In bringing to the screen the real-life story of his father -- who came out of the closet after becoming a widower at at age 75 -- "Beginners" director Mike Mills gambled on a series of improvisational "rehearsals" with star Christopher Plummer.
They included riding roller-coasters at Magic Mountain and shopping for skinny jeans at Barney's, with Mills' surrogate, Plummer's co-star Ewan McGregor.
“I sent them off to Barney’s and said, ‘Christopher, you’re gay now; you want to be attractive to younger men -- go buy yourself a scarf’,” Mills said at a post-showing Q&A Monday night at the Landmark, part of TheWrap's Awards Screening Series.
“And I said, ‘Ewan, take care of Christopher, he’s 79.’"
Very much like his father, Mills said to moderator Steve Pond, TheWrap's awards guru, Plummer "needed no taking care of. He got there, and he was obsessed with skinny jeans. He went to the jeans bar for like two hours! Ewan ended up buying him $1,000 worth of jeans, even though I only gave him $200 to buy a scarf."
Mills said the shopping gave them an experience "very much like what it was like with me and my dad” – which is just what he'd hoped for, since the film is very close to his own true-life story. “
Plummer, nominated for an Oscar last year for his role in "The Last Station" and winner this year of the L.A. Film Critics' Best Supporting Actor award for his role in "Beginners," plays a widower who comes out of the closet as gay in his mid-70s, to the amazement and amusement of his son, portrayed by Ewan McGregor.
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Mills said he wanted to envelop Plummer in deeper aspects of his role than just the joys of late-life fashion discoveries, of course.
“The day after the Barney’s trip, Christopher brought all his new gay friends over, and they told their actual life stories of coming out, and that really leveled Ethan and Christopher,” Mills said. “I think it really heightened the stakes for them of what we were talking about."
By the end, he said, "Christopher was very appreciative, I think, and liked having this weird space to play in. I think it kind of opened him up in different ways and made him more willing to sort of meander. He’s so good, you want that guy to meander.”
Melanie Laurent plays McGregor’s girlfriend, in a storyline hinging around whether the two young lovers will take a cue from the gay father’s fresh start and try out something new themselves – which, in both their cases, is overcoming a history of commitment-phobia.
She, too, had to join in on the unscripted bonding. Though rather than a shopping spree to flesh out that relationship, McGregor, Laurent and the director “went to Magic Mountain and went on roller-coasters all day long,” Mills said.
