An Interview with multi-hyphenate Frank Whaley

A well-known character actor for a number of years, Frank Whaley has appeared in nearly eighty films and TV shows, perhaps most famously opposite Kevin Spacey in Swimming With Sharks. He’s also written and directed three films, the most recent, New York City Serenade, coming to DVD on March 24. I had a chance to speak with Frank about the movie, his writing, and what’s next.

Warning: spoilers ahead

DM: I really enjoyed New York City Serenade. I understand you wrote it in the mid ’90s?
FW: That’s when I started writing it, yeah. I did the first draft in the mid ’90s then I stopped, came back to it probably six or seven years later. About 2000.

DM: And what prompted you to revisit it?
FW: Well, I never really forgot about it, and I really wanted to make a story about New York, because it had such a great influence on me at that time. I wanted to have New York as a separate theme or character, and it’s really important in this story because these two guys are in and out of each others’ lives, and that’s something that really exemplifies living in New York, especially when you’re young. At least that was my experience. You can get kind of caught up in life and turn around and those people you were so close with are gone, it’s kind of transient in that way. That’s the abstract idea that I had, to make a simple story with that as the basis.

DM: Was there an autobiographical element to some of the things that happened in the movie, or were you just trying to talk about growing older?
FW: It’s a little bit of both. The movie is very situational, it’s a bunch of short stories about these two guys. There’s the party, and then the funeral sequence, then they go off and leave town for a little while, and then things fall apart. All of those moments, those sequences, are somewhat autobiographical in that they happened to me, or people involved in them were people that I knew. And on the other hand, it is a story about, maybe not specifically about growing old, but about moving forward in your life. The basic idea is that these two guys are very close and sort of dependent on each other, and that is something that has to end for the good of both of them. That was the point of the post-script, in that Freddie Prinze’s character sort of breaks up with Chris, but can’t break free of him in the end, and goes back looking for him. And it’s Ray who says, “Don’t look back, keep moving forward.” So, yes, to answer your question, it is autobiographical in some ways, and the bottom line is that sometimes it’s better to move on.

DM: The relationship between the two leads felt very authentic, in that they weren’t very good for each other, but still wanted to be around each other in almost a self-destructive way.
FW: They’re comfortable. I think very few times we’ve seen realistic portrayals of male bonding or friendship, more and more these movies are slapstick or broad comedy, Pineapple Express or that sort of thing. What I’m striving for here is authenticity and realism, and that’s what I try to do in all my movies. What I hope I did was a truly honest portrayal of friendship between two men. They’re too old for this type of behavior that they’re exhibiting, and neither one of them are going anywhere in their lives. And they’re both drunks, both drinking too much. People in their thirties should be looking forward, and not be stuck in the mud, stagnant, and I think both of them are. Owen is showing a little a bit of potential, he finangled his way into making this short film and getting it exhibited in this film festival, while the other one is not doing anything. But yeah, I’m glad you thought the relationship was authentic. I tried to keep the realism involved, and tried to allow the humor and comedy to seep through rather than make it broad.

DM: I thought it was interesting when Owen gets to LA, he’s not very aggressive in pursuing his dream, even when it’s right there laid out for him, instead making Ray go talk to Wallace Shawn, and leaving the movie theatre when his film is about to start.
FW: He’s a bit hapless, you’re right. That’s his flaw, he doesn’t have that killer instinct, while the other guy does – but he doesn’t have any talent, or he hasn’t found it. The problem with Owen’s life is that he’s not able to take charge of it. That’s why he fools around with the girl at the party, destroying his relationship with a person who loves him and perhaps is good for him. And even when it counts, he doesn’t go after something that could possibly change his career or life: he puts his unqualified friend in that position. And that’s why in the post-script he comes back looking for his friend, and his friend gives him the best advice he can saying, “Leave, go, do it. Make it happen.”

DM: Ray seems like the more mature one in a way.
FW: I think he is, I think Owen did him a lot of favors by saying, you know, “It’s over. I don’t want to see you anymore, I don’t want you in my life.” There was a wake-up call when he opened his eyes and went off and got sober, he took control of the relationship with his daughter, took responsibility, got a real job and cleaned up, and we find him sitting happily and easily in the park. The hope would be he is going to continue on being a productive person in life. And what I tried to do in the story at the end was at least give an inkling of hope for Freddie too when he walks away. Ray tells him “It’s gonna be okay, everything’s gonna be okay.” And I think those words are kind of dear to him, and he’ll go back to California (even though) it might be a hard place for him. California can be a tough place for a guy like him, you can get steamrolled out there, but hopefully he’ll go back and pursue it.

