Director Ken Kwapis talks about He’s Just Not That Into You, character-driven comedy from The Larry Sanders Show, and creating a set where ideas thrive.
He’s Just Not That Into You is award-winning director Ken Kwapis’s latest romance comedy feature film, which “tells the stories of a group of interconnected, Baltimore-based twenty-and thirty-somethings as they navigate their various relationships from the shallow end of the dating pool through the deep, murky waters of married life.”
The film stars an emsemble cast including Ben Affleck as Neil; Jennifer Aniston as Beth; Drew Barrymore as Mary; Jennifer Connelly as Janine; Kevin Connolly as Conor; Bradley Cooper as Ben; Ginnifer Goodwin as Gigi; Scarlett Johansson as Anna; Kris Kristofferson as Ken; and Justin Long as Alex.
Kwapis, who has moved easily between the worlds of feature filmmaking and television directing, shares his insights on guiding actors and directing feature films versus episodic television. Kwapis also shares some behind-the-scenes of his past work, which connects with how he directed the all-star cast of He’s Just Not That Into You.
StudentFilmmakers Magazine:
Where are you originally from?
Ken Kwapis: “I was born in 1957 in a small Southern Illinois town of Belleville. Nobody has heard of it, however, the birthplace of Buddy Ebsen, and, if you’re a fan of the band Wilco, it’s also the birthplace of the lead singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy.”
How did you start directing?
Ken Kwapis: “I started as a filmmaker when I was very young. In the sixth or seventh grade, my father gave me a Super8 camera, which I proceeded to use extensively. In high school, I made films using classmates as actors, some of them are actually kind of watchable. And then, I entered college at Northwestern University, where I studied film as an undergraduate.
“This was in the middle 70s. I was there between 1975 and 1979. It was a very exciting time to be a film student for several reasons. One was, there was a lot of interest in European cinema that time, what was the combination of the French new wave, the German new wave. It just seemed like everywhere you looked, there were great films coming from other countries. And in addition, there was sort of the height, the peak of the sort of early 70s American realistic movement. I guess high points, including films like Coppola’s Godfather film, and Terrence Malick’s Badlands, and things like that.
“During my graduate years, there was a kind of seismic shift that happened in Hollywood filmmaking, as typified by films like Jaws and Star Wars. So all of that was going on as a backdrop to my studying film at Northwestern.
“I graduated and came up to study more film. One film degree was not enough. I applied and was accepted to the USC Graduate School in Filmmaking. For a couple of years, I continued to study film. And, when you’re a student at USC, when you’re a film production student at USC, one of the high points of the curriculum is 20 minute film shot in 16mm. The class number is 480, and I only mention it because many times, you’ll hear USC students just refer to, ‘What was your 480 film?’ It’s the high point of any film production student’s academic career at USC Cinema.”
SFM: Tell us about one of your student films in college.
Ken Kwapis: “I directed a film that was very unusual, and I want to mention it for a second, because it had a huge effect on my career.
“Everybody wanted to direct a film that showed a prospective employer that they knew how to direct actors saying dialogue. Everybody just wanted to basically have a great resume piece. And again, it felt like the key was to show that you can direct dialogue.
“Well, for some perverse reason, I wanted to try something completely different, and thought it would be great to direct a musical.”
SFM: What was that experience like? What kinds of challenges came up?
Ken Kwapis: “Now, even as a student, if you want to direct, say a musical, and if the music is copyrighted material, well, you have to pay for it. And, I couldn’t pay for existing music. I couldn’t, for instance, license a song by a top performer. But I met a member of the music department – he was getting a master’s degree in conducting – and he needed an idea for a thesis project as well. So we pooled our respective needs, and decided that I would actually direct a musical based on a one-act Mozart opera, and he would conduct it.
