Matt Ross may be most known for playing Gavin Belson, a narcissistic executive on the HBO show "Silicon Valley" but he's also a filmmaker. He's written and directed the new movie "Captain Fantastic," in which Viggo Mortensen plays a father of six children living off the grid; a former convict became a gifted guitar maker through the state's prison arts program.
'Captain Fantastic': Matt Ross, Viggo Mortensen and the perils of off-the-grid fatherhood
In the new film, "Captain Fantastic," Viggo Mortensen plays a father of six who, along with his wife, have decided to raise their kids deep in a forest, far from civilization.
But the family has to abandon its off-the-grid world when the wife becomes very sick.
You may know writer/director Matt Ross from his role as Gavin Belson, the CEO of the search engine company Hooli, on HBO's "Silicon Valley."
Ross found inspiration for the "Captain Fantastic" story in his own upbringing, as well as his experience as a parent. We caught up with Ross and Mortensen when the movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year. It opens in theaters on July 8.
Interview Highlights:
Matt, you drew from experiences from your own childhood in order to write this script, right?
Ross: There are autobiographical elements in it. My mom started a commune in Oregon. Commune sounds like a very '70s word. Now I think these families are called "off the grid." But when you use the expression "off the grid," it implies communities that probably are more right-of-center politically. We had a teepee by the lake. We used to sleep in it all summer long. So there were certain things that were true to my own life. We do celebrate Noam Chomsky Day, which everyone should do. I highly recommend it. There was no sugar, there was no television. I think the movie is a reflection of me and my wife as we try and figure out, well, What are our values? And how do we want to raise our kids? What do we want? I think good movies ask a lot of questions and don't necessarily answer everything. I think life is all gray, it's not black-and-white.
Viggo, I want to talk about the creative collaboration you have in talking about fatherhood. What were the important things that you wanted to be sure this story reflected in terms of how you think of this character as a parent and how you think of yourself as a parent? And where do those two things overlap and intersect?
Mortensen: I felt it was there in the script, but on the surface I wanted — and so did [Matt] — to be sure that ... we had very little time shooting-wise. We had a week. We had a lot of preparation and then we had a week to establish where we live in the woods and where we come from in the story. We got a lot done in that week.
You mean a week of rehearsal?
Mortensen: No, of shooting time. Just for where we lived in the teepee and all that stuff. What Matt wanted and what I was concerned about was that it be realistic. Everything about the hunting, where we're getting our food, how is it that we're surviving here.
Ross: A lot of that was our collaboration and our discussions. And then mine with Russell Barnes, the production designer. We had lots of conversation. [Their] food source was partially [made] clear by the hunting sequence of the movie, but they have to have access to clean water. How does that work? So a lot of our collaboration in the beginning was how does this actually function? What is the real version of this? Viggo was there early enough that he planted the entire garden and that's a real garden. It didn't last because it wasn't tended to.
What did you plant?
Mortensen: All kinds of vegetable and berries and things that could grow there. I kind of got off track of your question, which was not just being realistic, but this father being realistic in the sense that, at first — unless you've grown up with woodcraft or grown up in the country or hunted or any of those things — it's kind of a shock. You see these people at the very start of the movie and you're like, Where are we? Who are these people? The father is absolutely committed to caring for his kids, he pays attention to them. He's given up whatever other career he was going to have. He's done everything, but he makes mistakes. It was really important to me and to Matt as well that he really is shown to be flawed. And then what happens? Are you able to correct your course or reflect on it? Or are you just going to bulldoze like, it's us against the world? That's not what happens. It's much more delicately written and directed.
Viggo, what do you hope the audience takes away from watching this film?
Mortensen: I hope everybody leaves this movie thinking, What the hell happened to me as a kid? Am I doing the right thing as a parent? I hope that everybody, no matter what their idealogical point of view, whether they have kids or not, that they come out of this movie thinking maybe a lot, if not everything I'm doing, is wrong.
Did it make you reexamine the ways in which you examine your own children and being a parent?
Mortensen: It made me think about, let's say, to just throw an example — my kid when he was a toddler and until he was about 13, he would constantly say, C'mon, let's wrestle. If you meet my son, Henry, he's gigantic. As he got bigger, it got harder. But I would always jump on the floor and do it, almost always. But sometimes I didn't, sometimes [I'd say,] I really have to finish writing this thing. Or, I'm on the phone or I'm cooking dinner. He'd be grabbing my leg — Let's wrestle! I'd roll around when he was little. I would be gentle, but pretend I was really fighting. And then later I had to really fight for my life, basically. But I didn't always say yes, and this movie, for example, made me think I should have always said yes.
