Just between friends: Jennifer Aniston, filmmaker Nicole Holofcener, and Catherine Keener talk about their new film

By CHRISTOPHER BORRELLI
BLADE STAFF WRITER

PARK CITY, Utah - So anyway, I'm sitting here asking Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, and the terrific writer-filmmaker Nicole Holofcener if they still clean their own toilets, you know, themselves, not the paid help, them, down on their knees, scrubbing. I'm asking not because I really want to know the details, but because they've made this great movie, Friends With Money, which opened Friday here. It features the startling sight of Aniston scrubbing toilets. It's like the two other films by Holofcener, Walking & Talking (1996) and Lovely & Amazing (2002). It's about small tensions.

Between money and friends.

Money and happiness.

Comfort and happiness.

Aniston plays Olivia, a maid, a stoner - as Frances McDormand's Jane puts it, "She's unmarried, she's a pothead, and she's a maid." Jane, a wealthy fashion designer, has anger issues. (She stopped washing her hair.) Olivia is the stray in a pack of lifelong pals; three who have money and are married (McDormand, Keener, Joan Cusack), one who has no money and is not.

Pretty simple, right?

This being January in Utah, during the Sundance Film Festival, which chose Friends With Money as its opening-night film, this being Jennifer Aniston sitting before me - coming slowly out of her post-Brangelina Blue Period, but hardly a paparazzi cold potato - nothing is simple.

We are sitting in a tent erected at the bottom of Main Street. Outside it, cameramen stalk and try to talk their way in. Snow falls hard. The room is lined with men with walkie talkies and publicists trying to look hurried. And then, of all things, a PBS crew barge in, the cameraman shouldering his equipment and already filming.

Not Geraldo - PBS.

Aniston looks like a startled deer. She freezes. She turns her head side to side. Assistants rush in from the corners of the room and steer the crew away; this being PBS, they put up no struggle.

Anyway, as I was asking: Toilet, who cleans it still, anyone here?

Holofcener answers first.

"Of course," she says.

"I do," Keener says.

"I have," Aniston replies.

It's not unlike dialogue in a Holofcener script - quick, understated. Irony of ironies, of course, Aniston plays the poorest character but in life, here at the hothouse of Sundance, she's richer than the cast and crew put together, many times over. An assistant asks if she wants a Starbucks and before you can say "Venti non-fat Caramel Macchiato, no whip," it has arrived.

I am in awe.

I am also interviewing Aniston, Keener, and Holofcener all at once because that was the ground rule: I requested a chat with Holofcener. They said, fine but you have to talk to Aniston, and if you talk to Aniston, you have to talk to Keener. Aniston and Keener, good friends, were inseparable at Sundance; Keener is protective. She throws elbows.

They sprawl across a couch beside a fireplace. Keener sits upright and alert. Holfcener slouches. They talk all at once.

Like a Robert Altman movie.

Aniston: "I'm freezing."

Holofcener: "Is that a fire?"

Keener: "It is."

Holofcener: "A real fire with heat? You're not cold, are you?"

Keener: "No. Yes."

Aniston: "I am."

Again, these are the micro-moments Holofcener's films are built on, small interactions that reveal character. She's compared at times to Jane Austen; the comparison is a little over-ripe. She's more of an Edith Wharton type; she doesn't indict bad behavior, she watches and listens. Her characters are so self-aware they're sure they know what they sound like (they have no idea).

Wharton or Judy Blume.

Holofcener said Blume was a revelation. If she could write a novel about a girl named Margaret's everyday problems, if it could carry Holofcener through a book, she could write about her own issues, observations, neurosis, and impossible obsessions.

Q: Nicole, your characters, in all your films, compare themselves to friends and family, but never more so than here, which makes sense because Los Angeles is a place where you're only so beautiful as the person next you, only so well-off as the guy next door with two tennis courts. Is this the idea Friends With Money started with, that idea of comparison?

Holofcener: Only just a little. I wouldn't say that's what the movie's about specifically. We all do compare ourselves, though. And we want those comparisons. A friend like Jen's Olivia can make people feel better about themselves: "Thank God, I'm married now," and all that.

Aniston: She is also a reminder of where the others came from.

Holofcener: Where we could go back to at any moment.

Keener: Where we should go back again, to when we didn't have money or relationships, to remember what that felt like.

