‘RESTLESS’ INTERVIEW: Hollywood Soapbox sits down with Gus Van Sant, Bryce Dallas Howard

Restless, which recently opened in select markets, is director Gus Van Sant’s new film about two young adults facing difficult questions of life and mortality. The movie follows Enoch (Henry Hopper) and Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) as they attend funerals, reenact death scenes and innocently fall in love. Their entire relationship comes with a lot of emotional baggage: Enoch recently lost his parents in a car accident and talks to the ghost of an imaginary kamikaze pilot, while Annabel is dying of cancer and only has a few more weeks to live.

In addition to featuring stirring performances from Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper, the movie also serves as the producing debut of Bryce Dallas Howard, the actress best known for her roles in The Help and The Village.

Recently, Van Sant and Dallas Howard sat down with journalists in New York City to talk about the film, which was written by first-time screenwriter Jason Lew. Here’s part one of that conversation.

What was it about the project that interested you both?

Gus: I saw the script when it was sort of 40 drafts later, or however many had been developed over a couple of years. So, it interested me partly because I usually look at story, characters, settings and I liked the settings of the memorials and the funerals. I liked that this guy was not invited, but he was going in as scheduled and attending. It said something about him. I know some people that do that. Usually it’s to get free food. They have big spreads. People don’t really need to be doing that, but somehow they have an obsession, like they can’t pass up the food.

The Enoch (Hopper) character was all about being in his world and Annabel (Wasikowska) was pushing him: “I want to be your friend. I want to be your friend.” She had her agenda, which was so separate from his. His was to stay wrapped up in his sorrow, and hers was to let loose and have fun. And choosing him and just grabbing him and saying, “I sought you to have fun.”

Bryce: For me, when I came aboard, my friend, Jason Lewes, who wrote it, is one of my really good friends. We went to NYU together; we’ve been friends for like 12 years. And when I read it, it was a very, very, very early version of it. He had been kind of thinking about it as a play and then was considering making a shift toward this screenplay, and it’s the first thing that he has written. So he gave it to a few of his friends to read, and I was one of his friends who read it, and the first time I talked to him about it, we talked for literally four and a half hours.

I think the things that drew me to it … It was the opportunity to work with Jason. We had done several plays together. He is a very dynamic, creative, intelligent, sensitive person. And I really wanted to work on something with him. Not in any kind of a professional capacity, but just in a creative capacity.

And I think the other thing specifically that drew me to it was just that I knew it was such a personal story for him. His father is a pediatric oncologist, and so many of his friends growing up were his father’s patients who were battling terminal illnesses. So the fact that I knew it was so close to him, I just kind of felt like, OK this is going to be a process that is going to be one that’s very honest and true and poignant. I think that’s why anyone wants to get into it. It’s kind of a creative discussion to bring out the more truthful things underneath that drives all of us to be creative.

How did you find these two actors to bring Enoch and Annabel to life? Were you happy with their performances?

Gus: We were casting with Francine Maisler, who had done Milk. Mina was well known at the time for being on this show, In Treatment, and a lot of people talked about her. I don’t know if you remember? She was kind of like making waves. Which is hard from just a small show like that. I guess everyone’s on the lookout for the new person, the new girl.

I heard about her from my next door neighbor, who is a filmmaker, who is also somebody who is really into casting. Like he used to belong to all these casting clubs. And he made movies (Bryce laughs). … He, of course, was on the case.

And then Henry was more of a person that Francine knew about, because she knew his manager, Eileen Feldman. And Eileen was saying that Henry was going to come over from Berlin. He was painting. He really wanted to be a painter. But she thought he would be really good for this movie. And he’s coming over. And when he finally came over, he was really good. And we really liked him, and eventually both of them could take the script, because they were so good, and make it their own very fast, without seemingly too much trouble.

You can sort of tell how much work they’ve done beforehand, and they weren’t completely off the page, so that meant that they hadn’t done too much work on it. But they were able to make it sound like they were saying the lines, as opposed to saying lines that Jason had written. Sometimes you even cast people when it’s not quite fluid. You say, “We’ll get.” But in this case, both Mia and Henry were able to do that. They just had the ability to do that.

Could you describe casting Ryo Kase, who plays the Japanese kamikaze pilot?

Gus: We had some people come in, and I think there were a few Japanese actors that had been sent to us from Japan. There was a connection that we had in Japan that was doing a little bit of casting. And Ryo went on tape. He didn’t really want to go on tape for some reason. But we said you got to, because there’s too many people.

I knew him socially, which was interesting. I knew him because every time I would go to Japan, I think the first time was in 2003, he was a friend of my interpreter. So one day he came to lunch with us. And I didn’t know who he was. He was just like a friend. … I said, “Who is he?” Well, he’s an actor. Then the next time I went back, he came by my hotel and he brought some DVDs that he wanted to show me. And the communication was always very broken between Ryo and I because, he’s much better now, but at the time it was very hard for him to speak English. He would speak very slowly. So I knew him and I think I saw one of his films as well.

He was the only one I knew, and I really liked him. He also had a presence. He had a name in Japan. He wasn’t a pop idol. He was a respected actor working a lot in Japan. So we offered it to him.

Bryce, as your producing debut, how was it behind the camera, instead of in front of it?

A thousand percent frumpier. It was an incredible experience for me and definitely a creatively defining experience for me. But I don’t think, honestly, while it was profoundly educational, I don’t think I could actually apply 100 percent what the day-to-day was like on this to anything else, because Gus, being the filmmaker he is, he’s masterful and all that, but from a production standpoint, he’s kind of insanely efficient filmmaker. And we came so under budget, which I had nothing to do with, because of the way that Gus works and because the way that Gus has worked with his crew he’s worked with a lot.

So if I turned around and produced an independent film with a first-time filmmaker, I think I’d be in for a bit of a disappointment. It was a great experience.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

• Restless

• 2011

• Directed by Gus Van Sant

• Written by Jason Lew

• Starring Mia Wasikowska, Henry Hopper, Jane Adams, Ryo Kase, Schuyler Fisk and Lusia Strus

• Running time: 91 minutes

• Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and brief sensuality

• Click here to purchase Restless on DVD.

• Click here to read Hollywood Soapbox’s review of Restless.