Navigating Love and Miscommunication: The Making of 'I Don't Understand You'
Navigating the choppy waters of modern communication while attempting to craft a film about it can feel like trying to tame a wild goose—an exercise in futility and occasional hilarity. Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig, the duo behind the lens of 'I Don't Understand You,' dive deep into the intricacies of their creative process. Our conversation with the two reveals how they tackled the overwhelming presence of cell phones, a modern-day nemesis that threatens to drown out genuine connection.
The film's narrative dances around the absurdities of miscommunication in this hyper-connected age, all while threading through their personal experiences as they portrayed the chaos of adoption, a theme that resonates deeply within their own lives. The directors share how their partnership grew stronger during the filmmaking process, not just as collaborators but as friends navigating the emotional rollercoaster of bringing their story to life.
Transcript
You are listening to the we need to Talk Hot Asker podcast and this is our conversation with Brian Cranell and David Joseph Craig, co directors of I don't understand.
Speaker B:You'd know the one thing that was like the trickiest thing, especially shooting a film about communication in the 21st century, was cell phones.
Speaker B:Honestly, that was the bane of my existence during this process, was like, how do we keep the outside world away from these characters as much as possible?
Speaker C:I think that the commonality that we found between us was that we were so interested in the character above kind of everything else.
Speaker C:Like that if the character was true to themselves and true to the situation, the kind of tonal balance of the movie would work itself out.
Speaker A:First and foremost, Brian, David, thank you so, so much for your time.
Speaker B:Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker A:To start with you, David, this is a bit of an, I don't know, opposite movement from you, as in after years, in front of the camera, taking a step back from that, but at the same time stepping into the director's role alongside Brian.
Speaker A:So I guess how much of a rewiring was there to do in order to get out of one mindset and into the other?
Speaker B:Well, you know, alongside being in front of the camera for years, I also was producing with Joel Edgerton, working on his film.
Speaker B:So I did have.
Speaker B:And also, you know, seeing Brian's journey in filmmaking as well.
Speaker B:So I did, I did see a lot of the, the, the behind the camera work.
Speaker B:And, and really that was kind of my film school.
Speaker B:That was my studying was, you know, seeing how Joel works, seeing how Brian worked.
Speaker B:So, you know, I, I think it was a, it was a natural journey and natural progression.
Speaker B:And also, you know, it was also nice to have a partner in Brian too, to sort of help me along the way while doing it.
Speaker B:It felt quite natural to me.
Speaker B:So the rewiring, I guess, was in my blood to be a bit of a.
Speaker B:Of a boss.
Speaker B:So I guess, yeah, that as David's.
Speaker C:Partner, he has no trouble giving people instructions.
Speaker B:I have opinions.
Speaker C:He's a natural.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Because on the other hand, for you, Brian, what was it like for you to have David next to you behind the monitor?
Speaker A:I mean, even though filmmaking is a collaboration as a whole, how much had you considered directing as a slightly having your own realm within the system?
Speaker C:Oh, it was so much easier, honestly, because, you know, it's a job that is.
Speaker C:So the analogy that always comes up for me is like directing a movie is like being eaten by crows.
Speaker C:You know, nobody wants to eat the whole thing.
Speaker C:But Everybody wants a little bit.
Speaker C:And to be able to have someone that you've lived with for 15 years and trust and know each other's taste and know what makes each other laugh and so on, just to be able to, you know, share that work is so great.
Speaker C:And also, you know, if it's three in the morning in the woods and you don't have a great idea, you know, you're not sort of out of luck.
Speaker C:You can kind of look at somebody and go, like, please be better than me right now.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And so, yeah, it was a.
Speaker C:It was a great relief.
Speaker C:And then on a personal level, it's really interesting when you're working on something with your like, life partner, oftentimes you hear about their success, professional success, but you don't get to watch it and.
Speaker C:Or you get to see the result of it, but you don't get to watch it.
Speaker C:So this was really interesting because, you know, I could literally watch him succeed, which was so cool.
Speaker A:And this film, I don't understand you'd explores communication in such interesting ways.
Speaker A:So with that in mind, how would you describe your partnership?
