Interview: Jeremiah Zagar (We the Animals)

The summer movie season is normally filled with loud blockbuster movies, but it’s one of the quiet ones that’s actually making some noise. We the Animals, the adaptation of the wonderful book, hit screens this weekend. For director Jeremiah Zagar, it was the culmination of a long, rewarding process. I recently spoke with the director to talk about making the film, the challenges of adaptation, and why the film is perfect viewing for today’s audience.

I read this book several years ago and I really enjoyed it, but when I heard they were making a movie out of it, I was like “How are they going to do that?”
You were like this is going to be crap. [laughs] I’m just teasing.

Yeah, so I was wondering what drew you to the material.
I knew right away how to make it into a movie. I mean I read it at McNally Jackson, I just picked it up off the we recommend pile and I really felt like I could see it and hear it and feel it playing out in my mind while I read it. I was in, from minute 1. I bought about 5 copies and I emailed Justin after giving them to my co-writer [Dan Kitrosser] and producers. We met and hit it off. He had gotten some offers from other people who wanted to put the book on their shelf just to own it or they wanted to make it into a crazy sitcom and I didn’t want to do any of those things. I wanted to make exactly the book into a movie, and was naive enough to think that was possible. Over the years, we went through many drafts and emotionally the movie is as close to the book as can be.

You shot this in a cinema verite style and you have worked on a lot of documentaries. How did that enable you to make this film?
I think the ethos that I approach documentaries with is the same that I approach narrative films with. How do you create environments where you can be intimate enough feel safe expressing things you wouldn’t otherwise express. You know what I mean? When you do it with actors on set, it’s different but that’s the ethos. The DP [Zach Mulligan] I used for my docs, he shot this movie so we have a short hand that’s very clear. The other thing is we cast actors who were emotionally honest and wanted to immerse themselves in moments. We cast Raul [Castillo] and Sheila [Vand] because they know how to not pretend…they are really feeling those things, immersed in those moments. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

I mean I am a Raul Castillo stan and him and Sheila do such an amazing job. But you also have really young actors [Evan Rosado, Isaiah Kristian, Josiah Gabriel], how do you get these well-worn performances from both at the same time?
The kids were the easiest, in terms of their acting cause it was like directing a documentary, we were both kind of going for it in that way. We had an acting coach on set who works with kids and she was working with them to cope with the difficult emotional scenes. With Raul and Sheila, they were teaching me. They’re incredibly seasoned, intelligent, soulful actors who understand their craft. I knew what I wanted and as a team they showed me how to get there.

In the edit, how did you approach tracking the changes between the characters, particularly as the kids aged?
The boys are a we in the beginning and Jonah, specifically, wants to be a we and the family to be a we. When Pops leaves, things start to erode that idea and questions start to emerge for him. If he’s leaving, are we a we? If she can’t get out of bed, are we a we? Maybe it’s just us as the brothers? But if the brothers start to attack me, are we a we? All these things question his understanding of pack and where he fits. The difficulty of the edit was how do you do this subtly and slowly, and make it build? How are you watching the brothers get more violent, the father become more vulnerable, the mother sliding into her anger and depression, etc.

You did a great job of tracking it.
I loved that stuff in the book. You can feel the brothers growing up, that’s the magic of the book that we wanted to bring to screen.

Is that magic what inspired the animated sequences?
In the book, those sequences are first person and you’re in his mind. You’re comfortable in that mind; we had to figure out a way into our character’s psyche to process the world. We didn’t find it till about halfway through the edit. It was our way in and when we discovered it and showed it to the team, everyone was like, “That’s it.”

One of the things I found interesting about the adaptation of this is the ending being different from I remember. [Spoiler: In the book, the main character is taken to a mental institution and he loses contact with his family.] As a filmmaker, how do you deal with the challenges of adapting a story when you know you’re not stopping where the book does?
It was a conversation. It started with all of us agreeing we didn’t want to change actors. We were like there’s no way you can form a relationship with this one actor and then in the last 10 minutes go to a different actor, which is something you can do in the book because you can imagine anyone. Then I went to see Moonlight and was like “Well, someone did it.” [laughs] But it was different for us. We had to have conversations with Justin about how this could be a queer moment for this young boy, a moment of sexual discovery, while still being applicable to a 10-year-old. How do parents react to what this young boy writes? What happens when a young man at that age has a mental break? All those things had to change because of the age. So it was a conversation about how to translate the emotional quality of the book to the screen.

The ending is devastating. Seeing those photos on the floor and their reactions were tough. I do think leaving a more ambiguous note at the end is the way the movie was leading. Nothing is cut and dry in your narrative and you present these characters are real people, and it worked for me.
I’m glad.

Why did you feel like this was a project for now?
You know there’s a lot of movies coming out that are political in big ways, telling big political stories, and addressing the moment, the very terrifying moment we’re living in large ways. But I think a lot of us don’t experience our world in those ways. We experience it in very intimate and personal ways. I think when the world seems to be crushing down on everybody, it’s a political emotional act to engage with stories that are so specific that they become universal. This movie is about people you don’t see every day, that aren’t your people but they are. That’s the innate political act of storytelling, the uniting of our shared humanity. And that’s what this film is about.