The Nanny Diaries (2007)
Interview with Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
With big names such as Scarlett Johansson, Alicia Keys, Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti having major parts, it comes a bit of surprise that The Nanny Diaries takes more than twelve months to make it to the Swiss Cinemas. OutNow.CH talked to the two directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini last September already during the European Premiere of the Film at the Venice Film Festival 2007.
» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache
OutNow.CH (ON): How realistic is the portrayal of the New Yorker Upper East Side in your film The Nanny Diaries?
Robert Pulcini (RP): We didn’t obviously go for realism in this movie. It’s kind of a fairytale. But it’s interesting how extreme and how insular the community can be there.
ON: Is it your circle?
Shari Springer Berman (SSB): In know people who are in this world, but I wouldn’t say they’re my closest friends. We live on the West Side. It’s separated from East Side by the Central Park. So we could just walk over and observe the people around there. I also have friends who grew up in this world, for example a friend of mine, whose father is extremely wealthy and has a huge apartment on Park Avenue.
ON: Are there really nanny training classes or was this a fantasy of yours?
"Wanna beer?"
RP: Of course we made that up a little bit, but I think it’s possible…
SSB: There is indeed a real group, and they do have all kinds of classes where they talk about dealing with nannies, how they hire nannies and so on. It’s a very exclusive circle, a lot of it is focussed on getting your child to the right school because in New York City it’s insane. The private schools are very expensive and incredibly competitive. People start worrying about getting their children into school when they’re born. In fact the application process starts in the hospital after the child is born.
ON: You have a son and a nanny too. What did she say when she saw the movie?
SSB: She hasn’t seen it yet. She’s babysitting the kid, otherwise we couldn’t do our work.
RP: She asked me for a DVD, but I want her to see the movie on a big screen.
ON: How old is your son?
SSB: 11 months.
Proud parents
ON: That sounds like you must have been working while being pregnant.
SSB: Well he’s adopted from Guatemala, so we travelled to Guatemala during the process of filming, to see him, so it has been pretty stressful.
ON: Do you think that nannies need a lobby?
RP: That’s an interesting question because there’s so much suspicion on the nannies. There’s actually a thing in New York now called a licence plate for your nanny. If another mother sees a nanny that is not really caring for the child, she can go in the internet, can write that licence number down and report the nanny. So it’s a very strange dynamic. If you don’t trust the person that is caring for your child, this person shouldn’t be working for you.
SSB: There is some kind of a nanny organisation, but the problem is that – in New York at least and I imagine in most other cities in the United States too – most nannies are illegal immigrants. As a result they don’t have any protections. So they’re just afraid of getting kicked out of the country, because America has strict immigration policies. So I think it would be hard for them to be organized.
ON: How did Laura Linney play her part? It’s a very unsympathetic role. How did she deal with that?
RP: As an actress she likes playing someone that is such a mess and makes all the wrong choices. But it was important to her to allow some sympathy for this person, even if she is such a disaster. You see that she had a life at some point. You see that she went to a great university. That she worked in a very prestigious art gallery, but then here identity collapsed when she gave herself over for her husband. So I think that Laura found the humanity in that kind of decision.
ON: Scarlett Johansson hasn’t done a lot of comedies yet. What convinced you about her as a comedic talent?
"Coffee now!"
SSB: We had met with Scarlett before we made this movie for another project that didn’t work out. She is unbelievably funny. She has the best sense of humour. She’s naturally funny. She’s not the Scarlett you imagine when you see her walking on the red carpet. But you know who’s also incredibly funny? It’s Alicia Keys. She is really good at improvisation. She has a great natural sense of humour.
ON: Why have you made such a secret about Paul Giamatti’s appearance in the film?
RP: It’s kind of a metaphor for the absent father, you never really see him and even though the nanny is struggling to see him, she can’t see his face. And also there’s an element of surprise about the way Paul looks in the movie. When you hear about this man, you wonder what he’s like and how he looks. Those guys, those "masters of universe" often are very stubby.
SSB: …you expect them to be amazing looking, but they’re not at all.
ON: The film looks quite expensive. You’ve got some CGI going on. That’s quite unusual in a romantic comedy…
RP: Well, it’s actually not a very expensive movie, it’s in the $20 Million range, which for Hollywood is very unexpensive. The Devil wears Prada was probably twice as much as this movie. For us it’s always important to have some cinematic element, we wanted to have this dream-like vision of Manhattan you used to see in old movies like Breakfast at Tiffany’s. We also watched Mary Poppins a lot. We wanted to bring elements of the colours of Mary Poppins in modern day Manhattan.
SSB: We’re actually pride of the fact that we were able to pull of a lot of these effects and still keep the prize down.
ON: Do the comparisons to The Devil wears Prada annoy you?
The couple at Sundance Festival
RP: No, it’s not really annoying. It’s a genre movie of a kind of new genre that’s called "chick lit". There’s another movie of this kind, In her Shoes with Cameron Diaz. There are certain things these films have in common. There’s always things about shoes, and there’s always things about a girl in the city, trying to find her identity, especially through work. Or the subject of women and power, how power affects them, or women that have made the wrong choices in life and how that affects them. So it doesn’t bother us being compared to other movies.
ON: What did the authors of the novel say about the movie?
SSB: They’re very happy with the movie, they wrote us a note. They’re actually writing screenplays themselves, so they are aware of the fact that you have to change things when you go from a book to a film, so they were completely cool about anything we changed. They really loved the movie.
