John Wells, the director of the recession drama The Company Men, knows very well what it's like to be fired. In 2009, the creator/producer/director of TV institutions like ER and The West Wing lost his new prized show, the critically praised Southland, when NBC made the decision to remove five hours of prime-time per week in favor of Jay Leno.
As Wells makes the point in The Company Men -- currently having its Oscar-qualifying run in New York and Los Angeles before opening nationwide Jan. 21 -- we all have different way of reacting to the news of professional mortality. (Wells' reaction was to tell the L.A. Times, "I wish NBC and Jay Leno well; personally, he's a very nice guy, but I hope he falls flat on his face.") Men, meanwhile, follows the plights of a handful of executives (played by Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris Cooper) caught in a downsizing epidemic -- one initiated to do nothing more than raise the current stock price of the company. In preparing his feature-film debut, Wells spoke to hundreds of laid off workers, honed their stories, and created an honest look at what happens to employees after they've received their pink slips.
Movieline spoke to Wells about the stories so bad that he couldn't even use them in the film, how George Clooney almost ended production of The Company Men before it even started and if he now feels validated for his comments about Leno.
Was there any way that you were going to have Kevin Costner in this film and not have him playing sports?
[Laughs] He was very happy to go out and toss the football with the kids. He's in great shape; I wouldn't want to take him on.
It was announced that the main run of the film is moving to January. Are you disappointed or is it just the same to you?
We're doing a one-week qualifying run and then we're opening in 50 cities on 300 screens. Yeah, I was happy with it; I depend upon the distributors to make the right decisions. We had moved it, and we were going to try and hold it into early January through a couple of screens. Then we looked at the screens that were actually going to be available -- Black Swan looks like it's performing, King's Speech and The Fighter is coming in. And our film requires a little more word-of-mouth. I mean, I hope it does a lot of business in the first weekend, but we want to make sure it has that kind of time to build.
That's a good point about word-of-mouth; it's not like Ben Affleck is robbing Fenway Park in this film. It takes a pretty real approach to the issue of downsizing. Was that the goal?
Yeah, the piece was based on something that happened to my brother-in-law during the dot-com boom. That's the basis for it; it didn't actually wind up being their personal story. And I interviewed a lot of people for it; I interviewed probably over 300 people directly for it in all different levels of their lives, ages and employment. And then a couple hundred thousand online, going into chat rooms and asking people for anecdotes and stuff. So I certainly heard a lot of people's stories and realized that there were ways that the story was going to be big and more "movie, movie," and ways in which it was just going to be what really happened with these people. With this subject matter, if people came and saw it and felt that it was inauthentic in some fashion, they would dismiss the film and not come at all.
Were there any true stories that you couldn't put in the movie because no one would believe it?
It wasn't so much that no one is going to believe it, but some companies do such a lousy job of firing workers and helping them move on in their lives in some fashion that I really couldn't put them in. There's a scene that I wanted to put in that somebody told me about, but every time I tried to write it in and think about shooting it, the film would never recover. [At] one of the major defense contractors -- because everyone has high security clearances -- there's a parking garage under the building and this glass lobby that you had to enter to get to the elevators. And there was a security swipe. And the way that they would let you know that you had been let go was that your card wouldn't work in the door. So what happened is that people would come and put it in and it wouldn't open. Then someone else would try and theirs would work and they would go in. Then you realize that it was a layoff day. And then people would start to gather around the doors and hold hands because they were all friends. And then someone would walk up and swipe and as they got in they would wave goodbye to everybody. Others would hold hands and cry. Then a van would pull up and take everybody to outplacement.
A major character is given some bad news by human resources, not his best friend who made the decision. And I'm sure it happens that way, but when I'm watching the movie my first reaction is, "That would never happen like that."
It's real. Yeah, that's real. And I've heard that from several different people. Often, which I didn't include in this, a lot of times people hear about it on Bloomberg or on MSNBC that they've been let go.
Or the press calls...
Or the press calls and asks a question. The film is trying to get at this thing that's happened to tens of millions of people. This isn't just a couple of folks anymore. When we did the test screenings, at the end we would always ask, "How many of you have had this happen to you or a close family member or friend?" We would have everybody, every single time, put their hand up.
