To borrow from a well-known proverb, if you want a thing done well, do it yourself. That is exactly what John Krasinski decided to do in order to get The Hollars to the big screen.
The Office star originally read the script by Jim Strouse seven years ago, and was game to play the starring role of John Hollar, a struggling artist in New York City, who returns to his small, middle-America hometown and dysfunctional family after learning that his mother (Margo Martindale) has been hospitalized.
And then nothing. As so often happens, there was no forward movement on turning the script into a film until finally, three or four years down the road, the financier called Krasinski and asked he if would buy the script, because he felt that was the only way it would get made.
“I said, ‘Yeah, I really would,'” Krasinski tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. “It was such a weird financial commitment to make but for something that felt this special and felt this universal, I thought it would be a shame to not bring this to the screen. I was really honored to have that opportunity to do so.”
The Hollars, currently available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital, is both funny and heartbreaking, and marks Krasinski’s second film as director. To find out more about the making of the movie, read the interview in which he talks about setting the right tone, casting the right players, what appealed to him about the story, his switch from The Office to an action role in 13 Hours, his upcoming role as Jack Ryan in the new Amazon series based on the books by Tom Clancy, and more.
Several women next to me were crying when watching this, but it also had funny moments. How hard was it to set the right tone?
That’s a great question. I think the key to a movie like this is tone. I think that it’s very difficult to ride the line sometimes. Very rarely have I seen a script that is so specifically nuanced and particular about what everyone’s doing in a scene. Jim really was able to navigate these hairpin turns between comedy and drama that somehow because they’re hairpin turns, it’s real life. I think he really understands that you can be crying in the same moment that you’re laughing.
Being a kid who grew up going to church and, every now and again, would have laughing fits in church that I couldn’t stop and there wasn’t even anything funny, I understood that really well. That life will take you down two different avenues at the same time emotionally. He’s so beautiful at doing that.
I think the second big part is casting actors who know this tone and know how to deliver it. I think that when you’re casting people, normally you get notes back that say, “Yeah, I’ll do it but I don’t like this scene, or I don’t like this part of my character, or whatever.” I was lucky enough to have every single actor read the script; I talked to them and they said, “Let’s do it. They knew exactly what we were trying to do with this movie and what type of movie it was because they all understand comedy and drama really well. They know that the only way to play it is to play the truth in it, and whether you laugh or cry is up to you.
What you said about people laughing and crying in the same screening is truly the best compliment we could get.
It’s incredible that when something takes seven years to happen, that you just didn’t go, “Okay, next,” but you really had a belief in it.
The thing is these movies are special and, I think, anyone who’s getting into movies like this knows that you have to fight for them. They’re never easy. Usually the ones that aren’t easy are the best. This is, hopefully, a perfect example of that.
The Hollars are an incredibly dysfunctional family. Do you know people like this? What was it about this family that made you want to tell their story?
You’re absolutely right that this is a dysfunctional family and, yet, when I got to the end of the script, I immediately thought, “That’s my family.” I have an incredibly compassionate, very tight, loving family that is nothing like this family. Yet there are lines of communication, and a love and understanding that are universal to everybody. Yes, I get along with my family. This family doesn’t get along at all. The idea of what it means to be from a family and understand how special that is and to fight for it is something that I gravitate towards immediately.
You mentioned casting earlier. Did you just invite your friends? Were Margo and Richard Jenkins, who plays your dad, people that you worked with before? Or did you actually cast a wide net?
Actually, we didn’t even have a casting director on this film. I just made the calls to the people I wanted. I had never worked with Richard. I had done one commercial with Margo 17 years ago for Marshall’s, but other than that, I hadn’t worked with her. I was basically cold calling everybody. I knew people through social circles but never really knew them well enough to call. I figured I’d just give it a shot and call the people who I thought would be best for the role. I was incredibly lucky to get exactly who I wanted, especially Margo. I will say it helps a great deal to get a powerhouse like Margo in the movie because once you do, then all the other actors feel incredibly comfortable and more excited to jump onto a project because they want to work with her. She’s your litmus test of what’s good.
You directed on The Office and one other movie before. This is a feature film that you weren’t just directing, you were staring in. How do you find a balance between being an actor in the project and the director?
You know what’s funny? In this one, it was bizarrely easy. I know that probably sounds obnoxious, but the truth is it was easy because I think being an actor ended up being a gift. We had such a small schedule. We shot this thing in 22 days. Everyone had to just come and do their job. These actors certainly did their job really well. They created this very special bubble, where I was just lucky to feel like I was in the front row seat to these performances. I think if I was just the guy behind monitors yelling “cut” and then coming in and disrupting the scene, it wouldn’t have been nearly as good nor as special. I think me being an actor in the scene allowed me not to call cut, leave the cameras rolling, say a few things quietly back and forth to each other and then stay in the scene. It really felt more like we were doing a play. There weren’t a lot of takes because we’d just do these long takes where we felt like we kept playing with it until we got it right. I think that allowed people to feel like they were in a staged zone rather than hearing “cut” and going again and then losing their rhythm.
You were so well known for The Office and yet you did a movie like 13 Hours. It’s really interesting that you didn’t end up type cast. How did you manage that? Did you do something special?
I think the only thing special was hard work. I definitely made the conscious choice to try to do different things. Certainly not because The Office was anything I’m not thrilled and proud of. It’s actually the most special thing I’ve done, and probably at the end of my career, will still be the most special thing I’ve done because it was a job unlike any job I will ever have and I know that. To me, the most fun thing about acting is you get play different people. I wanted to play vastly different people.
After The Office, I tried to be a lot more selective what was coming my way and be more aggressive about the things that were probably not going to come my way. 13 Hours was one of those things where I didn’t think I was being considered at all for it, so I ended up putting myself on tape because I felt that I really wanted to give it a shot. From that, I got cast, which I’m very lucky to have done.
For the months and time after The Office, there was definitely that fear that I would be type cast in a certain way. I didn’t want that just because I wanted to have different experiences. I’m very lucky to have had that opportunity.
Speaking of 13 Hours, is that what lead to you becoming Jack Ryan?
I think it actually is directly related. In fact, I think the head of Paramount Television had seen a screening of 13 Hours, and, supposedly as the story goes, pointed to the screen and said, “That’s my Jack Ryan.” One of the producers of Jack Ryan is Michael Bay. When she called him about it, he and I got along well on set of 13 Hours and really liked each other, he said, “Absolutely, put him in the role.”
What I like about Jack Ryan is he’s not just an action guy, but he is a smart guy and he does a lot of intelligence work to get to where he needs to go. Is that part of the appeal of him for you that he does use smarts?
You hit the directly nail on the head. For me, I was very interested by it because I’ve always been a huge Jack Ryan fan, certainly from the books and the movies. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. When I talked to Carlton Cuse, who’s the showrunner; he was one of the creators of Lost, his whole pitch was: As much as you like the movies and I like the movies, it’s very difficult to put an entire Jack Ryan story into one movie and jam it into two or two and a half hours. He is a brain, he is an analyst; his super power is his brain. His deciphering things and figuring things out and solving the case is actually the best part of the story.
In most action movies, you just sort of find the bad guy, you beat him up and the movie is over. You can’t do that with Jack Ryan. The idea of doing it over long-form television is amazing because you get to draw it out very similar to the way it is in the book. You get to really dig in a little bit deeper into the richness of what Tom Clancy wrote.
The Hollars, currently available from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, also stars Sharlto Copley, Charlie Day, Richard Jenkins, and Anna Kendrick.
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