Matt, what about you?
Ross: For me, a lot of the questions in the movie I was asking while writing it. It was me thinking about being a parent. The great irony of it is that I went off for two years to make a movie about a man trying to be the best father he could be while I'm abandoning my own family, leaving my wife to raise my children and she's doing an amazing job. I think she is fifty times the parent I am. We want to kill each other a lot of the time, but I learn so much about being a parent from her. A lot of what is reflected in the movie is aspirational. Viggo's story about being present for his child is exactly correct. As all of us balance our professional and personal commitments, we're always torn in two ways. And I think women experience this more than men. Every woman I know who also has a job feels like she's failing at home as a mother because she's got all this work to do. Then she's failing at work as a professional because she's got to be a mom. Men get a pass on that because of the socioeconomic structure of our society, although most families have to both work.
This is a story about a family that is — as we would call it in today's world — living off the grid. At what point do you try to create an environment on set to make sure that as soon as the cameras stop, that everyone is not on their cell phones or iPads?
Ross: I made a contract that I made all the children sign. I didn't need to do that with Viggo. He's an adult and he's not on social media and is not on his phone or on his iPad. But with the children, they are contemporary American teenagers, and I made them sign a contract saying they would not eat any sugar, any junk food, and that they would eat vegetables and fruits and meat. That they would eat well on set and off. I made them sign a contract that said they would not have their iPhones, iPads or computers on set. I did that really as a joke, partially. If you read it, it was a comical contract.
I think for a kid who doesn't have these things and a parent says, here, you're getting an iPhone or whatever gadget, it was probably as cool for these kids who had those things to say, Okay, we're going to spend all this time and we're not going to have them. It was probably an adventure for them.
Ross: That adventure started when we had them for two weeks before production. We sent them to a wilderness survival camp. Annalise Basso and Samantha Isler, who played Kielyr and Vespyr, went to have a butchery class. They butchered a sheep. We were bringing them into the world as we could. And music. A lot of music. I was very conscientious, I mean, obviously Sam could sing and I knew that George plays the guitar. Viggo plays the guitar. These were skills that you can't learn in two weeks, so we had them.
Viggo, I want to ask you about music. There are two scenes that involve the family playing music together where you basically following their musical cues. Can you talk a little about those scenes and if they feel authentic, that you were jamming as a family, that you were creatively collaborating on the music?
Mortensen: Yeah, we do. One of the things I thought was very useful during the rehearsal period, apart from this rigorous long days with schedules of going rock climbing and everybody running around ... But music is when we all would get together. That was at least once a day we'd get together, all of us. We really were jamming and laughing and talking. We'd have something to eat. Okay, let's go! And then we'd start playing. The feeling there was, There's no such thing as making a mistake. We're just playing together. We got better and better and more comfortable with each other...I thought the music was important as an initial bonding thing.
Matt, do you see part of yourself more in one of the kids than another? Is there a son that you found yourself drawn to as a writer? I could guess Bo. I could guess Rellian. I'm just curious who you saw yourself in.
Ross: I'm definitely both of those. Like most kids, I was a pissed-off teenager. I think that a lot of Rellian's feelings were mine. Also, more specifically, I lived in rural communities. I lived in a commune at one point as I was hitting adolescence and we were so cut off from kids our own age. Certainly, as you're starting to develop sexually and are attracted to whomever you're attracted to, I really felt the need to break out of this insular and removed environment that I lived in. I wanted to live in towns so badly. I felt like a freak who lived in a teepee in the middle of nowhere. By that time, I had lived in England, I had been to Africa, I had been to many countries in Europe and I was living with kids who hadn't been to the nearest big town of 60,000 people. So I was a freak to them in some ways.
Matt, even though you clearly have conflicted feelings about the way in which you were brought up, do you think there's any doubt that you would not be the person you are were it not for this crazy childhood that you had? Did it make you the person who was able to make this film?
Ross: Probably, yeah. And I'm thankful for it. My mother said she read the script and was feeling guilty. She said something like, Well, do you feel better about it now? Are you okay? My response was, No, I'm really thankful that I had it. I think when you're so young you don't realize that it's unique. So I'm thankful for it. I try in my own way to give my kids as much of that through camping, exposure to nature and to the natural environment and to the books that I encourage them to read. I can't expect my 13-year-old to love Tom Waits like I do, but I can play Tom Waits and [Miles Davis'] "Kind of Blue" and hope that at some point she's like, Oh, that's good, as well as the other things that she listens to.