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The triumphant return of New Deal Tuesdays: $7 tickets all day long.

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Coinciding with the liberation of the term “Taco Tuesdays” from the clutches of Big Taco, Laemmle Theatres is pleased to bring back our weekly discount program New Deal Tuesdays. We first introduced it during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and although economists are now saying we will probably avoid another economic downturn any time soon, it is always a good time to encourage people to see movies as they were meant to be seen, where they are scientifically proven (research pending) to be 1000% better: in theaters.

For a limited time, we will sell all tickets for all Tuesday afternoon and evening screenings for only seven dollars. (Fine print: the discount only applies to movies we’re screening as part of regular engagements, so that excludes operas and film festivals. But those represent a fraction of the films we show.) This means that if one were to bring six friends or family members to a Laemmle movie on any given Tuesday, said person and their party could all enjoy the flick for only [7 x 7, checks calculator] $49!

What’s more, we are planning  Tuesday concessions discounts. Stay tuned to our socials to keep abreast of the developing New Deal Tuesdays tidings. Use laemmle.com/connect as a way to stay connected and get further announcements. And consider enjoying tacos before or after the movies! Tacos, too, are wonderful and affordable.

Kate Beckinsale and Brian Cox star in Catherine Hardwicke’s PRISONER’S DAUGHTER, opening June 30.

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Next week we’ll be opening the new indie thriller Prisoner’s Daughter. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight, Thirteen, many more), Brian Cox (Succession and many more) stars as Max, an ex-con trying to reconcile with his estranged daughter, Maxine, played by Kate Beckinsale (Cold Comfort Farm and many more). Here’s a clip:

Max is terminally ill and granted a compassionate release with the condition he live with his daughter. She’d much rather say no but desperate for money to support herself and her son, Ezra (Christopher Convery), she grudgingly agrees. As Max seeks one final chance to redeem himself in her eyes, Maxine’s abusive, drug addict ex-husband turns up. Max’s history of violence reappears too, with explosive consequences. Tyson Ritter and Ernie Hudson co-star.

We open Prisoner’s Daughter June 30 at the Monica Film Center and Town Center/Encino and are hosting a free advance sneak preview screening on June 28 at the NoHo where Ms. Hardwicke will participate in a post-screening Q&A.

Join Laemmle Theatres in supporting TreePeople’s new monthly giving program, The Canopy.

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A few words from Laemmle Theatres’ partners, TreePeople!

Dear friends,

TreePeople is delighted to announce our partnership with Laemmle Theatres, one of Los Angeles’ most iconic independent cinema groups. As an organization committed to protecting and expanding our local ecosystems, we are grateful for their support and shared passion for environmental sustainability. 

At TreePeople, we believe trees are not just a source of beauty but are also vital to the health and well-being of our communities. Trees provide shade, improve air quality, absorb carbon, and prevent erosion.

As you may know, TreePeople has a long and storied history. We were founded in 1973 by a concerned teenager who saw the need to address the environmental challenges facing Los Angeles. Since then, we’ve planted over three million trees, and engaged over three million volunteers. Our work has been recognized locally and nationally, and we’re proud to be part of the movement to create a more sustainable future.

TreePeople has made significant strides in supporting communities that suffer from pollution exposure and extreme heat, creating change to improve both environmental and human health. These impacts are further explored through our programming in wildfire restoration and prevention, school greening, eco-tours, residential tree distributions, community engagement, tribal relations, and a focus on our “bright spots”; areas across Southern California that are the most affected by extreme heat, pollution, seasonal flooding, and low tree canopy cover.

However, our work is far from done. The climate crisis is becoming increasingly urgent, and the need to protect and expand our urban forest is more important than ever. That’s why we would like to invite you to join our monthly giving program, The Canopy. By joining The Canopy, you will help us continue our critical work of building a greener, more resilient, and sustainable Southern California.

The Canopy is an excellent way to support TreePeople because it allows us to plan for the future with confidence. Your ongoing support will enable us to take on ambitious projects, such as planting new trees, restoring watersheds, and maintaining community green spaces. 

