Film South Florida: You’re here for the Miami International Film Festival screening of Snow Angels. How important is a festival such as the MIFF to an independent film such as Snow Angels?

Green: Film festivals are a fantastic way to bring international exposure to a project. It’s an industry passport to the world. Here, I get to eat in amazing Cuban restaurants and meet people from all different countries. It’s exciting … because there’s no understating how powerful and profound a well-run festival can be.

Film South Florida: What draws you to writing and/or directing such coming-of-age tales as George Washington, Snow Angels and Undertow?

Green: With any movie, you have to emotionally identify with the characters. Otherwise I feel it’s all fake. It’s easy to emotionally connect with characters in a coming-of-age tale. The situation also has to be engaging. Life is like that.

Film South Florida: Snow Angels represents the first time you have directed that is based on a book. How different an experience was it for you to adapt an existing work—in this case, Stewart O’Nan’s novel—rather than write an original screenplay?

Green: I do have to say I had a wealth of material before me and a structure that was already provided. That made it easier than writing in the stream-of-conscience manner that I do when I write a script from scratch. I used the book as a blueprint and gave it a personal spin in drawing out and illuminating characters.

Film South Florida: How did you get involved with Snow Angels?

Green: I was approached by the original director who had optioned the book. He wanted me to adapt it. It was beneficial in giving me disciple. I was fleshing out a world. When you write for yourself, you can be suggestive. When you’re writing for someone else, you have to be specific. When the director left the project, the producer asked me to step in.

Film South Florida: Snow Angels opens with the sounds of gunshots disrupting a high school band practice before flashing back to the circumstances leading up to the shooting. Is there any concern on your part that the opening may reveal too much about what’s to come?

Green: It’s vague enough that it’s not revealing anything and dramatically it tells the audience something substantive is on its way. The novel is a flashback seen through the eyes of Arthur, who’s all grown up. I eliminated that device and made it a contemporary with the flash forward sequence at the beginning.

Film South Florida: What did you see in Kate Beckinsale—who’s best known for slaying werewolves in the Underworld series—that led you to cast her in such a rare dramatic role?

Green: She has a beautiful face and a great sense of humor. She also brings an authenticity to the role because of her own experiences as a mother, wife and ex-wife. To me, the great discovery of the movie is taking an actress like Kate or an actor like Sam and giving the audience something new to discover about them. And actors like to be able to discover characters within themselves that they never knew existed before. They like getting approval from directors, journalists and audiences to take risks and break the confines. They like having support and encouragement—it helps them feel comfortable to go to dangerous places.

Film South Florida: Your next film is Pineapple Express, which Judd Apatow is producing. Having spent so many years directing some very dark and personal movies, why decide the time was right to lighten up and direct what’s being bill as “a weed action movie”?

Green: I’ve been wanting to do a comedy for years. I have that sensibility in terms of giving audiences a good laugh and taking them on a wild ride. And this is a specific time when a producer like Judd Apatow can push the boundaries and reach a wide audience. He has a unique point of view. In my eight years in the industry I’ve never seen such enthusiasm and freedom a studio has given a producer who can deliver what he promises. He’s challenging audiences by increasing the level of absurdity while simultaneously engaging them. Knocked Up had real characters and took everything to such a level of hilarity and absurdity that the audience was willing to go to. They are right at home in that environment.

Film South Florida: How was the experience of making your first studio picture?

Green: It was made under the circumstances of trust where all collaborators knew what they were doing were excited about the experiment we were conducting. We were blending a commercial comedy crew with an indie-minded dramatic crew. These two camps worked together because they have a loyalty to collaboration. And this gave the actors room to breathe and improve.

Film South Florida: Your previous films were low-budget affairs made for an art-house crowd. What do you hope Pineapple Express will do for you and your career?

Green: My expectations are not outrageous. Hopefully this is the first stepping stone, that Snow Angels and Pineapple Express can provide a degree of acclaim or financial gain and open doors in the future and allow me to work in various genres.

Film South Florida: You’re adapting John Grisham’s The Innocent Man into a film. What’s more important: remaining faithful to the truth or taking liberties with the facts in order to make an entertaining and accessible film?

Green: I’ve got to work with what’s dramatically appropriate for the film. I have a moral obligation to tell the truth. But a movie’s got to tell a story, it has to be entertaining, and it must find new ways to keep the audience invested its world. You have to take leaps, but at the time you have to try to keep a hold to the roots of the story.

Film South Florida: Will Ferrell recently did an interview with Ain’t It Cool News in which he said that he had no idea why the film version of A Confederacy of Dunces fell apart. What happened? And do you still hold out hope of directing a film based on John Kennedy Toole’s novel?

Snow Angels is now in theaters. Click here for more information.

Back to top