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Continuing to dazzle us with music videos and television commercials, including a Budweiser Super Bowl commercial, Jake went back to feature films in 2010 with the drama “Welcome to the Rileys” starring Kristen Stewart, James Gandolfini, and Melissa Leo.\u00a0 An emotionally powerful film written by Ken Hixon, with “Rileys”,\u00a0 we saw a depth to Jake’s storytelling that embraced all the elements of filmmaking to create one unforgettable tapestry of a slice of Americana.\u00a0 But it took almost another decade before Jake delivered his next feature film; this time, AMERICAN WOMAN, starring Sienna Miller in what is undoubtedly the best performance of her career.\u00a0 It was worth the wait for Jake Scott to tell this story by Brad Ingelsby as Jake has left no stone unturned in bringing AMERICAN WOMAN to life.\u00a0 From the foliage of the region to location homes to casting to cinematography to score to casting,\u00a0 Jake once again explores a regional slice of Americana and the human condition with an intense character study that is riveting, compelling, and poignantly inspiring.<\/p>\n Set over a period of eleven years, AMERICAN WOMAN follows the story of single mother Debra Callahan who is forced to raise her grandson Jesse after the disappearance of her daughter. Opening in 2003 in a rural area of Delaware County in suburban Philadelphia, we meet Deb, her daughter, her grandson.\u00a0 Living across the street is Deb’s sister Katherine and her husband Terry along with their two sons, and Deb and Katherine’s mother Peggy.\u00a0 Deb is this side of a trainwreck as she cheapens herself and throws caution to the wind, desperate to “find a man.”\u00a0 Several years pass and the case for Debra’s missing daughter has gone cold, but Deb now has a boyfriend living with her and Jesse.\u00a0 He pays the bills but exacts a price in emotional and physical abuse of both Deb and Jesse.\u00a0 Interesting is the bond between Deb and Katherine and Terry which, despite differing opinions, has only strengthened over time.\u00a0 Giving Deb the support and courage to clean up her act and her life, through Katherine and Terry she meets Chris, the ideal man.\u00a0 But as time and marriage marches on, will Chris prove to be all they think he is and will Deb have the strength to stand on her own two feet?<\/p>\n Spanning approximately 11 years, we are captivated by AMERICAN WOMAN and by Miller’s performance.\u00a0 But it’s the attention to detail, the visual metaphor, the music, all the puzzle pieces which Jake Scott carefully assembles that bring this story to life with authenticity.\u00a0 His grasp of the human condition, as with “Welcome to the Rileys”, once again resonates with truth and compassion.<\/p>\n I spoke at length with JAKE SCOTT about AMERICAN WOMAN, his craftsmanship and storytelling, and how he managed to find Boston-area locations as stand-ins for the beautiful Brandywine area of suburban Philly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For my money, you got another winner here on your hands, Jake.\u00a0 I really love this film and what you did with it. And sitting and watching it, it felt like I was right back home, especially when I saw the maple leaves and foliage!\u00a0 That was a key.<\/strong><\/p>\n Amazing!\u00a0 Thank you, thank you.\u00a0 That’s the best compliment. That’s it!\u00a0 That’s my day made.\u00a0 And yeah, the leaves?\u00a0 It was hard to find, all the combination of those things.\u00a0 We went out.\u00a0 I had a nature unit. and we went out, I had a nature unit like, you know, “Change the season! Quick, go find whatever!”\u00a0 You know, like you do … You’d find the seasons, whenever it was available.<\/p>\n Well, I am beyond impressed.\u00a0 I loved what you did with “[Welcome to the] Rileys.”\u00a0 You really tapped into a slice of American life and the human condition.\u00a0 And you do it again with this film.\u00a0 And I love it!\u00a0 The biggest thing for me, being that I’m from suburban Philadelphia where this is set, is the fact that you found a spot, locations in the Boston area no less, to mirror that section of Philly and Delaware County where you’ve got Brandywine Creek and Tyler Arboretum and all of the wooded areas with the maple trees, impressed me to no end!\u00a0 Then to have what Sienna [Miller] pulls off with the mannerisms, with the dialect, and your costume and hair, with the outfits, with the jewelry, with the nails, that is all so spot-on for that region.<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you.\u00a0 That’s it!