We are so grateful for this opportunity to tell you more about our work, and we hope that you will join our movement! Your contributions, no matter how small, will help us continue our work and build a better future for generations to come. 

Trees need People. People need Trees.

Sincerely,

TreePeople Team

 

ONLY IN THEATERS screening with Q&A this Saturday, July 8 at Vidiots in Eagle Rock.

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July 5 Update: Tickets are now on sale for this Saturday’s Vidiots screening of Only in Theaters. In addition to the film, this is one more, possibly last chance to catch an in-person Q&A with subjects Greg and Tish Laemmle and filmmaker Raphael Sbarge.

Original post from June 14: Vidiots, welcome to the L.A. exhibition scene! ONLY IN THEATERS screening w/Q&A July 8.

Los Angeles’ world class movie theater culture just got classier. By reopening the 271-seat Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock, Vidiots has joined major venues of film exhibition like the Academy Museum, the American Cinematheque, the Alamo Drafthouse, the New Beverly, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art (in 2025), and REDCAT, to grassroots sites like Braindead Studios, Secret Movie Club, and Cinespia, plus, ahem, yours truly, Laemmle Theatres to further get Angelenos off their lonesome sofas and out into our one-of-a-kind megalopolis. We are in Hollywood, after all, the movie capital of the world, and it’s only fitting we have a plethora of ways to see movies the way they are meant to be seen: in public, with an audience, on big screens. Yes, home viewing is convenient. And for episodic stuff that is meant to be seen on TV, we are all for it. But comparing the experience of watching a “movie” via VOD with the act of actually seeing the same film in a movie theatre is like the debate between masturbation and sex …or a frozen meal versus a meal at your favorite restaurant. In the immortal words of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, “ain’t nothin’ like the real thing, Baby.”

We’re pleased the documentary about Laemmle, Only in Theaters, is among Vidiot’s first screenings. Join filmmaker Raphael Sbarge and subjects Greg and Tish Laemmle for a post-screening Q&A on July 8.

Mark Olsen of the L.A. Times has been covering Vidiot’s long road from funky, adored Santa Monica video store to Eagle Rock movie theater/cafe/video store/event space. Here’s the beginning of his latest dispatch:

When the Santa Monica video store Vidiots, which had become a local cultural institution, closed in February 2017, founders Patty Polinger and Cathy Tauber had their doubts as to whether the store would ever rebound. Opened in 1985, the beloved rental shop had a collection of more than 50,000 titles on various media formats that was put into storage, potentially never to be publicly available again.

“I didn’t really think it would,” said Tauber, reflecting on whether the store could bounce back after years of financial struggle with the rise of emerging streaming services. “I know that was the plan from the beginning, but I think by the time we shut down, I was so worn out and exhausted from trying to keep the business going and all the negativity and struggle. It was really hard to imagine this was really going to happen. Of course I hoped it would, but we were just way burnt out by the time we were closing down.”

Tauber sat recently with Polinger in the comfy and inviting theater space of the revived Vidiots, which just reopened. Besides a video store, the newly renovated complex at the Eagle Theatre in Eagle Rock includes a 271-seat movie theater, a beer and wine bar, and a smaller micro-cinema space that can also be used for community and educational programs.

“It has been such a transformation and such a huge endeavor, with so many obstacles along the way,” said Polinger. “It’s really a miracle that we’re here.”

Click here to read Olsen’s full article.

 

“Today, at 79, Hammons is among our greatest living artists. His work is nothing less than a cultural touchstone for critical developments at the center of American art and life.” Christopher Knight on THE MELT GOES ON FOREVER, opening Friday at the Monica Film Center.

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The new documentary The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons chronicles the singular career of the elusive African-American art star David Hammons from Watts rebellion era ’60s L.A. to global art world prominence today. Hammons’ category-defying practice – rooted in a deep critique of American society and the elite art world – is in the words of one art critic “an invitation to confront the fissures between races.” We open the film this Friday at the Monica Film Center.