DM: Were there any touchstone films for you when you were making this movie?
FW: Every time I make a movie, I kind of base it, so to speak, or I am strongly influenced by one film in particular. For my first film, it was The 400 Blows, I was a student of that film and of the work of Francois Truffaut, so that film (Joe the King) was strongly, strongly influenced by that film, almost to the point of almost remaking it in my own mind, but I don’t think audiences would see that as much as I would. And then my second film, The Jimmy Show, which was about a failed comedian, (was influenced by) one of my favorite films of Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy. I adapted that movie from a one act play that I had acted in by Jonathan Marc Sherman, and I was strongly influenced by that. For this one, it was the film Withnail & I, written and directed by Bruce Robinson, which shares very similar themes in terms of friendship and human relationships overall. It’s about two friends, both of them actors, both of them are hopelessly lost and drunk in their lives and seemingly moving nowhere until one of them receives a lucky break and moves on. It’s kind of a tragedy in the end. I love that movie and had been seeing it a lot. So that would be the one.

DM: What about casting Chris Klein and Freddie Prinze Jr? I think they do some of their best work in this movie.
FW: I agree with you . Freddie, early on in his acting career did some really interesting work. The movie that I remember him from the most, the title escapes me, it was with Parker Posey, a small independent film I saw at the Sundance Film Festival a long time ago. Then he kind of got caught up in a whole bunch of romantic comedies and stuff like that, and got sort of typecast and began to repeat the same thing and was really, I think, overexposed in movies like Scooby-Doo. And like a lot of actors who are impressionable, he took the wrong course. So I think he does have some untapped talent, but there’s this perception of him that you don’t necessarily think of as legit or serious. And that’s too bad. With Chris, I think it’s sort of the same thing. He started out strong in roles, and then got strung along by other influences, perhaps, made some choices that weren’t so good or didn’t have opportunities. So I think this was an opportunity for both these guys to come back and do something really interesting and subtle, and I think they both acknowledge that. With Chris it came naturally, he embraced the language of the characters, while with Freddie I had to work with a little bit more because he was used to some, kind of, stock reliances, something we had to strip away to get right to the realism and simplicity of the thing. In terms of the casting of the both of them, the way to get a movie made – the only way to get a movie like this made, these days – is to have somebody with a recognizable name for the video box, and for overseas, that’s what they look for. They rarely read the script, they just want to know who’s in the movie, the investors. Were these two guys my first choice? Absolutely not, I had other guys in mind. But either they wanted money that we didn’t have or they weren’t available, or stuff like that. So it’s pretty random how movies are cast. Basically it came down to Freddie, I send his manager the script, he read it, he loved it. He and I sat down for a cup a coffee and were trying to figure out who could play Ray. I wrote the parts originally for Ethan Hawke and myself, Ethan Hawke to play Owen and myself to play Ray, but by the time it came down to making the film both of us were maybe a little bit too old for those roles, especially me. So Freddie, while we were having coffee, suggested, “How about Chris Klein?” because they had just worked together on stage in London in a play called This is Our Youth. So they had a real camaraderie, and he thought Chris would be good. Chris was for me, really, against type. I always think of Chris as a really good actor, but more as sort of a surfer, Malibu kind of guy, and these are New Yorkers through and through. But I met him and he really loved it, and understood the basic themes and ideas of what I was trying to do. And they met the qualifications for the investors, which is the most important thing for getting a movie made.

DM: They off pulled these characters that were so different from anything we’ve seen them do.
FW: I think so, yeah. It’s like good music, a good song, it all starts with the melody. With a script, it all starts with what the characters are and what they say. My strong suit is dialogue and character, and I think these guys read it and saw something they could sink their teeth into, and took it very seriously. Like I said, Freddie, at first, began to fall into some of the same sort of stock routines that he’s used in a lot of movies, for formulaic romantic comedies, but he soon learned that where the truth lies is somewhere deeper. And the truth can only be portrayed onscreen, I feel, through honest realism. And so the more simply and honestly anything can be played, the better.

DM: Do you have a favorite scene in the movie?
FW: I was really proud I was able to pull off — and I think they’re good, some might disagree — but my favorite scenes were the way the film ends, with two really, really long scenes of dialogue, and very little or no movement. I think of (the first) as the break up scene in the motel, where they’re sitting across from each other on the beds, and the camera didn’t really move and the actors didn’t really move. It was essentially just the two of them and their dynamic. And I think it’s really great. There’s very little cutting, which I think is nice as well. Then the scene where they come back together, after a couple of years at the end, it’s the same thing, they’re just standing across from each other. At one point we see the distance between the two of them.

DM: With the hedge in between them…
FW: Yeah, that’s kind of, in some ways, metaphoric for the distance that’s grown between them. So for me, it’s those two. If only because of the challenges I faced because they were ten page scenes, it was really up to the actors and myself to find where tension of the scenes was. Another was a scene in the movie where Chris’ wife, played by Heather Bucha, comes out screaming and yelling at him out of frustration and anger and heartbreak, and the camera pushes in on her, and she sheds a tear. Which was unexpected, and one of those moments that happens, and I always loved that.

