Those who caught Rose Troche's Go Fish and Bedrooms and Hallways know the openly queer auteur possesses a wicked sense of humor. Yet her latest film, The Safety of Objects, betrays a soul-searching emotional intensity. Add Glenn Close, a babydyke, and a boy in love with a Barbie doll and you've got a must-see widescreen work.
A darkly comic yet intensely deep drama, The Safety of Objects interweaves the lives of a neighborhood's denizens. All are somehow connected by Paul Gold (Joshua Jackson), a young man in a coma, and loss. Paul's mother, Esther (Glenn Close), tends to him so devoutly that husband Howard (Robert Klein) and daughter Julie (Jessica Campbell) have long gone ignored. Hoping to bring Esther back to reality, and exact 'payback' for her lack of attention, Julie enrolls mom in a grueling contest that could win her a new truck.
Jim Train (Dermot Mulroney), alienated from his family after years of careerism, is denied a promotion. Furious, he walks off the job and, spotting Esther in the contest, becomes her No. 1 cheerleader. Meanwhile, Jim's 12-year-old son, Jake (Alex House), begins a romantic relationship with his sister's doll (voiced by Guinevere Turner). Helen Christianson (Mary Kay Place), another neighborhood parent, is lacking romance in her life —her husband has gone cold while pre-adolescent daughter Sally (Charlotte Arnold) is busy with an apparent crush on a tomboyish peer, Samantha Jennings (Kristen Stewart). Sam's mother Annette (Patricia Clarkson), in the midst of an ugly divorce, is quietly preoccupied with yet another loss ... until Sam is abducted by attractive neighborhood handyman Randy (Timothy Olyphant).
Troche based her complex, mesmerizing film on the same-titled short story collection by A.M. Homes. In doing so, Troche carefully and thoughtfully merged several stories' worth of situations and characters into each of the film's main plot threads. To wit, the short story 'Jim Train,' featuring a workaholic worker completely alienated from his family, was combined with 'The Bullet Catcher,' a tale of a man who tries to enter a contest too late and instead supports one of the existing players. These tales now make up the film's Jim Train storyline. A luscious pop soundtrack by musician Barb Morrison's Emboznik, Bullet, and Itchy Trigger Finger outfits compliments the ultimately flowing narrative.
Although the film was wrapped over two years ago—it played at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival—Troche has no trouble recalling and discussing its making today. We hash about numerous other things in the process, from shock director Larry Clark to her Puerto Rican showbiz ilk ... like Jennifer Lopez. From the block. 'I can't get off the block,' Troche chimes in. 'I don't get paid enough. The rocks that I got are just rocks.
LF: So how does it feel to have the movie come out at long last? That was a long wait!
RT: My most hated question. What am I supposed to say? I knew they (IFC Films) had to release it, it was just a matter of time. They're contractually obligated. It is frustrating, however, to be like 'how about now? how about now?' and they say 'no, there's this competition or that competition.' Either believe in the film on some level or don't! There's never going to be a moment where the theaters are completely empty and people have to see a movie.
LF: At least you're not up against Daredevil.
RT: Oh geez, that's the same audience. Not. The funny thing about [looking at it again and talking about it] is I still like the movie. It's weird because it's the first time that's happened to me. Usually by now I'm like 'blech.' But I'm still very protective of it in a stupid way. I wish I'd gotten over it by now.
LF: It's a solid, entertaining drama. And such a great cast. It was definitely one of my favorite films at Toronto that year. And not to sound insensitive, but aren't you glad it screened before Sept. 11?
RT: I feel like this film is the trigger, the red button. Sept. 11 happened the next day, after the last screening. Now it's going to come out and we probably are going to declare war that same day.
LF: Maybe they shouldn't open your film now. Push the date.
RT: I know. I'm used to it being shelved, so it's all right. When a movie's shelved it can be 'that movie was great, I can't believe it never got distributed.' But once it gets distributed, you have to prove yourself.
LF: What drove you most insane during the script-writing process?
RT: I think it was trying to keep the emotional continuity and the balance of the stories. My whole idea was like no scene will be longer than three pages unless it includes a number of characters, so the thing would keep trotting along.
LF: Did you study any films that took short stories as their basis?
RT: Totally. That's why I made the decision to consolidate the stories and characters. I didn't want to do what Altman did with Raymond Carver's stories in Short Cuts, even though that film was very influential to me and I loved them. I wanted to make this a story about the same subject with multiple characters. I sort of looked to the multipart films more for what I didn't want to do. But I think a really fun film you forget is based on short stories is Jesus' Son. They made it such a linear narrative. There were definitely other films I loved that were multi part—Ice Storm.
LF: I love the whole Jake Train/doll relationship storyline, which was based on the infamous story 'A Real Doll.' Jake falls for a hot little male doll, Chet, later in the film (note: Barbie and Ken were featured in Homes' story, but for legal reasons, Troche and co. had to come up with fictitious names and fabricate original dolls), but you don't go as far as the story does afterwards. Did you consider going further?
RT: Yes. Actually, we shot all the Chet stuff, where he starts having an affair with Chet. Chet starts talking to him and all that. But when I started putting the film together, it became more and more clear the stories had to go straight towards this subject of loss without tangents, and I'm afraid Chet was just a tangent. So he got cut.
LF: Does Jake have sex with Chet in the cut scenes?
RT: Totally. He's in the bathroom washing Chet. Chet's naked, saying like 'I don't feel comfortable being naked around a man who can't be honest about himself. I want my clothes.' And Jake's like 'shut up, fine, fine.' And he puts Chet's little clothes down next to him. It's hilarious!
