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AE: Both your films have had average guy gays and minorities (Indian American, black, deaf) – they’re not this bland perfect Hollywood gay couple.
TB: Those characters are there because if this isn’t my life, it’s certainly part of my world, so it’s fairly organic. The thing that’s very interesting to me though is that I wrote this script four years ago and I’ve been struggling to make it since. In that specific scene (at the dinner table), gay adoption is the trigger, and four years ago in America that was such a non-issue - and what four years can do in the country’s culture that now it is a hot button issue is so discouraging it makes me all the more proud that Fox really not only stood by the movie, but embraced it.

AE: Tell me a bit about your background.
TB: My father’s an academic so I grew up traveling and moving around. I grew up at Northwestern, I grew up at Princeton, grew up at Syracuse, and then mostly at Amherst. I went to Parson’s School of Design for fashion and worked for Ralph Lauren for nearly a decade designing stores and environments. Film has always been my passion and Ralph is this huge film buff and our love for old movies was an incredible shorthand there – it’s like explaining an architectural detail, “Okay remember the columns in the library in “Philadelphia Story,” and he’d go, “Oh yeah, yeah.” So there was a lot of that.

But I took a couple vacations a year and I would always go to Sundance just because seeing five movies a day sounded really great to me. And then I wrote the script for Big Eden and was lucky enough to hobble together some financing and make that. But you know walking on the set on Big Eden was the first time I’d ever walked on a set period.

AE: Since you never studied filmmaking, what concerns did you have going to shoot Big Eden?
TB: I was confident with direction but worried about working with actors…so right before getting on the plane to Montana I went to Samuel French, bought this book by Judith Weston called “Directing Actors,” got on the plane, started reading, fell asleep, and the entire time I was shooting I kept thinking, “I gotta finish that book, I gotta finish that book.” And never finished that book. I got the book out again when I was getting ready to shoot exteriors for The Family Stone back East (laughs) and thought, “I gotta finish it this time.” Someday I will finish Miss Weston’s book.

AE: The Family Stone was pushed from a November release to be positioned as Fox’s Christmas release and it’s getting a huge wide release on 2500 screens. What was your reaction to the change in release date?
TB:  It’s unbelievable. It’s like “what?!” I’ve been working on this for so long and seeing so many different configurations that I think I was a little shell-shocked by the time we finally got there and even through the read through I thought, “Ah this won’t last.” Like someone will drop out, something will go wrong.

AE: Were you ever a Sex and the City fan?
TB: Yeah but it’s a little after the fact – I don’t have a television and so I didn’t see it the first four years, but then started seeing it at a friends house. Between Sarah Jessica and Cynthia Nixon, it’s just mind boggling. I think it was really smart writing and I think it was really good acting.

AE: What was it like working with Sarah Jessica?
TB: I think our heads work the same way – we’re very organized – and I can give her an adjustment and she with a minimum of input from me can zero in on exactly what I want.

AE: What’s Diane like to work with?
TB: I feel like she’s an emotional magician. She rides the waves is what she does in this fearless, jaw dropping way. Just whatever she feels, that’s where she goes in the moment, and it’s pretty spectacular to watch. The fun thing is you never get the same thing twice.

AE: It’s so difficult to straddle that comedy/pathos, drama/comedy line and few people are able to do it, but you’re very good at delivering a balance.
TB: It’s so funny, I feel like it ain’t that hard to do, but it’s harder to get those fucking movies made. Once you get there it’s pretty easy, it’s just getting people to understand that it’s okay to do both things at the same time…I think that people who see the funny side of things are able to I think because they have a greater sympathy for the human condition.

AE: What are you trying to get out in your work?
TB: Fucking nothing. I have no idea what I’m doing. I feel like all I want to do is tell a story – I don’t have any highbrow, “This is the message I would like to put across the footlights.” It’s not like that, it’s just you get possessed by a story and it won’t let you go and so you just have to do it.

AE: Both your films have romantic relationships with characters that are no longer fresh-faced. And in The Family Stone you even show some intimacy between Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson – something Hollywood is usually afraid or not eager to do.
TB: I’m a little bit of an ageist I think. The thing is I think if you’re under thirty, “What story do you have to tell?” It’s the richness of life experience that makes people interesting and for me those are the people that have the stories to tell are the people who’ve seen something of life and had to have made choices – good and bad – and lived with them a little bit.

It was a big, big, big deal on this picture just talking to the studio executives about casting Meredith and Everett. “Could it be Ashton Kutcher?” They wanted one of these twenty year olds in the part of Meredith and Everett and that was always a deal breaker for me. I wanted them absolutely in their mid 30’s at least because if they weren’t, there’s sort of no stake in them making the wrong decision because they’re young enough to be able to undue it and have a second shot, and I wanted the Meredith/Everett thing to be whatever decision they make (about marriage) is one they’re going to have to live with.

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