← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
Judy Greer Stars in Michael Shannon's Directorial Debut, 'Eric LaRue'
00:23:40
Actor Michael Shannon has made his feature film directorial debut with the new movie "Eric LaRue," starring Judy Greer.
Loading summary
Transcript81 lines
- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance Ad
All of it is supported by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates for multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates not available in all states or situations. Prices vary based on how you buy.
- [00:25]
WNYC Studios
Listener supported WNYC Studios.
- [00:39]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. Actor Michael Shannon has made his directorial debut with the new movie Eric Larue. Eric Larue is a teenager who shot and killed three other boys. The film is adapted from a 2002 play by Brett Neveau about the aftermath of a school shooting. At the center is Janice, played by Judy Greer. Janice is the mother of Eric, and she's having a hard time grappling with what her son has done. Her husband Ron has devoted himself to religion and has joined a new church that promises to relieve him of his burdens. Ron is determined to get his wife to that evangelical church. As Janice and Ron fight over faith and try to reckon with what their son has done, their marriage begins to crumble. And Janice doesn't seem to be quite sure if she's in search for forgiveness or for an explanation. The Hollywood Reporter calls Judy Greer's performance superb and says the movie is a work of thoughtful intelligence and restraint. Elegantly shot. Eric Larue is in theaters tomorrow. I'm joined now by director Michael Shannon, playwright and screenwriter Brecknevu, and actor Judy Greer. So nice to have you all in studio.
- [01:46]
WNYC Studios
Thank you.
- [01:47]
Michael Shannon
Thanks, Alison.
- [01:48]
WNYC Studios
Nice to be here.
- [01:49]
Alison Stewart
So, Michael, this play first premiered at Red Orchid Theater, which you founded in Chicago in 93. Why did you want this particular play to be your directorial debut?
- [02:00]
Michael Shannon
Well, yes, Eric LaRue, the play, anyway, premiered in 2002 at a red Orchid theater. And I wasn't involved in the production. I just went to see it a bunch. I had just finished doing a production of Bug there. And so Eric Larue was the next play after that. And I had never heard of Brett. This was the first play of his that I had been exposed to. And I just thought he had a remarkable and unique voice that was unlike any writing I'd ever encountered before. So I was kind of fascinated, magnetized by the thing. And so years and years went by and Brett became a member of our company after that. And Brett and I collaborated on other plays of his. I acted in his work, I directed his work. And. And God, what was it? Bread to 23. 2023. You gave me the Script?
- [03:00]
WNYC Studios
No, before that.
- [03:01]
Michael Shannon
Oh, it was before that.
- [03:03]
Brett Neveu
Boy.
- [03:04]
Michael Shannon
Well, it was okay.
- [03:06]
WNYC Studios
I feel like it was 2020. Well, you sent it to me in, like, 2021.
- [03:12]
Brett Neveu
It would have been 2019. Let's say 2019.
- [03:14]
Michael Shannon
Yeah. Okay. So sorry about that. So it was. It was the night that Shape of Water won the Oscar for Best picture. I was in Chicago. Brett gave me.
- [03:22]
WNYC Studios
Were you in that movie?
- [03:23]
Michael Shannon
Yes, and Brett gave me the screenplay. It was the closing night of a play of his that I had directed. So I read the screenplay, and I felt very compelled, first of all, by the fact that Brett had so beautifully opened up the screenplay, because it's sometimes difficult to take a play into the world of cinema. And I thought he had done a beautiful job of that and created a community where I was fascinate by all of the characters equally. And, you know, when you act in something, you just focus on one character and follow that journey. And I felt like to do that, I would be missing out on all the other journeys that I was fascinated by as well, and also just fascinated by the idea of creating this community as a whole. So I thought the best way to do that was to direct the film.
- [04:15]
Alison Stewart
Brett, what were some of the challenges of taking a stage play and making it feel cinematic?