The L.A. Times’ art critic Christopher Knight recently wrote about the film and Hammons, whom he describes as “among our greatest living artists.” Here’s an excerpt:

“In David Hammons’ most disarming art, seeming simplicity assumes sharp sophistication. It’s like a supercharged matryoshka doll, with each layer peeling back to reveal and fertilize another layer — and another, and another, and another, until a viewer is dizzy with exhaustion, both delightful and chastening.

David Hammons. Photo credit: Dawoud Bey. 

“Black life in a white-dominated society has been Hammons’ focus for more than half a century, at least since the fateful year of 1968. That’s when he enrolled in what is now called Otis College of Art and Design to work with artist Charles White, back when the school was at the edge of L.A.’s MacArthur Park (the one that was then melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing flowing down). Today, at 79, Hammons is among our greatest living artists. His work is nothing less than a cultural touchstone for critical developments at the center of American art and life.

“A documentary film about a living artist is especially difficult to do when the subject won’t participate, including not sitting for an interview. That’s one reason why The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons is noteworthy. The film is absorbing anyhow, minus the artist’s retrospective musings, thanks to contributions from many smart and observant artists and others.

Blizzard Ball animation still, 2022 Credit: Tynesha Foreman

“Hammons shows up now and then in rare documentary footage, which only adds to a distanced sense of disregard for norms that has been central to his aesthetic. That includes general indifference to the current clamor for celebrity driving so much contemporary culture.

“Surely the film’s well-established co-directors — Judd Tully, a longtime New York art writer, and Harold Crooks, an award-winning Canadian filmmaker — assumed before they started that they’d have to do without the artist’s direct contribution to their 2022 documentary. (It finally arrives Friday in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Monica Film Center, jumping to Amazon and Apple TV on July 5.) Hammons is famously elusive. I met him only once, in 1991, as he was finishing up a few minor details on the installation of a terrific midcareer survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. He was congenial, we exchanged pleasantries, and he was gone. The show, on the other hand, spoke with dazzling, sometimes strangely confounding eloquence…[the film] frames the larger narrative of a supremely gifted Black artist, moving through a white-dominated art world awash in ever-larger piles of cash, as a tale of humanity brutalized by stony economic transactions. In that, The Melt Goes on Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons reverberates against the founding sins of U.S. history, which remain painfully operative today.”

“All 21 movies in competition at Cannes, ranked from worst to best.” Justin Chang reports from the world’s premiere film festival.

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For decades, we Angelenos have been deeply fortunate to have gifted writers covering film for us in the L.A. Times. Charles Champlin, Sheila Benson, Kevin Thomas, Kenneth Turan, Manohla Dargis and a strong stable of freelancers brought and now Justin Chang brings indefatigable movie love combined with trenchant insights and historical knowledge to our doorsteps (and now phone and computer screens) every week. For proof, read Justin Chang’s dispatch from the French Riviera, where he somehow managed to see dozens of films within a very short span of time and emerge bleary-eyed but still able to write beautifully and succinctly about the world cinema he had just digested. It goes without saying that Laemmle Theatres be screening most if not all of these in the months ahead. To whet your appetite, M. Chang’s favorites are below, ranked from quite good to superb. (Click through to the full story to read about the ones he panned or gave mixed reviews.)

8. ‘Last Summer’ (Catherine Breillat) ~ A French-language remake of a well-received Danish movie (2019’s “Queen of Hearts”) wasn’t the comeback anyone expected of Breillat, who’s known for her fearless and provocative explorations of sexuality (“Romance,” “Fat Girl,” “Anatomy of Hell”) but hasn’t made a new feature in 10 years. Still, there’s a telltale absence of easy moralizing in this drama about a married lawyer (a fantastic Léa Drucker) who has a torrid affair with her teenage stepson (Samuel Kircher). That’s not a spoiler; what’s surprising here is the explosive, ever-shifting power dynamics that ensue, which Breillat explores and unpacks with delectable, diamond-hard rigor. It’s wonderful to have her back.

