Jason Bateman’s directorial debut Bad Words is a movie that almost never got off the ground. It’s a fierce and hysterical satire centered on a 40-year-old manchild who, through a loophole, bullies his way into a children’s spelling bee competition for his own rebellious purposes. The button-pushing screenplay by newcomer Andrew Dodge was enough to get Bateman’s attention behind the camera, but casting the main character proved to be difficult.
After many false starts Bateman tackled the lead role himself and wearing two different hats throughout the film’s production proved to be a blessing in disguise. Bateman hasn’t been this good in front of the camera in years and as a director he also shows a strong visual flair for the absurd which should guide him in future projects.
On a recent trip to San Francisco to promote “Bad Words,” Bateman spoke about some of his experiences putting the film together and his work in television and film. The way he explains it, his career goes back a long way so depending on the generation he’s either recognized for TV’s Arrested Development or something in his childhood.
The following is a transcription of that conversation.
Q: In checking Wikipedia last night – and if it’s on Wikipedia, it must be true – it said you were the youngest member of the DGA (Directors Guild of America). You directed several episodes of the Hogan’s Family. Is that true?
Jason Bateman: They called me the week I was doing that. I was pretty giddy about that. It was pretty cool. They said I beat Malcolm Jamal-Warner by a couple of months and Steven Spielberg by a couple of more months. I don’t know if it still stands, but it did for a while.
Q: At eighteen, your head must have exploded …
Bateman: Actually, it was blown years earlier. That was a treat to be able to [direct] at that age and I’ve been looking at the director’s chair for a long time. Just being a fan of movies; my dad was a big fan of film. He would always take me to the movie theater instead of the park. He showed me what was good acting and what was bad acting, what was good direction, bad direction, what was a good movie and a bad movie. I’ve always dreamed of having the opportunity to direct a film. It’s a much more robust and involved process as a director than obviously it is to [direct] a multi-cam [situation comedy] or even a single-cam show. Television is much less a director’s medium than film is.
Q: They call it a writer’s medium.
Bateman: Yes, you’re at the pleasure of showrunners. I certainly look forward to directing more television, but this was something I had my eye on for a very long time.
Q: Your characters in Bad Words, Arrested Development, and The Switch have very candid relationships with children. I’m wondering if you find that a source of humor for any particular reason apart from other types of humor.
Bateman: That’s a good question. I certainly don’t look for that. The notion of looking for particular projects or choosing particular projects gives actors a lot more credit than they deserve. There are about three people who get to choose their work in Hollywood. The rest of us just take whatever we can get. It’s coincidental that I’ve [worked on several projects] that have kids in them too. Once I’m there, I do find it an interesting relationship one can have with a kid if you treat that kid as an equal in certain circumstances. If you elevate that child and give them a lot of credit and treat them with the maturity that they might deserve in certain areas, then you’re on a peer level.
If you’re playing a character that’s susceptible to being immature in certain situations, then you can be on a peer level in those situations. Often times, you have those multiple situations in a film. It’s always interesting to have a young person and an old person on a peer level. It’s fun to watch. In this film, my character isn’t spiritually or emotionally advanced. He considers himself on an even playing field with these kids, so he doesn’t have any problems talking to this kid. He’s more elevating that kid than anything. He’s just a complicated guy. If he wasn’t so screwed up, so complicated, he wouldn’t have made this bad decision to crash this spelling bee and we wouldn’t have a movie. He’s not [intentionally] malicious. He just doesn’t have any social graces.
Q: What was your involvement in the casting and if you were, what were you looking for in the characters?
Bateman: I was deeply involved in all of the casting as the director. I was looking for a common sensibility, a common sense of humor with all of the actors. We are doing a comedy, but there are many different kinds of comedy, comedic styles, and flavors. There’s broad comedy. There’s subtle comedy. There’s Woody Allen type films. There’s Mel Books type films. None are better or worse than the others. They’re just different flavors. In dramatic work, it has to be real. I wanted to make sure I could get actors who were comfortable getting laughs without winking, without being big or broad. It was important that the actors be raw and authentic. And because they’re so raw and authentic, that’s what makes them funny. They just take this stuff too seriously or they become too emotional about one thing or the other. In Guy Trilby’s case, he becomes so incensed about this piece of information that he gets and goes off and makes this terrible decision.
Q: It sounds like you’ve wanted to direct for a while. What drew you to this particular script and as you were reading this script, did you ever feel the script went too far, especially since the subject matter centers on kids at a spelling bee?