“So my student film at USC is based on a Mozart one-act, the German title is Der Schauspieldirektor. It’s usually known, in English, as The Impresario. It’s a very simple little piece. It’s twenty minutes long. It’s something Mozart probably dashed off between meals. And the student film is called, For Heaven’s Sake, and it won the Student Academy Award in 1982. I don’t know how the Student Academy Awards work now, but at the time, there were several categories – there was animation, documentary, experimental, and dramatic. So, For Heaven’s Sake won the Student Academy Award in Outstanding Achievement for a Dramatic Film.”
SFM: What happened next?
Ken Kwapis: “As a result of that, I hadn’t even finished my degree, when I was offered an opportunity to leave Los Angeles, leave school, go to New York and direct an After School Special. Now, After School Specials don’t exist anymore, but they were very popular in the late 70s and 80s. They were normally an hour long, and they aired in the afternoon. They were aimed at young people. They were usually shot in 16mm, and many of them were produced in New York. So I was fresh out of school and suddenly directing as a professional for the first time.”
SFM: So you did leave school and take that job?
Ken Kwapis: “I left school, did not complete my MFA degree, and began directing. By the way, even at that time, I always assumed I would return and finish the degree. Because to be honest, how one becomes a director, how one makes their way in the business – I had no understanding of how one sort of broke into the business. I assumed I’d do this job and return and go back to school and finish the degree. I didn’t know.”
SFM: Tell us about the After School Specials you directed.
Ken Kwapis: “I directed three After School Specials. One of them was a kind of long form of After School Special, The Scholastic Book Company. And one of those three came to the attention of some people at Warner Bros. who were, at the time, toying with the idea of making a feature film – the first feature film to star the Sesame Street characters. “Jim Henson and Frank Oz had already made two or three films, maybe just a couple, starring The Muppets. Now, I don’t know if you know the difference between The Muppet characters and the Sesame Street characters, but very simply, The Muppets include characters like Animal and Gonzo and Miss Piggy. And the Sesame Street characters, of course, include Bert & Ernie, Grover, and Cookie Monster, The Count, and Oscar the Grouch. And the one character – only one character crosses back and forth between The Muppets and the Sesame Street group, and that’s, of course… “
SFM: Kermit the Frog.
Ken Kwapis: “…Kermit the Frog.
“So, Warner Bros. thought, ‘wouldn’t it be great, the first Sesame Street feature ever, let’s find some young guy to meet to do this.’ And they saw my work and invited me to meet with Jim Henson. So at age 25, I found myself directing my first feature film, and on top of that, directing Jim Henson and Frank Oz themselves, directing them doing characters that they created nearly 20 years earlier.
“So I found myself in very heavy company. A low budget film, by the way. A film that cost less than $5 million, which even then was pretty cheap. But it was the first Sesame Street film entitled, Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird. I’m very proud of that film. So, that was my debut feature.
“Now, at the time, there was a big divide between feature filmmaking and television directing.
On one hand, if you’re a television director, people assumed you would always be a television director. And if you were a feature film director, why would you want to direct television? That was the feeling. Among feature film people, there was an anti-TV bias. It exists to this day a little bit, however, today, everything’s turned around. And, in fact, I would say some of the top people that work in feature films are a find to work on creative television series, and some of the smartest writers in the business work not for features but for television. That’s one of the significant things that have changed over the course of the 25 years that I have been a director.”
SFM: Tell us about the feature films you directed.
Ken Kwapis: “I have directed 9 feature films, and they are [in order], Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird for Warner Bros. I directed a comedy called Vibes for Columbia Pictures in 1988, starring the, then, enormously popular, Cyndi Lauper; Peter Falk, and Jeff Goldblum. It was a film produced been the first film under the Imagine banner. They had just started their company.”
SFM: What feature film did you work on after Vibes?
I wanted to develop the next film from scratch. I wanted to direct something that was more personal to me. The next film I did, I co-directed with my, then, fiancé Marisa Silver. It’s a film entitled, He Said, She Said. And it really was a film that we designed for ourselves, in which the first half is the story of a romance told from the man’s point of view, the second half covers the same events, but told from the woman’s point of view. It starred Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins. And that was for Paramount Pictures.”