7. ‘Fallen Leaves’ (Aki Kaurismäki) ~ The title readies you for an autumnal work from Finland’s master of deadpan comic melancholy, though of all the familiar Kaurismäkian virtues on display here — the precise compositions, the brilliant gags, the swells of emotion that the characters feel deeply but can’t express — it’s the curious timelessness of the whole endeavor that shines through. That’s true even when the director ushers in overheard radio chatter about the war in Ukraine, a pointed touch that exists in steadily pulsing tension with an exquisitely directed love story, beautifully acted by Alma Pöysti and Jussi Vatanen. Oh, and it runs 81 minutes, making it the shortest movie in competition as well as one of the best.

6. ‘May December’ (Todd Haynes) ~ In exploring the decades-later aftermath of a sexual relationship between a woman and a young boy, Haynes’ densely layered, disarmingly funny, Netflix-acquired melodrama finds itself in playful, coincidental conversation with a few other movies on this list: “Last Summer,” of course, and also “Four Daughters,” with its layered inquiry into the nature of acting and cinematic artifice. Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman give superbly matched performances as, respectively, the movie’s Mary Kay Letourneau figure and the actor chosen to play her, and Haynes shrewdly leaves it to us to decide which of the two, if either, deserves condemnation. Caught in the middle is the young boy turned confused man, played by a revelatory Charles Melton, with a heartache so real and vivid it chokes the laughter in your throat.

5. ‘The Pot-au-Feu’ (Trần Anh Hùng) ~ The purest pleasure in this year’s competition is this two-and-a-half-hour French foodie romance, adapted from Marcel Rouff’s novel, that consists of long, dramatically uninflected sequences of Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel cooking up a storm in their enormous 19th century kitchen. But what a graceful, perfectly controlled and utterly mouthwatering storm it is, and what an ideal vehicle this is for Trần, a Vietnamese French director known for his sensuality-first filmmaking. If you’ve wanted to see vol-au-vent and baked Alaska assembled from the inside out, or observe the proper, napkin-over-the-head consumption of an ortolan, or just watch Binoche juggle veal racks and cream sauces with masterly ease, this is a picture to place on the arthouse culinary porn shelf alongside “Babette’s Feast” and “Eat Drink Man Woman.” You’ll never bother with “Julie & Julia” again.

4. ‘Youth (Spring)’ (Wang Bing) ~ Though it clocks in at more than three and a half hours, this utterly engrossing documentary — the first nonfiction work to compete at Cannes in some time — is a relatively short effort from Wang, whose films can stretch to six, eight or more hours at a time. His subject, as ever, is the perilous state of modern China, witnessed here in the numbing daily routines of teenage garment workers as they manufacture children’s clothes in the privately owned workshops of Zhili City. As this lengthy but never-leisurely work unfolds, you may find yourself mesmerized by the speed and dexterity with which these workers stitch each piece together, infuriated by how ruthlessly they’re exploited, and reminded — by all the laughter, horseplay and sexual frustration that occasionally burst into the frame — of just how young they truly are. Long as the movie is, its grim observations and implications linger far longer.

3. ‘La Chimera’ (Alice Rohrwacher) ~ The best archaeological adventure yarn at Cannes this year wasn’t “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”; it was Rohrwacher’s richly enveloping story of a young Englishman (a superbly scruffy, melancholy Josh O’Connor) with a heart full of ache and a talent for rooting out buried artifacts in the Italian countryside. With her wondrous 2018 Cannes entry, “Happy as Lazzaro,” Rohrwacher inflected the traditions of classic Italian cinema with a bracingly modern spirit. In this strange, layered and moving new work — by turns a ghost story, a romance, a crime drama and a bittersweet evocation of communal life — she shows a similar fascination with the old and the new, weaving the treasures of the past into a work of art rooted in the here and now.

2. ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ (Justine Triet) ~ A man falls to his death in the snow; did he stumble or jump, or was he pushed? The murder trial that follows in this intricate and enthralling courtroom whodunit, acquired for theatrical distribution by Neon on the strength of its enthusiastic Cannes reception, means to get at the truth. But it succeeds only in teasing out more questions: about men and women, parents and children, and the burdens of guilt and responsibility in a difficult marriage. There are, however, a few matters that can be settled beyond a reasonable doubt: Sandra Hüller, who plays the widow on trial, is one of the foremost actors of her generation, and Triet, who previously directed Hüller in their enjoyable 2019 meta-comedy, “Sibyl,” has taken a major leap forward.

