Better Living Through Chemistry is the writing and directing debut of David Posamentier and Geoff Moore but it is not their first film. They worked at Jersey Films and Mad Chance Productions respectively and have cowritten many unproduced screenplays at the studio level. Better Living is the film they decided to make together and it stars Sam Rockwell as a pharmacist in a mundane marriage with a distant, Type A wife (Michelle Monaghan). When a seductress (Olivia Wilde) tempts him to use his pharmaceuticals for nefarious purposes, it actually brings him out of his shell. We discussed a few of the movie’s memorable moments, including one where Rockwell has a sex talk with his son in which he confesses to fornicating with his childhood couch, along with some more self-explanatory topics.
CraveOnline: On the production side, you saw movies like Garden State, I Love You Phillip Morris and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind start from their independent inception and go all the way to Sundance and distribution. What were you able to take from that and apply to Better Living Through Chemistry?
David Posamentier: I think in our experience, we were fortunate enough to work for some really talented people over the last 10 years. I guess the takeaway was that there’s no real rulebook, that each story, each script, each movie really happens in its own way and to sort of embrace that. If you really believe in the story that you’re telling and surround yourself with a great cast and great crew that also believes in what you’re trying to do, the end product should stand on its own. I think all the movies you stated really did but they’re all really different and they all got made in different ways. So I think that’s the takeaway we took from those experiences.
Goeff Moore: And I think also there was an element of, at least for me, when I was working in development, I wasn’t necessarily thinking, “Oh, this is all building towards being a writer.” So you sort of absorb some things by osmosis that you don’t realize at the time were going to ultimately become really useful. Whether it was watching when George Clooney was putting together Confessions and he fought tooth and nail for, as it turns out, Sam Rockwell who played our lead role. Fighting for the cast that you want, or watching John [Requa] and Glenn [Ficarra] adapt I Love You Phillip Morris and see how do you get humor and serious stuff to mix? That sticks in your head. All of a sudden, you’re on the first day of prep for your own movie and you’re starting to pull these little keys out that you never knew were there. So it was as super beneficial process even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
The release of Better Living Through Chemistry is going to be limited at first and VOD. Were you able to use any of your connections to push for a bigger release for it?
DP: We were fortunate enough to get a really warm response to a buyers screening we did for the film and had some options laid out in front of us, but Goldwyn and Universal stepped up with the best possible platform for what we wanted. I think we’re going to start on about 35 screens. Given the scope of the movie and comparing it to some of the movies they release, we feel great about it. A lot of these movies hit New York and L.A. and that’s it. We’re fortunate to have people all over the country in major markets getting the movie. That was always the most important thing, that it’s represented across the country and people have an opportunity to go see it. Unfortunately we didn’t have too many relationships in the distribution realm to leverage into a better deal, but we feel pretty good with the way it all shook out.
Researching the pharmaceutical industry, were there any fun tidbits you learned, any pieces of information that fueled your creativity? Like Wolf of Wall Street educated me that Ludes disappeared after the ‘80s.
DP: I think we learned quite a bit and I think it really helped inform the character, because we always had this notion of this character as being very compelling. I think once we started to do our research and realize exactly how much access the pharmacist has to exactly what, it really got out imaginations spinning out of control. As they talk about in the movie, it’s a candy shop of narcotics back there.
Obviously you need a strong moral compass and there’s a sense of duty that comes with the job. 99% of the pharmacists don’t abuse that power but we just felt it to be really inspiring in terms of dreaming up different concoctions and combinations. We talked to a family friend who is a pharmacist to get a better idea of what the day to day is and how an investigation would work by the DEA. The mechanics of the day to day of a pharmacist, but as far as the actual chemistry goes, that was just our imagination running wild.
Is it sort of a modern Double Indemnity to suggest a couple of adulterers would ponder the pharmaceutical route for killing off a spouse?
GM: There are certainly lots of movies I think, again, it’s the same sort of thing. When you’re big cinephiles like each of us is, they just sort of live in your head and come out in different ways. We certainly didn’t set out to ape any particular structure or concoct the new anything. We started with the idea of Doug Varney’s character of this guy in a particular situation in a small town. Then we just sort of built it out from there. I think the twists and turns that the story takes, there obviously are comparisons to be made but it was not a conscious attempt to bring out any particular film reference.
Did Love and Other Drugs come out or enter development while you were working on Better Living Through Chemistry, or had that already come and gone?
DP: I think at one point it came out while we were working on it and I like to go see almost every movie that comes out. You see the title and part of your stomach drops like oh no, I hope this doesn’t wade into similar territory, but the moment the lights came up at the end of that movie, I felt totally fine. We were exploring completely different arenas.
Yeah, they’re a romantic comedy and they’re about antidepressants.
GM: And a book adaptation.
Does Sam Rockwell insist on dancing?
