Watching Everybody’s Fine is like being a guest at a family dinner. What’s left unsaid or implied always has more meaning than what’s laid out on the table, and the mood may swing between laughter, anger and tears. The tonally complex movie owes its feel to writer-director Kirk Jones, who gets a thrill out of swinging his audience’s “emotional meter.”
“What I really love to do is mix humor and emotion,” explains Jones. “I think you enjoy the extremities so much more. It’s a huge challenge, and I find it quite difficult at times, to push people to laughter one minute, and then try to involve them emotionally the next.”

Everybody’s Fine, which Miramax Films opens on Dec. 4, stars Robert De Niro as Frank Goode, a retired shift worker who has fallen out of touch with his children after the death of his wife. After they cancel a planned visit, he goes on a road trip to reconnect. His children, played by Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell and Drew Barrymore, are afraid to tell their father what’s really going on in their lives; their untruths are alternately, or concurrently, painful and funny.

The movie is based on the 1990 Italian film Stanno Tutti Bene, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, who also helmed the Oscar-winning Best Foreign-Language Film, Cinema Paradiso. However, Jones did not feel compelled to follow the original film closely. He watched it only two or three times before he started writing, trusting his own memory of the film. “I certainly didn’t want to just translate the project. I felt that would be a waste of my time. I knew if I did that, I wouldn’t feel passionate about the story.”

Jones almost bypassed directing after seeing some early examples of power-tripping directors while working as a runner and editor. “It amazed me how many directors thrived on creating a very stressful environment on set. I saw actresses in tears, I saw screaming and shouting and throwing things and getting violent. Even though I had been to film school and had ambitions to be a director, I remember looking at these guys and thinking, ‘I don’t think it’s ever going to work out for me, because if that’s what directing is, that just isn’t in my nature.’”

Now that Jones is the head of his set, he prides himself on the atmosphere he creates. “Anyone that comes onto my set always comments on how relaxed and unstressful it feels.” He wants his cast and crew to feel free to do their best. “Actors and actresses don’t work well in those situations where they are screamed at and shouted at. They’re as sensitive as anyone you can imagine, and they need to be made to feel secure and comfortable within the work environment.”

As he prepared to work with De Niro, he decided that for him to feel secure in his work environment, he had to treat him as a real person, not a legend. A plan to watch half a dozen of his best-known films was axed. “I thought, actually, that’s just crazy. I’m going to turn up on set and be in awe of him and nervous of him.”

Instead, he went on set thinking, “Just forget everything he’s done before. Turn up on day one with a fresh start and treat him as I do any actor: Make him feel confident and strike up a relationship with him. I’m glad I did it that way round, rather than getting too hung up mentally on the legend that he is. Because, actually, when you spend time with him, you realize he’s just a really lovely, incredibly talented human being.” In fact, the two are planning on doing another film together.

Keeping with his goal of a relaxed, comfortable set atmosphere, Jones decided to always tell De Niro the truth—even when it came to the little white lies told on set. “We all work in an industry where a lot of times people aren’t honest to each other, and it’s just boring, really, and eats up everyone’s time and energy. There are times where you’re encouraged not to be honest with the actors. Maybe you’ll be asked if you can pretend to wrap early, then you’ll ask them to stay on a bit later. I thought, Bob’s been working in the industry for so long and I have so much respect for him. He’s a grown-up, I’ll just be honest with him about everything, whether it relates to his performance or production.”



Jones shot the film on digital, his first, which changed his on-set techniques. Because he wasn’t worried about how much film was running through the camera, he would often have the actors run through several takes without stopping.

“I would wait until the actors had got a good rhythm and then just say, ‘Okay, keep the camera running, and let’s just reset and go back over the scene again.’ Instead of taking five minutes to reset, because someone says, ‘Maybe we should change the battery or change the magazine,’ and the props guys start coming and the wardrobe guys start fiddling with wardrobe, it was very simple.”

“I would often say to Bob, ‘I’m happy with that. Do you want to go again, or just leave the camera running?’ More often than not he’d say ‘Yes, I just want to try something.’ The actors loved it. It’s a nightmare when you get to the cutting room, but the actors loved it.”

The move to digital also enabled Jones to take advantage of existing light.

“The appearance looked just so much more natural because all you’re using is natural light. Even when you shoot at dusk, there’s very little grain in the film.” The lenses, too, improved greatly from original models. “When people would say, ‘I could tell it was digital, I could tell it was video,’ what they’re actually saying is that the lenses produced an image that felt a bit fake.” On-location light, like that of De Niro ambling through a bus station, gave Jones the sense of realism he wanted with less time and effort.

The movie also incorporated real people Jones met along the way. Before writing the screenplay, he took a trip similar to that of De Niro’s character, traversing the country on Greyhound bus and train. There, he met individuals—“some of them pretty strange, some of them by many people’s definitions quite crazy”—and ached to incorporate those kinds of interactions into the film. One such person, with whom De Niro chats in a diner is a 94-year-old furrier he met when the man wordlessly gave him a piece of candy. Jones had De Niro talk to the man for 25 minutes, holding up cards to get the actor to ask him questions about his life. He then edited the conversation into a minute-long scene.

As in his debut feature, Waking Ned Devine, Jones has tried to make a film that respects his audience’s intelligence. While he says he’s interested in making films that have a “strong commercial theme” in the sense that “if I spend a lot of time making a movie, I stand a chance at a lot of people getting to see the movie and being able to relate to it,” Everybody’s Fine feels different than a typical Hollywood family dramedy. The details of the plot are laid out with restraint and ambiguity, and the turning point happens in a moment of fantasy, not reality.

This is not the first time Jones has employed unconventional techniques. In Waking Ned Devine, the town villain gets knocked off a cliff in a pretty spectacular, unbelievable way. “Everyone who read the script said, ’You just can’t do that in a movie,’” but Jones prevailed. The moment ended up being pointed to as one of the funniest scenes in the film. “I always hope that by 80% into a movie, the audience is so invested they’re prepared to take a step into a more fantastic world. Hopefully, they’re still invested in the characters so much they can go into the dream world.”

In Everybody’s Fine, the move into fantasy occurs in a fantastical, dreamlike confrontation. Frank Goode gathers his children—as their much-younger selves—around a table to confront them about their lies. “As soon as I made that decision [to portray them as children], I was very excited by it because it meant that the children could speak as children do, in a childlike way, while talking about adult situations like pregnancy... They’re incredibly honest and speak their mind, as all children do. As we get older, we all try to cover up, imply things, and hide the truth.” It also means that Jones avoided the genre-worn confrontation scene he had originally planned to take place around a hospital bed.

Everybody’s Fine is just Jones’ third movie. His first, Waking Ned Devine, opened in 1998 to critical acclaim and went on to be the second highest-grossing film proportionate to budget that year. In 2004, he directed Nanny McPhee, written by and starring Emma Thompson.

For Jones, making films is more about passion and less about the paycheck. “I’ve always directed TV commercials as well, and I see that as a real advantage. Advertising is the bread-and-butter work, and it allows me to take time out and to pick my film projects very carefully. When I make a film, I really care about that project. I kind of have two careers to draw on.”

What Jones doesn’t want to do is make a movie that underlines every single intention. “There are a lot of big movies out there, and I think it’s a disease, actually, that they underestimate their audience and think they have to be told everything every minute of the film. It’s a modern problem. I think people are just lazy and want to know everything. Or people think that they want to know everything instead of being allowed to discover things for themselves.”

When viewers catch Everybody’s Fine this December, they’ll be met with Jones’ mix of comedic and poignant, and a film that isn’t afraid to leave its best parts hidden from view until an opportune moment.