In Phoebe in Wonderland, a strange little girl ( played by Elle Fanning ) in a school production of Alice in Wonderland finds herself spiraling down a different sort of rabbit hole and reality. It's an experience close to the heart and life of its writer/director, Daniel Barnz. Prior to Phoebe, he spent a surreal decade within the Hollywood studio system, screenwriting and developing big name projects that consistently fell through. And like his film's off-kilter pre-teen protagonists ( including a little boy who cross-dresses to play the Queen of Hearts ) , the L.A.-based father of two adopted children, with husband Ben Barnz, always was a little different.
"I felt like a weird kid growing up," he admits. Raised in Philadelphia's Main Line suburbs, "they called me the Pillsbury Dough Boy, an oddball. I didn't know it then but that had to do in part with being gay. When I think back to my school experiences there were no gay people, nobody was out, you barely mentioned the word and I think that definitely influenced who I am in some positive ways. It does make you want to go out and tell stories."
Although Barnz, 38, earned a BA in English at Yale, theater direction was his foremost passion. He attended summer programs at the Hampton Playhouse, Boston University's Theater Institute and the Williamstown Theater Festival, and ultimately relocated to Los Angeles to work with Tim Robbins' The Actors' Gang. Spreading his wings creatively, he attended USC's film school, where he experienced an epiphany. "I discovered that all of the things I loved in theater directing I could do a hundred times more in film. Plus all these other things that were interesting to me—music, writing and so on. I got hooked."
And not just hooked on film. While making his thesis film he cast future husband Ben, then an actor. ( They got legally wed during California's brief 2008 window. ) After graduating from USC, screenwriting became his bread and butter, but working within Hollywood's studios proved Kafka-esque as his projects, each with major stars attached—Jodie Foster, Leo DiCaprio and Mel Gibson amongst them—kept getting shelved or scrapped.
"One for Mel Gibson was about the Mongols Biker Gangs, they're like the Hell's Angels," he recalls. "If you knew me you would understand how hilarious it was I was working on that. I had two films that were actually greenlit and then un-greenlit. With the biker gangs, we got the call from the studio—'it's greenlit, here are the female stars we're looking at.' And one week later: 'Mel's not going to do it.' It was very soul-sucking."
So soul-sucking that Barnz proposed moving to Africa and abandoning Hollywood entirely if he couldn't get a film made within two more years. Fortunately, neighbor Felicity Huffman entered the picture. Impressed by the script for Phoebe in Wonderland, which Barnz had written almost ten years earlier, Huffman attached herself just as Desperate Housewives turned her into a bankable star. Patricia Clarkson, Campbell Scott and Bill Pullman also joined the cast.
Making Phoebe ( for which Barnz was honored as one of Variety's "10 Directors to Watch" at Sundance 2008 ) entailed a family affair. Zelda, 7, and Dashiell, 5 ( both adopted at birth by the Barnzs ) , are close friends with Huffman and hubby Bill Macy's two children, while Ben acted as co-producer. And Barnz admits that the insular world of Hollywood is an ideal place to raise their kids. "They go to a school that has multiple same sex families per class," he says. "They see a lot of different kinds of families. I think so far they seem to feel really quite secure and confident and my aim is to keep that going as long as possible without letting them grow up in a bubble. The longer they can go feeling as much a part of the norm, the better."
Now the Barnz clan's focus is Wisecracker, a biopic about openly gay silent film legend William Haines and his partner, Jimmy Shields. "We're in the middle of raising the financing and casting it," he shares. "It's a love story [ about ] how Haines was forced to choose between being the number one box office draw on top of the world or the love of this one man."
But first, Barnz is set to direct Beastly, adapted from Alex Flinn's novel. It's been dubbed a modern teenage twist on "Beauty and the Beast." "There's a slight supernatural element," he admits. "It's also a film that has a message about being different."
As for how he feels about his own children being different, Barnz admits it's a gift that ultimately comes with a price. "You kind of want your kid to be different because you understand how it can inform you as a person, give you character and creative direction," he says. "But it's also very painful when you see your child actually be different. My daughter is very introspective and has this phenomenal inner imaginary world, but that also means she's not the girl who makes a hundred zillion friends on the first day of school. Although neither of our children has a condition quite or even remotely like Phoebe's, I do feel there's an experience for each parent when your child is different than you expect them to be."
Would anything be too different? "If my child ends up Republican I don't know what I would do," he bristles. "Seriously. I feel like I can deal with anything but not that."
Phoebe in Wonderland is now out on DVD.