Bateman: I was drawn to the script by the humor, but also with that humor comes a huge challenge because you need to not hate this guy. Otherwise you want to leave the theater. I liked that challenge. I don’t know if we succeeded or not, but that was the goal. Because I was so excited by that challenge, I pushed the script. I took it further, especially once I decided I was going to play the central character. I thought there were ample opportunities to show the vulnerabilities of this character and flaws with this guy that we could take an even bigger swing there. I think that’s part of the inherent deal with the audience. “If you’re going to do this, you owe me that.” Near the end there, the kid and my character have a soft moment, but you want to offset it with him giving him the bird. There were a million opportunities there – to find the right balance.
Q: How do you feel your experiences as a child actor inform your direction of the young actors?
Bateman: I do remember wanting to be treated as an adult when I was a kid actor unless I got really nervous, then I wanted to be taken care of by a parent or an adult figure. I was always aware of trying to find that right balance with all of the kids, especially Rohan. When we had challenging scenes with off-color material, you want to do the same thing. You want to downplay it a little bit, so the kid’s not scared with these kinds of off-color things. If they don’t understand something, you might not want to explain it to them.
Q: How much did they understand? How much did the girl know about periods and panties?
Bateman: I don’t know. I didn’t ask her. Her mom was [on set]. They’re reading the script and it’s not my job to parent that kid. She’s asking to work on the film as a professional. As a professional, I need to assume she understands what she’s doing in a particular scene. Certainly if she has any questions or concerns or discomfort about it, it’s my obligation to address that with them, but I’m not going to poke around for it. There was an obligation to the audience as well as anyone working on the film to execute this material with as high sophistication as possible. In other words, not to make any of this stuff gratuitous or arbitrary. Truly, this was my intention and ultimately why I felt the [movie] was worth doing. [Bad Words] is ultimately a film about a guy who gets his feelings hurt and he’s not equipped to deal with it in a way you or I would. It’s sad. It’s a pretty melancholy story. Along the way, sure, we get plenty of laughs, but this guy would rather deal with things in a less immature way. He says so at the end. He says so in the very first line.
Q: Bad Words premiered last year at Toronto. Were there any changes – small, minor, cosmetic changes – between the time it was bought and now?
Bateman: No, it’s the exact same [cut]. The only thing I added was a dedication to a friend who passed away between then and now.
Q: Toronto screenings are often considered informal test screenings. Did you think about moving anything around in response to audience reactions?
Bateman: No. Because of the incredible reception from that audience at the Ryerson is what I think got us such a great sale, such a great distributor. It’d be counter-intuitive to make any changes.
Q: Did the sale include a number of screens?
Bateman: No, that was a later discussion. This was a difficult movie to bring to market for sure. A company like Focus Features is certainly up to the challenge.
Q: This was your first time directing and you also acted in Bad Words. Would you consider doing it again?
Bateman: Yeah, I can’t wait. I’m starting in May [on my second movie].
Q: Did you allow the actors any improv?
Bateman: Plenty. Whatever they want. If you know who your character is and you’re in the same movie comedically, then the specific words you use are not vital. You can communicate the same thing using a bunch of different words. Certainly, not to take anything away from Andrew’s script, he’d agree. He’s written great characters and those characters are going to be great whether they say A- or B-line. Oftentimes, depending on what the actors are doing on set, a different line might be necessary or the scene might benefit from a different line. You need to be open to that. Oftentimes, that’s the best stuff. We’re seeing it the first time the way the audience is going to see it. You plan for months and months for a certain way it’s going to be, but you never know how it’s going to be until you’re all there at the same time, you’re in that location, you’re inside action, before cut, it’s exactly what the audience is seeing, so let’s try to react to that and watch that and live that, in the real time the audience is going to be seeing it. You’re able to make perfect adjustments to it because you’re finally seeing it.
Q: Was the role of the child/co-lead always envisaged as Indian and how did you go about casting the role?
Bateman: It was always written as Indian. I didn’t know how to judge the talents of 10-year-old actors, so as I was watching a lot of these auditions, I wasn’t sure if we were seeing kids who were talented enough to be a lead in the film. For a second, I thought, “Do we need to make this kid Indian?” “Do we need to make this kid an ethnicity at all?” “Do we need to make it a boy?” “Let’s just open it up and find the best 10-year-old actor regardless of race, religion, [gender], anything.” We pursued that a bit, but before we went full-bore, before I started reading girls, I revisited Rohan’s tape – he was living in New York – and saw a quality there that’s undeniable, a quality that would really serve this film, to really offset the cynicism and the brashness of the Guy Trilby character, so let’s take that, work with that and let’s have whatever version of the character, Chaitainya, he wants to play.
