A suite in the trendy and glamorous Peninsula Hotel is, ironically, the perfect place to talk to the writer-director and several cast members of a movie entitled Friends with Money. It is perfect because this little gem of a film deals with the rarely discussed issue of how money affects relationships.
It's concerned with the tightly connected friendships of three middle-aged married women, with a slightly younger one who is also single—and this movie features a dream cast. Frances McDormand plays perpetually angry Jane, a clothing designer whose British husband, Aaron ( Simon McBurney ) , seems to all observers to be gay; recent Capote Oscar nominee Catherine Keener and Jason Isaacs are a bickering screenwriting couple in big-time trouble; while Joan Cusack and teddy-bear husband Greg Germann are Franny and Matt, the ultra-wealthy, deliciously happy couple who keep loaning money to Olivia, played by Jennifer Aniston. Emotionally and financially adrift Olivia has given up teaching and is now working as a maid. This sort of female version of Sondheim's Company ( sans musical numbers—though several wonderful new Rickie Lee Jones tunes provide the soundtrack ) plays out against the backdrop of Los Angeles.
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener is responsible for this funny, sharply observant relationship picture that opens this Friday. She and Keener ( who collaborated on Holofcener's two previous films ) sat down recently to talk about the movie. In mid-interview, they were joined by Cusack and McBurney. Highlights from the conversation:
WINDY CITY TIMES: I think they say that the majority of relationships and marriages break up because of money—at least that's what Oprah says.
NICOLE HOLOFCENER: I'm not an authority, thankfully, on the breakup of marriages. I think money is such a complicated issue and that so many people have such strong feelings about it depending on their upbringing and that if we're a mess about it it's bound to get into the marriage. I think in the same way if you have intimate friendships money will come up especially when you hit your 40s and when you're gonna be rich you got rich by this time and if you didn't it doesn't look like you're going to.
CATHERINE KEENER: Wow that's true.
NH: [ Laughs ] I'm deep.
WCT: Nicole you've talked about Joan's and Greg's characters being rich AND happily married and people wanting something to be wrong with that.
NH: We tell ourselves things to make us feel better—'Well, at least my rich friends are ugly or they never have sex' and I have friends who happen to be wealthy and probably have the strongest marriage of anyone I know and I thought, 'Isn't that ironic in a cruel way? I'm going to share that cruelty with everyone else.' Sometimes it lands out that way and it hurts.
CK: But it shouldn't hurt and why does it? Because they're portrayed so lovingly and you can't help but root for them—
NH: And there's one of them right now!
[ Cusack walks into the room. ]
JOAN CUSACK: Hello! Hello!
WCT: OK, this is perfect and I'm really happy. I'm from the gay paper and she's the gay icon.
CK: She's the gay icon? I thought I was the gay icon! [ Laughing ]
NH: You mean she's like the Liza Minnelli of Chicago because she lives here?
WCT: No, because of In & Out and Catherine, you're in the gay film pantheon for If These Walls Could Talk and Being John Malkovich.
CK: OK, good.
WCT: We were talking about the idea of wanting Franny and Matt not to be as happy as they seem to be because they're rich.
JC: I think people assume that too much of a good thing will spoil things.
WCT: But isn't there also a little bit of a tiny tyranny in the husband's character?
NH: That's your own issue. [ Laughs ]
WCT: When Aniston's character says to her, 'Well, you never had to ask him about loaning me money before you were married.'
NH: But he sees her giving away all her money—their money—and feeling guilty.
WCT: With a gay couple there's his money, my money and sometimes our money. You don't have that automatic 'our money' thing that's taken for granted by straight married couples.
CK: See? It is your issue! [ Laughs ]
WCT: Can you talk about the conscious effort to make a movie that doesn't look glamorous and show people that look real?
CK: I know it's weird that that should be a statement but it's true.
NH: People say, 'Oh, you're so brave to let your actresses look like that' and I was like, 'Uh, that's what they look like.'
[ General laughter ]
[ McBurney has now joined the interview. ]
WCT: Simon, let's talk a little bit about Aaron. It's a pretty tricky character because he's being second-guessed by the other characters and by the audience. I wonder what your approach to creating him was.
NH: I'd like to know this, too. He had sex with both genders, right?
SIMON McBURNEY: No, the answer that's been given many times before is that it has to do with the way Nicole writes. I think there's a huge amount of unconscious stuff that goes on when people write and even though this is a feminine perspective and this is about women ... I was struck by the nuances of the unsettling things in that sense.
NH: He just wants to know if you were gay or not. [ Laughs ]
WCT: Exactly—is Aaron gay or is he bi-curious? I think that part of the anger of Frances McDormand's character is because somewhere she knows that he's gay.
SM: No, I think she's just going through a crisis.
WCT: Isn't there a bit of that in there?
NH: I think there is. When I wrote it I did feel that when I knew that this character was in a rage I wondered if it was because her husband was gay and then I wrote some notes about having him turn out to be gay and then I thought, 'No, I want her rage to be free-floating' but I do think there's an element of that in there though I don't think I discussed that with Simon.
WCT: The film has great parts for women and for you ( Joan ) especially—to have done so many of those wacky, outrageous dark characters—to do a 'normal' person was it just 'thank you' or was it daunting?
JC: No, it was great. I mean four women talking about real things and real struggles in life and beautifully written. It was not work; it was like what you dream of.
CK: I was always such a big fan of hers and for me I was so excited beyond what I imagined when I knew she would do it. I just loved her take on the character because it was so alive and fresh and beautiful and spirited and all that stuff and you can see how people are drawn to her without all being some quirky, out there, loony, all comically driven.
WCT: How do you recommend this picture to straight guys? It doesn't really strike me as a chick flick but as more of a mature movie about men and women.
NH: I agree. I don't think about it. I just hope people will go see it.
CK: That's interesting. When you hear 'chick flick,' you definitely think there's something condescending or patronizing about it.
SM: If it was four guys you wouldn't say, 'It's a dick flick.'
CK: No, you'd say it's a PRICK FLICK!
[ Laughter all around ]
WCT: Thank you. There's my headline: 'It's a Prick Flick, Says Catherine Keener.'
CK: No, no, I go see those movies, those 'chick flicks' –
WCT: —along with every gay man, hello.
CK: —and I don't think there's any problem with the word 'chick' but I do think that if the term is diminishing the movie then it should be avoided. I agree this is a mature movie for whomever.
