Michael Barbieri in Little Men. | Photo: Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.
The KCET Cinema Series continued its summer season on Tuesday, July 26, with a screening of Little Men at Santa Monicas Aero Theatre. Directed by Ira Sachs and written by Sachs and Mauricio Zacharias, Little Men is a story of friendship and gentrification. When his family moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn, teenage Jake forms a strong friendship with the son of a local business owner. But, can the boys friendship survive a changing neighborhood and their parents feud?
Following the film, Pete Hammond, host of the KCET Cinema Series, led a Q&A session with Sachs and the films young star Theo Taplitz. A portion of that conversation appears below.
The KCET Cinema Series is proudly sponsored by the James and Paula Coburn Foundation and E. Hofert Dailey Trust. It brings audiences advance screenings of anticipated movies and conversations with the talent behind the films. The summer season ends on August 2 and the fall KCET Cinema Series will kick off at the Aero on August 16.
Ira Sachs on the genesis of Little Men
Ira Sachs: Mauricio Zacharias, my co-writer, and I, we had made two films in the last five years. One was called Keep the Lights On, which was about two men in their 20s. Another, Love is Strange, was about two men in their 60s and 70s and it really just felt like we were called to make a third film in a kind of trilogy of stories about New York life and that we would focus on kids this time.
I think being a father -- I have two four-year-old twins -- certainly influenced making the film, but I also feel like being a son influenced making the film. Im 50 years old. My parents are in their 70s. The slow process of recognizing that our parents are people too is something that I still feel involved in.
I think, for me, Im very interested in generations and how they interact in terms of time passing and the next generation coming up. Specifically with this film, there were two things that I wanted to do. One, I wanted to talk about a certain innocence that I remember from being a child, specifically the ability for kids to cross difference. Kids do not seem to notice that someone is of a different race or of a different class or from a different country. They seem to be able to find the things that are similar between them in a way that adults are not as good at and I remember that so well from being involved specifically in the theater.
The other thing that I really wanted to do was make a film that was both for adults and kids... I believe that theres a common kind of hierarchy, [a perception] that animated movies and superhero movies are the only things that kids are able to watch and I dont think thats true. I think for me, and a lot of people, we grew up loving a kind of cinema like 400 Blows or Red Balloon or, for me, The World of Henry Orient -- if anyone remembers that movie.
Films about childhood that are with real kids is something that I wanted to make.
Theo Taplitz on the films he loves
Theo Taplitz: I have a wide range of movies that I like to watch. I really like Wes Andersons movies. I love 400 Blows as well. Truffauts stuff is...
Pete Hammond: Which is 1959.
TT: Yeah, and I love it.
PH: How old are you now?
TT: Im 13.
PH: Thats very encouraging.
IS: This kid has three short films that hes made since we finished shooting Little Men that have appeared in festivals. This is a young filmmaker, actually.
--
--
Theo Taplitz on making his own short films
TT: I think it came out of school. It came out of acting as well. I had this project in fourth grade that was about the gold rush and you had to, we had to write something or make a poster and there was one little category that says make a film and I had seen films. I liked them. So, I was like, Okay, why dont I do this, and I realized how hard it was to make a movie. It was kind of this realization point, but it was so fun doing it at the same time and it wasnt a walk in the park. It was a challenge, but it was the sort of challenge where, afterwards, you felt really, really good about it and Ioved that feeling writing this script and taking something from your imagination and letting it kind of blossom into this real life -- so youre taking something and then its actually out there, you actually get to see it. And it just blew my mind and I just really liked it ever since, so I continued to make films...
IS: Thats how I feel. Just what he said is what I still feel like.
On the cast not rehearsing
IS: Sydney Pollack was an executive producer of a film that I made called 40 Shades of Blue and he was a wonderful mentor in many ways.
One of the things that he kind of gave me permission to do was to not rehearse. I was from a theater background when I was younger and I was following that training in a certain way. Sydney was like, you dont have to rehearse with actors in film because there is something about catching them for the first time with a camera that you cant repeat.
So, what I do is I spend time with each actor individually and talk through the film, but Ive never heard the dialogue read. Theyve never heard another actor do it until we start shooting. The day of shooting, we shoot for four or five hours or a full day for each scene, so you begin to refine it and block it and to do a sort of kind of rehearsal, but its all in front of the camera and I think thats part of what allows for this simple relationship to the text that Theos talking about.
TT: Though we didnt have rehearsals, what Ira did is that he sent us all, all the cast members, on these little dates. We would get together. I got together with Greg Kinnear and then I got together with Michael Barbieri. Ill use Michael Barbieri and me, that example.
What we did was that we just sort of hung out. Ira told us specifically not to talk about the f
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Michael Barbieri in Little Men. | Photo: Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures. 
