You may have read the abridged version of this interview in The Burg... well, here's the full thing. If you haven't checked out the article, check it out now!
SAM: I've just watched BOYHOOD, and what an experience this film must have been!
PATRICIA ARQUETTE: It was the most incredible working experience; it was the strangest, most unorthodox and beautiful experience ever, you just had to jump on board with all these people...
S: What was your initial reaction to the project?
P: Every cell in my body was like, "Yes!" I mean, Rick presented it like you were gonna watch this kid age, you know, through first grade to graduating high school... To see how fast his life blurred by, how beautiful the moments were; I wanted to see that, I'd never seen that done before. I immediately said yes, and he said, "We don't have any money," and I was like, "Yeah yeah yeah I'm in!" And I was like "Oh what's my part?" and he was like, "Oh you're gonna be the mom." "Okay, great!" And also, that was cool, because I've been a mom before, but I hadn't really been playing a lot of moms before because I was still young at that point, I hadn't really moved into the "mom category" yet... So I was excited about that. And I said, "Can I look at the script?" and he says, "Well we don't have one." So it was very unorthodox, a big gamble, it really gets under your skin when the movie's gonna be without a script. He told me a lot of the main changes, but he left a lot of room.
S: It must have been strange, seeing your character develop in real time. How did this compare to other roles that have all the development laid out for you?
P: There's a real safety in that, in being able to know exactly what your character's saying, and how they're thinking... it took a really different skill set... and I was excited by that. I did know a lot of the major changes, I knew some of the struggles of what I was gonna be faced with, and this family would be faced with, but as far as the specificity of things, um... but I also really felt connected with the single mom experience, and you know, my mom wasn't a single mom, my dad was the breadwinner... but I really wanted to pay homage to my mom. And there were weird commonalities, like Rick's dad and Ethan's dad worked in the insurance business... my mom and Rick's mom both went back to school, both got their degree, both taught, both ran therapeutic sciences. So I remember going home and watching my mom study, and having her talk about "passive agressive personality" and "borderline" and "narcissism", so I had a lot of that vernacular. So it was a blend of a lot of different people.
It was all kind of a blend, actually. My friend told me that story about her son sharpening a rock... it's so crazy how the world's set up. You teach little children, here's this tool, here's what it does. It sharpens something. And then, they're kind of brilliant, and they think, I want to sharpen this thing -- I'm gonna use a sharpening instrument. And then they get in trouble. It's the complexity of life... families bug each other, and they get on each other' nerves, and they push against each other... but what love feel like is... imperfect, but it's there. It's your base, but it's not always flowery and perfect. You go through things in life, everyone goes through things in life. You show me the perfect parent, I'm gonna show you a lunatic. A liar, self deceptive, crazy person.
S: Sounds like you were all able to put your own experiences into the script.
P: Everything we did was based on someone's truth, like the producer said to her daughter that the worst day of her life was when she went to school. You know, the blending of a lot of different people's experiences was that there's not really a moment in the movie that's not based on something true. Like my son had a bunch of friends over, and there was a big sign about the bathroom, you know, "Please don't use this bathroom," and then they clog it up with a bunch of toilet paper and it's like, what's going on here? There's another bathroom. Even dumb moments. Everything in life. Rick's daughter, Lorelei, plays the daughter in the movie, and she created her own language. And Rick knew that, he was like, "Speak that little language you made up, Lorelei. Do that weird thing you always do to bug your mom..." She still knows how to speak it.
S: You went back and forth between this and other roles. Tell me about the transition; was it hard getting back into character?
I really kind of got the character, I felt connected to the character from the first conversation I had with Rick, and I felt open to her discoveries along the way, so it wasn't hard to get back into character. And I think part of it was this collaborative process, of how we would work. Rick would write the rough draft of the scene, and we would read it, and then we would talk about different people's life experiences that sort of correlated to the scene in some way or another, or each other... and then we would do an improvisation of it, and then Rick would say, "That second part of that story you told about your friend, let's use that. That little improv you said on that line, let's use that part." And he would craft it from there, and then we would shoot it the next day. So it was a bonding experience, and a really creative, collaborative experience every year going back.