- [04:21]
Brett Neveu
Well, that was one of the reasons I didn't do it for a really long time. Like Mike said, that was first produced in 2002, and I'd written it about four or five years before that. And my manager, Megan Schumacher, she encouraged me for about 15 years to adapt it. And I finally had two weeks because my daughter was at camp to adapt it, and I'm like, oh, I'll see what I can do. And the thing that was really great about it and a challenge, but I really do like challenges like this. In rehearsal for the play, which I'd seen a bunch of times because it was produced in all sorts of different places. All of the conversations we had about other people in rehearsal, like, where does Ron work? What does Janice do when she's not worrying about what's happened? I was able to write those scenes. And so just adding that, adding the rest of the town, adding travel, really, like Mike said, really opened it up. And so the challenge was not as hard as I thought it would be. It was mostly just sitting down to write it.
- [05:25]
Alison Stewart
What intrigued you about Janice? Judy?
- [05:30]
WNYC Studios
I. I guess I was. I felt like she was a very courageous woman that I think, looking back on the experience of playing her, that I didn't really realize at the time that how hard it would have been for this woman to reach out and try to get help and to try to reach out to these other women. And I think that for someone who's very introverted and experienced this trauma in a very different way than the rest of the community, like what it meant have took for this woman to try to go back to work, to try to have a meeting with the mothers, to reach out even to her pastor, who she had no relationship with besides sitting in service once a week, to try to get some answers, to try to have closure, to try to deal with her grief. I just thought that it would have been Herculean for any person to do what Janice did. And so I was really impressed by her.
- [06:39]
Alison Stewart
Your husband in the play is Alexander Skarsgrd.
- [06:43]
Judy Greer
He plays Ron Michael.
- [06:45]
Alison Stewart
Ron's kind of a little awkward, a little odd. Depends what word you want to use.
- [06:51]
Judy Greer
What did you discuss with Judy about the relationship between her character and Ron?
- [06:59]
Michael Shannon
Hmm, yeah, yeah, I'm pretty careful throwing that word odd around about people. I think we're all kind of odd in our way. You know, I walk down the street every day and think, geez Louise, look at these people. What the heck's everybody doing? Look at these people. So, yeah, we're all odd in our own way. But I think that something that's occurred to me a lot of times is that people can get together and have a relationship and have children or a child and spend a fair amount of time with one another without actually getting to know who these people are or be as deeply connected as the. I don't know, the customs of our society seem to indicate that they are. I think Janice and Ron are both fundamentally very sweet, kind people, but they may not be totally awake to themselves or they may not be totally equipped to be the most agile parents in the world. Ron definitely struck me as somebody who was stunted somehow in his development. I mean, he even indicates as much himself in the film that he wasn't able to speak to his son about the birds and bees. But I can totally understand Janice falling for Ron. I can understand anybody falling for Ron because he. I do believe he's fundamentally a kind person. He doesn't have a malicious bone in his body. He's just not quite. I don't know, he's not quite self actualized, but again, I was gonna say.
- [08:50]
WNYC Studios
Existential in any way.
- [08:52]
Michael Shannon
Yeah, yeah. But again, I don't think that's uncommon, particularly in this little society we all are sharing currently together.
- [09:04]
Judy Greer
Judy, did you and Alex have any conversations about what the marriage was like before the tragedy.
- [09:12]
WNYC Studios
I don't think I talked a lot with Brett, actually, about the couple. Alex showed up. We didn't have a ton of time with him before he started shooting. He just had a baby when we made our movie.
- [09:27]
Judy Greer
What'd you talk to Brett about then?
- [09:29]
WNYC Studios
We talked a lot about Janice and Ron, about them as a couple, what they were like, their background, you know, who he was. There was a family that he was thinking about, that he knew that when he was writing the play originally. And then these conversations always lead to the more fun conversations of just people in general. Communities, marriages, characters, people. How are we similar and how are we different from the characters that we're playing as actors? And that was kind of. Those were conversations I loved having. It's not often that we get the luxury of having the screenwriter on set with us every day. In this case, we did, which was great. So I was able to keep pestering Brett about, but why does she do it? Why do they have this conversation? When did they fall in love?
