Interview [Written]: Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, and Craig Johnson (“The Skeleton Twins”)

Huffington Post interview with The Skeleton Twins actors Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig, and co-writer/director Craig Johnson:

Did you ever feel it a challenge to tonally keep it in check, just because the subject matter can be pretty touchy at times?

Bill: We were all over the place, and the tone of the movie was just really, really a hard tone to achieve. Craig and Jenny, the editor, did an amazing job, I think, because they’re very disciplined. Because there was tons of stuff that we did that was really, really funny, and some things that were incredibly bleak and even more hard to watch than that are in the film, and Craig was disciplined enough to say, “This is what’s right for the movie.”

Craig: Getting the tone right to a movie like this was critical. It was everything. We knew that that was sort of like Marching Order #1, and there’s so many things that factor into that. How, where the performances are pitched. How committed do we go? How dark do we go? Music’s huge for that, and music’s really important to me, so finding the right pieces of music, from the score to the source music, was critical.

And, it’s intuitive. It’s hard to say when you know you’ve got it. It’s just, there’s this feeling like, okay, this is starting to feel right. We screen rough cuts of it for some feedback, to get more of a sense. It has so much of it just trying to be honest, like gut-checking yourself. Are we being honest? Are we being truthful? Am I leaving this in just because it makes me laugh, when it doesn’t quite feel like what the characters would do.

Kristen: It’s just so interesting that people say it is kind of a different tone, because it doesn’t fall into total comedy or total drama, which is so funny, because that’s what life is: both. It’s just funny that we all watch these stories of people’s lives, and it’s not just all one thing.

Craig: Movies are ruled by genre, so often, and things go binary and become black and white pretty quickly. Many movies don’t. There’s a whole tradition of wonderful movies that are similar in tone to this film. I just re-watched the “Ice Storm”, the Ang Lee movie, and that’s in a similar world. Not to compare myself, that’s a great movie.

Bill: (mock newscaster voice) “Craig Johnson compares himself to Ang Lee! What do you think?”

Kristen: “Implies he’s better!”

Bill: “Implies he’s even better! Ang Lee angry! Response?”

Kristen: “Craig Johnson’s body found!”

Bill: “Greg Johnson’s body found eaten by a CGI tiger! Source says Ang Lee missing!”

(laughter)

Here is the trailer for The Skeleton Twins:

The movie opens in select theaters this week.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Comment Archive