<\/p>\n It is perfect.\u00a0 Regionally perfect.\u00a0 And it blew my mind that you were able to pull this off in the Boston area.\u00a0 I would never have known this was not Delaware County.<\/strong><\/p>\n Wow!\u00a0 Thank you.\u00a0 Here’s the thing.\u00a0 The writer’s from Delaware, so he was a brilliant resource.\u00a0 \u00a0Also, I went to Delaware [County] and had a look.\u00a0 Obviously, I went outside.\u00a0 I’ve got to go look and see and make sure we’re going to get this right.\u00a0 And I was so paranoid we were going to get it wrong.\u00a0 My production designer, Happy Massee, and Alex Bovaird who did the costumes, they’re both obsessively detail-oriented.\u00a0 So, that was a big part of it in building the vernacular, I suppose.\u00a0\u00a0 I think it’s also not so distant from some parts of where I come from.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 \u00a0It’s blue-collar, we call it working class.\u00a0 But I think when people read the script, a lot of people thought that because of her, because of Deb, and how she is when you meet her, which is, she’s a party girl, and we all know people like that, who just can’t grow up, who let their kids down, who aren’t really there, emotionally available.\u00a0 They’re either narcissistic, or they’re just dysfunctional, alcoholic, addicted, sex addicted. T here’s so many people like this. Male and female.\u00a0 I felt that, on the page, there was this sort of, there was a judgment that I kept hearing.\u00a0 “They’re white trash,” right?\u00a0 \u00a0And I’m like, “They’re not. They’re not white trash.”\u00a0 You’d think that’s not what these people are.\u00a0 They’re just good, honest, hard-working class, hard-working people.\u00a0 \u00a0Katherine, and Terry, across the road.\u00a0 We were thinking about the timeline of this, the recession.\u00a0 We went through a bad recession.\u00a0 We’re post-9\/11.\u00a0 That is the timeline of the story.\u00a0 But Cath does the bills. Terry’s in construction.\u00a0 He\u00a0 works really hard and they tighten their belts.\u00a0 \u00a0So it’s all that stuff.\u00a0 There’s a sort of dignities to the characters, and of course, Deb grows through the film.\u00a0 And grows up through the film.\u00a0 So that story doesn’t necessarily only happen in Delaware County. Right?\u00a0 It could happen in Yorkshire, England.\u00a0 It can happen in Northern France, it can happen anywhere in the world.\u00a0 So, the people of that part of Pennsylvania, which I really do find there’s a lot of parallels between England and that part of America. Here, there’s no parallels. But there, there’s a lot of parallels.<\/p>\n I still think it goes back to because of the fact the British colonized the region!<\/strong><\/p>\n I do, too. And especially now I’ve spent as much time as in New England.\u00a0 I’m like, “Oh my God. This is what’s what it is.\u00a0 We are related.”\u00a0 We are related.\u00a0 They’re very welcoming in Massachusetts. But I felt very, weirdly connected to it because I felt very comfortable with the culture, and it was really interesting. It sounds logical, isn’t it?\u00a0 \u00a0This film’s not going to get any awards for design or visual. But it’s all design and visual.\u00a0 It really is. Right down to the nails and the crib.<\/p>\n Oh, the nails!\u00a0 I knew girls like her, like Deb. And, it’s interesting when you say that nobody’s white trash, which is true.\u00a0 But whatever the reason, a lot of the women think or <\/strong>thought that this was how you go get a man; you put on all these trappings.\u00a0 I can tell you horror stories of women I knew in the region.\u00a0 So many mother-daughter battles and father-daughter battles because this was their daughter’s costume to go out and find a man to go take care of them, or to better their life.\u00a0 \u00a0And I find it so striking in AMERICAN WOMAN because we see the costume coming off.<\/strong><\/p>\n I love this interview!\u00a0 The point of the lingerie in the motel room thing.\u00a0 Alright.\u00a0 I’m a guy.\u00a0 I’m heterosexual.\u00a0 I have five kids.\u00a0 I’m a guy.\u00a0 So going into this film, I’ve got three daughters, and I think, “Okay. I’ve got to really approach this . . . There’s the male gaze and there’s the female gaze.”\u00a0 You know?\u00a0 I was like, “Okay, I got to really come at this, really come at this with a different viewpoint.”\u00a0 And catch myself … No, I’m not misogynistic, but catch myself because of how we are conditioned, socially; how our mothers conditioned us, how our fathers, how our peers, how other members of your sex condition you into behavior. Right?