- [10:19]
Brett Neveu
And I totally knew all of the answers to those. I didn't at all.
- [10:23]
WNYC Studios
I thought you did.
- [10:24]
Brett Neveu
Well, anyway.
- [10:25]
Alison Stewart
Well, when you were thinking about these two people as a pair, they can't seem to have a conversation about what their son has done. Why can't they have a conversation?
- [10:37]
Brett Neveu
Too hard? I mean, to be as simple as I can state it, it's a really hard thing to sort of wrap your mind around. And I also think that they're going in such different directions and that the actual violence created a split, but it also created a split in their faith, in their future. I felt like one is moving forward toward adulthood and one is regressing. Something that occurred to me not too long ago, actually. And I wrote this so long ago. It's been in my life such a long time that Ron, the way that I built him, was a little bit like when I was in middle school. I do believe I was in an evangelical church at the time with my folks and everything. And I became born again. I didn't know what that meant because I was 13 years old, but I remember feeling really happy and that I was belonged, had belonged to something, but I felt like I had regressed to, like a kid. And I feel like that's what I sort of tried to insert into Ron, into Ron's life, into Ron's behavior. And then the other thing that I imagined was, what would I feel like if I looked at myself back then, sitting on a couch, watching TV and being incredibly happy about this? Change and. And how it would feel. And that became Janice. And I try to, with my lead characters, make them as much as I can, like myself examining that. I mean, different people, but trying to understand that the thing that they're going through is something that I'm interested in understanding better.
- [12:11]
Alison Stewart
My guests are director Michael Shannon, screenwriter Brett Nouveau, and actor Judy Greer were discussing their new film, Eric LaRue, about the aftermath of a school shooting on a community and the family of the boy who turns out to be the shooter. So, Michael, Janice becomes sort of fixated on her son's bedroom. We see shots of the door. It's always sort of in the background. She ultimately goes inside. First of all, what went into the production of the boy's room? What would be in the boy's room?
- [12:42]
Michael Shannon
Oh, yeah, it's interesting that you bring that up because there was quite a bit of research done on it. And my lovely production designer, Chad Keith, who is a real, real artist, and his staff, his crew put a lot of thought into it. You know, the. The fact of the matter is, is that that room, typically, after an investigation, would be a lot emptier than it is in the movie. And so I had to think about that a little bit. Like the. The police probably wouldn't leave anything behind. But I was just very taken with the image of that room. It was very elegic to me. It was very poetic, and it seemed to represent the story as a whole. I'm always looking for things like that, images or moments that kind of actually kind of tell the whole story, or one version of it anyway. And, yeah, I thought what they came up with was as beautiful as any, you know, painting I've ever seen in a museum. So I kept it that way. But. And the closet, that was just dumb luck that there was that. That secret door in the closet. When I saw that, I had a feeling about that house the second I stepped in it. We had a long list of houses to look at when we were location scouting. That was the first house I saw. And I said, this is the house. I know it's the house. And they said, well, can we look at all the other ones? I said, sure. And then we looked at 15 other houses, and they said, which one is it? I said, it's the first one.
- [14:35]
Alison Stewart
How did you know?
- [14:36]
Judy Greer
How did you know that was a house?
- [14:38]
Michael Shannon
Well, first of all, it's small. It was the right size for the amount of people that were living in it.
- [14:47]
WNYC Studios
Unusual for today.
- [14:48]
Michael Shannon
Pardon?
- [14:49]
WNYC Studios
Unusual for today.
- [14:50]
Michael Shannon
Yeah, yeah. It was just, you know, it had just enough room for three people, and it was simple, and it. There was something kind of oppressive about it in a very subtle way. And the design of the house is a loop, so it's literally like you could. You could just walk around in circles in that house, which I feel like is very. A great analogy for what's going on in these people's lives, both before, during, and after what Eric does.
- [15:24]
Judy Greer
Yeah. There's a scene when you're folding the laundry and Alex kind of looks forward just through the doorway. Like, you just can't really get away from him.
