The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and having recently premiered on Netflix, I DON’T FEEL AT HOME IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE is truly special work from first-time writer-director Macon Blair, a much-beloved actor who has turned his attention to filmmaking of late. The film is the story of Ruth (Melanie Lynskey), whose home is burgled, and she enlists the help of a neighbor she barely knows, Tony (Elijah Wood), to help her track down the thieves and confront them. It’s a sketchy plan at best, but Ruth is dealing with a great deal of emotional upheaval in her world, and she is driven to confront those who have wronged her. It’s a beautifully realized and acted piece that you should all check out.
At Sundance, I had a chance to sit down with Lynskey and Wood, two actors I’ve interviewed many times over the years, and always enjoy doing so. Both were also represented in other films at Sundance—Lynskey also starred in the horror anthology XX (in theaters and OnDemand now), while Wood produced writer-director-actor Marianna Palka’s BITCH, the much talked about midnight offering. The circumstances of the interview were quite unusual, as there were two things going on while we were talking—the Women’s March down Main Street in Park City and a fairly formidable blizzard. But we made it work. Please enjoy my talk with Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood…
Capone: The whole time I’m watching this film I’m thinking, there is something that drives us as human beings to want to confront the people that wrong us, but we almost never do it. There’s something too scary about it. That’s a big part of what this movie is about—getting in the face of the person who has done some amount of wrong, whether it’s in a express lane in a grocery store line with too many items, or someone who cut you off in traffic, or somebody who robs you. Have you thought about that?
Melanie Lynskey: Yeah. A few years ago, my ex-husband and I got robbed—just our basement. We had just gotten engaged at the time. We had a bunch of champagne and stuff like that, and one of the local kids told us who did it. This really awesome kid who knew us. He had moved a television for us, and we gave him some money, and then he was like our informant. And it was really weird because we did have this desire to make it right. Especially Jimmy, my ex-husband, was like, “I want to confront them.” And I was like, “What’s your plan? What do we do?” We heard them having a party one night and he was like, “They’re drinking our champagne.” It was so sad. But yeah, it’s weird. We both had this sense of “We have to make this right.” We felt so violated by these people, but then it’s terrifying.
Elijah Wood: I don’t think I could do it.
ML: We couldn’t.
EW: I would feel the same impulse, though. Especially if you knew who it was.
ML: Yeah, that’s what you’re talking about—instinct. If you knew.
EW: You knew who the people were.
Capone: Was it freeing in a way to play a character that didn’t care? That first time she like confronts the people that have her computer, I was scared to death for her. You don’t have a plan really. You just know you’re going to get in there, take it, and danger be dammed, but you don’t see characters like that in movies.
EW: It was super fun. Tony is waiting for this opportunity to rise to the occasion to be some kind of hero.
Capone: He does seem more eager than you would expect.
ML: Oh my god, that scene where I come to your house and I’m like, “I need backup,” and you’re like, “Yes.”
[Everyone laughs]
EW: He’s just waiting for some kind of opportunity to do some good, in some sort of hero capacity, so it was fun to do that and live out that fantasy.
Capone: Both of your characters seem to have an inherent—I don’t know if “anger” is quite the right word—but frustration with the way the world works, that nobody has to answer for what they do, and that people just aren’t nice all the time. That seems to really wear them down. How do you get into that head space?
EW: I think we can relate to it.
ML: Like Elijah’s saying, I really related to that feeling of “Oh god, it’s so tiring some times to be positive and good and kind when you’re not receiving it back. Sometimes it gets very, very depressing.” I related to a lot about her relationship with her grandmother, and she lost someone who was so special to her and who she knew was such a good person, and it’s turned a little light on when she’s looking around the world, and she’s like, “This amazing woman is gone, and all these dicks are left treating people badly.”
But yeah, it’s like what you were talking about before, I love how the movie doesn’t make it unrealistic. She’s not going there and confronting people and being so sure of herself. She’s like “I need someone to be with me, I need to know how it’s going to happen, but this is right.” She’s like “I just want to make it right,” and I love that.
Capone: I’m not sure in the end it ends up being the right decision, by the way.
ML: No!
EW: No!
ML: A lot of terrible things happen.
Capone: Let’s talk about Macon, because the guy is obviously a tremendous actor, but he’s also a first-time director, and you both don’t just work with them but you like foster them sometimes. You like encourage them. When you’re working with a first-time director, what do they need to bring to you to convince you that they have a vision that you want to be a part of? And what did Macon specifically bring you?
EW: So much of it is in the script. There’s a lot of specificity, from music choices to details about the characters and the tone, and you could visualize what it was that he wanted to do. And then in subsequent conversations, as I’m sure you had, there was so much assuredness of vision in the way that he saw the movie that he wanted to make. I had faith in him immediately just upon reading the script. It was so clear.
ML: Yeah, I loved the script so much. The first day of work, he was very, very specific about a lot of things, movements, and talking a lot about the scenes, and I started to feel like “Oh my god, is it going to be one of these?”, where you’re like the puppet.
Capone: You’ve made so many films, you do probably have one of those experiences.
ML: Oh my god, I have “one of those” of every kind of experience.
[Everybody laughs]
ML: But the thing with Macon was, I said to him, “I’m not great at talking, talking, talking. I’d like to just do it, and then we’ll talk about it.” I have an instinct and if I don’t follow it, I don’t know what to do with myself. And he was like, “Dude, I read a directing book. They said that actors like people to tell them what to do. I don’t know. This is so fucking scary.” I was like “You sweet angel.” His openness, his willingness to communicate, and he was like “What do you need?” And we had this really amazing dialogue, and he just became one of my all time favorites. Just great.
EW: Same.
Capone: You mentioned tone before. The tone shifts so violently sometimes in this, and I love films that don’t stay in one tone all the time. Is that something you could read, or did you realize that as you were shooting it?
EW: It was in the script. Yeah, because it starts very emotional—funny, but ultimately emotional in her interior life, and then it gets funny as this double-hander trying to go find the perpetrators, and that’s very fun. And it reads as fun, and then it gets out of their hands and becomes dangerous and dark and heavy. It was all there in the context of the script and so exciting as a result of that. It wasn’t one thing, and then there’s a relationship at the core of that too that almost had this HAROLD AND MAUDE sweetness to it that was so lovely.
ML: I was going to say, he’s such a beautiful writer, and it’s so evocative, so it’s not just dialogue. The connective tissue of the script gave you such a sense of the world you were in, how funny it was, how weird it was, and how sad it was.
EW: The voices pop off of the page. Yeah, it was a thrill. To what she was saying too, he’s so open and so sweet. He was always so appreciative of the position he was in, with no less assuredness. He very much knew what he wanted to do, but he did that great thing that all great directors do, which is he hired an incredible team of people who he could have the greatest amount of faith in articulating the things that he wanted. It really felt like an amazing team in that sense.
Capone: I know a lot of people have compared this to Cohen brothers stuff.
EW: That’s an easy reference.
Capone: Real quick, you both have other films here. I saw BITCH last night, which was so fucking great.
ML: Oh, dude! I’m so glad you liked it.
Capone: I loved it. And then I’m seeing XX tomorrow night, but you’re in Annie Clarke’s segment.
ML: I’m in Annie’s! I’m so honored.
Capone: Tell me, working with another first time director.
ML: Oh, she was amazing. She had it. She really did a beautiful job. I’m excited. I’ve only seen her one, I haven’t seen the whole movie. She’s incredible.
EW: She’s so talented.
ML: I think it’s beautiful. I was really happy with it.
