Patrick Wang was the writer, director, lead actor, and even self-releasing his film, In the Family (review), which he received an Independent Spirit Award Nomination for. He talks about the adjustments he had to make from his theatre background to film and why he decided to keep the score of the film to a minimum.

So I have read why you decided to have it set in Martin, TN but why did you decide to shoot in Yonkers, NY?
That’s a great question, and in the future I look forward to shooting in many different parts of the country. But this was my first film, and New York is home now. With all the new challenges that would be coming my way, I thought it would be a good idea to be able to come home to someplace familiar at the end of the day and be close to my support system of friends. Yonkers is close to New York, is similar in climate to Martin, and parts look very much like Martin. It also has another connection to the movie: Chip Taylor is from Yonkers.

It seems like you would have had to know Chip Taylor was going to be a part of the film from the beginning, since one of the characters was named after him, is this true?
I had written Chip Taylor into the script but not so deeply that we couldn’t change things if he didn’t like the project. I sent him the script to read, and fortunately he liked it. He has been a great friend to the movie and to me.

Speaking the score, In the Family remains largely absent of one, what was the reason for this?
One of our audience members made the beautiful observation, “Some movies make you think, this one lets you think.” I tried to combine a strong visual perspective for observing the scene with neutral perspective on interpreting the scene. The deep focus allows your eye to follow many different paths through the scene, and the lack of score lets your emotions follow many different paths through the scene. While riskier, the result can be a much more personal and unpredictable experience.

Because there was many single-take long scenes which sometimes involving a child actor, how were you able to keep him focused throughout the scene? Was it a constant struggle?
The most challenging scene with Sebastian was the long take for the opening kitchen scene. He has a lot of lines; he’s moving around and handing a lot of props at the same time. But honestly, it was a challenging scene for all of us. I had a line flub in one of the takes, and I barely had any lines in the scene. Sebastian is extremely focused as it is for a six year old, but when he needed some help, I’d try to make a game out of the scene and give him something new to do.

It took only three weeks to shoot the film but approximately how much did it cost to make In the Family?
It was just under half a million. A significant amount of that was for the filmout and making 35mm prints for a 169 minute movie.

The film was rejected from several film festivals before finally being accepted into some, do you think the run-time was the biggest culprit?
Your guess is as good as mine. We have only heard back from one of the festivals very recently. They apologized and acknowledged they had only watched the first few minutes of the film.

You are going to be self-releasing the film this spring, what do you believe is the toughest hurdle to getting picked up?
Each film has its different hurdles, and with this film, I feel the biggest hurdle is that I am facing a distribution industry that has adopted risk minimization as its behavioral norm. Not risk optimization, risk minimization. In the short run, this lets you grasp at the disappearing pie. In the long run, it kills innovation and future commerce.

Any interesting fact you can share about the film that a viewer would not know from just watching the film?
Even though they get cut up in the final edit, the two wide shots in the deposition scene were shot as single takes of the entire scene, each take over half an hour long. I remember how exciting the first take was. Everyone thought we would cut at some point, but we did the whole damn thing.

What influences from your theatre experience transferred to this film? What was the most difficult adjustment for you?
From theater, I get my love of performance and literature. I also learned from working with designers in theater how to see and listen. That’s most of what I needed to make this film. I think the most challenging adjustment I found in moving from theater to film is that the environment on a film set can be very distracting to the actors’ work. My AD and I worked hard to find ways to make the set culture more performance-friendly.

Do you have any future projects in the works?
Yes, I’m working on writing a screenplay based on Leah Hager Cohen’s novel “The Grief of Others.” It’s a gorgeous novel, and I’m looking forward to figuring out how film can try to keep up with the density and dexterity of a novel.

In the Family is an indie first feature film from writer, director, and lead actor Patrick Wang. The film is about a man who must deal with the loss of his same-sex partner and the subsequent legal battles he must endure. The film carefully paces, sometimes too slowly, to show how powerful hope can be.

Set in a small conservative town in Tennessee a young six year old boy named Chip Hines (Sebastian Brodziak) is raised by his two fathers, his biological father Cody Hines (Trevor St. Johns) and his romantic partner Joey Williams (Patrick Wang). Because his biological mother passed away when he was born, Chip has always had two fathers. That is until one tragic day when Cody Hines gets into a fatal car crash.

There were plenty of long takes where no dialog is spoken, just the two of them now going through their everyday routine. A good example of this is a scene when Joey and Chip are getting back from the funeral and the two sit at the table together going through the large pile of mail. It was impressive how well the young child, Sebastian Brodziak, held up during these long scenes. There are some go on for more than 10 minutes.

After going through the mail Joey goes to Cody’s sister to help decipher what all the bills mean. It is then that he finds out that Cody made a will 6 years ago and did not include him in it. To make matters worse, all the possessions including their house and even Chip are now legally hers.

Joey becomes isolated from Cody’s side of the family but he has always experienced situations where he does not feel like he was part of the family. The first occurrence is when the doctors will not allow him to go see Cody in the hospital because he was not technically family. The second time is when his name did not appear in Cody’s will. Another is when Joey is not invited to the Hines’s Thanksgiving. Despite what the title of the film implies, he is not very welcome in the family.

Things take a turn for the worse when Joey goes to pick Chip up from the Hines’s Thanksgiving and Chip is not there. The family has decided to exercise its legal rights by taking Chip away from Joey. Needless to say, Joey is devastated when Chip is gone from his life so suddenly.

We learn more about Cody through multiple flashbacks to his past. We are shown how Cody and Joey first met and how he came up with naming Chip. But perhaps most interesting is that Joey knew Cody’s wife before she passed away.

It took me about an hour to really start getting into In the Family, it is fairly slow moving throughout its entirety but especially until then. Although many of the long scenes worked, some of them could have been condensed down during editing. The nearly three hour run-time was a bit much. But after reading the director’s statement I learned this was done intentionally, “The camera movement and cutting is minimal as I prefer to let the dynamics emerge from the characters and the events.”

In the Family has a powerful message but the film demands a great deal of patience from the audience from beginning to end. Even though it is a little rough around the edges it was an impressive first feature film by Patrick Wang. The film earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. Even if you did not care for this film, you cannot help but wonder what Mr. Wang’s next project will be.