American Dreamer is a film that explores one man's idea of happiness — four walls, a patch of grass, and a place to write his novel. In a world where that's becoming less and less obtainable, it offers a life lesson about where happiness really comes from, and how we treat one another in the pursuit of it. Starring Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine, this is a modern take on the odd-couple dynamic that encourages us to seek understanding.
Ahead of its release in selected cinemas, FILMHOUNDS had the pleasure of speaking with director Paul Dektor.
I've been really excited about American Dreamer, and it's now nearly 2 years since it premiered at Tribeca Film Festival. How does it feel that it's finally going out to the world?
You know, it's kind of mixed because it's been a long time — we kind of sat on it for a year. We showed it at Tribeca and there were some things we wanted to change, and we went back to make those changes. We finally had it ready and then the strike was coming and all these things were happening. In hindsight, I wish we didn't sit on it for so long, because the whole world has changed since then. It feels like we're twenty years down the road — but I'm happy for it to be coming out, and I'm happy for it to be seen, so that feels great.
I wonder if the world being so different now compared to when you went through production is the reason it came across how it did to me — I don't think I expected it to be so wholesome. Do you think that's a fair word to describe it with?
It is, it is. Did you think it was a straight-ahead comedy?
I think because of the housing crisis that exists worldwide, there was an expectation that it would be quite politically critical of that alongside the comedy. But really I think it's more about the two main characters, Phil (Peter Dinklage) and Astrid (Shirly MacLaine), being able to see the best in one another. Do you think that's a fair interpretation?
Well, I'll tell you what my intention was and you can tell me if you see it — at the heart of it, it's about a guy searching for happiness. He thinks he's going to find his happiness in one place and it's external, but he realises through his meeting with Astrid that maybe it's not that. We didn't want a big Hollywood ending — he's just questioning by the end and we're left, or at least I am, I'm left questioning if he's going to change.
But there are some moments to what you're talking about too. To me, one of the most poignant moments, and a lot of it just gets gone over, is the moment Phil's in the classroom and he's lecturing those kids. You know, he's talking about how the rich get richer and how the little guy can never get ahead. The point being made is this whole system is built around the rich finding it easy to get richer and everyone else finding it hard to get into that world. There are little hits of it, but it's not thematic throughout the movie. There are just little bits that are reflective of what people are going through.
There were three films that kept coming to mind while I was watching American Dreamer — the first was Danny DeVito's Duplex because of the similar premise. The second was Billy Wilder's The Apartment, perhaps just because of Shirley MacLaine starring in it and it all centring around a property of some description. The third was Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude for the young guy/older woman black comedy dynamic. I'm interested to know which films you had in mind while you were making it?
I'm not sure I had any films in mind. You can tell that we mixed a lot of tonality in this film — part of what I love and what Pete loves is that slapstick humour, but it grows into something more heartfelt. I think the mixture of the different tones has actually thrown a lot of people, and I'd like to hear how it sat with you. But it throws a lot of people. I think some people weren't expecting that, but it's something that was important to me.
I do love Hal Ashby, not so much when I think about individual films but when I think about directors. I love a lot of the films he's made, but there wasn't any one specific thing that I wanted to make a movie similar to. It was kind of like an outside-of-the-box approach where we set out to do a lot of different things. Whether that works for people or not, who knows? But it works for me and that was kind of the intention.
It's interesting that you brought up the tonal shifts actually because that's something I wanted to ask about a little bit later. I wanted to go into your background a bit because there was something that struck me about how you've worked so much in advertising — because one of my favourite scenes in this is the one where Phil and Astrid are lying side by side and looking up at the sky. It's the moment where it's like they've become delirious because of how frustrating they find one another.
That's my favourite scene, by the way.
I loved it so much, but I also loved how it goes into the next scene. There's a bit of physical comedy between the two of them and it's so funny because that scene before feels like a hard reset on their relationship. It encourages you to laugh as an outlet for the relief you feel for them both too, if that makes sense. I wondered if the way that you shift tones and create such big emotions in really small moments is something that you learned to do through advertising. Because it's the same thing of trying to engineer a really big feeling in a really small window of time, right?
