In Rebecca Miller's debut novel, 'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee', there's a line where the narrator explains that what every publisher is looking for is "an Easy Read of Quality". Miller's book is deserving of that accolade and the film that she has made of it is an Easy Watch of Quality. Starring Robin Wright Penn in one of her best performances to date, 'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee' tells the story of the much younger wife of a famous publisher (Alan Arkin) who finds herself unravelling when they move to a retirement community. As she tries to make sense of who she's become, there's a look back at the people from her very colourful past (Blake Lively as the teenage Pippa, Maria Bello as her mother, Julianne Moore as her aunt's lover) and a glimpse of a possible future with the drifter son (Keanu Reeves) of her next door neighbour. Here Miller talks about the film, the book, a central character who's described as "the adaptable enigma" and her star.
Harry Guerin: Having watched the film and then read the book, I'm still trying to figure out if Pippa behaves the way she does because of a lack of self-confidence or as a penance for things she's done in the past.
Rebecca Miller: I think it's a bit of both. I think it starts with somebody who's quite wounded by things that happened in her life and in a way numbed. One of my favourite scenes in the film, in terms of Blake's performance is when her mother says: "What did I do to make you so secretive and unhappy?" And she says: "Nothing." And there's this moment where you can just see the way that she's going to start hiding herself for the rest of her life - the way that she has been driven underground by the mother, in terms of her character. Her ability to express herself in a direct and natural way has not been allowed to continue to grow.
Read the review of 'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee'.
HG: And she has been surrounded down the years by these larger than life characters - her mother's behaviour is very extreme, her aunt's lover is very flamboyant, her husband is a publishing legend and his best friend is one of American's most famous authors.
RM: She's become a kind of a listener and she would really rather not be. She's very uncomfortable having the [dinner] toast be all about her in the beginning of both the book and the film. She doesn't like to be in the middle of everything and in a way her unconscious forces her to be at the centre of her own story. She's forced by her own desire that is perhaps very deep inside of her to be the centre of her own drama and that's essentially what gets her to the next step in her life.
HG: I think Pippa puts other people first and abandons her own needs to atone for what happened to her husband's first wife.
RM: Absolutely, she focuses on the idea of penance. She does have a masochistic streak in her, anyway. And that's something in the book which is much more developed. [For the film] I elected to hit it light and let it resound. Seeing something and reading something is very different and in trying to keep a kind of lightness in tone to the film, I thought it would make it resound more deeply maybe. Also, that was the film I chose to make - I didn't choose to make a super dark film. You could do that with this book in a way, but that just wasn't the choice I made. That wasn't at that moment how I wanted to interpret the book. A different year maybe I would've done it differently.
HG: Would you write another book about Pippa?
RM: Later, down the line? I don't know. I'm done with Pippa for now. I'd be interested to know where she is in 10 years - in 10 years of her life. At this moment I don't know what the answer is and I would definitely need some distance to figure that out. In a way it's almost like you have to build up a kind of appetite for something like that.
HG: You have a fantastic cast in this film - Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin, Keanu Reeves, Maria Bello, Blake Lively, Winona Ryder, Julianne Moore and Monica Belluci. Watching them reminded me of something another director said about how many people are happy to do stuff when you ask them because people would rather be working doing something than sitting at home doing nothing.
RM: That's a point. People very often assume that I simply called all my friends in my address book! But I didn't know any of these people - except for Julianne I knew.
But it's absolutely true that if somebody isn't working and they connect to the material and they trust you as a director, then I think most actors want a chance to do interesting work because that's the point of their lives.
They can all do 'paydays' somewhere along the line - and that's definitely never what my work is about - but it [the film] also doesn't take that long because my whole shoot is only seven weeks long, really. So most of those people worked for two weeks, except for Robin.
HG: When I read the book I thought that the film couldn't have been cast any better. I think I'd feel the same if I'd read the book first - the actors are perfect as the characters.
RM: Aren't they? I know! I really felt in some cases that they were revealing the characters to me sometimes, like Winona's character, the way that she did Sandra. Not to mention Robin, who's so... Robin was different from my original Pippa in certain ways, but she got the exact essence of who she was.
HG: Robin Wright Penn is excellent in the film and it's interesting to watch her performance keeping in mind that she is portrayed by some sections of the media as the wife of a legendary actor rather than an artist in her own right.
RM: That's true. I have to say when I cast her I didn't even give one single thought to that. And now looking at it I realise there is something kind of resonant about it. I think people really wish Robin well, you know what I mean? There's a moment where you just feel you just want her to have her day. I think she's really as good as the best of them. And the thing about this performance that's so surprising is how subtle her humour is as well as everything else - the lightness, the funniness and the way that she found the tone of the film, which is a very odd tone. She found it and she embraced it and she kept it going.
HG: You are very good at bringing characters to life on the page and in the film - by the end of both I really wanted to see what happened to the people next. And the medium where that can happen is on TV. Have you ever thought about creating a TV series?
RM: I have thought about it, actually. The thing about it is that we live in Ireland at the moment and if I did do that it would have to be an American thing because I just don't know the [Irish] culture well enough.
Right now we come to the States in the summertime. If we were to reverse it and go to Ireland in the summertime, then I would be able to be here long enough to actually oversee a TV show. It is kind of a big commitment.
I do have a couple of ideas that I've gone through in my head... that it would be really interesting just to keep going with characters. I think the thing about it for me is that I would have to just love something so much that I would be willing to commit. Because if it had any success then you're married to it for a while!