DM: It was interesting how you had the scene of them arguing in the hotel room, and then go to black, then there’s the scene in the park two years later — a whole movie could’ve taken place between those scenes.
FW: I agree. I never really planned, or realized this, but it goes from a flat motel room to very bright, sunny, lovely Madison Square Park, and I love the way it happens. And I really hand it to those two guys, they really showed up that day, that morning to do that scene, and they knew the scene, they had worked on it, thought about it, and it wasn’t easy but we did it.

DM: Do you see yourself directing more in the future, or do you like this balance of acting a lot and directing every few years?
FW: I would prefer to be able to make a living, make my life, directing. That’s what I love to do and that’s what I prefer to do. I’m just lucky to be making a living doing either these days, I have two children to support and a family. So, anything that comes along, whether it’s acting or directing, I kind of have to grab it, whether it’s a guest spot on a television show, a television series, or a role in a film if I get lucky. But my passion, my soul, is in writing and directing. I have another film that I’ve written that I’m trying to get financing for, and the types of films that I make, if I’m lucky they’re critically received, but they’re usually not very financially viable, so I’m not the kind of guy being bugged by the studio to make a movie. Every time I’m trying to dig another hole and get a movie made. But I have to do it, I want to tell my stories.

DM: Would you ever consider directing something you didn’t write, or writing something and not directing it?
FW: I’ve done some rewriting. I’ve been approached to doctor scripts in the past, and that’s strictly just to pay my bills. I actually just finished something that I was asked to rewrite. But I don’t really like to do it because it’s a lot of work and you’re kind of giving your ideas – ideas are like gold, and you don’t really want to give them away. There are some people who do that, and there’s a formula they have to write scripts in Hollywood. And I don’t abide by it, I kind of do my own thing. So I find myself hard pressed to rewrite somebody else’s, like, action thriller, because it always ends up turning into something completely different. It’s funny because I was paid to rewrite a kind of hackneyed action movie, a thriller, and I realized right away that there were no characters at all in the movie. There were just sort of ideas, stock. So I went back and spent a lot of time doing it and the notes came back like, ‘It’s too dark, you can’t do that.’ I guess what I’m trying to say is they don’t want it to be the best, they want it to be what it is.

DM: When you’re writing, are you very disciplined as far as outlining, or do you just go with it as it comes?
FW: Yeah, that’s what I do. My new original script that I’ve written, and it’s the same with all the stuff that I’ve written, it really begins with an idea, and always ultimately ends on a whole different idea. And so what’s fun and exciting for me about writing is that I’ll have a basic idea in my mind as far as where the story is going, and who the characters are first and foremost, and as I begin to write, maybe three weeks into it, I stop, and I just start to think about it. Whether it’s when I’m walking down the street, or taking the kids to school, or running on the treadmill, I’ll try to figure out what they do next. I’ll start, in my mind, speaking with the characters, perhaps and it always changes, from where it started, where it’s going. My last script, I did write a kind of outline as to where it would go, and the finished script has very little relationship to it, it’s completely different. So I tend to learn as I write.

DM: About how long does it usually take you to finish a script?
FW: I would say, if I condensed all the time – because a lot of times I’ll put it down and come back to it sometime later – but if I put all the time of actual writing together, maybe three months? For me it’s easier to start than it is to wrap it up. That’s why my first draft is always over two-hundred pages long, it’s almost novel-like. Everything but the kitchen sink is in there, all kinds of backstory. The last script that I wrote, the first draft I gave to my wife, she’s always the first person I want to read it, it was like three-hundred pages. She’s a writer herself, so we call it the red pen draft, she gets out the red pen and Xs out things. She’s an editor, that’s part of the process as well.

DM: So that’s the next thing you’ve got coming up, the film you’re getting off the ground?
FW: I hope so. I hope to have it together and in production by late spring or early summer. It’s called Like Sunday, Like Rain. And the movie I was inspired by was Harold and Maude. This movie’s about a very intelligent young boy, and he’s thrown together with a kind of temporary nanny who comes out to care for him over a summer. It’s a simple idea, a simple story, about these two different people from completely different places in the world, and their interactions.

DM: You’re casting now, getting finances together?
FW: Those two things usually happen simultaneously, you know, same old story. But for this one the lead is this 22, 23-year-old female, and I’m not sure there’s really a name actress out there that would really fit the role, so I’m trying to convince someone to finance it on a really low budget so I can go out and find the right person for that part. I’ve sent it around to a couple of people who like it, but they want some name actress who maybe can do it but is not what I want. One thing I’ve learned is, casting is everything. You’ve got to have the right person.

DM: Well, good luck with it, I look forward to seeing it. And I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me.
FW: Thank you. It’s been really great talking to you.

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