Jennifer Jason Leigh & Alan Cumming - Interview

Interview, July, 2001 by Elizabeth Weitzman

WHEN MAKING A MOVIE FEELS LIKE THROWING A PARTY

Take two iconoclastic minds and one dizzying idea, and you end up with the fete of the year. Having plumbed the depths of human complexity acting in other people's movies, pals Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming were convinced there was still further to go. So they sent out invites to all their like-minded friends and threw The Anniversary Party, a seriocomic cinematic dissection of a Los Angeles marriage under extreme duress. The film was both written and directed by Leigh and Cumming, and the two also co-star as the spouses at the center of the storm. Cumming is a dilettantish writer whose book about their marriage is being turned into a movie; Leigh is his insecure actress wife, who's horrified to realize that not only is her life going to be exposed on screen, but she's too old to play herself when it happens.

The movie takes place over the course of one combustible, drug-fueled evening, in which the pair have a dinner party to celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary. Shot in 19 days on digital video, the proceedings have an intimate, eavesdropping quality; since the guests are played by the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Parker Posey, Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates, it's definitely an affair to remember.

Though Jason Leigh was in Chicago shooting Sam Mendes' Road to Perdition, and Cumming was appearing on Broadway in Design for Living, they promptly RSVPd to our own invitation, in which we asked them to share their experience with us via telephone.

ALAN CUMMING: Jennifer?

JENNIFER JASON LEIGH: Darling!

ELIZABETH WEITZMAN: So now that we have you two together, tell us how your creation came into being.

AC: We met when we were in Cabaret in New York, and after we left, we spent some time together in L.A. That's when we first began thinking about it.

JJL: I had just come back from doing The King Is Alive, which is a Dogma film, shot on digital video. I was telling Alan how free and fun and inspiring that experience was. We said, "Why don't we write something that could be made very quickly?' So we started brainstorming.

EW: Did you have any hesitations before you began writing?

AC: No, it was one of those-hang on, Honey is missing! [Cumming drops the phone.]

JJL: I'll talk while he's gone. Alan is the kind of guy who makes anything seem possible, and it really seemed to come together so easily. We just told all our friends about it and they each said "Count me in." [Cumming returns.]

JJL: Did you find Honey?

EW: Is Honey your dog?

AC: My dog, yeah. She'd gone out for a pee. Thank goodness we found her. Where were we?

EW: Talking about how easy things were. Did you have to make any business or artistic

AC: We could have done with some more money. But nothing really major.

JJL: We didn't even use our whole budget.

AC: Yeah, but we bloody well should have, because we weren't allowed to keep the surplus. They explained that since we didn't use it, it was as though that money never existed.

EW: Were there any moments where you felt real fear?

JJL: I wasn't sleeping much, but another director told me not to worry because I'd have enough adrenaline to get me through. When I realized that, I started getting up and using that time to work, instead of tossing and turning.

AC: That's the difference between us. When Jennifer was saying how easy the shoot was, I was like, "Are you on crack? I'm exhausted!"

EW: It's a painful movie to watch in some places. Was it emotionally painful to make?

JJL: No, it was really fun.

AC: Yes, that big splitting-up scene-

JJL: That was the most fun. To be able to go to that low, to recreate those fights that you have in life where it's so fucking nasty and hard-core, and you can't take it back.... wow. It's so rare that you get to do that. It's very freeing.

EW: Is there anything in the movie that's autobiographical?

JJL: We wrote about stuff we know, so it's some-what authentic. We know our lives and what's innately funny and horrible about them.

EW: Jennifer, your character has to deal with some difficult truths about getting older as an actress. Is that an issue that you've had to face also?

JJL: Yes, sure. When they first read the script, my friends were surprised that I was so hard on myself. But if I really felt a lot of those things, there's no way I would have written them.

EW: Did you collaborate during the whole process? Or did you work separately and then reconvene?

JJL: We collaborated throughout the whole thing.

AC: We would finish each other's sentences and intuit what the other person was going to think. And, of course, get ratty with each other, as you can when you know someone so well.

JJL: Then we'd have a directors' moment.

AC: [laughs] Directors' moments--that's what we'd call them. We'd go outside after we'd had a little rat, have a cuddle and then we'd come back in again.

EW: How did you cast the film?

AC: As we were writing we formed it around specific people. Then we bludgeoned them to be in it.