CHANGING LANE
Actress learns to walk the line between big-budget films and independent movies
Paris Can Wait Opens throughout Canada in June
Diane Lane likes movie extremes.
Next fall, for instance, she reprises her role of Superman’s adoptive mother Martha Kent in the superhero extravaganza Justice League. This spring, Lane’s the headliner in the indie picture Paris Can Wait.
The indie film is Eleanor Coppola’s quasi-autobiographical story of her car trip from the Cannes Film Festival to Paris without her husband, Oscarwinning director Francis Ford Coppola.
It took Eleanor, the 81-yearold documentary filmmaker, six years to find funding for her directorial debut. But Lane was always her first choice to play the lead.
In the movie, Lane’s Anne is at Cannes with her producer husband Michael (Alec Baldwin). When Michael jets off from Cannes to a Budapest film set, Anne accepts a car ride from the south of France to Paris with her husband’s flirtatious business partner Jacques (Arnaud Viard).
During an interview in L.A., Lane, 52, discusses the comedydrama and her penchant for variety.
Q Can you compare working on Justice League and Paris Can Wait?
A It’s all crazy, sometimes for the smallest things on the biggest productions.
Q What do you mean?
A You can have a very expensive filming day with helicopters and holding traffic, and there’s a green screen. And then it can be all about a hairpin. My kingdom for a hairpin, because now your blowing hair doesn’t match the last shot. It’s amazing how much it’s about hair.
Q Did you enjoy the intimacy of Paris Can Wait?
A It’s a film that doesn’t have explosions and a wild car chase and lot of things that happen in movies today. So it was different and fresh to me. A film like this feels like a reprieve more than a dalliance.
Q The food looks delicious at the various dining stops. How was that to shoot?
A It was fun, and I know it all looks delicious. They should give a disclaimer about not coming to the movie with an empty stomach.
Q Did you enjoy your collaboration with Eleanor (Coppola)?
A She’s great. Eleanor is a collaborator first and foremost, and she’s a nurturer and empowered, and she has her own kind of confidence.
Q Did you feel the role was tailored for you?
A I was offered the part in 2013, but I didn’t have time. Fast forward two years later, and I did have the time. In the interim, the script was a little richer and there were more twists and turns.
Q Did you have concerns about working with a first-time director?
A Oh sure, I always have concerns. Many a slip between cup and lip. But Eleanor is a strong leader on set for the actors and the crew, and she was under tight (budget) circumstances in a foreign culture.
Q Were you comfortable playing a sort of Eleanor in the movie?
A I definitely made the character my own. It’s really a version of (Eleanor). In the beginning, Anne’s frustrated because she wants to get to where she’s going, but then she shifts her thinking.
Q Does that allow her to appreciate the French surroundings?
A Priorities come to the forefront when you are able to be present in what you are doing and where you are. It makes her more aware of the culture and what’s available.
Q Paris Can Wait opens at the Cannes Film Festival. Was it strange to be at Cannes filming a movie instead of promoting one?
A It was surreal. It was kind of haunting in good ways, medium ways and not so good ways. That film festival, and the characters there, is its own universe. When you stand behind the curtain of that sort of Oz, you can’t unsee it.
Q Justice League and Paris Can Wait are completely different. Is that what you like?
A I think I’m the perfect candidate because I’ve always ‘cohabitated’ in multiple universes.
Q How so?
A Even as a child actor, I would hang out with the adults all day, and then hang out with kids who were my friends. But I couldn’t really tell them about each other.
You can have a very expensive filming day with helicopters and holding traffic … and then it can be all about a hairpin.
Q So you enjoy performing in big and small movies?
A I enjoy both, but I would not have enjoyed one without the other.