Sandra Hüller in ‘Anatomy of a Fall.’

1. ‘The Zone of Interest’ (Jonathan Glazer) ~ I’ve written much already about this one and will be writing more about it in the future, when it’s released theatrically by A24. But Glazer’s brilliantly unfaithful adaptation of a novel by the late Martin Amis was the most gripping movie I saw at Cannes and the one that refused to leave me alone. A formally controlled portrait of a Nazi commandant (Christian Friedel) and his family going about their lives right next door to Auschwitz, it’s a brilliant negative-space vision of the Holocaust, a mesmeric portrait of human evil observed from the inside, and its images and words have come rushing back to me with alarming frequency and clarity all Cannes long. Given the mixed festival reactions to Glazer’s earlier triumphs “Birth” and “Under the Skin,” it feels gratifyingly right to see “The Zone of Interest” already getting its due.

From ‘The Zone of Interest.’

And finally, this is how my personal Cannes jury of one would dole out the awards. In spread-the-wealth fashion, I’m allowing a couple ties, and I’m also limiting each movie to just one win, with one exception (per the festival’s rules, a movie can win both an acting prize and a screenplay prize).

Palme d’Or: “The Zone of Interest” (Jonathan Glazer)

Grand Prix: “Youth (Spring)” (Wang Bing)

Jury Prize (tie): “The Pot-au-Feu” (Trần Anh Hùng) and “Fallen Leaves” (Aki Kaurismäki)

Director: Alice Rohrwacher, “La Chimera”

Actress: Sandra Hüller, “Anatomy of a Fall” (Justine Triet)

Actor (tie): Charles Melton, “May December” (Todd Haynes), and Koji Yakusho, “Perfect Days” (Wim Wenders)

[To see how the festival jury doled out the prizes, click here]

 

 

A “sensitive and devilishly detailed coming-of-age drama,” THE STARLING GIRL opens Friday at the Laemmle Town Center, Monica Film Center and Glendale.

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A Grand Jury Prize nominee at Sundance and an Audience Award nominee at South by Southwest as well as a winner of the Directors to Watch Prize at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, The Starling Girl is both a brilliant depiction of the American evangelical community and, with the fantastic lead performance of Eliza Scanlen, a chance to catch a rising star. You may have seen her supporting performances in, among other things, Sharp Objects (2018) and Little Women (2019). The Starling Girl gives Scanlen the chance to carry a feature and she utterly succeeds.
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“The Starling Girl lives and breathes through Scanlen’s stellar performance.” ~ Monica Castillo, RogerEbert.com
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“Parmet’s strong script and surety behind the camera navigates the audience through this complicated story of religion and sexuality, patriarchy and power, brought to eerily accurate life by the ensemble of excellent actors.” ~ Katie Walsh, TheWrap

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“Laurel Parmet makes a striking, assured feature directorial debut with The Starling Girl, which serves double duty in solidifying Eliza Scanlen’s already pretty solid reputation as a young actor worth watching.” ~ Glenn Kenny, Boston Globe

“Parmet is confident enough to know that atmosphere, emotional tone and unspoken feeling can convey far more meaning than the talkiest of dialogue.” ~  Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

“Parmet’s less interested in cultish dread than a more naturalistic dullness of isolation and groupthink you’d find in any closed conservative society where women of faith have been sold a purity narrative.” ~ Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

“It’s a refreshing change to see this milieu treated with the level of nuance that Laurel Parmet brings to The Starling Girl.” ~ Peter Debruge, Variety

“The language and strictures of their religious community are perfectly rendered by writer and director Laurel Parmet, who captures the complicated interplay of power and immaturity that can blossom in isolated communities.” ~ Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

“Scanlen’s work here is steeped in the feeling of a real-life being lived right in front of you.” ~ Jason Bailey, The Playlist

“The power of this sensitive and devilishly detailed coming-of-age drama is rooted in the friction that it finds between biblical paternalism and modern personhood.” ~ David Ehrlich, indieWire

“When you have Julia in your head, it’s bliss, because it just makes me funnier, knowing that she’ll do it.” Nicole Holofcener and Julia Louis-Dreyfus on YOU HURT MY FEELINGS, opening Friday.

