Mike Mills can’t stop crying.
And you won’t either when watching the director and Berkeley native’s latest release, “C’mon C’mon,” opening Nov. 24 in theaters.
Mills’ fourth full-length feature is poised to break hearts with its gentle, personal story about a sweet but clueless uncle (Joaquin Phoenix) bonding with his precious Los Angeles nephew (Woody Norman). It makes an ideal cinematic centerpiece for Thanksgiving.
What’s prompting Mills to mist up this day is remembering events from the night before when “C’mon C’mon” was shown to an actual audience in an actual theater. It was the Centerpiece selection in this October’s Mill Valley Film Festival.
“It’s really emotional to be in a room with people,” said Mills, who edited the A24 Films during the thick of COVID-19. “I’m like a hot mess. Films are so dependent on audiences. When I edited the movie, I never saw it once with another person.”
He considers movies a communal experience — so much so, that a film seen in isolation “is, like, dead.”
Shot in B&W, “C’mon C’mon” takes a thimble of a story — a single radio journalist Johnny (Phoenix) becomes a de facto parent for his curious, spirited nephew (Norman) while his sister (Gabby Hoffmann) tends to the boy’s father’s (Scoot McNairy) after he suffers a breakdown in Oakland — and then fine tunes it into a thoughtful meditation on acceptance, understanding and the importance of listening. That last part is reflected in Johnny’s latest journalistic assignment, interviewing young adults about life, dreams and themselves.
“C’mon C’mon” is quintessential Mills, another relatable feature wherein a family dynamic gets reshuffled and then redefined. That theme sounded strongly in his 2010 award winner “Beginners,” wherein a father (the late Christopher Plummer, who won an Oscar for his performance) comes out as gay late in life. Ditto 2016’s “20th Century Woman,” a feminist drama with Annette Bening about a boy raised in ‘70s Southern California by the strong females around him.
As in those films, “C’mon C’mon” comes from the talented director’s heart and his own experiences, this time as a dad.
He is keenly aware that more cynical filmgoers might not be won over by “C’mon C’mon.”
“I’m sure there will be a lot of people who will be disgusted,” he said. “Even in my friends’ community, they were like, ‘Eh that’s a little too syrupy for me.’”
The 55-year-old, whose first feature was 2005’s “Thumbsucker,” finds making movies to be tough work.
“It takes like five years of my life and it’s such a crazy opportunity,” he says. “It’s such a crazy privilege to have that space, be on that stage. So my way of dealing with it is to put all the chips you have on the table, whatever you have, your experience, your best bet to share. I’m always in that trouble zone.”
“C’mon C’mon” avoids drowning in schmaltz thanks to the cast, particularly Phoenix, who gives one of the most kind-hearted performances of his career, a far cry from his Oscar-winning work as the Joker.
“Joaquin was great about cutting against it a lot,” he recalls. He also credits his own decision to shoot in B&W “so as not to be too gooey” and went with wide shots instead of closeups on the expressive Norman. Also, Phoenix and Norman didn’t rehearse together; their first meeting was when they started filming together.
Mills praises Phoenix — whom he regards as the “best helper, friend and comrade” he could have asked for — and took it to heart when the actor told him “you want people to have that emotion, but you’re pointing too hard at it.”
“He engaged with me like that,’ says Mills. “He was like someone who said, ‘You know you’re about to make a mistake.’”
Even though Phoenix isn’t widely regarded as the go-to actor when you’re making a heart-warmer, he was Mills’ first choice to play Johnny.
“It’s like dating. It’s like you see someone from across the room. I have the hots for you and I don’t really know why and I’m just going to risk going over there and see if it works out and have a connection. That’s really how it is. You have a vibe.”
Mills says Phoenix comes across as highly intelligent and “subversive in a great way.”
Finding a “dumb, straight white dude” isn’t too hard, Mills says. “It’s like a commercialized trope, a monetized trope. And the world is plenty full of them. Sensitive white men don’t need that much help in the world. But if I’m going to make one on screen, I want him to be someone who’s been in therapy and someone who isn’t a failure and someone who has problems.”
But Phoenix didn’t jump on board from the start.
They met for lunch, shared a few laughs and then the bombshell dropped.
“Basically he came to the lunch to be really nice and tell me my script was really interesting but I don’t think I can do it.”
They continued to talk, and eventually he signed on, uniting with a cast that also includes Scoot McNairy, radio journalist and actor Molly Webster and Jaboukie Young-White, amongst others. Sometimes the cast got along too well, particularly Phoenix and Hoffmann.
“When they get together they cannot stop talking,” Mills said. “They get into hysterical arguments and they make each other laugh a lot. It’s kind of distracting on set. (I’d say): ‘Guys we’re rolling.’ There was a lot of that.”
Mills didn’t mind though.
“You want the actors to not be obedient,” he said. “You want to be filming them being disobedient.”
Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.
Source: www.mercurynews.com