Having been a child actor yourself, does that help you to direct a child?
Certainly in trying to create a comfortable atmosphere for him it did. And he was incredibly gifted. He knew what we were going for and I think he knew what we needed out of that character. Whether he was aware of it or not consciously, he knew when to bring the sunshine and when to hold back. I always kind of found that balance in all of our scenes together. Plus he was very open to me directing him. He understood direction he understood how to take it . Some of the words I might give him to try to motivate a certain emotion were a little over his head. So sometimes it got very sort of primary, in the direction all the way down to just like giving him a line reading which he was open to. I loved getting a line reading as an actor because the a director can say "say it like this" and you say it exactly the way he wants it and you're never gonna say it exactly the same way he wants it, but there is an efficiency in trying to communicate the spirit of it. Just by the inflection of one word sometimes you can save ten minutes of trying to find the emotional word that jars that kind of reading. It's like, you know, just give me the line reading and I'll understand what you're trying to say.
Were you always committed to starring in it as well?
No. I just wanted to enjoy the directing process in full but after my first two choices said no before we went to a third one I thought, "Maybe I would cut my workload a bit by not having the director/lead actor and also might increase my odds by hitting the tone target that I wanted by being in front of and behind the camera?"
I don't think that most people would've thought that would decrease their workload.
Well, there's a creative negotiation that happens between actors and directors throughout shooting films because a director is kind of has to resist the instinct to give a note to change a performance just simply because it doesn't sound or look like the way that he or she always thought of it. For better or worse I got exactly what I wanted out of it.
Did your young co-star's family have any concerns about the very adult material in the movie?
Of course, sure, although they understood the nuance in the script and I supported all of those assumptions that they had. It seems as if there was something slightly more elevated here. Certainly the lead character has some sort of emotional agenda at play here as opposed to just being a prankster and in fact that is what drew me to this script. So I was very specific in how I described that to Rohan's father and mother and assured them that the movie is certainly not for everyone by any stretch but the effort certainly was there, we try to give it a little bit more substance than perhaps a different version of the movie.
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