By: debbie lynn elias
It’s always an enjoyable and interesting experience when I sit down with director Mark Pellington. Long admiring his work in music videos and films like Arlington Road, Henry Poole Is Here, and particularly, the Richard Gere vehicle, The Mothman Prophecies, Pellington’s films are always emotional, speaking volumes as to a time and place in his life and perhaps mine as well, allowing them to resonate, be it good, bad or indifferent.
At first blush Pellington’s latest film, the sensorally exciting and dazzling I MELT WITH YOU, appears to be the poster child for boys behaving badly. With debauchery descending into new depths of hell, Glen Porter’s script details the 25th annual gathering of four best friends. Starring Rob Lowe (in possibly the best performance of his career), Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven and Christian McKay as Jonathan Richard, Ron and Tim, respectively, now in their 40’s each seems to have “made it” in life. Careers, families, an occasional hiccup perhaps, but nothing unusual, their lives turned out exactly as planned in college. Or did they? As the film unfolds, so do secrets, unspoken truths, horrors, and the unraveling of their lives, as each faces their own mortality and the age old question of “Where did my life go?”
I recently sat down with Mark for the most open, intimate and personal discussion we have ever had, talking I MELT WITH YOU, movies, letting go and moving on, and mortality.
Good to see you again!
Good to see you again, Mark. I have to tell you, again, that what you achieved with this film is just wonderful.
Thank you.
It’s true to you with your music video background and your style.
Sure! Very different than Henry Poole.
Tell me about it! But in some respects though – and you did this with Mothman Prophecies, which is still one of my all time favorites…
Ah, good. I’m glad.
. . .and with Henry Poole, and now with I Melt With You, the characters are at a crossroads, they are in a crisis of conscience. You handle that theme so well.
Maybe I just relate to it. It’s funny… Arlington Road and Mothman were about two guys who were widowers. After Mothman, I became a widower. And then I make Henry Poole which is very sad, sentimental and sweet, and that was the perfect movie for what I felt then. Coming out of it, in frustration of trying to get other movies made I wanted, my mother passed away. So you’re going through these things. And you’re parent now. So, I’m a parent and your parents die. There was no crisis, there was no mid-life crisis. There was this examination. I remember when I was 43 and 44, I was like, “I didn’t feel that”, because I was probably too sad or in grief. And so you come out of a period where all the videos and Henry Poole where the grief works, and you come out and you’re like, “Whoa! Wait a sec. What just happened? I was just 29 and now I’m 47. Where am I?” And I wanted to make a movie and I said, “Fuck it. I’m gonna make a movie.” And I remembered Glen Porter’s script. And I read it and said [to him], “Get on a plane” and we sat down for two weeks and all this stuff came up into pretty much the script. There was lots of voice over stuff in it. I said, “Fuck it. I can do whatever I want if I’m gonna go get a little bit of money from this person and put my own into it.” Naively, stupidly or whatever, but that was the spirit of it. So as it became a reality, I realized “Okay, we need real actors” because you want real actors. It helps get some bread to make it but, yep, that was the movie I wanted to make and made that will define, for me, my life at that point. I watch it now, I watched it two weeks ago, and it was almost like watching the footage of a train wreck. I felt away from it in a way that I wanted to. Those were aspects of myself of shadows that needed to go away. I needed to say goodbye. . .just some stuff that I needed to deal with and to be able to get out of my system to pull away from. I was like, “Wow. I don’t even recognize that movie because Ifm now going towards somewhere else.” But I’m glad I made it.
In watching it, and perhaps because I‘ve gone through a similar pattern in life with what you‘ve gone through – I just lost both parents within 3 years – it‘s very cathartic.
It’s scary watching it.
It‘s very scary watching it.
But catharsis is that unleashing. And that’s all I wanted to do, to be honest with you. My bar for what makes me feel something, because when you’re fucked up, when you lose your significant other, that’s severing. So, it would take so much to make me feel anything. I would walk out of movies. I remember telling somebody one year, “The only [movie] I liked last year was The Road.” And they said, “That was so depressing.” I thought it was fucking beautiful. It was so bleak, but it was one of the only movies that made me feel anything. So it took me a lot to [feel]. And when I was watching [I MELT WITH YOU] the other night, like I said, I didn’t recognize it. [SPOILER ALERT] There’s a shot of where Rob Lowe is dead. That shot was based on me holding my mother’s head when she died. And I was like, “That’s fucking dark shit. But it’s real.” I don’t like that I’ve experienced all that stuff, but I can’t help it. So my bar for what makes me react to something in the imagery or the sound – even now I was thinking, “Maybe I should have mixed that lower. Boy that was maybe a little overly rendered.” But when you’re in it, when I’m editing, I can’t help it. Maybe if I had had time and could have watched it with an audience and may have made different choices, but that’s not the way it works. You have to just commit to something.
