What was it about the book Thumbsucker that really made
you want to do this for your first feature?

I guess the main thing was feeling like I somehow had the right to do this. Which to me means that I knew what the characters were talking about. I related to that main character so much… I felt… I don’t know, I just felt like this is turf I know about… this is something I could execute… this is something that means something to me. Especially his relationship with his mom sort of echoed so much mine and it became like a very cathartic thing… like a very personal thing. You know I would say I was attracted to how the book feels really real you know? It doesn’t feel super contrived. It feels like someone’s telling you about their life. Those are all things I really like. And it had a sense of humor that wasn’t like making fun of other people which was really key to me you know? It felt kind of helpful which is also key to me and the way that writing through Justin I could actually be talking about my life or using it as a mask to say things… that made it very powerful for me.

Were there other books that were considering along with this one? Or did this one grab you so much that you just knew?

You know I was trying to write something on my own that just wasn’t coming out good at all. At first I didn’t think I was going to do Thumbsucker just because I thought I was going to write my own stuff. But the more I sort of sat with it, the more it really sprung out to me… and the more I felt like man, I want to try to adapt this… I want to write it.

So this was your first time writing a screen play?
So how did that go?

That’s a long road you know?

Did you break out the “Story” book?

Uh, I ignored that book. Someone gave it to me and I read a little bit of it and I found it so daunting and so rule bound… But I’d ask anybody who would give me answers you know? I’d ask lots of friends about stuff and I was reading as many things as I could but I was largely… really naive and really unknowing and I knew it. I think that was one of the strengths I had. I had no big pride in my writing and was very willing to change it. I don’t know, I was just very open and I think that can help you. But yeah, it was a long tough road and took years and lots of drafts. I’m a pretty hardworking person… like I was continuing writing drafts all the way through us shooting you know? So it kept going the whole way.

What kind of things influenced you as a filmmaker? Where there other directors that influenced you? What about things outside of film that influenced you, like your design work…

The design work is just a part of me. It’s part of my background, it’s sort of how I see the world or how I isolate the world. Like a very kind of iconic simple way that does relate to the graphics… You know it influences everything from me shooting things kind of flat to me being very interested in inanimate objects being part of the story. Inanimate objects are all designed by someone and they have like a story within themselves and maybe I’m more in tune with that… having been a designer.

Music influenced me a lot and it was a way that I communicated with my crew and actors. I made a CD of songs to communicate the different moods of different parts of the story. Neil Young was just a really big metaphor for me in the way that he recorded “Harvest”. He did it at home, no studio, on his own, and in general he’s much more interested just being emotionally raw and emotionally present than being slick or anything like that. I talk to my DP a lot about Neil Young as a sort of working method.

And then directors… You know Woody Allen has always been a big influence on me. His combination of being funny and being sad. Especially the 70’s films like: Stardust Memories, Annie Hall, Purple Rose of Cairo and Manhattan. And the way he goes between really organic acting and more subjective kinda surrealist sequences…
and the way he just bounces back and forth between them .

And then Hal Ashby is a real big influence on me. Harold and Maude
was definitely a big model for this film. Just the kindness that’s in Hal Ashby and the way that all his characters are all messed up and flawed but he treats them all with love. I was definitely trying to do that… and just the general benevolence of Harold and Maude I think that was something I was seeking out with Thumbsucker.

What were some of the biggest challenges of shooting the film?

The biggest challenge was getting it financed… and dealing with the sort of marketing mindset and people who are very afraid of it. Having to meet with all them and try to talk them into the film.

Once I got shooting… at least I knew where I was and there were a lot of problems but they were relatively funner problems. You know?

One of the problems with shooting was we shot (with) anamorphic lenses. And I really just misjudged that… The depth of field is so narrow. I wanted a really shallow depth of field but… I didn’t quite realize how restrictive that was going to be. So it made for a much more nervous, much more lockdown kind of set than I initially wanted. I had to make adjustments for that and find new ways to get around marks and limited movement you know?

There’s this one scene in Thumbsucker where Justin overhears his parents talking about him… Justin stands at the door and he’s in focus, but then when he steps back and he really falls out of focus. I noticed that there wasn’t any attempt to follow focus. I thought it was a really interesting effect. Was that something that was intentional or was it part of this limited depth of field issue?

There’s a few things like that and it was definitely intentional but I think it’s true to say that it would’ve been impossible to follow focus in the back anyway. It would’ve taken like a bunch of takes. To say yeah let’s not follow him backwards was… you know… it (the depth of field) encouraged us to have solutions like that.

Well it was a really interesting effect because it feels like Justin is stepping back into this sort of obscurity…

Yeah. Having a shallow depth of field really creates a mood and I think helps communicate how kinda gooey family homes are. You know? The boundaries between people are kinda porous and the whole house is kind of like, you don’t really know where it is or how big it is… your kind of in this mush. That was part of the plan from the beginning. But yeah, that was definitely tough.