Speaker A:Whether we are talking about the writing or the directing part of it, do the dynamics differ between these two situations or parts of the process?
Speaker C:I think we communicate best about work things.
Speaker C:I think other people are much harder to communicate about.
Speaker C:But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker C:What do you want to say?
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, honestly, the movie's called I don't understand you, but we definitely understood each other throughout the process very well, I think.
Speaker B:I think, like Brian was saying professionally, it's been.
Speaker B:It's really easy to discern each other throughout the process because.
Speaker B:Because it's, it's about work rather than about being personal.
Speaker B:So it was very easy for us to communicate through the process about a movie that's about bad communication and, and not having a real take on each other until the end of the movie.
Speaker C:I think also we have a good sense of what's funny about the other one and, or, and, and ourselves and like, are pretty easygoing about that kind of stuff.
Speaker C:So I think that that's, you know, useful to be able to kind of pick fun at yourself in this work.
Speaker A:And this film is so rich.
Speaker A:It's like a masterclass in terms of the crazy juggling of characters coming in and going out while of course, keeping the narrative flowing.
Speaker A:Were there moments during any stage of production where you both looked at each other and thought, surely nothing else can go wrong?
Speaker A:Which perfectly translates, of course, onto the screen.
Speaker A:As for our heroes, what does go wrong?
Speaker B:You know, the one thing that was like, the trickiest thing, especially shooting a film about communication in the 21st century, was cell phones.
Speaker B:Like, honestly, that was the bane of my existence during this process was like, how do we keep the outside world away from these characters as much as possible?
Speaker B:And having technology as such a part of our lives now was probably the most difficult thing to keep organized throughout the shoot because, like, when we wrote it on paper, it's very easy to say their phone died, but then to actually interact with that throughout shooting and obviously with films, you shoot out of order.
Speaker B:And so to actually keep all of that organized for me was probably the biggest hiccup throughout the whole process.
Speaker B:But, like, you know, not to give too much away about the movie, but, you know, once one thing happens in our movie, you can't really.
Speaker B:You can't really go back from it.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:And so the continuation of narrative was quite easy to keep up with.
Speaker C:I think it's interesting that you say that it's all about sort of juggling the component parts of the movie.
Speaker C:And that certainly felt true and easy on some level because we had such great partners in Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells, who play the leads of the movie who were doing, like, this sort of emotional heavy lifting of that stuff really well and kind of tracking where they were in the movie.
Speaker C:So that stuff was on that side was pretty easy.
Speaker C:I think that if the question sort of scans to, like, while you're also doing that, you're also making a movie across a language barrier.
Speaker C:That also worked out really well.
Speaker C:The crew is amazing and really got into the movie and really thought it was hilarious to make a movie about dumb Americans, which.
Speaker C:Which we agree with.
Speaker C:I think the one thing that is.
Speaker C:Is.
Speaker C:Was a sort of challenge, is like, Italy, culturally, is sort of operates in its own idiomatic way.
Speaker C:So, like, for instance, one day we.
Speaker C:We were shooting this sort of, like, car chase through Rome, and we shot a couple takes of it, and then the cops were like, there's a protest nearby.
Speaker C:We can't have fake cops in the street anymore.
Speaker C:You're done.
Speaker C:And you're like, shit, like, now what do we do?
Speaker C:And, you know, so those sorts of, like, filmmaking scrambles.
Speaker C:Where in where over here, you would just sort of like, you know, work it out or pay someone or do whatever.
Speaker C:There was just like, no, we have a huge climate protest.
Speaker C:There's like, truly no one you can speak to.
Speaker C:It was like, okay, well, so, you know, there were.
Speaker C:There were those sort of like challenges that mirrored the characters in the movie, but for our of filmmaking process.
Speaker C:Similarly with like shooting in a.
Speaker C:In.
Speaker C:In Rome's functioning airport, you know, and it was like down to the wire as to whether or not we would be able to do that.
Speaker C:And, and so that some of those things mirrored the character's experience in the movie.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And now that you mentioned the actors, of course, Nick and Andrew Derlet, they bring such distinct comedic energies to this endearing yet dark scenario.