Q: And yet we're talking about movie stars. Can you guys relate to someone who looks in a mirror and thinks, "Do I look OK?"

Aniston: Absolutely.

Q: And calling guys but hanging up, as your character does?

Aniston: Not that.

Holofcener: I completely relate to it. In fact, sitting between these two makes me self-conscious. I'm just regular-looking.

Aniston: Oh, stop.

Holofcener: But it's there.

Keener: That's disingenuous. You cast all of us because we are pretty regular-looking, too.

Holofcener: Better versions of me. That's OK. A notch up.

Q: The one thing the characters in this film don't have is fame. If body image and money are relative with everyone, fame complicates relationships even more - or perhaps it doesn't.

Aniston: It's a combination. I'm not sure. I don't do anything to smooth over friends who feel weird about my celebrity. It's not my job to take care of their discomfort.

Holofcener: That's maturity.

Keener: True. At a younger age you might feel you want to show them, you know? I do feel I am the same person now as I was then, but if you perceive me differently you might be projecting. Relationships are doomed if you don't know who you are.

Q: Has money affected relationships with your friends?

Aniston: My friends are still the same since I moved to Los Angeles. Some are no longer friends but not because of income. I didn't change. I don't think. People around me changed. They felt different around me. I noticed that. It's not that they were spooked. It was just uncomfortable for some of them.

Keener: I do think, as Cyndi Lauper said, money changes everything. Because it does.

Holofcener: But as a human being do you feel different?

Keener: No. I understand what Jen's saying. But in very obvious ways money is something, you know, poor people should have. The oppressed in our country are often the people who are poorest. It'd be great if we, as a culture, thought our freedom didn't come from that. But freedom comes from having money. They go hand in hand.

Holofcener: It's relative. At my age, people feel. ... For instance, I don't have a savings account.

Aniston: You don't?

Holofcener: I have one. But it's empty. There might be $3,000 in it. But I own a house and I have so much more than so many other people have.

Keener: Like that sweater. Nice sweater. Is it cashmere?

Holofcener: It's yours.

Keener: Oh.

Holofcener: My friends might have a savings account but they feel poor when their car breaks down. So see? It's all relative. I always thought that would be a fun, interesting topic to come at a story with. It's weird it's never addressed in American movies.

Q: Jennifer's character cleans houses. The rest are either very comfortable or have successful careers, or both. Did any of you ever work in the service sector?

Holofcener: I woked in retail, sold a lot of clothes, or tried to sell a lot of clothes. I used to get so tired. I would hide in the dressing room so I could sit down. I would pull up my feet onto a dressing room bench and hide out for a while.

Aniston: I was a waitress for many years and I loved it. I worked at an advertising agency. I was a bike messenger. I was a receptionist. I worked in a skin care center. I sold ice cream. I was out of work for a while at one point. I had no money, and when you don't have it, you're thrilled with getting 500 bucks a week for waitressing. But like she said, it's relative. Once you start to make money and see how much money you can have ...

Holofcener: What restaurant did you waitress in?

Aniston: Jackson Hole. It was in my old neighborhood on Columbus [in New York City].

Holofcener: I think you told me that. Bad service.

Aniston: That's because I left. I wasn't a very good waitress but I enjoyed it. I dropped things a lot. I got orders wrong and spilled stuff on people but they were OK with it. Only one time did I have someone take my head off and yell at me. I loved serving people. But then, I've got issues.

Keener: I worked in the service industry and I loved it. It's a great thing for people to do ...

(Pardon, but this calls for an aside: Do you notice the wording? "It's a great thing for people to do." That's a Holofcener micro-moment. Keener doesn't mean anything by it; as actors go, she's a thoughtful, curious, deeply gracious interview. But the idea that waiting tables is a character-builder, not a financial necessity, could either be read as naive or earnest or sincere. Or maybe the words of a financially comfortable person. Or it could mean none of that. I'm not saying waiting tables isn't a great job. But in a Holofcener film, a line like that lingers in your head, pregnant with poignancy, or just meaning nothing at all.)

Keener: ... I tended bar I waited tables. I was working full-time for free on an internship, so I had a waitressing job to pay bills.

Q: Catherine and Nicole, you've worked together on each one of Nicole's films. Have you developed shorthand by now?