- [15:32]
WNYC Studios
Yeah. It was the first time in my whole career that I've ever been invited to spend time in my character's home before I was ever shooting there. The set decorator, Catherine, she reached out to me at work and was like, hey, we're going to be working in the house, and I can leave it open, we. You know, if you want to come on Saturday. And I got coffee and went over there by myself and, like, sat in the living room for a while. And it's very rare to even talk to a production designer or a set decorator. As an actor, we have endless conversations with wardrobe, but for some reason, we rarely talk to the people who design the spaces that we live and our offices and the cars that we drive in, anything like that, which is ludicrous to me. But that's. That'll be in my next book. But in this case, it was very different. And so it was really collaborative, but it was also just really, like, an excellent opportunity to just spend some time in the space by myself, like, being there, having a coffee, sitting when no one was around. There's a playground across the street that we shot in, but it's literally the playground across the street from the house. It's not like movie tricks. And I thought that was really cool, too, that they would look at this place where all these children play all the time, even after their son has been taken away and is in jail, that they still have to stare at the place where their child must have played. And I think that is. It's like, those images are really beautiful to me in the movie, too.
- [17:12]
Judy Greer
How did that help you, being in touch with the set designer?
- [17:16]
WNYC Studios
It was so great. It was so great. I mean, I've never experienced that before, and. And so many little. There was all these tiny little Easter eggs that she. There's a. There's a snow globe on the. On the dresser in her bedroom that had, like, the. When you shake it, it was like tiny little outlines of guns, which is so silly. But it was just like these. Like she would show us these tiny Easter eggs. So it was like, you're never seeing this in the movie, but like, we kind of know it's there. Like, I don't know. Things like that that I think are so beautiful.
- [17:51]
Michael Shannon
Yeah. Kathryn Bailey, she really went above and beyond. The whole team was just phenomenal.
- [17:58]
Alison Stewart
Let's play a clip from the film. Ron is having a bit of a spiritual awakening, a religious awakening at this evangelical church. And in this scene, he's suggesting to Janice they have a dinner with a woman who he's met at the prayer group. Let's listen to it and we can talk about it on the other side. This is from Eric LaRue.
- [18:16]
Alexander Skarsgård
Hi.
- [18:17]
WNYC Studios
Hi.
- [18:18]
Alexander Skarsgård
Do you need some help with the groceries?
- [18:21]
WNYC Studios
No.
- [18:22]
Alexander Skarsgård
Okay. Hey, I was talking with Lisa Graff and she wanted to know if we want to come by their house over the weekend for dinner maybe.
- [18:34]
WNYC Studios
I don't think I'm up for that just yet.
- [18:38]
Alexander Skarsgård
No? Okay, well, I'll let her know tonight.
- [18:45]
WNYC Studios
What's tonight?
- [18:47]
Alexander Skarsgård
Prayer group at Redeemer. She's picking me up.
- [18:53]
Alison Stewart
You can even hear the timbre in their voices is so different. When you hear Janice is at one tone and he's like, hey, want to go have dinner? Michael, how did you talk to your actors about the tone that they would take in this film?
- [19:10]
Michael Shannon
Oh, dear. Well, it's a very delicate thing. You don't want people to be too self conscious about how they sound or how they look. You know, I'm really just striving to. You know, the thing to remember about actors when they go to work is 99% of them walk on the set terrified and feeling like no matter what they do, it's gonna be a disaster. So you really have to alleviate that right away. But what's so fascinating about it is if you can get them to a place where they're relaxed and they're not beating on themselves constantly, they actually have a neat habit of doing it themselves. You don't really have to say much to them. The main thing you have to manage is the self doubt, which is very understandable in this situation because it's an extraordinary feat of the imagination. Nobody in this cast has been through anything remotely similar to what any of these people have been through. So it's a lot to ask. But. But the imagination of Judy, the imagination of Alex is so potent and so beautiful and agile that once, you know. And having Judy, like she was saying, get to spend time in the house, you Know, really making it feel like it's not a film set. You know, we're not making a movie. It's not, you know, and there's something slightly luxurious about making a low budget film to the extent that, you know, there's no bells and whistles or fancy things. But the pressure is kind of, we're not sitting there saying, well, I hope Warner Brothers feels like they're $100 million is well spent. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I have nothing to lose. Like, literally whatever happens, I'm. It's a zero sum game. So it's fine. I just like to explore, you know, and we always had the time to explore, which was kind of bizarre because we didn't have a lot of time. But I guess, you know, a lot of these scenes are fairly simple and they're blocking and don't require like. We're not trying to create like the grand inquisition or something. It's just people in a space relating to one another.
