Q&A with Thomas Bezucha

How did you find the book this film is based on, and what attracted you to adapting it?
Thomas Bezucha: The novel “Let Him Go” was written by Larry Watson, who I’ve been a fan of for well over twenty years.

Q&A with Steve Carell and Adam McKay

What drew you to this story?
Adam McKay: We had done a movie with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg called The Other Guys, and the goal of that movie was to do a comedic parable of the collapse.

Q&A with Simon Rex

What were your first thoughts, after reading the script?
Simon Rex: I was just like… whoa. Whoa. WHOA!

Q&A with Richard Tanne

What did your writing process entail?
It kind of had the whiff of destiny, from the time I read the book.

Q&A with Pamela Romanowsky

How did you get involved with this project?
I came to this book as a casual reader. I got it from the same bookstore you see James [Franco] signing books in at the start of the movie.

Q&A with Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Helen Hood Scheer

How did you two come to work on this project together?
We started working on what we thought would be a triptych, looking at sex, birth, and death on screen from a women’s perspective. We started the one about sex and it was an avalanche of ideas and people and different actors that we wanted to speak with, and that’s really where it began.

Q&A with Jessie Barr and Nicole Holofcener

What was it like developing the script with your cousin Jessica Barr after she had written the first draft?
Jessie Barr: We did a lot of talking and a lot of sharing; there were intimate conversations about what we’d gone through when we lost our parents.

Q&A with Jessica Kingdon

You did almost all of the work on this film— what was that experience like?
Jessica Kingdon: I did have a close cinematographer, Nathan Truesdell, and we shot it together. But, yeah, it was very much a film that was coming out of my own mind.

Q&A with James Mangold and Jenno Topping

Can you talk about what it was like to craft these characters?
James Mangold: I’m a big believer in hanging out. I am not a big believer in rehearsing.