Speaker A:So in that, Wayne, what were you looking for when casting these roles against the film's at times, many times horrific backdrop?
Speaker A:Had you by chance had the two of them in mind for their respective roles from the get go or.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:How did their involvement come about?
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, Andrew we thought of right away because he's so funny always and so sort of like he can be likable to a, to a viewer no matter what he's doing, even if the things that his character is doing are sort of edging towards vile or something.
Speaker C:And when we had also then heard, in the period that we were casting a podcast interview that Nick had done, talking about the experience of having his first child and, and he was so like, kind of cracked open emotionally.
Speaker C:And we had just gone through that experience as well and we were like, oh, he'll totally get it.
Speaker C:Like, if he reads it, he'll get it.
Speaker C:And we knew that they, they knew each other and were friends.
Speaker C:And we talked to Andrew first and Andrew loved the idea and love loved Nick.
Speaker C:And before we could even reach out to Nick, he had called him and then like, that was like a Friday or something.
Speaker C:And like by Monday, Nick had read the script and wanted to talk about it.
Speaker C:And so it was so organic and great.
Speaker C:And then through the process of the movie, shooting the movie, they were just so on each other's side the whole time and so supportive of each other.
Speaker C:It really was like watching a married couple.
Speaker C:Like all of this stuff that you would assume with two people, you know, all this sort of like comfort you would assume that you would have to build between two people to play a very intimate role relationship throughout.
Speaker C:It was just there on kind of day one.
Speaker C:So that made our jobs super easy.
Speaker B:And something that was great about the two of them that we, I guess we didn't really clock when we cast them was they both come from comedy duos in a way.
Speaker B:You know, Nick with John Mulaney and Andrew with Josh Gad.
Speaker B:Both of them have an understanding of where to let the other person take charge and take.
Speaker B:Take the like, they weren't hogs, which is wonderful for two people who have to share 98% of the movie together.
Speaker B:They know how to share the space, which was.
Speaker B:Which was absolutely great in having they were working as one the entire time, which, you know, I think was very lucky for us because I don't think we as directors actually calculated how much screen time we put the two of them in together before we were actually shooting the movie.
Speaker A:Beautiful.
Speaker A:I know.
Speaker A:I already know.
Speaker A:Stupid question, because she's simply amazing.
Speaker A:But after your short Dog Food, in which you had worked with Amanda Seyfried.
Speaker B:Who.
Speaker A:You even played her brother David, what made her the right fit for this particular story and particular character?
Speaker B:Well, she's.
Speaker B:She's in our life personally, and she is essentially, for lack of better word, our son's godmother.
Speaker B:And, you know, she richly knows our story.
Speaker B:She.
Speaker B:She humanly knows our story.
Speaker B:And so it just felt like.
Speaker B:It felt like a really sweet thing to do for us and for the movie.
Speaker B:And also, she's just.
Speaker B:She's just such a charismatic human being.
Speaker B:And you really an actor, and you really need somebody who has such little screen time to give that role such humanity that you want these two characters to get their child.
Speaker B:And, you know, I think it was just like.
Speaker B:It's just.
Speaker B:She's just such the right mood for that.
Speaker B:And.
Speaker B:And I think it just.
Speaker B:It really shows on screen also, you.
Speaker C:Know, her character kind of, because the guys do such horrible shit across the span of the movie, you need her almost as a.
Speaker C:That character, almost as a permission structure for the audience to be like, oh, it's great that they get the.
Speaker C:You know, it's great that they succeed.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:And so when.
Speaker C:When you have someone like her who has this sort of like, inherent trust built in with an audience and can kind of do what anything on screen.
Speaker C:Like David said, she's an absolute, absolute master craftsperson.
Speaker C:Like an incredible, incredible actress.
Speaker B:I think something else to mention in that as well is like, one of our major themes in the movie is like, just for everybody.
Speaker B:She plays the birth mother of the child that Nick and Andrew's character are adopting.
Speaker B:And I feel like, especially in I can only speak towards American society, but the birth mothers are typically looked at as in a negative light, as if they have no other option but then to give their child away.
Speaker B:And that is so far from our own experience of adoption.
Speaker B:Our birth mother, you know, she is our hero.
