part of Americana and the American Dream, destroyed the psyche and unique nature of different families?

Mills: Very well put, that’s more of an answer than a question. [laughs] The night that I realized I wanted to make this film my Dad said to me, ‘Your mother would not agree with me, but I think she turned in her Jewish badge and I turned in my gay badge, and we got married in 1955 and joined the mainstream American narrative.’ And that marriage really meant the abandonment of some deep primal important parts of themselves – their gayness, Jewishness, sexuality and desire. American families are a wonderful means as a race towards who we really are, or they’ve been historically used that way. But they are also how we figure out ourselves.

Even in how strange, complicated and mysterious my parent’s marriage was, it’s how me and my sisters came into the world, and we all love our parents in different ways. It’s the weird mess about being human, and the family seems to be in the middle of that mess.

Ewan McGregor and Director Mike Mills on the set of ‘Beginners’ Photo credit: Andrew Tepper for Focus Features

HollywoodChicago: Do you think modern society is more accepting of different household structures like gay nuclear families?

Mills: Yes, it is changing, growing in its breadth. Not only in gay families, but all types of families, there are so many non-two parent structures now, and many different ways of growing up. That seems like the march of progress. But even in California, seemingly so liberal, if you go one hour outside of Los Angeles or San Francisco it is much more contentious and a different state. America is crazy big, backward and forward.

HollywoodChicago: Have your sisters seen the film? What do they think?

Mills: One has, my oldest sister Katie. She is a film studies professor, and she very much got it. I talked to both of them about it, and they were both supportive. But Katie got that it was my fiction, my version. I could write other versions. My Dad could have certainly written his version, my sisters would have had their own version. It was weird not to have them in the movie, but also it would have been weird to have them in it, to invade their privacy like that.

HollywoodChicago: The imagery of the different times in America, illustrated in your film by symbols both historical and ordinary, seems both a facade and a destructive reality, especially for gay men and pre-feminist women. What were you doing in the film to uplift both of those groups while highlighting their struggles?

Mills: Pre-feminist women are interesting, because my mother was born in 1925 and was a teenager during the Depression. And women during the Depression and World War II were pre-feminist, but they actually had more space and room than women in the late 1940s and ‘50s. I think my Mother grew up in that space, and that is part of the humor of the mom character in the film and her irreverence. She feels very 1930s to me, and I consciously did that.

I also liked having gay history as part of the film, and part of the family’s history, a ‘heterosexual’ family being intertwined with gay history. My parents were married in San Francisco in April 1955, and right down the street Alan Ginsburg is writing [the poem] ‘Howl.’ I show my Dad’s picture of the church, and Ginsburg’s picture of his apartment. It’s what different souls can do in different historical moments.

Goran Visnjic, Christopher Plummer in ‘Beginners’ Photo credit: Focus Features

HollywoodChicago: Goran Visnjic, best known for playing a hunk on the TV show ‘E.R.,’ played the disquieting character of Andy. What notion of the gay psychology were you trying to communicate with Andy, and what did Goran add that made the character that much more exposed?

Mills: Goran did this full body transformation. He was really done with E.R., and he wanted to embrace a character unlike that type. He’s a big guy, and while some actors are internal, with Goran it was this big, playful thing, and that was really neat to watch. Because my Dad came out late and didn’t have to reveal that nature to his parents, and came out into a fairly hospitable community, I wanted the character of Andy to have an opposite experience; coming out was traumatic, causing a lifelong rift in his family and it was something that really shaped him more.

HollywoodChicago: Given that you came from a music video background, what significance do you give music in relationship to your feature films?

Mills: The difference from ‘Thumbsucker’ to this film is that the music comes from a different place. I love music, and that is what I use to help me write. The first thing I did with this film was to put Bob Dylan’s ‘Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35’ at the top of my computer. That was the figurehead at the front of my ship. It’s a New Orleans-like funeral march, but there is no need to feel all alone, because everybody must get stoned. No self pity, it has a humor and it’s full of life, that is what I wanted my movie to be.

The other music in the film came from my parents. My Dad was really into classical music, and my mother loved all different types of music, but I glommed onto her love of the music from ‘The Sting,’ the Scott Joplin stuff. Joplin led into Jelly Roll Morton, Mamie Smith and Josephine Baker. That’s what felt right for her character, because my Mom was a big civil rights advocate. It was a way to get to the character, it was a key part of the character.

Mike Mills in Chicago, May 13, 2011 Photo credit: Patrick McDonald for HollywoodChicago.com

HollywoodChicago: Your biography states you have directed music videos, including the artist and icon Yoko Ono. What emotion do you belief that Ono represents through her art and music, and in what aspect is she least appreciated?

Mills: The work I did with her was primarily animation, but I had met her before through her son [Sean Lennon]. I also interviewed her for a documentary, so when I think of her she has this tremendous, generous curiosity. She is so open and makes herself so vulnerable that makes her a target for attack. It’s funny that we have to temper the vulnerable and open people. She is quite smart and people don’t know that she is intellectually rigorous. She gives the most poised answers to questions that you can imagine.

HollywoodChicago: You and your wife [Miranda July] are both independent filmmakers, and since you’ve gone in different directions in your careers, what have you shared or how have you given advice to each other?

Mills: We’re actually very different, I like her work and she likes mine, but we go about it differently. We met each other later in our lives, and we were set in our ways, and she’s a super-strong woman. In many ways when we’re together, we’re everything but our work. When you eat, sleep, take walks and argue about the dog, we’re not sitting around talking about our films. It’s weird that we met at Sundance, and our films are coming out within a month of each other. We didn’t plan that and really didn’t want that. Does that answer the question? [laughs]

By PATRICK McDONALD Senior Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com