LF: How much did you have to explain to Alex House, the actor, what was going on with his character?
RT: Are you kidding? Oh my god, he goes 'don't you think Jake is a latent homosexual?' and I said 'I don't even think he's latent.' I had to warn him when he was going to see the film that the Chet stuff got cut out. That kid, he's half Argentinian and Canadian and his mother was great. She was in Canada for political asylum—her brother was one of the 'disappeared.' His father's a lawyer for the people and he'd gone to alternative schools, so he was one of those super cool ... . The nice thing about Safety was that if a parent was at all squeamish, the kid never tried out to begin with, so I didn't have to deal with these precious parents. Same thing with the actors. Not at all precious, really about the material and not having to deal with this 'she can't do that' thing.
LF: So Alex was all down with the gay doll thing.
RT: Alex's just interested in that character, he loved Jake because he saw him as this repressed homosexual and he thought he was really messed up. This is a kid who's not at all gay, which makes him so much more cool.
LF: Is A.M. Homes gay? She went to Sarah Lawrence for God's sake.
RT: Ah god. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. Isn't that common knowledge?
LF: It's not.
RT: I thought it was common knowledge. We met at a mutual friend's christmas party. A gay couple's.
LF: I gotcha.
RT: She's way pregnant right now.
LF: Are you and your girlfriend ever going to have a kid?
RT: Talk to my girlfriend because she's the young one. [We've been together] less than a year. So no pressure!
LF: Did you feel pressure when Glenn Close said she was going to do the film?
RT: I actually cried. A week to go before we shoot, every call that came in I was like 'is that it?' So we were in the car doing a location scout and there was a call on someone's cell phone and Jon Marcus, the associate producer, turned around and said 'we have Glenn Close.' I started crying. It was such a relief. I had loved her before, and that's the weird thing—when you admire an actor and all the sudden you have to direct them.
LF: Was that a pleasant experience?
RT: For the most part, yes. Like 90 percent. She was a little grumpy when she first got [on set]. She had been away doing the wonderful 102 Dalmatians, followed by the fabulous South Pacific, she had been away like eight months and so she was just wanting to be in New York. A month later I'm like 'hi, do my film in Canada for no money and be away from your daughter again.' So she was a little cranky in the beginning, then she was fine.
LF: How did you like working with Timothy Olyphant? Such a gripping, dread-filled storyline.
RT: I like Tim. It's even more horrifying in the book. He's an older guy and pretty much a pedophile. I always say he's 'sort of a pedophile,' like he's 'sort of a killer.' But how are you sort of? You just are. Tim's great. He really put Kristen Stewart at ease because it's a little creepy to even act out, how creepy he has to be. And it creeps kids out. Kristen was 10 at the time, the coolest kid in the world.
LF: I'd say the pedophile thing was actually a bit ambiguous in the film.
RT: Yeah, that's one of the reasons I made [Sam] a girl. I changed the character's gender [from the story]. If Randy truly were a sexual predator he would have found out oh, it's a girl, and done something.
LF: Why A.M. Homes' stories?
RT: I really like her voice so much. I had read In A Company of Mothers and actually tried to option that book, but Warner Brothers had it at the time. Now I have it! I finally optioned it so I'm gonna be making that one. But Homes just says what people think as they think it. She will go there, whereas I think a lot of writers are still polite even when we're supposed to be inside their characters' heads. They're still polite as if presenting themselves to us, whereas Homes is as insane as we are inside our own heads. She's very true to that interior voice.
LF: Did you debate making the film more queer, incorporating more queer stories?
RT: No. Because to me the movie was [already] very subversive and queer. In its strangeness, its view into this 'normal' world. I can't help but having some gay sensibility to everything I do. I think we see [my gay sensibility] most in Sam. That's probably the most personal change I made to the book itself. As a kid I constantly got mistaken for a boy. Even now at the airport I'll get called 'sir.' I'm like, 'what kind of man, freakish man, do you think I am?' Who's that gay guy with the puppet?
LF: Wayland Flowers?
RT: Yeah! Like what am I? Charles Nelson Reilly? I don't know what kind of she-male you think I am!
LF: Could Kristen relate to her character?
RT: What's funny is that Kristen, who I'm sure will like be a supermodel when she gets older, is this amazing, gorgeous, wonderful person who just is. She is who she is and she's so unaffected by the pressure to be more girly. I remember that when she discovered she had a per diem, she bought a coat. I asked is that costume? Is that wardrobe? It was a boy's biker coat.
LF: Awww, a little babydyke.
RT: So much! It was so difficult to find [a girl to play Sam] because I think young women who want to be actors are not tomboys as well. Kristen was just incredible. She's this little surfer drummer, so cute. The guardian she came [to audition] with was a lesbian who was a writing partner of her mother's. Her mother and father are married and straight, but her mother has this very good friend who's her lesbian writing partner.
LF: Are you glad Patricia Clarkson is becoming such a indie sensation right now? She was in, I think, four Sundance movies this year, and completely rocked in Far From Heaven.
RT: Yeah. First, Patti deserves it. But I'll take all that. I went to see All the Real Girls last week and it's fine, but if you're going to see it for Patti, it's not very satisfying. She's got like three scenes. I'd like to see a little more of her and less of that guy who's supposed to be 22.
LF: What are you working on now?
RT: Two things. My next feature, Lucinda's Change. It's the first time I ever got paid to write a script. And then I'm doing a lesbian series for Showtime. I think it's going to be called The L Word. They're going to start airing in December.