Speaker B:You know, she is a wonderful human being who made such a tough decision and we made it together to that we were going to be the parents of our child.
Speaker B:And I think we really wanted to reflect that in this character, that she is human, she is a hero.
Speaker B:And I think Amanda just was able to do that so unbelievably, charismatically and stoically, which is exactly what we needed.
Speaker A:The film is on the technical side of things.
Speaker A:Edited by Nancy Richardson, whose work includes Twilight, the first and third one, Warm Bodies, Love and Monsters.
Speaker B:Selina, Selena, Send and Deliver.
Speaker C:Keep going.
Speaker C:She's got credits, baby.
Speaker A:How did you navigate the balance between terror and tenderness in the editing room, especially when it comes to the more gory elements?
Speaker B:That's a great question.
Speaker C:This is a great question.
Speaker C:I think that the.
Speaker C:The commonality we found between us was that.
Speaker C:Was that.
Speaker C:I think that the commonality that we found between us was that we were so interested in the character above kind of everything else.
Speaker C:Like, that the.
Speaker C:That if the character was true to themselves and true to the situation, the kind of tonal balance of the movie would work itself out.
Speaker C:And, you know, like, Nancy is an absolute master.
Speaker C:And it was so cool to get to work with someone with that much experience and that much to offer and is also so technically fast that we could kind of throw out ideas and that she would just sort of like, you know, we'd, like, go grab coffee and like, this page of notes would be like, accomplished by the time we got back.
Speaker C:And so that it allowed us a huge amount of time in the editorial process to really, like, drill into what we wanted to get to and like, really fine tune the movie where I feel like, had we done this with a more because the movie, like you're saying, is technically challenging as well as sort of like challenging challenging.
Speaker C:So I feel like if we had done it with a less experienced editor, we would have just spent a lot of time kind of getting it into shape.
Speaker C:But when we walked in the.
Speaker C:To the rough cut, it was like a watchable movie that could have been released.
Speaker C:It wasn't the movie that it is now for sure, but.
Speaker C:But it was definitely like a functional version of the movie.
Speaker C:So starting from that place was like such a.
Speaker C:Such a joy because we could actually do what we love to do and really, like, make the movie kind of work moment to moment, exactly how we want it to.
Speaker B:I also think, just to add to that, I think because plot wise, our movie works in such a specific way, meaning once one of the accidents happens, you can't go back from it.
Speaker B:That, like, I think.
Speaker B:I think that was also a benefit for us is because we we were able to stretch the.
Speaker B:The terror or the comedy within that without having to reorder anything because there was not really a possibility of reordering technically once we get to a certain point in the movie.
Speaker B:So, like, there was a give and take where we were able to actually test the waters of comedy and horror because our plot was so, so specific.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's a great point.
Speaker C:Like every other movie I've done, you spend a lot of time going, like, what if the middle was the end?
Speaker C:Or what if the beginning started later?
Speaker C:And you just waste weeks kind of like reordering the script that you've spent years putting in a very specific.
Speaker C:Like, not doing that here was such a luxury and again gave us more time to just really make every moment funny and stuff.
Speaker A:And on a less technical side, or dare I say least technical side, from the outside, there is something absolutely terrifying, not just in terms of gore and the blood of it all, but in putting such a personal story first onto the page and then onto the screen and in front of an audience.
Speaker A:So how did you go about that part of the story?
Speaker C:You know, I really don't think we thought about it enough or we made the movie because, you know, we.
Speaker C:We always sort of talked about writing the movie as like a kind of twisted love letter to our son.
Speaker C:And it never occurred to us that the movie could be bad.
Speaker C:Like, you know what I mean?
Speaker C:Like, it could have.
Speaker C:It could have gone a whole other way, like luck.
Speaker C:We made a movie that we really like and the parts of it that he's seen, he enjoys, so that's cool.
Speaker B:But he's the little boy at the end of the movie, by the way.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's really.
Speaker C:Yeah, that's.
Speaker C:Who's great.
Speaker C:And.
Speaker C:But yeah, I mean, I think that the, you know, it's.
Speaker C:It's weird.