SFM: What films did you direct after He Said, She Said?
Ken Kwapis: “After that, I did two comedies. One, a children’s film, that I’m very proud of, entitled, Dunston Checks In. The main character – the titled character – is an orangutan. So I’ve directed Big Bird and an orangutan [laughs].
“The film also features Jason Alexander, Rupert Everett, Paul Reubens, who you may know as Pee-wee Herman, Faye Dunaway ~ quite a wonderful cast, and it’s really one of my favorite films that I’ve directed. Not a lot of people saw it when it came out. But it’s had a very healthy life ~ afterlife, I should say. It’s really a classic children’s story. I’m really proud of it.
“I directed a film for Paramount entitled, The Beautician and the Beast, starring former 007 Timothy Dalton and Fran Drescher. It’s kind of a mash up, I guess you would say, of stories like The Sound of Music and The King and I, about a beautician from New York who is enlisted to tutor the children of an Eastern European dictator.”
And followed after Dunston Checks In and The Beautician and the Beast?
to go on a very different direction. I wanted to direct something that I wrote. I had never had the experience of directing my own script. And I wrote a screenplay entitled, Sexual Life. And it’s a very loose adaptation of a very famous play by Arthur Schnitzler. The play is called La Ronde.
“I don’t know if you know the play, but it has a very simple and unique structure. And here’s how it goes… You meet a character. I’ll just call that character, Character A. Character A has an affair with Character B. And then Character B, it turns out, is married to Character C, who in turn is having an affair with Character D. And so on, and so on. In the play, there are maybe 10 characters.
“So inspired by this, I wrote my own version of it. And I directed it for a tiny sum of $1million. It was financed by the Showtime Network during a short period in which they decided to create their own independent filmmaking unit. I think they called it Showtime Independent Films. You can get this film on DVD. And several of them have appeared in festivals, including mine. It was, again, a short-lived experiment by the cable network to try and create independent feature films.”
SFM: What was your next feature film after Sexual Life?
Ken Kwapis: “After that, I’ve done three films since then. And each of them has been very significant and very important in my career. The first of those three was The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Now when I started working on that film, a lot of people, a lot of my friends, laughed at me and said, ‘You’re doing a film about four teenage girls and one pair of pants. What kind of career move is that?’ But when I read the screenplay and the novel it’s based on, I felt so confident that it was an emotionally rich story. And that each of the four young women, so relatable, the issues they were dealing with, so easy to relate to, I felt really secure that this would be a strong film. It’s again a film that has really a strong reputation, and in addition to everything else, it helped launched several of these actors, like America Ferrera and Blake Lively. Blake Lively, who no one knew before this film. In fact, I don’t think she held a job of any kind before she was cast in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.”
SFM: What did you direct after Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants?
Ken Kwapis: “After that, I did a comedy about marriage called, License to Wed, with Robin Williams and Mandy Moore and John Krasinski. And, that led directly to the most recent film, He’s Just Not That Into You, which, in many ways, is a culmination of a lot of things I have been experimenting with in feature films of late. A lot of the reasons I wanted to talk about Sexual Life and La Ronde, is one of the challenges of that film was juggling eight, nine, ten characters, trying to keep you equally interested in a series of stories. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants had certainly similar challenges and was also a very female driven film. He’s Just Not That Into You, again, all of these things lead to this kind of sprawling ensemble ~ nine leading characters.
“And for me, one of the things I’m happiest about with this new film is the fact that I feel like I was about to juggle all nine storylines, and keep you, the audience, equally involved in a wide variety of situations and characters.
“But, that’s the feature film side. Now, this is the other thing, though. In many ways, the feature films take a backseat to the television work I’ve done because over the past 10 to 15 years, I’ve been very fortunate to have helped launch, or be an important part of, a kind of revolution in half-hour series. Very specifically, comedies that are shot like films that have no laughter track. Single-camera comedies.
