We were on the red carpet for the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of “Safe Spaces.”
The Knockturnal: Tell us about the film.
Fran Drescher: So it’s about a Jewish family, and my mother is terminally ill in the hospital. And even though we’re a fragmented family, divorced parents, and all the kids are doing their own thing and maybe a little bit at odds with each other, this problem, the depths of despair, this sad time, actually draws them close together as a family. And the love that they all share even with me and my ex-husband, ultimately prevails.
The Knockturnal: Tell us about your charity.
Fran Drescher: Yes, Cancer Schmancer. I suggest everybody go to it and click on “Be the change.” That’s our new video that’s out with Jamie Foxx, Jeff Bridges, and myself. Jamie’s an angel. He’s the star of it. And it’s educating, motivating, and activating, and it’s free. And it’s fun, and funny, and informative. So I suggest everybody go and learn how they can reduce their risk of disease.
The Knockturnal: What else are you working on?
Fran Drescher: I just shot a pilot for NBC, and we’re waiting to find out. I have a good feeling about it. I’m also going to be doing a night-time talk show for Bravo. And I’m doing standup now, so can go to Showtime On Demand and catch my standup act called Funny Women of a Certain Age.
The Knockturnal: Tell us about the film.
Justin Long: Yes, it’s a movie about a family, the struggles that this family is going through. The matriarch of this family is dying, and it deals with how a tragic event like that brings people who have a lot of conflict together, how when something that major happens, all the other struggles that you’re dealing with pale in comparison a little bit. And so, that’s the background for the whole movie, and it’s something I’m sure everyone, unfortunately, can relate to. I hate to say this, we’re all going to die. You can use that as a nice sound bite. We’re all going to die.
The Knockturnal: How was collaborating with Daniel?
Justin Long: I felt a very immediate connection with him. We have similar neuroses. For better or worse, we’re quite similar. So I initially responded to the script, and I think it’s because I felt very close to the writer. I think he’s a little bit more neurotic than me. We have a similar sense of humor and stuff.
The Knockturnal: How was filming in New York?
Justin Long: Oh, I live here, I love it here.
The Knockturnal: What was a highlight scene?
Justin Long: I think the family scene with Fran and Richard. That stuff, you never know if it’s going to work until you get there. And they’re such natural grounded actors, that I just have to be there. And it felt very safe, and it was a safe space.
The Knockturnal: What’s next for you?
Justin Long: Next is, I think, I’m going to watch the movie and hopefully not feel a really extraordinary sense of insecurity, so that’s my next hurdle. I’m doing a show on Netflix called Giri/Haji. It’s a BBC Netflix co-production that comes out in the fall. And I’m doing a podcast that launches on May 13th.
The Knockturnal: How was working with Daniel?
Lynn Cohen: It’s a word I don’t use actually, exciting. It was an honor. He understood women. He was very vulnerable. He was so honest and so open.
The Knockturnal: How was working with Justin?
Lynn Cohen: It was wonderful. He’s so generous. You want to work with a generous actor because they’re there … You want to work with somebody who’s there even when they’re not on camera.
The Knockturnal: And so tell me about the inspiration for the script.
Daniel Schechter: Oh, it was based on a lot of true things from my life and a lot of fiction that I made up to fill in the gaps. It’s about roughly my family, with some inventions in there, and this week where it was kind of a sad week because my grandma passed away, but it was also this beautiful death where we all surrounded her and laughed a lot and she went very peacefully, and I don’t know, made me come to peace with the idea of passing and made me love my family and feel really grateful for them. And then the other half of the movie is sort of about Justin Long playing a adjunct film professor who was embroiled in a controversy and he just doesn’t really want to see that he was complicit in any way. He’s very defensive about it.
The Knockturnal: And you’re a professor as well. And you cast your student. How cool is that?
Daniel Schechter: It’s really cool. The whole movie is filled with my family, my friends, a student of mine, and he worked on the movie on every level. He helped me write the movie. He helped me with acting in it and editing. So and yeah, I adore the guy and it does feel special that it was a student of mine and it was about the experience of dealing with students, because I think I may have had missteps, but also I had such a wonderful time and learned so much from my students.
The Knockturnal: How long was the screenplay writing process?
Daniel Schechter: I write in such a sloppy way, probably over a year and a half or two years or something like that.
The Knockturnal: Was New York always going to be the center of it, one of the characters?
Daniel Schechter: Yeah. Yeah. I live here. I was too lazy to invent an idea of what I would be like in San Diego. We shot most of the movie within a mile distance of here. I live 15 blocks this way. So yeah, it was always a New York movie and I like New York movies. They kind of have a charm all their own.
The Knockturnal: You also have New York icon, Fran Drescher in the film. How was working with her?
Daniel Schechter: It was my mother’s suggestion for her to play a part roughly based on my mom, which was really cool and we kind of just called up her people and we got a better, quicker response than we thought we were going to. And I think two days later we were on the phone and then a day later she was just in, I think she was just hungry to do something different. I was excited about seeing her do something different in my movie, and she’s really funny and brings her specific charm, but it’s also something kind of new and cool.
The Knockturnal: And how was casting Justin and collaborating with him?
Daniel Schechter: Great. He’s just the funniest guy ever and yet as much as I’ve seen him in and he has all these gears I didn’t get to see that in these previous movies. I mean you never want to offer actors stuff they’ve done a bunch of times in other movies. You’re not going to get any director points for that. And they’re not going to be as excited to do it for no money because it’s an independent film. So I think we just really like pushing each other to make a funnier and more grounded movie.
The Knockturnal: How was casting the grandmother character?
Daniel Schechter: So literally every casting director in New York said, “Oh, you’ve got to cast Lynn Cohen.” Everyone. We talked to five of them. And it made me not want to cast her because you don’t want to cast a cliche person for it or whatever. And then I met with her and I’m like, “Dear God, this is the luckiest thing.” She kind of captures a little something similar to what my grandma had, but she’s all her own. And I was like, okay, well done. Now I have the heart of this movie in my pocket.
The Knockturnal: Who are some important mentors in your career or teachers?
Daniel Schechter: I think the reason I teach weirdly is because I didn’t have a lot of mentors or teachers that connected with me and I’ve always been pissed off about it. And so I always, like somebody who didn’t have a good parent, they want to be a great parent. I never had someone who made me feel like there was something special in me, from a teacher or mentor’s point of view. And also it means you have to learn from a lot of your own mistakes. And that sucks because you’re just going to make a bunch of mistakes over and over again. So yeah, I think that was it.
Actor Nick Inglese talks working with @justinlong on “Safe Spaces” at @Tribeca pic.twitter.com/kt6p7FcJ48
— The Knockturnal (@_TheKnockturnal) April 29, 2019
Producer Ryan Willard talks “Safe Spaces” @Tribeca pic.twitter.com/YKTvkZNftT
— The Knockturnal (@_TheKnockturnal) May 3, 2019
Actor Bern Cohen talks “Safe Spaces” @Tribeca pic.twitter.com/rlx9WbUcvU
— The Knockturnal (@_TheKnockturnal) May 3, 2019
