Apart from his role as Nick Miller on Fox’s New Girl with Zooey Deschanel, actor Jake Johnson has been making a name for himself in the movies, both in small, critically acclaimed indie films such as Safety Not Guaranteed and Drinking Buddies as well as this year’s mega-blockbuster, Jurassic World. His new film, Digging for Fire, marks his second collaboration with indie maven Joe Swanberg who uses extensive improvisation in all of his films. Johnson developed the idea for the film with Swanberg, incorporating a bizarre event that actually happened to him when he discovered an old gun and a bone on his property. But, being a Joe Swanberg film, Digging for Fire does not venture too deeply into murder-mystery territory, it is quite content to simply explore the machinations of a couple (Johnson and Rosemarie DeWitt) as they are dealing with issues in their relationship. The film features a plethora of very interesting supporting characters played by Brie Larson, Sam Rockwell, Anna Kendrick, Orlando Bloom, Melanie Lynskey, Jenny Slate, and others. The couple’s young son is played by Jude Swanberg, the director’s little boy. I sat down with Jake Johnson in Los Angeles to talk about this fascinating character study.
Danny Miller: I’m so fascinated by Joe Swanberg’s style of making movies. Do you get anything that looks like a script beforehand?
Jake Johnson: Nobody gets a script. Joe’s movies aren’t written, they’re improvised and guided. He knows what he wants out of a scene but he wants you to find your own way of doing it. He has no idea how you’re going to get there, but when what you’ve done matches up with the vision in his head, he gets very excited!
I imagine there must be takes that go to places that may not work for the story?
We shot this on film so we didn’t really have the luxury of overshooting. We’d do a rehearsal of a scene and then have a long discussion but if you started going in the wrong direction while he was shooting, Joe would just stop you. That can be frustrating to some actors who are used to many takes. They’re like, “How can you tell me no when there’s not a script?”
So what would his direction be like if we were shooting a scene right now?
He’d say, “Danny, you go in and ask Jake a couple of questions about his new movie but the point of the scene is that you reveal during the interview that you have $100,000 in your back pocket.” So then we start and maybe you start saying how you need some water and he might stop and say, “Danny, forget about the water, just come in and ask Jake this something about the movie. When he answers, say, ‘I’m having a hard time focusing because I have all this money in my back pocket.’ Then you’re done.” And while we’re rehearsing that, the camera operator is walking around us figuring out how to shoot the scene. It’s a pretty cool way to work!
So the actors don’t really have much leeway with the plot? You can’t suddenly decide that your character is going to have an affair with Brie Larson because it seems right in the moment?
(Laughs.) No, we know what needs to happen. I may say things to her off the top of my head but can’t change the overall plot.
The conversations in Joe’s films seem extremely natural and realistic.
That’s what he’s going for. He wants his movies to feel like you know all the characters, they are real people having real conversations who then go off on a journey and make you think, “Hmm, how’s that going to end?” He thinks the most natural way of getting there is not memorizing words but just knowing the beats you have to get in a scene.
I imagine this technique would be liberating for some actors and terrifying for others.
It’s definitely not for everyone. You realize an actor is not meant for a Joe Swanberg movie when they ask things like, “Why would my character do this?” or “What’s my character’s back story?” Joe doesn’t have those kinds of answers.
Did things ever take a turn you didn’t expect during the shooting of this film?
Remember the scene when Jude cries at the dinner table? That’s a perfect example of Joe’s process. Before we started, Joe told me and Rosemarie that the scene was just about the family being together. He told Ro she needed to get me to do the taxes because I said I was going to. He told me that I wasn’t that interested in doing them but that I would. He told us it was just a really short scene in the movie that would move the story along. But then he walked up to me privately and say, “Hey, Jake, Jude always finds it hysterically funny when anyone says the word ‘poo-poo.’ Why don’t you say that at the beginning of the scene and make him laugh?” And then he privately said to Ro, “Don’t let them goof around too much at the dinner table, you don’t want Jake to get away from what you need him to do.” So we start shooting and I say to Jude, “Hey, buddy, have you taken a poo-poo today?” He starts laughing and then Ro scolds us because she was doing what Joe told her. But Jude was caught in the middle and started crying! Ro finally picked him up and handed him to his mother, Kris, who was sitting just outside of camera range. We never got out of the scene and then Ro comes back and says, “You see what you made me do?” Then Joe said “Cut!” That was exactly the dynamic that he was looking for!
That scene works so well even though Rosemarie told me she was traumatized when Jude started crying and had to play with him for hours afterwards!
I know! And I felt like the asshole because I was encouraging him to say that word and not expecting that he was going to get in trouble for it!
That kid is a real natural.
He’s so good but such a real little boy. Sometimes in the middle of a take, he’d look at me and say, “You wanna go get some ice cream, Jake?” And then Joe would say, “You can’t call him Jake, remember? He’s your make-believe Dad right now!”
I always roll my eyes when I hear complaints that Joe Swanberg’s films aren’t “about” anything. Isn’t it enough to explore human relationships?
The thing that makes me crazy about our industry is how often people try to loop all movies together. They’re all different. This movie is not trying to be about a bank heist in the 1970s with big twists and turns in the plot. I love those movies, they’re awesome, but this is a character study told through very small, emotional moments.
Although, unlike most of Joe’s films, this one does have that tantalizing subplot about the gun and the bone and what might be buried in that hill.
Yeah, that was my influence because that actually happened to me. Joe was excited about using it but it’s still really about the relationships.
Did you ever consider delving more into the history of what happened there on that hill?
No, because we realized there were two very different movies we could make. There’s a version of the film we could’ve done where it all stayed with my character and the boys’ weekend but we were all more interested in showing what made this marriage work.
I’m sure some people will be frustrated not to get more about the body.
Oh, absolutely. I heard a guy in the bathroom at one of the screenings I was at the other night complaining about it!
I thought it was a somewhat un-Swanbergian move to connect Anna Kendrick’s character to your storyline and to the one Rosemarie had with Orlando Bloom.
That was Joe’s idea. He wanted to show that the crazy girl in the pool had this whole other life and wasn’t just some party girl. Joe was really excited about that.
And Chris Messina taking off all of his clothes in the pool scene?
That was all on him! We told him he needed to bring the craziness to the party. I thought he had a lot of courage as an actor to do that.
Now he’ll be on those websites where they show screenshots of every actor’s naked scenes.
(Laughs.) Definitely!
I imagine making the gigantic studio film Jurassic World must have been a very different experience than working on Digging for Fire?
It’s funny — I made them both during the same summer. I really don’t have a career trajectory the way some actors do or any kind of long-term strategy. For me it’s all about who I’m working with. I did an indie with Colin Treverrow called Safety Not Guaranteed which I loved so doing Jurassic with him was such an easy, “yes.” I like working with people where I know we’re going to do really good work and have fun doing it.