Jennifer Connelly and Producer Gary Lucchese Talk "American Pastoral"

Jennifer Connelly, Ewan McGregor and Hannah Nordberg in American Pastoral.

The KCET Cinema Series concluded its fall season at the historic Aero Theatre on October 10 with a screening of American Pastoral. The film stars Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connelly and Dakota Fanning as a family pulled apart during traumatic times and is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Philip Roth. American Pastoral also marks McGregors directorial debut.

Following the screening, KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond led a lively Q&A session with Connelly and producer Gary Lucchesi . Below is a portion of that interview, edited for space and clarity.

The KCET Cinema Series fall season was sponsored by the James and Paula Coburn Foundation. The winter season opens at ArcLight Cinemas, Sherman Oaks on October 18. Tickets are now sold out. There will not be single admission tickets available for the screenings.

Jennifer Connelly on how she became involved with American Pastoral.

I think it was about 10 years ago. Gary was making the movie and they came to me. I read the script. I was very moved by it. I was very moved by Dawn and interested in the complexity of the character and then it went away. That iteration never really happened. Then it was not that long before we wound up shooting and it came back and Ewan was attached to be in it, as an actor, at that point, not a director. Then we got to the point where it is now. I was very excited to do it because, as I said, I really loved the story and the character.

Jennifer Connelly on Dawn, her character in American Pastoral.

I felt like she was someone, both of them, as a couple, you felt like good things were going to come to them and good things would happen to them and then everything goes terribly wrong and theyre left wondering and I think were all left wondering why and how it became derailed.

I thought she was really moving. One thing that was really interesting in the novel, and in the script as well, was the conversation about judgment and the kind of assumptions we make about one another. And I think Dawn really struggles with that. It was one of the things that I found really moving about her - her struggles with her own identity. And we see them first. And the first image is of her as a contestant in a beauty pageant and I think that depiction of her kind of follows her around and people make decisions about her based on that and it sort of haunts her. When things start going wrong with Merry, people say its because, oh... shes fake, because shes too perfect. Theres this conception about her and she struggled, I think, to find some sense of value, her sense of meaning. And she finds that in her family and its so excruciating for her when her daughter then rejects her love. I think its really very heartbreaking, what winds up happening to her once she loses that meaning that she found in the relationship with her daughter.

Jennifer Connelly in American Pastoral.

Jennifer Connelly on Dawns facelift in the film.

That was Judy Chin, who is an amazing makeup artist. Ive worked with her many times. I worked with her first on Requiem for a Dream and weve done a number of movies together. Jasen Sica did my hair and I also worked with him on a few projects and hes also really wonderful and talented. They had various little tricks that they did that were kind of painful, but, I think, pretty effective - a little bit. I thought it really worked.

I thought it was an interesting choice and a very sad choice that she makes. I understood it. Shes completely dismantled by that loss, the loss of her daughter. And I think that after so many years of waiting for her... she literally cant bear it anymore and Seymour goes a different way. Swede is sort of looking to the past and to this fantasy, this dream of what they once were, that Dawn knows is never going to be again and she literally cant survive it anymore. She knows she cant, so she has to look to the future. And I think she sort of tears down the narrative of their life together and she has to rebuilding something. She has to build a new way forward and she wants everything to be modern. She just wants a new exposure, a new exposure of their house. She remodels the house and wants windows that let the light in from a different direction and he needs a new point of view. She needs to look to the future.

Gary Lucchesi on adapting American Pastoral for film.

I think there were three things and John Romano, who was the writer, and I talked about it a lot when we first did the adaptation. Theres the story of the pastoral 1950s of the United States coming into conflict with the 1960s. There was certainly the father/daughter story, which was profound. And then, as John says, there was the scenes of the marriage story that was part of it, which is really Dawn and Swede. So, you dont oftentimes get to deal with three such interesting subjects, but the book gave us that opportunity.

Pete Hammond, Jennifer Connelly and Gary Lucchesi talk American Pastoral at the KCET Cinema Series. | Photo: Liz Ohanesian

Gary Lucchesi on Ewan McGregors directorial debut.

We had other directors and then we had a director who was going to do the movie with Ewan and Jennifer, but then he fell out. Ewan approached us and said that he was interested. Tom Rosenberg and I, we talked about it, but it really wasnt that long of a conversation. We knew that we had a performance movie deep down inside. We knew that Ewan could perform Swede. We also had spent time with Ewan and knew that he was a very serious gentleman who really wanted to direct. We knew that Jennifer, if Ewan could convince her to stay on, that she was the perfect Dawn and we knew that Dakota was fantastic as Merry and everybody loved the script. It was then a question of putting the right technicians around Ewan. To his credit, he was the person who ha

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