Interview with Nick Cassavetes (Director/Screenplay) and Heather Wahlquist (Screenplay/Actress) (“Yellow”)

 
When I interviewed Nick Cassavetes when he came to Japan for the promotion of “My Sisters Keepers” in 2009, he told me about his next film. Cassavetes said, “The next film that I am going to begin is going to be quite difficult and I may have to put my house up for mortgage. In any case, I would be making a different film and the idea was to be out of the box.” In his new film, “Yellow,” a substitute teacher named Mary, with a sad past, tries to deal with grim reality by escaping into various delusional worlds. We interviewed Nick Cassavetes, who broke the mold as he said he would with his new film, and Heather Wahlquist, who co-wrote the script of the film and starred in the film.
 
– Was the idea of “Yellow” in the process of script development when I interviewed you 3 years ago?
 
Nick Cassavetes: I think I was in the process of writing the script. But as I am a man of my word, my house is now in mortgage (laugh). I wanted to write a story about how women think today, for the new film. It didn’t matter what type of women it would be. I have been dissatisfied with how women are portrayed in film these days. That is because it didn’t feel 100% authentic to me as an audience. That was the initial genesis for the idea and the reason for wanting to portray the real image of the woman.

 
– You’ve jointly wrote this script with Heather. How did the writing process take place?
 
Cassavetes: In a general sense, I would think of a situation and I would ask Heather how a woman would really think and how they would act and started to write it down. We would talk about it thoroughly and I was being very diligent not to put any moral judgments on what the character was doing. That was because I thought that the audience’s first inclination were to judge the actions that she took.
 
– Did the communication process from being married and living together make it possible for you to create such a screenplay?
 
Cassavetes: Even though during the course of the film Heather and I have been separated and are no longer married, I fully recommend this type of process. This is something that you cannot do with somebody that you don’t know. Sometimes those stretches can be very difficult when you are making movie like this in which you are searching for the truth. Your partner is the best person to get to that truth. We never believed this movie would be made. So we approached it with sheer delight and love. It wasn’t for commerce or guided by fear. We want you to understand that we did what we wanted and it was a purely creative experience.
 
– Heather, I think there is a scene where Mary goes back home to Oklahoma, and I understand that you are from Oklahoma as well.
 
Heather Wahlquist: Yeah, it was set in Oklahoma. It was a coincidence that we actually got to film it in the place that we had in mind when we wrote it. The shooting which took place where I actually grew up in was really kind of magical for me. To see the same stores and realize that everything was just a little bit smaller than what you always thought it was felt very emotional for me. The people of the town were so excited to have the film there. It was a very poor town and it also brought in money and it was a great feeling.

 
– I believe this is a fiction, but it seems that it is reflecting and merging the perspectives of Director Nick Cassavetes and Heather’s family creating this kind of very real and realistic type of environment.
 
Cassavetes: The dinner scene where the family members turn into farm animals… that is my family (laugh). Everyone in my family is very smart and very tough; and we love each other tremendously. But what we actually do is; we sit down and we all drink together until we can’t stand up; and then everybody says exactly what they want to say. It can be very painful and also can be very insightful; but in any case, it is really truthful and without reservation. My family is like a wild pack of animals in that scene.
 
Wahlquist: My mother also appears as a bird in that scene! Nick and I both have a lot of women in our families. Nick has two sisters and a mother; and then I came along and brought my sister. Nick has two daughters and we had another daughter together. So Nick is the only guy besides our dog, Rumpy, who appears in the film too (laugh). That is why he is attracted to the strong women roles in the movie. My family are very passionate people and they want to tell you how they feel and they are normally wrong when they do that. That’s my family in a nut shell.
 
– During the film, there are no clear distinctions between real life and the hallucinations that she has, so there are various parts in the film that make the audience wonder whether this is real or unreal, and the audience is probably feeling like they are also floating in the atmosphere which I thought was interesting.
 
Wahlquist: One way of doing the film would be showing a sign every time Mary’s character goes into the fantasy; for example shooting it with a different kind of contrast or B&W; but what that really does is telegraph the audience what is real and what is not real. Mary’s character has a very difficult time distinguishing between fantasy and reality and we wanted the audience to have the same experience. Does that mean that audience is sometimes confused? Yes. Does it mean that they have to catch up sometimes? Yes. But I think that audiences are smart. When you don’t know what’s happening in a movie, it makes you more interested in that world rather than less interested and hopefully the movie resolves itself for those audiences. But yeah, I want the audience to be able to choose for themselves, choose what they thought was real and what they thought was unreal.
 
– There is a scene where Mary has a huge fight with her sister, Xanne and they take off in the car. They still continue to fight even after the police arrive which was hilarious; was this intended to be improvisational?
 
Wahlquist: That was what my real sister and I did in real-life, It happened exactly in the restaurant, in that parking spot and was shot in the same residential street; and that was the same route where the second car which came from behind got stuck and is also where the keys and the purse flew over. So we’ve re-enacted what had happened in the real life. Probably my headshot is posted in back of the restaurant saying do not let this lady in. (laugh)

 
The partnership between Nick and Heather reminds us of the ties between John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, The style depicted in “Yellow” is completely different from John’s films; but the spirit has been passed down without a doubt. That is because Nick, just like John, is starting to depict the truthful image of the woman based upon a family-like relationship of confidence.

 
Interview by Masaaki Oba (Film Critic)