A Better Life - Chris Weitz interview

CHRIS Weitz talks about the making of immigration drama A Better Life and how it enabled him to get back in touch with his own family’s Mexican heritage. He also talks about working with the communities it depicts, remaining apolitical and finding relatively unknown actors to occupy key roles to heighten the authenticity.

Q. I gather A Better Life was partly inspired by your grandmother and wanting to research your roots?
Chris Weitz: Yeah, I mean the actual incident that set it off was something that happened to a friend of one of the producers 20 years ago. Of course, there are also some similarities to The Bicycle Thief, so I don’t want to try to slip under the radar with that one [smiles]. But my grandmother was an immigrant, she came to America when she was 17-years-old but I was part of the first generation of my family that doesn’t speak Spanish, so what this film provided me was an excuse to learn Spanish and also to get back in touch with my heritage.

Q. Are you fluent now?
Chris Weitz: As the Spanish would say: “Non!” [Laughs] Not yet but because as much as people just think Spanish is just adding the letter ‘o’ to every word, it’s actually quite difficult and there are also 20 different kinds of Spanish: there’s Spanish-Mexican, Spanish-Chilean, Spanish-what have you. So, it’s an ongoing thing for me and I’m still taking lessons. But we had a bi-lingual crew and that helped tremendously, both in making contact with the areas in which we were shooting and in helping focus me on the issues at hand.

Q. How important was it to make this film apolitical?
Chris Weitz: Well, it was very important to me that everybody in the film should be perceived with a sympathetic eye – even police officers and immigration officers. Of course, it’s impossible to turn a camera on somebody without, in a sense, being sympathetic, so if that person happens to be an illegal immigrant you’re being sympathetic towards an illegal immigrant. But really you’re just saying they’re a human being worthy of as much attention as anybody who gets in front of a camera.

But we didn’t want it to be a soap box because I think that people don’t like being lectured to when they go to the cinema. I have no interest in preaching to the choir, so hopefully this will reach the middle because in America right now there’s a very antagonistic, ugly battle going on over immigration. So, what people need is information rather than rhetoric.

Q. You see that anger against immigrants in some of the signs that are shown in the movie. What was it like going into some of those communities were perhaps those tensions did exist? Were you welcomed once they found out what you were making a film about?
Chris Weitz: Yeah. What was very important was that I went to a guy called Father Gregory Boyle, who is a Jesuit priest who started Homeboy Industries, a gang intervention programme that helps give jobs to gang members who want to leave the gangs, which is a very courageous thing for them to do. Once we were in with them, we had contacts in the communities in which we were going to shoot and were welcomed with open arms. I mean, I think people living in East LA like the idea of film crews showing up anyway, because it’s fun. It’s only in hoity-toity areas that people give you a hard time for bringing in a camera and making a lot of noise. But it was very important that we approached these situations with as much respect as possible.

Q. Is it often you put a script through a ‘bullshit filter’, as you did with this?
Chris Weitz: Well, I called it the ‘bullshit filter’ because we actually had two or three: we had ex-gang members and East LA teenagers who read the script and I asked them to look for any mistakes or things that didn’t ring quite right in terms of jargon. But also in terms of how people would behave. Immigration lawyers looked at it. In that regard, it’s an incredibly deeply researched film, but we tried to wear that pretty lightly. It’s structured like an adventure story rather than anything else.

Q. The cast is amazing. How did you find Demian Bichir, especially, who is brilliant as the father?
Chris Weitz: Demian is a big star in Mexico, so if you know Mexican films it’s easy to find him. But in America, he’s been on Weeds and in Steven Soderbergh’s Che, so he hasn’t been seen very much on American movie screens and that was great for me. If I’d approached someone like Benicio Del Toro or Javier Bardem you associate all the movies that you’ve seen them in with this character. But this character is meant to be invisible and unknown, as if you’re experiencing him for the first time, so you also get to experience this tremendous performance by a great actor who you are probably seeing for the first time. I think that’s pretty extraordinary.

Q. And how long did he have to bond with Jose Julian, who plays his son?
Chris Weitz: He had quite a while. We had a couple of months of pre-production and we cast Jose relatively early on in the process. He was a first-timer but very naturally talented. It was kind of a similar situation to when we found Nicholas Hoult for About A Boy. So, they spent a lot of time together, which was really important. They basically spent their free time together. The World Cup was going on at the time and Mexico was in it, so I think they spent a lot of time watching the national team and rooting for them.

Q. I gather Jose was also really dedicated. Didn’t he have to undertake an epic journey to get to the audition?
Chris Weitz: Yeah, it took him three hours to get to auditions and three hours to get home afterwards because he took three buses to get to where we were. So, that gives you an idea of the scope of LA and how big it is… the distances involved between the kind of worlds and his knowledge of the world of the character he was portraying.

Q. How much do you as a filmmaker enjoy making these kind of smaller films as opposed to bigger projects such as The Golden Compass and Twilight: New Moon? Do you have more control?
Chris Weitz: This was the first time I’ve ever had final cut on a movie and it feels good. On Golden Compass, I felt that the final product wasn’t what I’d intended it to be and I feel like I let down Philip Pullman and Philip Pullman’s fans. So, on this film, with a much more sympathetic studio, that I felt understood what I was going after, that was fantastic.

Q. Is it harder to get a film like this made, though?
Chris Weitz: Well, in general it’s harder. I’m very privileged in that I’d just made two big movies, including New Moon, which had just made loads of money and that instils a certain mojo in you, whether you deserve it or not. It certainly wasn’t under any agreement that I was going to do anything else for Summit but they had a great deal of trust in me and I in them because they had bought the foreign rights to American Pie 13 years previously, so we’ve been working together for a long time. It was a good experience.

Q. Has your grandmother seen A Better Life yet?
Chris Weitz: No, she hasn’t. She’s 100-years-old and I have to take a DVD to her at some point because she can’t really get to a screening. But I think it’ll be an amazing experience.

Q. So, what’s been your favourite reaction to the film so far?
Chris Weitz: Well, there’s been so many. The Mayor of Los Angeles coming to the film and crying was pretty cool. Seeing it with ex-gang members for the first time, people who’d helped us make the film, and showing it to Father Boyle for the first time. All of these experiences… every time you see a screening with a different audience you’re seeing a different film as a director because you’re seeing it through their eyes. So, each one has its own appeal.