\u00a0\u00a0So I’m thinking about this, and I think, “Okay, we got Sienna in the cheapest lingerie you could possibly find. And it still looks too good.”\u00a0 And you’re thinking, “How do I get this …”?\u00a0 And all the guys involved in the film were a little bit . . . I had to educate them about this, and say, “Guys, if this scene is sexy, we fucked up.”\u00a0 Pardon my French. “If this scene’s sexy, then we’re too present in the decision.” Because there isn’t nothing sexy about this! She’s in the cheap motel wearing two, three dollar lingerie, with a married man who is drunk.\u00a0 It is that close to being paid for sex, right? And it’s depressing.\u00a0 \u00a0And that was the thing that sort of opened the whole of my approach.\u00a0 Once I made that decision I was like, “Oh! That’s it!\u00a0 Her growth can only be seen through her own experience.”\u00a0 So, she disappoints herself.\u00a0 That’s what that look in the mirror is, when she’s in there in the bathroom.\u00a0 She’s almost like, “Here we go again. I got to do this again.” And it’s, from there to that ending, where she’s clear, and she’s present.<\/p>\n And the makeup is gone. The nails are gone, the makeup’s gone, and we see that visual transformation that is so incredible, Jake, because slowly, with each point, each step that she takes … the curls go, cuts the hair five years later.\u00a0 She’s still trying to find who she is.\u00a0 But, she’s improving. And a lot of those trappings, that costume, is gone.\u00a0 And, by the time we get to that third act, and she’s standing there, and there’s no makeup, and the hair is totally natural, and we finally see her. Watching this unfold is just glorious, Jake!<\/strong><\/p>\n Right.\u00a0 Amazing.\u00a0 Thank you!\u00a0 That’s exactly it! The makeup’s gone, and then nails are gone.<\/p>\n And Joi’s [McMillon]\u00a0 editing!<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah, she’s killer.\u00a0 She’s killer.\u00a0 That woman. . . I’m telling you.\u00a0 I sat and watched –\u00a0 I was undecided about editors, and I was like, “There’s too many men. . .”.\u00a0 \u00a0That was the other thing, it was like, male director, male writer, male DP. And male productions behind it.\u00a0 \u00a0And interestingly, there were quite a few daughters amongst us as men as fathers. But, I was like, “Alex Bovaird.\u00a0 I need a point of view in here that’s balanced.” And, boy, did I get it with Joi, you know?\u00a0 I’m watching the screen in “Moonlight” and about a third of the way in, half or 30 minutes, I was like, “This is the editor. This is it.\u00a0 This is the editor.\u00a0 I’ve got to have her.” And she came in for an interview, and we got on like a house.\u00a0 And she giggles, and I loved that.\u00a0 That was it.\u00a0 There’s not anything but complete and utter adoration for her as the craftswoman and artist that she is.<\/p>\n Joi is great.\u00a0 Something that I also love, and it’s a testament to you, to your cinematographer John [Mathieson], and to Joi, is that in so many of these scenes we’ve got the whole family in the house, in one room. And I know the size of these rooms, in these houses. It is not big.\u00a0 Not by any stretch of the imagination. But you have all these people, and granted the fact you picked houses that you’ve got that second level with the stairs is your lifesaver for these interiors.<\/strong><\/p>\n Man, you notice everything!\u00a0 \u00a0It was the only way we could do it. And we kept looking at these houses, and we kept going back to that particular … Because I had it in my head, right from the get-go, that it’s a cul-de-sac. There’s only one way in, and one way out. Because it’s like the bottom of a test tube.\u00a0 Kath loves the security of the cul-de-sac, and Deb is\u00a0trapped.\u00a0 It’s like a Venus flytrap.<\/p>\n Plus, the metaphoric dead end.<\/strong><\/p>\n There it is!\u00a0 But Kath loves that it’s the dead end.\u00a0 \u00a0They get married there.\u00a0 But the houses themselves, as you correctly point out, that was it.\u00a0 That was it. And you could use that landing level as a stage, as Chris [Aaron Paul] does, in his poor attempt at seduction.<\/p>\n And in Kath’s house, Amy Madigan’s character of Peggy, you got her in there, to keep her in the frame.\u00a0 All of those houses were built in the 1960s along that northeastern seaboard in the suburbs.\u00a0 My parents’ house, our whole neighborhood and those surrounding us, were built similarly with landings like that.<\/strong><\/p>\n Yeah.\u00a0 1962, the first part of the 60s.\u00a0 \u00a0The couple that is Kath’s house, Jack and Dotty, they’re in the film. You see them.