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Gifted writer-director Nicole Holofcener (Lovely and Amazing, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, The Last Duel) has a new comedic drama we’re thrilled to open Friday at our Claremont, Glendale, Santa Monica, Newhall, North Hollywood and Encino theaters. You Hurt My Feelings is her second collaboration with Seinfeld and Veep legend, 11-time Emmy Award winner and Mark Twain Prize for American Humor recipient Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The first was Enough Said, with James Gandolfini. Hopefully the two collaborate again because this one’s a gem too. Alissa Wilkinson of Vox described the movie as “warm-hearted and rueful and hilarious in all the best ways” while Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com wrote that it’s “one of [Holofcener’s] smartest and funniest films.”

The New York Times just published a joint interview with Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus. Here’s an excerpt:

Was there an inciting incident that prompted this film?

NICOLE HOLOFCENER It started brewing as soon as I started screening my movies or having people read my scripts, wondering if they’re telling me the truth or not. And believing that I can tell. What a nightmare this situation would be, if somebody that close to me revealed to someone else that they didn’t like my work, or even just one of my movies. They have to love everything, in other words, for me to feel safe.

JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS She’s very sensitive.

HOLOFCENER I just came up with a what-if. What would be the worst scenario of somebody telling me they love something and me not believing them? I do have friends that I don’t believe. And there’s one person in particular that I don’t believe. I’m actually OK with it. Because I know they love me and get me and clearly they’re wrong. I mean, it hurts a little. They didn’t admit it.

Since Nicole wrote this script with you in mind, did you connect to it immediately?

LOUIS-DREYFUS Yes. I think it’s interesting to consider the notion of worth and self-worth. Am I my work? And who am I without my work? That’s certainly something I like to think about. And that this is ostensibly a great relationship between a married couple, and then the wheels just totally fall off the bus. That was kind of terrifying to consider.

I told Frank Rich [the former New York Times columnist who was an executive producer of her series “Veep”] the premise of this before we shot it. He audibly gasped.

HOLOFCENER Oh good. That’s my audience. Not the p

eople who would hear the premise and go, ‘Yeah, so what? Like, what planet are you from?’

Since you wrote this with Julia in mind, did that change your approach?

HOLOFCENER [To Louis-Dreyfus] Just don’t listen, because it’s going to sound stupid.

[Louis-Dreyfus throws her cappuccino-stained napkin over her head to avoid eye contact.]

HOLOFCENER When you have Julia in your head, it’s bliss, because it just makes me funnier, knowing that she’ll do it. She just sparks my imagination.

Is there a scene that you wouldn’t have written if Julia wasn’t your lead actress?

LOUIS-DREYFUS Oh God.

HOLOFCENER Certainly, I can see other actors doing the scenes differently, and I’m so glad they’re not in it and she is.

What scene specifically?

HOLOFCENER The scene where she’s sitting on the couch with her sister, she’s smoking pot. This is after she’s heard the bad news; she’s crying. It’s tragic. And you really feel for her, but you’re laughing because of that face.

LOUIS-DREYFUS Oh gee, thanks.

HOLOFCENER Julia walks a very fine line between comedy and drama. And that’s what I like to do with my writing. I didn’t have to do much, or anything, for her to get what I mean. We know this movie is about something fairly minor in the world of things.

LOUIS-DREYFUS But also very major.

HOLOFCENER But in the big picture, we’re not going to be crying for her. We hope she’ll get over it. But I think that scene works because she seems like she’s about 16. I think all of us are sometimes still 16. Especially when it comes to getting approval or not getting approval. I still think of myself that way. So that’s funny to see a grown-up person behave like they’re 16, in an honest way. Not in a movie way. Or a histrionic or a silly way.

Click here to read the full New York Times piece.