Speaker C:Like, I'm kind of a shy person naturally, but then you kind of expose this real emotional piece of your life and heart and stuff.
Speaker C:And, you know, the motivation, even though the behaviors that the characters perform in the movie are.
Speaker C:Are.
Speaker C:Are imagined and extreme, the.
Speaker C:The.
Speaker C:The sentiment of it is coming from the real place, which was when you are in an adoption process or expecting a child, regardless, you're kind of living in a version of a horror movie where, like, anything can go wrong.
Speaker C:And if it does, it will be the worst thing that could possibly.
Speaker C:If it does, it'll be the worst thing that could possibly happen to you.
Speaker C:So you.
Speaker C:That sense of particularly.
Speaker C:It was our first child and, you know, there's a certain kind of vulnerability inherent in the process, that maybe because we had just been through it with our son, it felt totally okay and easy to talk about on screen.
Speaker C:But if I were to do it again, I think our next movies are slightly less personal.
Speaker C:Maybe I say that now, but maybe I haven't thought about it enough.
Speaker A:Ana to close with a big one, Given that I don't understand you explorers, miscommunication, connection across barriers, borders through video calls, etc.
Speaker A:And this is something we've talked about all throughout our conversation.
Speaker A:So what's something that creating this film together helped you understand about each other or about filmmaking that you didn't before?
Speaker B:I think, you know, one thing that in going with Brian's last statement that we never really discussed until we were making this film was we both hand in the film.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The boys discuss how they, you know, their adoption process and how they, you know, got scammed by a birth mother before they actually matched with this other birth mother.
Speaker B:And that actually happened to us in real life.
Speaker B:And neither of us really talked about it emotionally to one another.
Speaker B:And we both mourned that loss very differently.
Speaker B:And through writing the film, through shooting the film, and through editing the film, I think we both came closer to one another in terms of how we handled it.
Speaker B:And I don't want to use any terms pejoratively, but it was sort of like our version, I would assume, of a miscarriage, of losing a child.
Speaker B:And I think the actual making of this film was our therapy, was our connection to one another on how we actually handled the year and a half experience of adoption.
Speaker B:So on a personal level, I'll let Brian take the director chair on this one.
Speaker B:But on a personal level, it definitely brought us much closer together in the understanding of who we are to one another and how we both reacted to this.
Speaker B:And I am so sorry.
Speaker B:Our dog is in heat, so he is barking in the background.
Speaker A:That's fine.
Speaker C:About filmmaking.
Speaker C:I think it sort of validated a point of view that I've had for a long time and tried to express in my work and writing, which is that narrow casting films into a sort of very small tonal space is a lie and is kind of talking to your audience as if they don't live lives that are more complicated than kind of pastiche or melodrama or a simple narrative.
Speaker C:My life is funny and sad and scary and exciting and all those things usually all at the same time.
Speaker C:And everyone I know kind of has that experience where you're.
Speaker C:It can be all of those things at once.
Speaker C:And I think that there's a real craving for that.
Speaker C:And some of the movies that you've seen and shows that have come out in the last couple of years that have been very successful have played in all of those spaces together.
Speaker C:And that's good.
Speaker C:And I think that that gives.
Speaker C:Treats actors with respect.
Speaker C:I think it treats audiences with respect.
Speaker C:So it was very validating to do a movie where everybody was on the same page with that kind of philosophy and then also see audiences in the screenings that we've had so far at festivals and so forth.
Speaker C:Come away with that experience has been really cool.
Speaker C:And then personally, I think it's just.
Speaker C:It's incredibly validating to work with someone who holds you to account.
Speaker C:In David, when I would be getting frustrated with something or, you know, when I would be kind of not my best self, and he would be able to kind of very expediently go like, hey, dummy, like, get it together.
Speaker C:And that's useful.
Speaker C:That's very useful and very.
Speaker C:A very charming skill and a good reminder that what we do for a living is play pretend at a great big scale and that it's not that serious and everybody should be having a great experience.
Speaker C:And so that was a good thing for me.
Speaker A:Well, David Ryan, thank you for this chat, for sharing, and for the film itself, because it's beautiful.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:I really appreciate the chat and the great questions.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker B:Thank you.