“The first break came in the early 90s when I directed the pilot of the HBO series, The Larry Sanders Show. Now, The Larry Sanders Show, at the time, was quite a radical departure for a half-hour show. First of all, it had a strange format, where he was both shot on film and tape. It included a show within a show. It was not written like a traditional half-hour comedy at all. In fact, there weren’t really any jokes. Most multi-camera situation comedies depend entirely on jokes for their rhythm. The Larry Sanders Show is very different. It was very funny, but all the comedy was driven from the behavior. It was very character-driven. It also tonally had the ability to shift between light and dark. It would be occasionally quite dramatic or quite satiric. It also had a style that was very different from most half-hour comedies. The style wasn’t really a mockumentary, but it sort of felt like you were eavesdropping on the world of these characters, as opposed to, these are people putting on a show for you.”
SFM: Did your work on The Larry Sanders Show lead to other shows?
Ken Kwapis: “The experience on that show led in part to work on several other shows. I was very fortunate to work on the almost legendary short-lived, shamefully short-lived series, Freaks and Geeks, which again I felt was quite ground-breaking. It was an hour show that was hilariously funny and heartbreakingly dramatic at times. And, again, Judd Apatow and Paul Feig were the creators. And they created a show that allowed all of the humor to not only come from character, but in many ways, much of the humor was derived from people just in pain. I don’t mean physical pain, but just emotional pain. It was really a great show. And literally at the same time, I worked on a show that stylistically couldn’t be more different. But again, like all the shows I’m mentioning ~ no laugh track. I produced and directed nearly 20 episodes of the show, Malcolm in the Middle.”
SFM: Tell us about your work on Malcolm in the Middle.
Ken Kwapis: “Malcolm in the Middle was unique for a half-hour show in that it was filled with complicated psych gags and physical comedy. It was also very character-driven, but it had this robust, high definition style. I often said it was the closest experience I’ll ever have to what it must have been like during the silent era, where you would shoot, you know, comedy two-reelers every two weeks or so.
“Each week we had solve complicated logistical problems. The kinds that really you would deal with on a feature film level, but rarely in a half-hour television show.”
SFM: You also directed The Bernie Mac Show.
Ken Kwapis: “I directed the pilot of The Bernie Mac Show.
And this is really significant thing because The Bernie Mac Show again in many ways has familiar elements ~ it’s a family comedy. In a way, it’s a cousin to everything from My Three Sons to The Cosby Show. But the differences are critical. First of all, Bernie Mac had long been approached to do a half-hour show, but didn’t want to do it unless he could do it in a single-camera way without an audience. He didn’t want to do stand up for a show. He wanted to do something that was intimate and conversational. So the show had a very intimate style.
“The other thing about the show was tonally, it had a very blunt kind of comedy. And again, what was unique about Bernie’s character, and I feel like I helped guide this, was that his approach to child rearing was so rough. It was politically incorrect. And yet he was so committed to this point of view. And that’s I think what this thing wishes it from every family comedy. You know, the great family comedies of television do not have parental figures who claim to want to break their children’s necks. I mean, one of Bernie’s lines he used to say about the children in the show is, he’d say, ‘I don’t negotiate with terrorists.’ And so, his approach to child rearing was just so tough-minded and wrong-headed in a way. But the style of the show, again, made that blunt attitude very accessible and very user-friendly.
“All of this finally led to getting to direct a pilot of, one of the most unconventional shows, I think, on TV, and that’s the show, The Office. I directed the pilot, and I’ve directed about a dozen of the shows. And again it felt like so many of the things that I had experimented with in different comedies, in terms of unusual tone, in terms of making sure the comedy comes out of character and not jokes, it kind of really blossomed with The Office. Which in many ways, some of the most comedic moments are on ones that also make you cringe, and sometimes you’re just embarrassed for the characters even as you’re laughing. Again, this is just tonally, I think, very unique. Also the style of the show, which I absolutely helped set ~ not simply a mockumentary, but a show in which the cameras often instructed to deliberately miss important information. Because you hear a line of dialogue, and sometimes the camera will pan and arrive at the subject too late. That’s fine. That’s the style of the show.”
