Interview: John Krasinski's Hideous Men

We think that’s pretty accurate. Lots of cool stuff goes down here.

That’s what it sounds like.

So, getting on with what we are really here to talk about, directorially and from a screenwriter’s viewpoint, why did you choose Brief Interviews with Hideous Men to be your feature debut?

I never really thought I would have a feature debut. I never thought that I’d be a director and never had the impulse. It’s possible that I will never have the impulse again. It was really one of those things where, without being overly sentimental, it wasn’t only the impulse to do the movie but rather an impulse to act. For me, this book is the reason why I am acting.

I was acting in college just for fun and then I did a staged reading of BIwHM; it had such an impact on me. It sounds weird but you can be performing and making jokes for your friends and doing little plays and having fun doing zany stuff, and then you are a part of something like this that is so emotional, so provocative and has a point to it, with an incredible direction and existential experience (the book), it takes you by surprise. All of the plays that I was doing and books that I was reading, it was sort of standard issue stuff. There are amazing works, incredibly moving plays like Angels in America that obviously have a huge impact on people, but because things like that are analyzed and focused on in classes, you already know before you read it that it is supposed to be this incredibly emotional journey.

With BIwHM, I was doing the Chris Meloni part in the staged reading (the part that Chris Meloni plays in the film. Notice I call it the Chris Meloni part and not my part. He did it way better than I did, I can assure you of that.) When I was doing that, and the way that part is written, I just thought we were going to yet again put on a funny little show, but it turned out to be anything but that. When I saw everyone else get up and do their pieces I was completely enthralled. Once we saw the whole thing put together it was so moving. I think in college everyone is trying to “find themselves” and the way that David Foster Wallace writes, he demands that you look at the world from a different perspective and I find that incredibly inspiring. Whether it is an issue or a character, he always presents them in one way initially, and by the end of his observation and writing, you see this issue or character in a different way.

But even if he presents you with a bad person, that you think is bad, he won’t have some crazy switch at the end where, “But every Christmas he donates $10 million to charity,” and you think, “Oh, this character has a heart of gold!” It’s not like that, it’s more that by observation you learn about this person and their routine and you start to understand the person better and in understanding you can look at them from a different angle. In understanding, which is a big thing for me, whether it is a social issue or whatever, if you look at it a little bit to the right and a little bit to the left, you get a fuller view and that’s kind of the definition of social responsibility and that was a big deal for me.

[Laughs]That was the longest answer to that question that I have ever delivered.

[Laughs] Well it was a great and definitely set off lots of questions in our head. One in particular is that you talked about how this material is very provocative and very deep and does force you to look at things from a different angle, but it is also incredibly brutal towards the inner workings of the male mind. Did you ever feel like, in making this book into a film, that you were betraying your gender?

It’s so funny, as you were saying that, I was thinking, “She is going to use the word ‘betray’, I just know it.” I don’t think so. I think to me, again, and maybe I am being completely idealistic, but David Foster Wallace does this incredible thing where none of these guys alone, well maybe a couple of them, but for the most part they don’t exist independently. Some of those guys are so brutal that you realize that person may not exist individually, but the amalgam of all the characters together do show a lot of insight into the way guys think. I don’t think all guys are so sexually predatory. I don’t think all guys are one way or another; everybody has a combination. So to me, getting back to the idealistic point, I think that in a way it is almost this incredibly wonderful thing that David Foster Wallace did in writing these characters, which is he allows you to see the power of honesty and truth. When you are honest about your insecurities and your vulnerabilities instead of always being so incredibly defensive and self protective, which is always the reason why these guys are getting in trouble, they are doing one thing that is overcompensating for their insecurity, they start coming across as hideous and as soon as they break down and show their insecurities they are not so hideous anymore.

Obviously, a case in point that I am thinking of is Dominic Cooper’s character. His theory that a women being abused might have some upside is a completely offensive and brutal statement. It’s awful.

Agreed.

But his anger towards her (The Interviewer, Sara Quinn, played by Julianne Nicholson) is so incredibly brutal that you wonder where he could get the fuel to even be this angry. Really, I think that his interview represents the whole movie. At the end of it you start to realize that it is all his fear and insecurity and lack of ability to deal with the world and what he has gone through that fuels his anger and it is so oddly enlightening. I think if I had to choose one interview to sum up the movie, that would be it, because you leave that story not knowing how to feel.

You definitely don’t hate him anymore and you find yourself in this weird space where you think, “Oh my god, now that I have the information, what do I do with it?” That is the way that I feel about this movie. Once you have taken it all in you can choose for yourself whether you like it or not. Whichever people choose has never been my major concern. My major concern is that I have presented the material in a respectful way and that it is hopefully something that David Foster Wallace fans can be proud of.

