By Jessica Wedemeyer
10:52am PDT, Jun 12, 2018
In Hollywood, you'll be hard pressed to find a bigger family affair than "The Year of Spectacular Men," which opens in select theaters and is available on VOD starting June 15, 2018. Lea Thompson makes her feature-film directorial debut with the romantic dramedy, in which she also portrays the mother of two young women played by her real daughters: Maddie Deutch, who wrote the script, and Zoey Deutch, who produced the film along with their dad, "Pretty in Pink" director Howard Deutch, who's been married to Lea since 1989. The comedy centers around Maddie's Izzy, an aimless college grad reeling from a breakup while navigating her younger sister's newfound Hollywood stardom. (Sound familiar?) Wonderwall.com caught up with Lea to get the scoop on the differences between her real family and their characters in "The Year of Spectacular Men." She also dished on what it was like directing her daughters, why she left her husband on the sidelines and ended up feeling like "a boss-ass bitch" thanks to her girls, how she and her husband managed to make it to 30 years of marriage in the industry and more. Keep reading for the highlights from our chat…
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Lea Thompson on the impetus for "The Year of Spectacular Men":
"It started out as an idea because Maddie, my oldest daughter, just got done with college and was having all this terrible romantic stuff going on and she felt really adrift. She's always been a great writer, and she wrote all these incredibly personal, interesting songs. So like a mom, I told her to write about it — write a script. She did. She wrote a part for me. She wrote a part for Zoey. She wrote a part for Avan Jogia — we all hung out a lot because Avan used to date Zoey. It just turned out so beautiful."
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Lea Thompson on the biggest differences between her real family and "The Year of Spectacular Men":
"There are very big differences, but what's the same is that Maddie went to college and she came back home and her sister was a movie star. It was like, 'How did that happen?' How do you deal with that? That's her younger sister! She felt like her younger sister had it all together and she couldn't figure it out. We're all very different characters. The father in this case is dead, and my husband is very much alive and we're still married. My character is a lesbian. … But some of the stuff is just true to life emotionally for Madelyn."
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Lea Thomspon on making "The Year of Spectacular" men with her kids while her husband was away working on other projects:
"He was working on his own stuff. He's only made big movies. I've acted in a bunch of little movies. I've directed two small TV movies. I understand tiny movies — so do Zoey and Maddie. We've done a lot of small, independent movies. My husband's only done big projects, so he would never be able to pull this off. I was, like, carting around my mother's paintings, which are in the movie all over the place. I was carting paintings and set dressings and props. We were physically working really, really hard. I love my husband, but he's done nothing but big, giant movies. We have different tastes. He was still a producer, though. He came in on a lot of clutch plays — he really helped a lot."
Lea Thompson on her upcoming 30th anniversary with her husband and what's made them work for so long:
"Sometimes I think it's pure luck. Sometimes I think it's just that we really like each other. I'm a very strong family person and very into dinners at the table and spending birthdays together and working things out when people are fighting, like, 'Come back, let's work that out.' I don't know why — I didn't set out to be Miss Family Values, but that's the way I've ended up. I love my family and I feel really grateful that I've been able to manage to stay married. It's not easy. We've definitely had our bad times, but now is like the best. I'm madly in love with my husband. I think he's hilarious and flawed and beautiful and I love watching my whole family together. We have a weird dynamic, but it's our dynamic. Family comes first, so that's why this is a very unique and beautiful experience for me."
Lea Thompson on the most difficult part of directing her daughters in "The Year of Spectacular Men":
"Here's the deal: Movies are fraught with a lot of tense moments because you're losing the light or you didn't get the set you want or somebody doesn't like the lines or someone didn't show up. Independent movies are the worst that way because you don't have a lot of support. You don't have a lot of people stopping traffic and all of that. So I was under a lot of pressure that I tried not to [show]. Because my daughters and I know each other so well, it was hard to hide when one of us was panicking about something — especially me, probably. I would get this far-away look on my face and get extra-calm, and they'd be like, 'What?!' And I'd be like, 'Nothing, nothing!' That was the hard part — just dealing with all the anxiety that's inherent in doing something this complicated and with stakes that are really high. So I think because we know each other so well, it was hard to hide pure, real emotions sometimes. But everyone really behaved."
Lea Thompson on feeling validated as a female filmmaker thanks to her daughters:
"It was a really profound experience for me. I don't know if it all coincides with Me Too and Time's Up or what, but it's colliding with this movement that's really opening up a lot of our minds to the fact that we've held ourselves down, women, because of [what other people made us feel] and the things that people have said to us and the things that have been put on us. I feel like my kids gave me a lot of strength to be more of who I am and to accept my own ability to be a boss-ass bitch and to take my own destiny in my own hands, which is what we did with each other — we all gave each other a leg up and we took each other as partners and made something and stuck with it and followed it all the way through. That's a beautiful thing in any type of friendship or partnership where you can really have each other's backs and have each other's own interests in your heart."
Lea Thompson on why she's struggling to go back to acting after making her feature-film directorial debut:
"I would love to direct more movies, for sure. I've been lucky enough to direct some episodic TV, but I would love to direct more. I have some ideas. I'm developing a lot of different things right now. It's hard to go back. How are you gonna go back down on the farm once you've seen Paris? I just acted in a pilot, and it was really hard for me. I was like, 'But guys, I think that maybe it should be [this way],' and no one was really interested. … Actors are not really treated very well, honestly, as fellow artists. As a director, I like to be very collaborative with my actors because I understand what they're bringing to the table. But people don't want to give actors any power. It's very interesting. It shouldn't even be viewed like that — it should be more collaborative. But Maddie, Zoey and I all noticed that. Maddie as a writer really appreciates the way her agents treat her differently than her acting agents treat her. Zoey as a producer notices how people treat her differently. So I really want to go forward and create my own thing while I still have a little energy — because it takes a lot of energy."
Lea Thompson on the depiction of Hollywood in "The Year of Spectacular Men":
"Zoey's character, Sabrina, is a young Hollywood movie star. But no one ever portrays them like this. She's super-domestic. She lives in this pretty modest house. She has it all together and is very sweet and domestic. You don't usually see movie stars portrayed that way. I loved the way [Maddie] portrayed Hollywood — it's very different than you're used to seeing. … The way we decided to shoot the sets and the behind-the-scenes things felt much more real to me than I've seen in most movies. They usually have everybody being jerks, and that's not my experience on movie sets. It's a lot of hardworking people."
Lea Thompson on how her experience on "Dancing With the Stars" influenced the depiction of paparazzi in "The Year of Spectacular Men":
"A lot of people worried about the way we have the paparazzi in the movie kind of as a Greek chorus. That was specifically taken from my experience on 'Dancing With the Stars' because when you do 'Dancing With the Stars,' there are these paparazzi that sit outside the studio and cheer you on. They're like, 'You did great last week!' And you're like, 'Really? Thank you!' And they become like your best friends in this weird way."
