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By the films deeply affecting end, I understood why Kirsten was so desperate not to let him go.
I loved this movie.
He would cry when I left for college, and he was comfortable with that level of emotion.
He and cinema give permission for letting out emotion.
Thats one of the great advantages to seeing movies in a theater together.
Its a ritualistic, collective experience, in some weird way, not unlike a funeral!
Youre going into something, learning about something, but also mourning it in some ways.
I really want this project to be this experiment this engagement with our deepest metaphysical issues.
Were looking at all of these dead people onscreen.
When youre looking at Buster Keaton, youre looking at a dead person.
And yet hes the most alive person there is.
How much crying did you do while making this movie?You know, its interesting.
I cried so much during my mothers Alzheimers.
How do you do that?
Whats the craft of creating a laugh?
Someone said, Youre throwing your father under the bus in this movie.
You have to throw yourself under the bus.
And I was like, Oh, I have to speak these feelings.
It happened in a moment when my fathers dementia had advanced.
He was starting to come out in the middle of the night looking for patients.
Sometimes he thinks hes on an airplane.
To be woken up in the middle of the night by a person convinced theyre in another reality …
He said, Theres a desperate, suicidal patient who needs me.
Thats when they need help most.
We go downstairs, and he looks around, and he says, Theres no patient, is there?
And I said, No.
And he said, It must be so hard for you to watch your father lose his mind.
Oh my God.That was when the emotion broke in me.
And I really cried.
For the entire month of September.
But before that, it had been several years of not crying that much.
Clearly the filmmaking was a coping strategy.
That footage was footage I hadnt looked at since she died.
I hadnt seen it in ten years.
It had this effect on me of seeing her come back to life.
So I was thinking a lot about,Cinema can do this.
Howd you first pitch it to your dad?
What was that conversation like?[Laughs.
]Well, my dad loves Monty Python, Harold Ramis, Mel Brooks.
He really loves to laugh.
What an amazing man.What an amazing man!
Thats what gets me.
My dad has lived a beautiful life.
My family was religious.
But just for him to say, I trust you unequivocally.
Even if this is a mess.
Lets just do this together.
To be that free with the reputation of your life that floored me, honestly.
Your relationship with him is so beautiful.
Are you kidding me?
Its so sacrilegious.So I said it to him, and he said, Oh, thats a great title!
Then it allows me to do some reaction formation.
Ill have to stay alive forever in contradiction to the title.
Were doing pre-traumatic stress therapy together.
You take something and look at it so that it cant stay locked in you.
You let it go.
Like you let the tears go.
What were your biggest fears or concerns about making this?The idea that this movie is a failure.
I cant stop my fathers dementia, I cant stop him from dying I knew that.
But I thought,Let me be a fool and fight those things.
Can we reassemble him?
Hes just a guy theres nothing so special about him but theres something ineffable in his presence.
You sense hes at peace with his own life, hes interested in you, and hes not judgmental.
And thats what Ive experienced all of my life with him.
So I did feel like I was failing in the effort to capture his essence.
But I wonder if that wouldve come through with your dad if it werent you making the movie.
So much is about the exchange between you two.
Initially, I believed I could do that again.
But one of the things I wanted to look at in this film was how cinema constructs realities.
So I really wanted to show the mechanisms of cinema including me behind the scenes.
I love the metaphor of that.
I wanted to turn things inside out, including my role.
Howd you come up with each of the death sequences?
Then it just became totally obvious that my dad couldnt do that.
Hes a fragile 86-year-old who doesnt have toes, whos in danger of tripping and falling.
And I realized: All of that was escapist fantasy.
Ground-level falls, in fact, are the most frequent way that elderly people die.
These very banal, small risks.
Can I risk letting my dad walk to the other side of the car when the traffic is coming?
Im taking a big risk.
Those scenes and the whole movie are very upsetting but also very funny.
!How much do you laugh watchingJackass?
Thats what I want.
So that was always the hope.
Tell me about conceiving heaven.
Those scenes are so beautiful and weird.At some point it was like, We need to stop killing him.
It was not fun for him.
He was bloody and cold and outside and I was like, Why am I doing this to him?
I wondered,What would be pleasurable to him?
Which is a lot of what dementia is like.
He was totally flirting with her.
He was totally into it.
That whole shoot, the fantasy shoot, was insane.
Because I was really worried he wouldnt be able to participate in anything.
Hes ashamed of his toes, for example.
I didnt know if hed take off his socks.
Totally did it, loved it, thought it was hilarious.
He played clarinet his whole life but cant recently because of arthritis.
But we put him in a tuxedo, put him in the bandstand, and he started swinging.
I was going to weep.
He doesnt know where he is, but knew he trusted me.He totally surrendered to you.And he engages.
And he said, Im in heaven.
Weve found a way together to keep him in this life with me.
But then its like, well, what would be the problem with that?
Why is that embarrassing?Right.
Wheres the actual problem?
And I said, Okay!
Walk off the stage, thats fine!
One of the things I learned making this film was that I dont need to pretend to know things.
Let me be interested in whats happening in the moment, and nothing can go wrong.
My father says hes in heaven?
Thats interesting and beautiful and fine.
Can you do that?
Its right at the edge.
In the last death, he says, This is the worst thing thats ever happened to me.
And ten minutes later, he was like, That was hilarious!
And I cant control that in that space either.
At the end of the movie, for a moment, you do think hes dead.
But then its revealed that hes alive.
Your original plan was to film up until his death.
Were not going to do another one when he dies.
I mean, in the making of this film, five people in that audience are already dead.
Ray is 91 years old.
The friend who breaks down?
Why do you think he had that intense of a reaction?Its all real.
Everyone in that audience had lived through my mothers dementia and death and knew my fathers was beginning.
So they were truly grieving his loss in that way.
I think thats why film helps us because it shifts our relationship to time.
Thats what were doing: disassociating, associating, empathizing.
I made this out of need.
And this was the only chance I was going to get.
So there are politics in it.
What does your dad think of the film?
Does he understand what hes watching?He loves it.
He laughs at it.
He gets to go back to his home.
He gets to see his friends.
He does wonder why hes been put at the center of things: You really think this is interesting?
Or hell say, I really miss that guy.