The audience doesn’t have a preconceived notion of how Chaitainya should look, sound, or behave. If this is the version Rohan wants to play, let’s let him do that, as long as that essential quality is there – sunny and fearless and trusting. He’s meant to be the antithesis of what guy is. His character thaws out my character. My character gives him a bit of a backbone – and as odd as it sounds – a bit of a paternal model. Once I got my head around that, we didn’t need to go further. I had a Skype session. He was just as charming as he was when he did the written scene. His dad was on the Skype too. He’s some bigwig at IBM, I think. He was super-intelligent, understood what the film was going for, what I was trying to do with it, and was very comfortable with his son being a part of this.
Q: As a director deciding to act in your own film, how do you know that you’re the right person for the job?
Bateman: That’s the risk, you have eliminated that checks and balances and you’ve got to be honest with yourself whether you have a fair chance of hitting the necessary target. There’s no right or wrong way to play to play the character, but there is a wrong element for the character. I knew I had a good shot of hitting that quality of unlikeable yet likeable, so I decided to take it on.
Q: Did you talk to other actors before deciding on yourself?
Bateman: Yeah, I tried to get a couple of other actors to do it and they said no thanks.
Q: Did you hate anything about directing your first movie?
Bateman: Absolutely nothing. It was the greatest experience next to the birth of my children. (laughs)
Q: You’ve got to say that.
Bateman: Yeah, it was everything I wanted it to be.
Q: You’ve obviously seen this movie many times but as a viewer, do you have a favorite scene?
Bateman: The opening sequence I like because it’s so important to put your flag down and see that this guy who is sad, introspective, regretful. He’s observing all these kids and [you’re thinking] what’s he doing? I thought this was going to be a comedy? All those images that we got of the kids talking to their parents, that was all before we were rolling. Those were the actors talking to the other actors about when we were going to start shooting. I just started rolling the cameras and getting those authentic engagements. Building that sequence so that from there we could go and do all the funny, crazy things this guy does. Just to establish that tone in the film was really important.
Q: You have a big body of work both on TV and film. Where are you recognized the most?
Bateman: From Arrested Development. Well, I should qualify that by saying there’s been a lot of stuff that is not great and people probably don’t like. Those people walk right by you. People don’t usually stop and say you suck. But Arrested Development was a really well-made show, Mitch Hurwitz is a genius so the people who really like that come up and say so and I’m really happy that they do. That’s never annoying.
Q: Does being recognized ever differ with generation? Do people recognize something like It’s Your Move?
Bateman: Yeah, well you’ve got to be my age to enjoy that stuff. Usually people half my age will stop me for Arrested Development but I am very fortunate to have more than one generation of people recognize me from something. I count my lucky stars every day, truly.
Q: As a first-time director were there any films you were influenced by or were you trying to stay away from that?
Bateman: Paul Thomas Anderson and David O. Russell and the Coen brothers and Spike Jonze, they make films that are about a class of people that are pretty raw and that lend itself to drama and comedy fairly easily without changing genres. A very important part of that execution is the technical elements, the way a film looks and sounds and moves and is marketed. It is a whole world that they bring you into. Being John Malkovich is something that I really keyed into on this film because it’s a comedy, it’s what they call it. There are certainly some funny parts to it but at the end of the day it’s about a bunch of eccentric people going through something fairly absurd.
Q: You have a lot of great supporting players in this film. Did your time on Arrested Development help you balance out the ensemble?
Bateman: Yeah, I played a lot of team sports growing up so it’s the same sort of thing. Everyone has their job and the sum total of those efforts create something for the audience to enjoy. You don’t want redundancy but you do want some overlap. I like being a part of that and it was a pleasure to be asked to manage that.
Q: What was the biggest obstacle in shooting this film?
Bateman: There really wasn’t one. It would’ve been more luxurious if we had more days and time is money on a film. But if we had more money we wouldn’t have been able to make something so specific.
Q: You’re going from city to city answering a lot of questions for this movie, sometimes even the same questions. Is there one question you wish would go away?
Bateman: In every junket there is one, in this one it seems to be what’s your favorite bad word?
Q: Speaking of which…
Bateman: My answer is I really don’t have one. I really like them all. You can abuse them that I try not to do but used in the right way at the right time they can be pretty effective.
Q: Are you a good speller and do you like watching the bees?
Bateman: That’s the second most asked question. (laughs)
Q: In the spelling bee scenes, all the kids on stage had ethnic names that did not match them. Was that deliberate?
Bateman: Yeah, the little blonde kid at the end had an Asian last name and then the Asian kid at the beginning had the name Braden Aftergood. It’s a very WASP-y name so what happened there was I just liked this kid for this part and this kid for that part regardless of what their names were. One thing that bugged me about the placards, and I didn’t catch this until after we shot it, but my number was 123. It’s like, how could we let that happen? (laughs)