SFM: Could you describe a little bit what it was like on the set of The Office?
Ken Kwapis: “When I first had my big crew meeting before we started shooting the pilot, I announced to the entire crew, ‘Hair, make-up, wardrobe, production design, sound, camera,’ I said, ‘All the things that in any other circumstances would get you fired are actually very acceptable on this show.’ I said that our job is to create the illusion that we’re eavesdropping on the life of this office, and as a result, not prepared for the stories that unfold in front of our eyes. We shouldn’t be prepared. We should be caught unaware. And so, so much of what I do as a director on that show is try and create the illusion that, in fact, I don’t know what’s gonna happen next.
“A lot of that sort of fed into this latest film as well. Just a sense of what I told all these actors ~ Ben Affleck, Jennifer Jks ]__alpejc oq^ieooekjo bkn Bqpqna kb ?ejai] Ejpanj]pekj]h Behi Baoper]h I]u – Ì /( .,,5
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“I said [to the actors] I want to feel like I’m eavesdropping on the lives of these characters. I never want to feel for a moment like you’re putting on a show for the audience. So just let me watch, and, of course, I’m directing a scene, and we have to shape it. But the feeling should be that the audience is getting a little window into the lives of these people.”
SFM: Because of how you started in filmmaking, and you’ve directed some new talent like Blake Lively and others, what techniques do you use to work with less experienced actors? And how do you deal with different kinds of egos on the set and disagreements?
Kwapis: “Well, there are a couple of things. One is, it’s just important that when you’re casting to make sure that whether or not it’s somebody who’s well-known, or somebody who is unknown, that they want to participate for the right reason. So whether it’s Blake Lively, who came to auditions never having work before, or Jennifer Aniston, who is a celebrated actress ~ you want to make sure that the reason why they’re there is they connect with the material. They see an opportunity to say something personal. That they can relate to the story. That it reminds them of something they’ve been through. My job is to make sure that everyone’s telling the same story.
“There’s always going be disagreements.
That’s a collaboration is. But, it’s not my job to tell an actor how to do their job. But it’s my job to remind the cast what the story is we’re trying to tell. What I try and do is encourage the actors to figure out a way to relate the storyline to something they experienced. It doesn’t have to be the same thing.
“In fact, sometimes Blake Lively and I had very good discussions about character and motivation entirely based on the Harry Potter books. I’ve read them all. She’s read them all several times. And we were talking great detail about the motivations of the characters like Ron Weasley, and how that related to the characters in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
“The main thing is how do you open up an avenue for the actor or actress that allows them to connect with the part? It’s not about hitting a mark. It’s not about saying a joke properly. It’s not about rhythm. None of that stuff is important to me. What’s important is that kind of “X” factor that an actor will bring to the set because they somehow enable to, in their mind, find an avenue from the fictional role to something they have experienced in their life.”
SFM: What kind of guidance or suggestion would you give to someone who is embarking on the path and has decided that this is something that they want to do – which they come in large droves these days – and possibly someone who would be in school who’s studying it, and maybe at your old alma mater?
Ken Kwapis: “For me, I think the advice I would give is that there’s no right or wrong way to become a filmmaker. You don’t need to start at the top. You can direct a documentary. You can direct a public service. You can direct a feature film. You can direct a television commercial. You could direct a music video. You could direct an episode of a show for Nickelodeon. There’s actually no right or wrong way to begin. And it’s not possible to know, what doors will lead to the place you want to go to? It’s a very unpredictable business. And, by the way, that’s what makes it great. As long as you could realize that whatever door you’re walking through may lead to something great, it will.
“My feeling, also, is I always encourage people to do two things, and they seem to be different things, but they have to be done simultaneously. One is, you have to know film history, you have to know what’s been made before you. You have to know how people tackled the story problems in the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. Because, in fact, the problems of how to tell a story haven’t changed. And people have solved these problems brilliantly over the years. It’s imperative to know where people have gone before you. That’s number one.