- [21:24]
Judy Greer
But it's beautifully shot though.
- [21:27]
Michael Shannon
Yes. Andrew Wheeler. I really lucked out with Andrew Wheeler. He's a phenomenal dp and so he had, he showed up with so many ideas. He was really brilliant in his use of filters in the camera. He was, he. And he made some bold choices that, you know, he said during pre production, I don't know if your producers are going to be up for this, but, you know, we can always, we can always fix it in post. And I said, oh no, oh no.
- [21:59]
Judy Greer
Not the fix it in post, but.
- [22:01]
Michael Shannon
But when I saw, when I saw the dailies, I was like, no, this, this is right on the money. So I appreciate you saying that. Yeah.
- [22:09]
Judy Greer
I wanted to ask you before we go about the warring pastors in this film. These two pastors each wants to get the women together to talk. Why do these two men want so desperately to be the ones to get these women together and to have them talk?
- [22:26]
Brett Neveu
I think the first two words you use, these two men for one thing. And I grew up in a small town in Iowa, Newton, Iowa, and I went to Presbyterian church, went to the Catholic church, went to evangelical church. Growing up, I went to all three. We kind of transitioned through all of them. And there were really, really different approaches to healing, faith, communicating, loving each other, all kinds of stuff. What comes next after you pass. And I wanted to analyze that too. And I didn't. I don't think I set out to, to create a sort of rivalry between these two or a competition who was going to save the town. But it just kind of came about because if, if one pastor's going to try, especially if it's the Presbyterian church, this massive church with this big congregation.
- [23:19]
Judy Greer
That Janice belongs to.
- [23:20]
Brett Neveu
Yes, that Janice belongs to, then of course, the new church, the evangelical church, is going to say, no, no, no, we are going to take care of this and then turn it into something big. Because I also thought a lot about what happens after everybody leaves. Police leave, the reporters leave. What happens to the town who takes over? Well, in this case and in my town, where there's. It's a town of 15,000 and I think there's 15,000 churches. And so it's, they're gonna, they're gonna fill in that, that void.
- [23:54]
Judy Greer
The name of the film is Eric LaRue. It opens this weekend. My guests have been director Michael Shannon. Congratulations on directing this film.
- [24:03]
Michael Shannon
Thank you.
- [24:04]
Judy Greer
And screener Brett Nouveau and actor Judy Greer. Thanks a lot for being here and with us.
- [24:08]
WNYC Studios
Thanks so much for having us. Yeah.
- [24:09]
Michael Shannon
Thank you.
- [24:17]
WNYC Studios
To Sheep. It's made by Angels Soft and strong. Budget friendly. The choice is simple. A roll that feels like paradise and always at a heavenly prize. Angel soft. Angel soft. Soft and strong. So it's simple.
- [24:36]
Michael Shannon
Pick up a pack today.
- [24:38]
WNYC Studios
Angel soft. Soft and strong.
- [24:39]
Michael Shannon
Simple.
- [24:41]
Progressive Insurance Ad
NYC now delivers the most up to date local news from WNYC and Gothamist every morning, midday and evening with three updates a day. List listeners get breaking news, top headlines and in depth coverage from across New York City by sponsoring programming like NYC now. You'll reach our community of dedicated listeners with premium messaging and an uncluttered audio experience. Visit sponsorship.wnyc.org to get in touch and find out more.