Funny that you mention the scene when Rob dies. When my father passed, I had raced to the hospital and he had just passed not five minutes before I arrived and the mouth was open and I just stood next to the bed holding his hand for hours. That popped right into my head when I saw that scene on screen.
I’m sorry about your dad. I think if people have experienced it, if you’ve experienced a lot of stuff in your life, I think this movie will hit you in different ways. If they haven’t, they’ll only experience it based on what they bring to it. Do you know what I mean?
Yes. I do.
And I don’t think it’s that way with every movie. Some movies are designed and billed as “here’s the story, here’s the entertainment, this is what this is and is meant to elicit a laugh, the tears, whatever it is”. I don’t think [I MELT WITH YOU] is that kind of beast.
I agree with you, Mark. This is the kind of movie that makes you think.
Think and feel.
You think, you feel, you sit there and think to yourself that life has come by and you‘re how old now. I know for me, I may be going on 54, but I donft feel any older than 29, but you have to face mortality at this stage.
Exactly. Mortality. Mortality terror. Mortality acceptance. I remember my sister and I talked about it after my mom died. We had lost my dad 15 years before and she said something and I said, “You know what? We’re next.” And just in a way like, you can see it. Here I am. I have a nine year old daughter. I’m lucky, I’m lucky to hit 75. Okay. That’s 25 years. I’m two-thirds of the way done. And in a way, I don’t feel panicked. I feel kind of like, “Take care of her. Take care of myself.” I feel good about what I’ve made. Boy, there’s a lot of movies I want to tell! Very impatiently. That’s why this movie; making it the way we made it. I’d rather just keep on [making them]. “How cheap can I make it and how can I get it made?” I just can’t be somebody who takes five years between movies.
No. There’s no need to.
There is no need to. But still, even if you say you have this, “I got this incredible script now. And I’ve got Kurt Russell and I need to get the money”, but until I get the other actor and say I can make it for $7 million, it’s not what I could do for $1 million. So, I’m trying to find another [film] that I can do for not even $1 million, but go do in eight days for $300,000. Do you know what I mean? Because you can make those and they get out in the world.
I’ve been doing this as a critic for over 18 years and I’ve done films, music videos, tv, so I understand exactly.
Okay! Okay, good!
I did some of my own stuff and I know how hard it is when you don‘t have money. You sit back and go, “Okay, I can’t come up with all the money, so what can I do?” You know you’ve got to do it, so how much can you come up with? How creative can I be? What can I do? I do?
Yes! Yes. Exactly. That’s what it’s about.
I think it forces your hand as a person, as a filmmaker, whatever you’re doing – to be under the gun and find out exactly what you’re made of. I believe that some of the best stuff that we‘ve seen over the years comes when a filmmaker says, “screw it” and you just go balls to the wall.
Truly. That was the truly the intention and spirit of [I MELT WITH YOU]. I’m less concerned with the reaction of the movie because I’ve read the worst reviews ever of the movie in my life. I’ve read some really great ones but I’ve read “this is the worst movie ever made.” And I’m like, “Really? Really? So, if somebody hates it, it’s like, “Why do they hate it? What is it that makes them hate it so much?” I don’t know. Can they define what it was [they hate]? They don’t like those guys? I can read any review and look at the intent. It doesn’t matter. It is what it is. I’m more concerned with how do I get another one made.
Do you have another [movie] on tap?
Like set? No. There’s always a question of stirring the pots. I’ve got three that I think I’m one piece away from going to get financing for. And a couple of assignments like studio movies that I could do a good job at that haven’t clicked yet. But those you just wait around forever. For two years I was supposed to do The Orphanage for Guillermo del Toro, but it was “Well, if they can’t cast the movie, then it’s not really being made. So what good is being attached to it?” And you invest months in scouting or designing. It’s literally soul crushing. It really hurts when you’re working four months on a movie and doing early prep and investing yourself in it. I stopped doing it on movies. Until I know it’s happening, I’m not going to lift a finger because it’s too heartbreaking.
I‘ve seen it happen over the years to a lot of directors who do that; investing heart and soul in doing the pre-pro on it and it doesn’t happen, the plug gets pulled or it gets turned over to someone else who gets the benefit of the first director’s pre-pro a year or two down the road.
There’s a movie that might come back. But it doesn’t matter. It’s all fantasy, conjecture. You’re just one phone call away from saying, “Okay. Well, this film I’m gonna spend the next year of my life on.” So, we’ll see what happens. You know what it is? It’s I’m trying to control my actions and I can’t control the results. So if I do the best I can on a script or in a meeting, I can’t control that some guy hates the movie. You just hope that there’s enough of a balance in the reaction to it that somebody who might give you money….where you really realize it is when you’re going out to foreign sales on another project….is the perception of foreign sales. “When are you going to do another Mothman?” I probably need to do a kind of larger commercial movie to get back to that place.
Where the check books want to open.
Yep. That’s it.
Mark, always a pleasure.
It’s so good talking to you. Just awesome.
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