Talk about icebreakers. In the opening scene of Away We Go, Sam Mendes’ (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) new
film, Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are in bed going
at it. Burt has his head under the covers and is clearly, um,
pleasuring Maya, while he tries to keep up a conversation at the same
time. It’s a funny but awkward scene that was among the first that the
two stars filmed together. Good thing they knew each other before
shooting began.
“Maya truly is, in my opinion, one of my favorite people to watch,”
says Krasinski at a roundtable interview in Los Angeles. “I think on
SNL, she brought a completely unique take to that show. When I actually
got to do [Away We Go] with her, we had known each other through
friends a little bit. It also helped to shoot the in-the-bed shot first
or second. I wouldn’t say I was a shy guy when it comes to scenes like
that, but you almost get shy because you respect the person so much.
It’s like, ‘Now that we’ve become close friends, I will be between your
legs for the next six hours.’ But it was really fun.”
A road movie of sorts, Away We Go follows unmarried couple
Burt and Verona as they traipse across the country, visiting friends
and acquaintances in an attempt to find a place where they can live and
raise their child. They decide to embark on their trip after Burt’s
parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O’Hara) inform him they’re moving
and won’t be around once Verona, several months pregnant, gives
birth.
So Burt and Verona first visit Phoenix, where they meet one of
Verona’s former colleagues (Allison Janney). Then they’re off to Tucson
to visit Verona’s sister (Carmen Ejogo). After stops in Wisconsin,
Montreal and Miami, they decide their friends don’t have any answers
about where to live and how to raise children. While the film is
essentially about a loving couple that doesn’t have any major issues,
Mendes says he sees the movie as a companion piece to the much darker
Revolutionary Road.
“In very obvious ways, it’s the flip side of the same coin,” he
says. “It’s a couple who, this time, they want to escape and they can.
Certainly Revolutionary Road is not a romantic comedy, but it is
about the mechanics of a couple facing each other, about the
relationship itself. [Away We Go] treats the couple as a unit.
They’re in love and they love each other, and they’re happy. In the
traditional romantic comedy, boy meets girl, they fall in love, then
something goes wrong, and then they are reunited at the end. That’s
sort of different here, and I like that.”
To capture the film’s different feel, Mendes decided to work with
cinematographer Ellen Kuras, who’s most famous for work on music
documentaries like No Direction Home and Shine a
Light.
“I wanted it to be simple and a little rough around the edges,”
explains Mendes. “I didn’t want to obsess about lighting and in
particular interiors. We had no time and no money, so I realized there
wasn’t really a choice. I told Ellen, ‘The irony is that you’re
delighted to be working with me after everything, but I can’t give you
the time that I would have.’ So a couple of times she would get
frustrated, but you know, I wanted it to feel warm and soft, so we used
old lenses and we shot widescreen, so I could get a sense of landscape
around the characters.”
Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, the script lends itself to
that kind of low-budget production.
“I heard Vendela say that when they were writing it, she had two
wishes to fulfill, which was she didn’t want them to have a big
dramatic breakup and she didn’t feel like she had to wrap it up in a
bow and have them get married in the end,” says Rudolph. “Whether or
not that was like a writing challenge, I don’t know, but I like that
it’s not perfect, and that it is very similar to the way that life
is.”
Krasinski agrees.
“I think it’s a comedy in the way that life is a comedy,” he says.
“It’s very rare that someone writes the part so well that you don’t
really have to think, you just show up. But they wrote it really,
really well, and there’s something about that type of relationship that
I not only respect, but am in total awe of. It’s not all about flowers
and diamonds all the time. It’s about secret languages and knowing
everything in a glance. That kind of relationship is something that I
admire in real life too. I think that’s something really special, and I
don’t think I’ve personally seen a romance like that in awhile.”
This article appears in Jun 24-30, 2009.