“The second thing is, remember that really, ultimately, your work will only be strongest if you can draw from your own experience.
“That’s why I’m saying they’re two opposite things. You need to know where others have been, but then you also need to kind of draw from where you’ve been yourself in your life. Even if you’re 10, 15, 20 years old, and you haven’t had all that much life experience, there’s still enough. Everyone’s had friendships and heartbreaks and difficulties and challenges. Don’t ever dismiss those experiences. That’s the grist for the mill. Whether it’s going to produce a screenplay for you, or whether or not, when you’re talking to actors on a set, or lining up a shot, or trying to decide how to stage a scene ~ you’re trying to produce in the audience an effect, an emotion. And if you can sort of relate it to where you’ve been in your own life, the audience will feel that.”
What started your collaborative relationship with John Bailey, ASC?
Ken Kwapis: “Well, this is our fourth film together. We do have a wonderful short-hand. We have a shared love of film history. We both take it very seriously. We plan our shots, we storyboard. I’ve admired John, and I remember when I went to see Ordinary People, the first film he shot as the Director of Photography. And I’ve been an admirer ever since. I don’t know what to say. We’re kind of like brothers.”
SFM: Do you do your own storyboarding?
Ken Kwapis: “No, I hire an artist who can draw. And I try and have the storyboard artist come to the locations, if possible, to see what the physical spaces are like. The storyboard artist also has photographs of the cast as they are assembled. And the goal is to kind of previsualize as much of every scene as possible with the understanding that you might get on the set and throw the whole thing out. And an actor may come up with an idea. John Bailey may have an idea. Something will suggest itself. But at every turn, you have something you’ve planned that you can fall back on. And it may be the perfect thing.
“And for me, previsualizing is also a way of trying to understand what’s really going on in the scene on a deeper level. It’s not just about the mechanics of, we need this shot or that shot. It’s about, what are we trying to express here? What kind of energy are we trying to create? Should the camera move? Should it not move? Why shouldn’t it move? These are all the things related to, what’s the most effective way to tell the story at any given moment? And again, I always work with John Bailey and the storyboard artist together. We sit in a room, and we’ll act out the scenes together. And the artist will go away and then do renderings of that scene. And again, I love doing it, but I also know good and well that sometimes it’s something that you should be prepared to abandon at a moment’s notice if a better idea comes along.”
SFM: The actors are responsible for, of course, knowing their lines and some character creation. What kind of rehearsing do you do?
Ken Kwapis: “I try and do as much as possible. It’s sometimes hard when you’re working with actors who are popular and have conflicts of schedules and the like. But, for instance, for Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I had a very extensive rehearsal because one of my jobs was to create the feeling that these were four life-long friends. There’s only about fifteen minutes in the film before these four characters are separated for the great vast majority of the story. And I so had to, in short order, create the illusions of four life-long friends. So, in order to do that, we did a lot of rehearsal, some of which was just designed to get the actors to know each other better.
“Often times, it’s not about rehearsing actual scenes, but it’s about just meeting and talking about the story and characters and what makes those characters tick.”
You previously said that there are always going to be disagreements that are part of a collaborative effort. What do you do in those situations where there are disagreements?
Ken Kwapis: “Oh, I think that every interaction is different. What you need to do is be able to negotiate with a wide variety of different personalities. And it’s not just actors ~ it’s the studios, it’s producers, it’s writers, it’s directors of photography, and the editors. You want to encourage people to have ideas, you don’t want people to come in and be robots. And so, a lot of what my job is, is to encourage people to bring their best game. And what that often means is I’ll bring in ideas that may or may not help tell the story. I never try and squash a bad idea in such a way that would make someone feel inhibited about coming up with something again. And I think that so much of what I do is try and create an atmosphere in which people feel free to explore different ideas. And by the way, I’m not territorial about a good idea. If it comes from someone else, great.”
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