\u00a0 They’re sort of distant family members in the film.\u00a0 This very white-haired lady, and Jack.\u00a0 They’re amazing. That was their house. They bought that house when it was new.\u00a0 They brought up their kids in that house. That street where Deb and Chris get married, that is their\u00a0 [Jack and Dotty]\u00a0 garden.\u00a0 It was those people. That’s who they are.\u00a0 \u00a0And it was the pictures on the walls, and everything.\u00a0 So I was like, “You two have got to be in this film. You’ve got to be in the film.”\u00a0\u00a0“Nah, we can’t do it … ” And I was like, “No, you’re going to be in this film.”\u00a0 And so, they never left.\u00a0 I always just talked to them at lunchtime, just stuff like, “Do you not feel like you want to go somewhere? . . .”\u00a0 \u00a0You know?\u00a0 “No, no, this is, we’re happy here. We are happy and we are glad to be here.”\u00a0 That was it for me.\u00a0 It was like the contrast between Kath’s feelings about it and her sister’s feelings, and the two of them, and then Deb leaving at the end, how hard that is for Kath.\u00a0 And they’re going to talk on the phone in like two hours!\u00a0 That’s the funny thing.\u00a0 And Kath will go and see her in a week.\u00a0 And that’s “the thing”.<\/p>\n That umbilical cord.\u00a0 It is like they’re twins. That umbilical cord does not break.\u00a0 I have a brother and sister like that with each other. So, I totally get this, in this film.\u00a0 John’s lighting design is so exemplary as a means to distinguish between Kath’s and Deb’s houses.\u00a0 We’ve got the dirty look, the yellow look, in Deb’s house.\u00a0 Doesn’t want to turn the lights on, wants to keep everything shadowing. And Kath, you’ve got the beautiful kitchen window, and you’ve got light coming in. Beautiful contrast, even though the houses are the same design!<\/strong><\/p>\n They’re exactly the same floor plan. There it is the exact same house. It’s exactly the same.\u00a0 And all it was is that.\u00a0 Yeah, you saw it, you saw it as we intended it.\u00a0\u00a0And it did feel different.\u00a0 You stood in that house, and it did feel different.\u00a0 No one liked the days when we were shooting in Deb’s house.\u00a0 Everybody, the crew, got grumpy with each other.\u00a0 But soon as we were in Kath’s house, people were making tea for each other and bringing chocolates to set, and it was like, “I’ll let everybody hang out in the sofa.”\u00a0 It was really interesting, the psychology of that.<\/p>\n Before I am taken away, Jake, something that fascinates me is that you make these two very significant films about the human experience, the human condition. “Welcome to the Rileys”, a portion of Americana.\u00a0 AMERICAN WOMAN, a portion of Americana.\u00a0 Yet, here you are, a British director.\u00a0 What is the appeal of these American stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n I could’ve just easily made them both in the United Kingdom. I live here. And, I think I’m a great admirer of a particular period of American cinema as well.\u00a0 I don’t even have to explain that. But, also, as a European, I was always fascinated by Wim Wenders, and British directors, European directors, that have come here, and made, told American stories.\u00a0 \u00a0I think there’s a sort of viewpoint that we might have that’s still fascinating to me as a culture.\u00a0 I think that’s what it is.\u00a0 I’ve just a fascination with the culture.\u00a0 And I love this country and I find truth in these live.\u00a0 Because I’ve got a famous film director as a father [Ridley Scott] doesn’t mean I don’t have a rest of a family who have normal jobs.\u00a0 You know?\u00a0 \u00a0I’ve lived in Beverly Hills my whole life.\u00a0 Went to school in London.\u00a0 Came here when I was 26.\u00a0 Yes, I’ve had a fairly, very privileged life, but. . .\u00a0 You know, my mum lived on a cul-de-sac for 25 years, and it’s in the suburbs of London.\u00a0 So it’s not through anything else than just the humanity of the characters in these stories about the truths, and the truth of living.\u00a0 \u00a0I love it.\u00a0 It just fascinates me.\u00a0 Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind doing a film with a car chase, or something, you know. But it would still be character-driven!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n by debbie elias, exclusive interview 06\/06\/2019<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/behindthelensonline.net\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/AW-3.jpg\")
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