The Company Men is a nice complement to Up in the Air. Were there any worries about one film stepping on the other's toes? There's a version of the George Clooney character briefly in this film.
You know, we were doing the final episodes of ER and I was directing George in a scene that I had written for ER when he came back. And he was telling me about this film that he was getting ready to do and I was like, "Uh oh." He gave me the script to just kind of let me read it on the set, briefly, and I realized the interviews in the piece that Jason [Reitman] did, we're actually following the people that were interviewed. If you saw Up in the Air and wondered what happened to that guy, that's what we're trying to do -- what happened to the guy on the other side of the desk.
I'm well aware of the successful run of television shows that you've had. Has anything like what happens in this movie ever happened to you?
Oh, sure. We're all freelancers in the film business, so I've been fired by friends, which I heard through my agent. Particularly when you're screenwriting it happens all of the time. And I was a carpenter before. I supported myself through college and we built homes as a kid. When I was first being a writer for six or seven years we built houses; of course we got fired all of the time.
Right after I asked that question I remembered, "Oh, yeah, Southland being dropped for The Jay Leno Show."
Oh, I mean, it happens all of the time. The shows get canceled but the more painful ones are when I've been working for someone who is a friend who then lets me get fired by a third or fourth party rather then just calling me and telling me themselves.
Speaking of Southland, I just read Bill Carter's The War for Late Night.
Oh, yeah...
You're in the book...
Oh, am I? [Laughs] For saying a nasty thing about Jay [Leno]?
Actually, they avoid that because there are enough nasty things said about Jay already in the book.
I actually didn't say anything nasty. I said something honest, which sometimes can be construed as nasty.
If I remember your quote, it was something along the lines of that Jay is a nice guy but you hope that he falls flat on his face. How much heat did you take for that?
I didn't take any heat from that from anyone other than the people who are directly involved who said, "We're catching so much criticism already, do we really need to catch it from you?" I said, "Yeah, you know, I feel strongly about this because I really care about what I do. And what I do is to have done a lot of network dramas, and you just got rid of about eight of them between the first runs and the mid-season shows."
Do you feel validated?
I'm not sure I feel validated. I think that the network drama that I've done for a long time is a bit imperiled, and most of it has moved to cable. I'm more concerned that the networks get back to showing a bit more courage and patience with those in allowing things to last longer.
Did the network prime-time drama die when ER went off the air?
[Pauses] I mean, there are certainly other shows that are like that for other segments of the audience. That kind of area of the audience is kind of fragmented, mostly to basic cable and pay cable, which I think is kind of a shame. But we were the last visage of the last surviving breath of the old Must See TV. But NBC gave up on it just as a business strategy. So... it's their money. They can decide what they're going to do with it. [Laughs]
Will it come back on the networks, or will it all be on TNT now?
I hope it comes back. I think there should be a place on network television, but they've become more timid. And they will admit that they've become more timid.
What's the disadvantage of basic cable?
I don't think there are real disadvantages. You have less money to make it, so that's more of a challenge to put the production value on-screen that you would like to. But I think we're doing a good job with that. On broadcast television you have an opportunity for a larger audience because they reach more people.
Both ER and The West Wing were pitted against each other for Emmys one year when you were very involved with both shows. Is that tough to root for one over the other, or does it even matter?
You're just trying to survive day-to-day making them, honestly. And making them good. By the time you get to the awards-season stuff, you're like, "Oh, yeah, that was last year." And you're already, like, 40 episodes past it.
Like we discussed, The Company Men is getting a limited run to qualify for awards season. With this film, is awards season more important as opposed to television?
Well, I think about it more. With these types of smaller films, with any type of awards recognition, it really helps because you get more people to see it. And when you're trying to make things, you want people to actually see them. And the subject matter of this is such that any kind of recognition we get can be very helpful in getting more people in to see it. Not for the monetary reasons, although that's great, but primarily because when you make something, you just want people to actually see the damn thing.
[Top photo: WireImage]