Working with actors was kind of my favorite part… the stuff that I really munched into. It just takes a lot of stamina and a lot of bravery to keep
it alive and keep it changing when you have a time restraint and your shooting and everybody’s tired. Both just physical stamina and a willing-ness because like maybe you wont get the scene if you try some crazy idea you know? But maybe you have to try the crazy idea to get farther.

There were some really great performances… How did you prepare as a director working with a cast on a feature level versus your past experience working in music videos or even your shorts?

In one way, they’re still just humans and your human and it’s not different. The main difference is time and the depth of the material. Like when you do other things (shorts, videos) you just don’t have a character who goes through all these changes. And you don’t have much time together. We had two weeks to rehearse and what we mostly did was improvise all the characters backgrounds. Like their life before the movie. Like when Justin got busted sucking his thumb earlier. We did the Audrey character and the Mike character coming home from Thanksgiving and kind of agreeing that they weren’t going to be like they’re parents… them getting married… they’re whole life together.

So really giving them a sense of how these characters
are as people…

Yeah, and also not just authorship but experiential authorship. Like they experienced the growth and the development of all these people. A lot of things that they discovered during these improvisations weren’t things that I thought of or things… there were layers on top of the things I thought of. Then we would sometimes add that to the script or they would just have it in them. I think that a huge part of directing acting is just providing the back story for the characters so they know where they’re coming from and why they’re doing certain things.

Were there things you learned shooting this feature that maybe you hadn’t experienced doing commercials or videos?

Yeah, well doing all that work with the actors… I thought of it when I was doing the videos but I never got a chance to do it. Something that kind of experimental and long. Just going through it actually changed me in lots of ways… it was really new in lots of ways and its way more emotionally intensive for you because your kind of participating in it with them. It really is. Everybody’s really feeling this stuff. Not just kind of intellectually going through it.

The thing I mostly learned…. the other stuff (videos) does happen pretty quick. When you do a film you have to have so much stamina and things can go like so wrong or so right and then change. I’m kinda used to... if something goes right it stays right and your done. But in film something doesn’t seem right and then turns sour and then get right again and then goes sour… you know? Your on this much longer trip and you have to have the emotional stamina for it. You have to be able to endure things falling apart and coming back together and not just in terms of financing but like when your shooting and especially when your editing. So I really had to adjust my brain to calibrate it differently for failure, in that things that I previously would’ve thought were a failure could actually turn out ok...

Also just the nature of the beast… your dealing with something so much deeper and … your dealing so much more with the unknown. Especially those kinds of performances. Your trying to get to the point where the actor doesn’t really know what they’re doing anymore… and they’re really responding to the moment. And when doing something as complicated as a feature script there’s lots of layers to the script that even you as the writer don’t really know and will get revealed to you later.

So a lot of what I thought I knew… or thought I knew how to do… or the ways I thought I could measure if something was going well or not… I had to just dump along the way.

Trying not to be very attached to it?

Yeah and don’t be attached to failure either. You know what I mean?
Like you could lose a location… or you can lose the light… or you can not be able to get a performance that you thought it should be… and yet something else or something even better can still happen.

At the San Francisco premiere you said something like “so much of editing is covering up your screw-ups. Does describe how post production went for you?

It is the place where you come to terms with what you did… you know? Both good and bad. Where a lot of shortcomings of my script were or shortcomings in my storytelling in what… That’s where you find them. And you have to get very inventive about how to fix it or find a way to communicate what you originally wanted. That’s where you find yourself going over a scene over and over again and realizing that man, you can really re-invent scenes in the way you edit them. If the thing you’re always looking for at the beginning isn’t there in your first couple of edits usually in doing videos or commercials you’d be dead. But then in doing a feature you just keep editing and keep editing it and you kind of learn what the scene really is, to a degree that you never would with those other mediums and you can get to what you originally wanted. That was part of what I learned, but it was not a fun process to go through.

How did you go about finding music for the film?

Music has always been a big deal to me in films like Harold and Maude and the Graduate. The way that they had one artist do the score. I definitely wanted something like that. Elliot Smith… he was one of my heroes… was into doing it and he was going to do a bunch of covers. The first on he did was “Trouble” the Cat Stevens song… then he had a song by Big Star that he thought was right… and a song from his record that he was working on that he played for us. But then he passed away. So we were stuck,  and for a while we didn’t know if we were going to be able to… or want to use his music. It was so sad. So later [we] decided that you know, he did this music and we wanted to include it.