Advertising is absolutely the same thing, you just have to tell a beginning, middle and end in thirty seconds or whatever it is. So I'm used to that, and a film is just that on a big scale. But each scene is also that. I've been making commercials for thirty years, so I don't feel like I've come into this as a first-time director.
Commercials are a great place to learn filmmaking because you get to do so much. I've done thousands of commercials and you don't get to do that kind of volume just making movies. I think for people who just want to get into filmmaking it's a great place to really do it and to hone your craft.
What you're saying reminds me of an old Ridley Scott interview — because obviously his background was also in advertising before he made The Duellists — but he said that making commercials gave him a really intimate connection with his actors. Do you think that's true of your work too?
I have quite a specific way of working, I think. I don't like to give a lot of direction. A lot of what I do, I like to watch. I think of it as creating a space for people, and you allow them to find it on their own. You can't do that as much on a film, but with a commercial, you've got all this luxury of time for such a little bit of time that comes out of it. So it's actually quite different for me.
So given that you've worked with Peter Dinklage on a commercial before and you were already familiar with one another, knowing that you perhaps didn't have the luxury of working how you always have before — how important was it for you that he was on board with making this?
The main characters were written for Pete and Shirley. We sat down and we started writing, and we thought about who we wanted and it was Pete and Shirley. So we wrote it for them, and then when we showed them they didn't know we had written the parts for them, but when we showed them they were both like “Oh my god.”
Shirley actually said in the first meeting we had about it, “I feel like this was written for me.” And you can see in those lines, there's a couple of points in the movie where she's talking about past lives, and all of that was built into the original script.
That's so interesting because that's not a pairing of actors you'd normally put together.
We set out to make an absurd movie. And it is — it's absurd what he's going through, what he does, all the things, he's an absurd person. For me, there are people who are absurd in life. A lot of people look at this and go “Oh that's not real,” I look at it as “What is real?”
We've become like we expect reality to be homogenised like everything else. I know a lot of people who do the most stupid, crazy things. So, for me, it is actually real but it's absurd. So that pairing, those two together, was our idea of absurd.
I've seen another interview where you say that the advice you always give to your children is to not be afraid of failure. I wondered if there's anything in American Dreamer that you'd like us to take as advice.
That is the advice that I do give, that's like my biggest bit of advice. I always think in terms of my kids, and another thing I would want them to know is not to ask for anything external to make you happy. I think we all fail at that.
Even though that's quite a short statement, that kind of recontextualises the film for me.
Really? I'm going to say I wish that was more of a prevalent theme in the film. It touches on it, but there's a lot of different themes happening. That in itself throws a lot of people because they're not sure what it's supposed to be, and it was always the intent to do it that way but maybe in hindsight, it would've been nicer for that to be a stronger theme.
I don't know how much stronger you can make it, though. That's so much more powerful if people find it for themselves.
Maybe you're right.
Well that's the essence of what you're saying, isn't it? That finding something internally is more important than finding it externally. I'm not sure the message would be as poignant if it was more explicit.
A question for you, then. Having watched it, what did you take from it?
I think my take is that it's all about seeing the good in one another. Because the big complication is that Astrid doesn't quite understand Phil and Phil doesn't quite understand Astrid, so they write one another off quite easily. And I think we're encouraged to as well. But then you have multiple moments for example where Phil saves Astrid's life even though he could've quite easily benefitted from not doing the right thing. That's where they start to become more curious about each other and that's where I started to think maybe this is saying that we're all a bit better off when we try to understand one another.
Which is definitely there, it's a big theme.
And this isn't to say it isn't really funny too, but I don't think the point of any of it is the comedy. I think the absurdity is just there to reveal a really big heart underneath it all.
That is the core of the film for all of us who made it. It's funny, I was very instrumental in making the trailer, and we made a choice to make it comedy-heavy, but I wonder if maybe to your point we should've added more of the heart in. Because it is the core of the movie, the comedy just covers it.
American Dreamer was released in selected cinemas on March 8.
