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First printed at www.movingpicturesnetwork.com
Interview by Elliot V. Kotek
(from the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival)

Moving Pictures magazine sat down with Derick Martini for a discussion about his latest film, Lymelife.

Moving Pictures magazine: Welcome back to Toronto after almost 10 years. It was a lot of fun watching Lymelife last night. What were you surprised about in terms of how the audience responded?
Derick Martini: It was a similar experience to the last time I was here. We were here in ’99 with the project that I wrote called Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire. What surprised me this time, which is the same exact thing that surprised me last time, was that the film is much funnier than I had imagined. I got laughs where I didn’t necessarily expect them. I thought, “This could be funny, but, you know, maybe it’s just funny to me.” I don’t know, you know? Sometimes it’s that way, like maybe it’s just my sense of humor and no one’s gonna get it, but they seemed to get everything. Even the great bar scene with Tim and Alec, they applauded.

MPM: Having your mom in the audience as well – What was that like? Did you…
Derick Martini: Well, you know what? I didn’t see her before. I only saw her after – because, before, I was just worried about making the damn speech, you know? I mean, again, I’m usually the writer. I can usually just fade away and hide, and nobody gives a shit. You can just hide and sit there in the back and just watch the audience, and you don’t have to announce it or introduce it. But I was a wreck, you know, just a nervous wreck back there – trying to just calm down, get the show on the road and get the movie rolling. I was really excited to see the response; really anxious to see the response.

MPM: This whole project was a while in the making. I know Rory [Culkin] and Kieran [Culkin] were involved in the project a while ago.
Derick Martini: So were Alec [Baldwin] and Tim [Hutton].

MPM: How were you able to get those guys to stay involved? Are they still young enough? Especially Alec.
Derick Martini: Oh, Alec; I mean, that role had to go to a great actor. As far as I was concerned, all of the roles in the picture had to go to great actors, no doubt.

Alec is somebody who I just got to know over the years very, very well. We’re very similar, and we’re [both] from Long Island. He’s from Massapequa, [and] I’m from 20 minutes away from Massapequa. Not that we knew each other back then, but we sort of grew up in a similar way – blue collar families. We just became very close friends and, through that, he hung in there.

I think he also really liked the script. He doesn’t get offered a lot of these kinds of roles anymore, you know; he’s getting comedy, comedy, comedy, comedy. He was Stanley Kowalski on Broadway, which I saw twice when I was a kid, so it has to be frustrating for him to just get offered these goofy comedies. Not that I’ve ever seen “30 Rock.” I don’t know if it’s goofy or good or what, but I know when I talk to him about films he’s been offered and goofy comedies he’s been offered, he’s not really happy with that. He wants to… He’s an actor first. When you play Stanley Kowalski on Broadway, in front of thousands of people and it’s a hit… And he was Stanley; I mean, he was a great f*****g Stanley Kowalski. He was amazing.

MPM: In terms of working with the actors, what was the experience like? It looked like you gave them a lot of room, to change your script.
Derick Martini: Yeah. Why wouldn’t you? I mean, if you try to fit a square peg in a round hole, is it gonna work?

MPM: Did you enjoy that process?
Derick Martini: Yeah, that’s my favorite part. My favorite part is watching them make it their own, and then between action and cut, and cut and action. All the prep stuff beforehand, I really enjoy that. I love being overly prepared. The only way you can shoot a movie like this in 22 days is to be overly prepared. Once that’s out of the way, the most important collaborators on my set are my actors. You know, my shot lists are done, everything’s out of the way, everyone knows where they’re going and what they have to do. Your actors become your most important collaborators.

It gets stale on the page. You don’t want them to just stick to the page. The goal every day is to make what’s on the page better, because we could make what’s on the page and just sit there and say the lines and then, you know, what did you do? You didn’t really do anything but make the script. You want to make it better than the script, so that’s what our goal was every day.

MPM: Was the Lyme disease story an event that actually happened?
Derick Martini: Yeah. I knew a guy just like the character Tim played. He actually attempted suicide, that guy, in real life. He was so depressed, and this guy was telling his wife… It’s two things based on a story that my grandfather told me about the Great Depression. He said to me, during the Great Depression that America had, everybody was out of a job and there were no opportunities. There were men who were good men and men who were bad men. The bad men would lie at home on the couch and get drunk all day and beat their wives up, and the good men would put on their suits and get their briefcase and say, “Okay, honey, today may be the day,” and they’d go up to the roofs of their tenements and they’d basically hide there all day and then come down at the end of the day and say, “Oh, sorry, no luck. You know, bad day.”

So there’s that story that always stuck with me, about my grandfather, and then I knew somebody who actually had Lyme disease. He was telling his wife he was going to work, and he was hiding in his basement. He tried to commit suicide. He left a note and took a bunch of pills, but they saved him. He could never cure it. He still can’t cure it. He’s still – [it] pretty much ruined his life.

MPM: For the visual references in the film, obviously setting it in the ’70s…
Derick Martini: Well, there are a couple of reasons. This movie could be set today, except for the fact that they have a cure for Lyme disease. The content of this movie, the economic change, the idea of men who are pursuing the American Dream to a fault – it could be set today, but I wanted it to feel timeless. I never wanted to make a piece that was, you know, like “That ’70s Show,” where everything had to be boom, on the nose, that ’70s. I just wanted to be subtle, and it was more about the color palate than it was about being on the nose with the ’70s. But you almost have to set this in the ’70s, because they didn’t know what Lyme disease was then. They were just figuring it out, and they were misdiagnosing it all the time. So, once you start misdiagnosing something like Lyme disease, it just spirals and spirals and spirals, and, as you see in the movie, Tim’s character is a victim of that.

There are other things, too. Economically, things were changing. These Jewish, Italian, Irish Americans from Queens who were blue-collar guys, lower-middle-class-income guys, because of urban sprawling were getting the opportunity to jump ahead in life rather quickly, and they were all chasing the same thing, all chasing the same dream – some of them to a fault.

MPM: What about you? You’re behind the camera, driving, directing. Now that you’ve had this taste as well in a relatively quick time, are you motivated to do it all again?
Derick Martini: I’m motivated to get back into the editing room on this. The movie’s not – in my mind, it’s not finished. It’s an unfinished product. It’s presentable right now, but there are some things that, you know – I mean, this is the second time I’ve seen it on the big screen. The first time I saw it was Friday, this past Friday, for the check print, you know? So I haven’t really been able to analyze it on a big screen. I’ve only been looking at it on the little monitor. So now when I see it on the big screen, there are things I can make better before our release.

MPM: The audience obviously loved it last night, so congratulations.
Derick Martini: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you very much.