Holofcener: Yes. That happens, but we didn't always have that. On the first movie we had to get to know each other and trust each other and then that happened and we had this shorthand. Now the extent of my direction of Catherine is "Better ... Worse ... "

Keener: "Don't yell."

Holofcener: Yeah. "Look sadder there. Don't cry here."

Keener: It's different than the high money situations you can get involved with, where you owe the filmmakers perfection at every moment, and it's not always perfection of the work, it's some other thing. With Nicole, you get to swing a cat a little bit.

Aniston: Swing a cat?

Holofcener: That's abusive.

Aniston: Nicole's words were specific, so it felt simple. She would come up and say like, "Not so screamy." I just love that.

Keener: I got "whiney." The thing is Nicole writes economically and directs the same way - understated. I don't think a lot of people in Los Angeles know what a good script should look like. I'm not sure they'd recognize smart writing. Nicole writes without all the flourishes, the monologues, the big scenes that nobody believes or can relate to. That's very rare to see in a script. But I think the audience, without thinking about it, probably suspects it because her movies feel different than most movies. She writes in this shorthand speak and it's not just between women. All of the guys in the film spoke it and understood it as well.

Aniston: Not all actors like to be directed that way, though.

Holofcener: They want you to tell them "This is what you're feeling, this is what you felt ... "

Keener: They need that.

Aniston: Well, I prefer it this way. I mean, I get it. I can fill in the rest. And it goes so fast with Nicole, too. You don't lull. You get to keep acting. You don't waste time. Movies, a lot of times, are a lot of lighting, adjusting things.

Holofcener: Did you like shooting all those scenes in my relative's homes? Having to contend with my family?

Aniston: My dressing room was like her mom's bathroom. But you could focus on the work, which doesn't always get to happen. But to be fair, I love both kinds of movies. It's apples, oranges. It's like which is better, Los Angeles or New York City?

Keener: New York.

Holofcener: New York.

Q: Jennifer, is it still hard for you to get parts that wouldn't remind people of Rachel on Friends? Is it hard to get that out of the mind of the public?

Aniston: That will take as long as it takes. Unfortunately, there's reruns everywhere. But I loved that show. That character gave me a career. Thankfully there are those Nicoles who don't care.

Holofcener: I don't care, but you were great on that show and I didn't disregard your work on that show to cast you. I took that into account. I considered that.

Aniston: Right, but that baggage didn't stop you.

Holofcener: True.

Keener: That happens to all of us to a degree. A well-written, developed part is more fun than a part with certain assumptions, with flashy moments that lead to big illogical scenes. It's embarrassing when you're basically background for a film, wobbling around while the movie goes on without you. Know what I mean? You're thinking to yourself, "Why am I doing this movie, again?"

Aniston: There's nothing worse. There is nothing worse.

Q: Is that the attraction to characters quite different than Rachel - that they're downtrodden, sad. That's true here, The Good Girl, Office Space ...

Aniston: I didn't think of Olivia as downtrodden when I was doing it. But I think that's how I do see myself. It's part of me. I'm from that place. I have moments of low self-esteem and insecurity. Just because you get put on top of a wedding cake or are given this image doesn't mean that's who you are or what you believe for yourself. Sometimes I feel like that person on top of the cake. You find peace with yourself. Shirley MacLaine? We should all get where she is now. She's so, "Oh, the hell with it."

Q: It's funny we're talking about this, because Nicole's movies have this undercurrent of not acceptance but anger -

Holofcener: It's not a theme for me. It's a part of life. It comes from the entitlement my characters sometimes feel. It's funny. Frances' character, the way she lashes out at stupidity, everyday rudeness - we all want that.

Keener: In Nicole's world, I don't think anger is a bad thing. I'm used to being told I play angry characters, but there's a stigma attached to that. Nicole feels anger is completely appropriate. That's made me more comfortable in my own life. But it doesn't go along with modes of behavior that say we should be -

Aniston: Ladylike.

Keener: Right, ladylike. But who in this world isn't raging right now - with good reason?

With that, another camera crew appears, the camera balanced, the microphone extended. Aniston shakes her head and looks down. Assistants swoop in, put the kibosh on the situation.

Everyone sips their Starbucks.

Keener smiles warily.

"As I was saying, anger can be, you know, kind of appropriate."