And I just went to see the Polyphonic Spree and was so into the spirit of what they do and the positivity in what they do. They have a whole, it’s like a 35 piece band with a choir and a symphony and it’s like man, that’d be pretty amazing. I liked that it was sort of an unlikely choice. I guess I like my scores to be a little bit more in the foreground and not just invisible subconscious music that’s affecting you in the background. Luckily Tim Delaughter (from spree) was into it and he hadn’t done a score before… but I think that was a total strength for him. He totally got to the emotions and did it in a way that I find more refreshing… You know I like that it’s kind of rough and uneven and not perfectly finessed in it’s production and not totally smooth. I guess to me, music that’s kind of silent so you can’t really hear but you feel are almost like cheating to me… you know?

Music that’s just kind of filler or background (noise)…

Well it’s more emotionally… I mean, I’m sure I’ll change my mind and I could easily do a score like that next time… you know? But it did feel a little like emotionally manipulative.

You had mentioned that finding funding was a challenge. Could just talk about what you tried and basically how you came about finding you main source of funding?

Well, you know we went to just about every film financier. We went to every company that [we] could think of and basically got told “No”. We didn’t even have a price… for any price we got told “No”. A lot of the companies in Europe and Canada too… We just couldn’t find anybody. I learned a lot about how marketing a film is a very… because you’re asking for a bank loan essentially, that the lender wants back you know? It’s very hard to get people to lend you millions of dollars. And I didn’t quite realize how adventurous a movie called Thumbsucker was you know? No one wants to put millions of dollars into a movie called Thumbsucker that has an adult kid sucking his thumb that’s by a first- time director you know?

Didn’t someone tell you at one point that you might as well call it “The Masturbator” or something?

I got everything… You know there’s a certain “gross-out” factor about thumb sucking… so I got all sorts of comments like that. Also there’s a certain financial “gross-out” factor you know like… I just don’t want to do that. It was especially hard because I was a first-timer and I didn’t have a track record. And it’s kinda execution based so … it was very hard for people to have faith in it.

And the financing is basically based on cast (not just with me, with anybody) and you know I had to get a cast that was really big to get them to chock up 3.5 million. You know what I mean?

So is that what ultimately helped? Getting a good cast?

Yeah… You know, you had creative interest but the only thing that really got their banking side to really say it was give me some names that were gonna secure their downside…

After funding, were you able to secure distribution relatively quickly or is that something that happened after film was made?

Yeah it happened at Sundance. So we went to Sundance without a distributor and again it wasn’t like there were tons of people clamoring at the door to buy Thumbsucker. Even though it was going over relatively well… marketing wise people just didn’t know how to handle it and what to do with it. So I was very lucky that Sony Classics got it and felt like they knew what to do with it…

So now that it’s done and it’s out in the world… What are your thoughts about it?

It’s great… As a filmmaker you really have to keep remembering your audience. That there’s people actually seeing the film and talking to you afterwards and they “get” the scenes (laughs). They understood what you meant basically or they took their own thing… but you communicated with people. It’s easy to lose that and just be hearing about the numbers or the press or your bad review… When I go to the theater it’s way easier to feel like I just cooked a big meal for all these people… and they all ate it. And that’s much more enjoyable and grounding than often thinking about that you’re a director. But I think that the more you can do that and to stay in touch with the actual people who are watching it that’s very rewarding and very cool thing.

…even though some people may get the wrong idea about certain things? Like the woman at the San Francisco premiere…

Yeah… that’s the strongest reaction I’ve gotten. That’s the crazy thing about film is that… everybody sees a different film you know? And I find enough people come up and say this or that… and that’s like… wow, you really saw something else. But that’s valid and I do feel like the audience finishes the film for you by whatever they take from it. I guess much more often I am surprised and warmed by the amount of people who relate to it in a way that is kind of what I was feeling. You know?

Yeah. It goes to show you that there’s a lot of people out there that have had a similar experience…

Yeah… it’s really interesting. It’s made me feel more communal than ever.

What’s next for Mike Mills? Some more features? A combination of everything?

A combination of everything, but features being the big trees you know? I definitely want to keep doing wherever my graphic stuff ends up taking me. I’m going to do some feature length documentaries for the ifc channel and I’m writing a script right now… I want to keep doing those three things… I love doing videos but I’m not sure if I need to do anymore and the markets kind of gone… I don’t really want to do ads anymore so I’m trying to find some new way to support myself and sort of simplify life a little bit.

Do you have any advice that you might give to new filmmakers
out there?

The best advice I ever got that I would share… You have to be your own industry. You can’t wait for anybody to give you a project. So whatever stage your at, you have to be making things on your own consistently and not waiting for someone to give you a video or give you money or give you an ad. That will keep you sane and keep you growing creatively but also you’ll present yourself as a self motivated self sustaining creative force. Instead of someone waiting and dependent on whatever the powers that be. So just make stuff. Even if it’s a flipbook or whatever just like keep making stuff at whatever level you can. And don’t… take it from me as someone who’s often had high production levels, don’t worry about production levels. If your ideas are really good that will all shine through. So even if doing a little spec spot in your backyard on your digital video camera could
be excellent to help get you a job.