At the end of the day my biggest goal was to start conversations. It is provocative. It is one of those movies where you are not supposed to, at the end, say to yourself, “I feel good because the protagonist won.” It’s not like that at all. It is definitely nonlinear and more of a weird experiment. You need to leave and digest the material, which is the highest compliment that you can give to any artist (and I mean DFW, not me), when you take something in like this and you can’t really decide how you feel about it for awhile. You have done the artist such justice by taking it all in, rather than watching it and saying, “Hated it!” as you walk away.

Well, it is interesting that you brought up the Dominic Cooper interview because that one is definitely the most provocative of any of the interviews in the movie and because he is interacting with Julianne Nicholson’s character, it feels like it kind of changes the source and its intent. Since the narrator in the book seems to be a blank slate as a thematic choice by David Foster Wallace, do you think that the introduction of this female protagonist who has a story line alters the delivery or possibly the audience’s reception of the material?

Good question. I have 50 ways to answer that and won’t be able to focus on one. One thing is, when I read the book, I vividly saw that it was a woman that was interviewing these guys. If you read the book, after the interviewer asks these questions, the way that the guys respond is very interesting. None of the men seem as if they are answering clinical questions; they seem like they are being provoked slightly. In order to do that, if you are just doing a clinical study on the male psyche you would ask very basic questions and just keep hacking away at very general stuff. You wouldn’t ask them to talk about their last sexual experience or how the girl felt about the two of you breaking up—that’s not clinical, there is something personal to that, which is why I connected her to one of the characters. That was absolutely the biggest cinematic choice that I made and I was scared to death to choose that, but I was on the phone with David Foster Wallace—he called to give me his blessing, which I thought was incredibly generous, but now that I think about it, it was a necessity. I wouldn’t have been able to make the movie, especially the movie we made, without knowing that he was not only okay with it but that we had come to this place that I am about to tell you about. He was very reluctant to talk about the script, he didn’t want to hear about it and by the end of our conversation his curiosity got the best of him and he said, “Why don’t I tell you what this book is.”

And then he said something very interesting. He said, “The book is a failed experiment.” And I said, “Well, how do you figure?” He responded, “Well I wanted to write a book about a character that you never see or hear from, but due to all of the characters around her you know who and what she is.” And I said, “Good, so it’s a woman.” You know, whoohoo, we got it right. We were three weeks away from shooting when I talked to him, so we had already written it and cast it and everything and then he said, “I think she is probably at an ivy league school doing her dissertation on the effects of the feminist movement on the male psyche.” And I was, like, oh my god. There was a long pause and he said, “What’s wrong.” It was then that I told him that that was exactly what the film was about. I told him the plot and we laughed about it because he was so excited that we had unearthed the truth and turned it into a movie and that maybe it wasn’t such a failed experiment. I’ve gotta say that that was one of the greatest moment of my career, to connect with an author that I feel so incredibly admiring of and not only that we were making a movie out of his work but that we were actually on the right path was an awesome feeling.

That’s pretty fabulous. You really couldn’t ask for more.

This question may be a bit fatalist, but do you think that the film conveys that relationships of any kind are always doomed to fail?

No, not at all. In fact, and maybe this is just a side effect of reading it 3,000 times, but the truth is that I think it is incredibly enlightening. It’s like that age old saying about making any decision, which is if you see what you don’t want, then that will better inform what you do want. I think that is true about seeing these men and hopefully none of us want to be like them, so we can identify some of the qualities in them that you might think you have also and start to move away from them.

My understanding of the material is that it is oddly uplifting and the potential is there for gaining an understanding about the power of honesty. I think these guys hiding their fears and insecurities, like I said, is sort of not only what these characters are doing in the story, but also what has been the norm in real life. I think in the ‘50s, the male thing was you run the house, you don’t show emotion, guys are the providers, we are the only providers, nothing can change, and that is obviously why the feminist movement happened.

It’s true what Julianne says at the end of the movie: “Everyone knows what happened to women. But what happened to men?” And it is very interesting to think about that. Guys are now in a position where they are not only not the sole providers but they're not even the providers. I think this whole paradigm shift is going to have a lasting effect. The movie basically shows that it is okay, everyone should take a deep breath. It is okay if you are nervous or insecure, just be honest about it. Don't try to be some tough guy and project something that you are not when really you are just bummed out that you can't perform sexually or whatever it is, whether it is a guy like Ben Shenkman's character or Dominic Cooper's character. It's in the truth that all this relief comes and I think that says, at least to me, that relationships can work and the ones that are based in truth and honesty with be lasting.

There are definitely moments in the film, specifically your final scene (not to be a sycophant or anything), that are pretty powerful and seem really true. They kind of go above and beyond what the film is itself and hopefully the audience will embrace and remember those moments.

Thank you for saying that.

Well, thank you for taking time to talk with us and good luck with the Austin screenings this weekend.