Interview with Kirk Jones, Director of Everybody’s Fine

In the new film “Everybody’s Fine,” Robert DeNiro plays Frank, a widower with four children who worked his time in a factory and basks in the glow of his children’s success. When they all can’t come to his family barbeque, Frank sets out on a tour of America to drop in on each of his kids. But what he finds is that his kids, not wanting to disappoint him, have exaggerated their successes and minimized their troubles. He starts to connect with who they really are, not who they wanted him to think they were.

I talked recently with the director of “Everybody’s Fine,” Kirk Jones, who also directed “Nanny McPhee” and “Waking Ned Divine.” 

“I am always very wary when people describe families as being the perfect family,” said Jones, “Because in my experience, when families appear to be perfect in every way, it actually suggests something that is slightly unreal. The film really set out to present a very real family and a family people can believe in and relate to as opposed to a lot of families presented in movies these days which appear to be really fake.”

He thinks people will see their own families in the film, “I was asked early on who I thought was going to see this film and I said I don’t think anyone will go to see it unless they have some experience of having parents or brothers and sisters or children, which is pretty much all of us.”

Jones also had a very personal connection to the father in the film, something he shared with star Robert DeNiro. “I’m also a father myself, I’ve got three children and I connected to a lot of the things that were in the film and I was really relieved when I approached DeNiro. As a father of five, he was also able to relate to the film very clearly. As an actor, it was more his life experience that I was interested in than his acting experience.”

Jones hopes the film will not only connect emotionally with people, but will make them think about their own priorities, “I was contacted by a couple who said they were so moved by the film that they stayed up all night talking about their own families and how they weren’t trying as hard as they should to keep in contact and the next morning arranged a family reunion and changed their plans to get back for Thanksgiving. “

The things that were supposed to connect us more are actually dividing us, Jones contends. “We congratulate ourselves on having developed a communication system in the past 20 years which includes the internet, Facebook, cell phones, texting, Skyping, video conferencing. But instead of those allowing us to keep in contact with each other, I worry at times it’s preventing us from communicating with each other. 

“I remember when I was young, my father finished work at 5 pm and he’d come home and I’m not saying he sat and played with me every night or read me stories for five hours. But he was home and he was part of the family. I think it’s very common these days for people to leave work at six or seven o’clock or later. When they leave work, they still have their blackberries, they still have their iPhone, they still have email. They’re pretty much contactable 24 hours a day, people are distracted when they’re coming home. They’re not focused on family responsibilities and they’re certainly not aware of the boundary between work and home life. I worry that we’re all very contactable these days. No one really switches off. No one really stops working. And it’s damaging to home life.”

He thinks the film will encourage people to reconnect. “I think it’s a good film for the holidays because it really makes us think about our own families. Most of the people who are leaving the cinema are coming out and going straight on their cell phones and a lot of people are emailing me to say they were inspired to remember their mother, remember their sisters. People are thinking very carefully about how they prioritize their own families in a modern world that’s dominated by careers and by technology.”

by REBECCA CUSEY, who is a member of the Television Critics Association and does celebrity interviews, reviews, trend pieces, and event coverage. Her work has appeared in USA Today, Comcast.net, World Magazine, National Review Online, Relevant Magazine, Beliefnet.com, Crosswalk.com, numerous newspapers, and many other outlets.