Also, I never got the full script, so Rick would tell me, "Oh, this year their dad's gonna take them camping..." I didn't know exactly what they talked about. So when I saw it, my character was also watching. And my character immediately had a lot of thoughts, like when they went on that little hang out with their friends, and he lied to his mom, I was just thinking, "What are you doing, I don't like that guy, you're never hanging out with him again, I'm coming to get you right now..." My character just started thinking, while I was watching the movie.
S: What did you find to be the most difficult aspect of production?
P: The only thing that was hard was finishing. You know, knowing that that was the last time we'd be shooting and that I'd be having that experience. That was very hard.
S: I can imagine that last scene was very easy to do. That line, "I thought there would be more..."
P: That was something that someone had said to Ethan, about when he went to school, and the producer said to their daughter it was the worst day of her life... I felt very different when my son went to school. I did feel sadness, but it was mostly about me pumping him up, and then as I dropped him off, that ... nine hours when I was alone in the car. But I did have that experience when I turned forty, I was reevaluating my life and feeling like it was going south. There were so many things I hadn't done, and what was I doing, and why hadn't I done them, and I was gonna be dead before I knew it... and there was a sense of that ending. So it was a collaboration of a lot of different complicated feelings and things. Also, an element of my character was the blind spot, not noticing how other things upset other people, even though she's in the therapeutic kind of world.
S: I'm sure these people became your second family. Did you get together off set at all?
P: Not that much. I mean, Ellar and Lorelei and Rick all live in Texas, so they saw a lot more of each other; Rick and Ethan saw more of each other because they were working on the other movies. And then a couple times I saw Ethan in New York -- he lives in New Yorka nd I live in LA, so... but whenever we see each other, it's like no time has passed.
S: What was your favorite part about shooting this project?
P: It's hard to say, because I really felt I looked forward to it, first of all, creatively, every year.... and watching beautiful kids grow up, also, and prosper, become who they were, which is beautiful individuals. And yeah, they were really interesting little babies, and the first time we shot I had them for the whole weekend, and we hung out and played dinosaurs and did art projects, and I got to have them just being them for the whole weekend.
Even from the beginning, they really weren't their characters. They didn't have brothers and sisters, they were both only children, they didn't really know what that sibling dynamic was like. So they were playing it very early on... Ellar had this traumatic haircut scene... Rick called him and said, "Don't cut your hair this year, we're gonna do a haircutting scene." Ellar was DYING to get a haircut. He looks really bummed in the scene, but he was really happy. And it was one take, just that. So we were like, can he pull it off, or will he just start laughing? And the way they would dress, you know-- they were so much cooler than their characters.
S: Would you do another project like this if given the opportunity?
P: "You know, this could have gone terribly wrong. I could have been stuck doing a movie with a bunch of jerks for 12 years, and it would have been like, okay, do I cut my losses here and take care of myself, or do I just keep showing up? So I don't know, I don't know if I would do that with somebody who didn't have a script, if it didn't feel right. I'd have to really look at all the data, and see how I feel.
But the whole time I was making this -- for seven years I was doing a TV show, and people would say to me, "You used to make these art movies, and you'd work with these really interesting directors," and I was like, "Yeah, I still am." And they would look at me like, yeah, right. I was like, "I'm making a movie right now, I'm making a really important art movie right now!"
S: Were you trying to keep it under wraps?
P: Well I guess we weren't supposed to tell... although I told so many people, and so did Ethan, and we both had this experience that nobody cared, it wasn't interesting and their eyes would glaze over and they'd get really bored... (laughs) and I didn't understand it because the second I heard about it, I thought it was incredible. But they didn't.
S: Have you been able to see people's reactions at all after they've watched the film?
P: You know, it's such a personal project and such a beautiful project, and we cared so much about these characters and story and experience, and each other, and i was worried about giving it to the world... but people really come up to you and tell you personal things, and are moved, and introspective, and they want to call their mom, and have a different perspective on their life... and so the love we made has been returned, and it's been incredible.
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