DP: [Laughs]
GM: [Laughs] It’s funny. Obviously he did quite a bit of dancing in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind which was the last time I had ever been around him. I think there’s a 10 minute sequence on YouTube that’s his dancing, his screen test for that movie. It certainly doesn’t come from him. We suggested it as part of that montage because it just worked so well. It was sort of with a smirk from him where it’s just like he knows he’s a badass dancer. He knows it’s a great skill of his, but there’s a little bit of “God, I hope this is the last time I have to dance in a movie.” Then he just crushes it so you know the next director that works with him is going to say the same thing. “Dude, you’ve got to dance.”
DP: We had a moment after the fact on set. Him and Norbert Leo Butz who worked together in a few scenes, some of our favorite scenes, Norbert is also a gifted dancer. We’re looking at them and we’re like, the fact that nobody has put Sam in a Chicago style dancing Moulin Rouge remake of something is insane, because he’s that good. He’s like a Fred Astaire level dancer. Hopefully we put the world on notice that it’s time to put Sam Rockwell in some sort of a dancing big musical production.
It’s true, every director takes advantage of it, from Charlie’s Angels to The Way, Way Back.
GM: When we do the stage musical of Better Living Through Chemistry, he’ll truly have found his perfect role.
DP: We’ll get U2 to do the soundtrack.
So where did the couch f***er story come from?
GM: [Laughs] That is a story that I had heard from a friend who had a college roommate that sort of got busted in a similar situation. I told David about it way back when we first started writing and it’s just something we always found so absurd and we were always looking for a way to bring it in, and that was the perfect place.
DP: As we’ve been told over the years, a couch can be a gentle, compassionate lover.
I wonder if we have the same friend, because how common could it be that I’ve heard a couch f***ing story too?
DP: I think throughout adolescence you hear couch f***ing, you hear fruit f***ing, American Pie. I think there’s just a phase that young men go through between the ages of 13 to 18 where they’re just going to stick their dick in about anything that comes along.
Fruit f***ing I’ve only heard about in the movies. I’ve never heard of anyone really doing that.
GM: [Laughs]
DP: Yeah, I have not been fortunate enough to meet anyone that’s made love to a piece of fruit.
How many unproduced screenplays have there been in the past?
GM: Um, more than three? Dave and I have been pretty fortunate to have remained pretty steadily employed in the 10 years that we’ve worked together. We do a lot of work in the studio system doing rewrites or selling an original and then trying to get it made, which has been great. Also sort of led to us directing Better Living because it was let’s figure out a way to keep control and live or die on our own as it were. Also, we are always generating ideas and working on scripts and writing things. There are definitely a few. We have a few orphans on the shelf.
DP: I was just trying to think to myself, just off the top of my head I think there’s five original screenplays that aren’t owned by somebody else, that we own that haven’t been made. Collectively we’ve probably written close to 40 or 50 screenplays in some shape or form, be it pilots that didn’t get picked up or a rewrite at a studio, whatever it is. Despite the fact they don’t get made, there’s no regrets. I think you just keep getting better and better. It’s like one of these muscles that you exercise, it keeps getting stronger and stronger. We notice it. It’s like you go back and read a screenplay you wrote five years ago and you just see how you’ve improved as a writer. Just because the screenplays don’t get made don’t mean it’s a waste of time.
Not at all. I was curious if you maybe worked on any franchises that didn’t end up going in the studio system?
DP: I’d say a project that we worked on that wasn’t necessarily a franchise but was certainly a big property was that Neil Strauss book The Game. It had, I’d say, somewhere between 8 and 12 writers on it. It had so many different incarnations trying to get that movie off the ground, and we are still very friendly with the producers of that project. It’s a perfect example of just how difficult the business is, how you can have such a hot property, such a universally celebrated book that was this bible for so long, and it just couldn’t find its way. I think that was probably one of the bigger things that we came onto that just the movie gods were not going to let that one happen.
I happened to read that book as I’m sure many guys have. Were you using the story of Neil becoming Style or were there other approaches?
DP: We were brought in on a weekly just to do some character work on it, but the screenplays they were attempting to make were very close adaptations to what the story in the book was where Neil starts out as this forlorn, lost guy, this nerdy guy who finds himself and finds his confidence, and then creates a monster and doesn’t realize that he has love right in front of him the whole time. Every incarnation at least that we saw was trying to adhere to that, but it was years and years ago we worked on it. We were amazed that despite the stature of the property, it never found its way.
I was also curious because I did see the movie How High, David was was the development of that movie with Method Man and Redman?
DP: That was an interesting one. That was one of those experiences where someone pitches one line and you go, “Wow, that’s a movie.” I think the line when we were at Jersey Films was: What if Method Man and Redman got into Harvard? Everyone was like, “Well, there’s a movie.” Lo and behold they got a script together and those guys got their schedules right. The development was pretty straightforward with that one. It was one of those instances where you just had a very simple, cool idea that was highly marketable and the studio got behind it in a really supportive way, and away they went.
What’s the pilot you’re doing now?
DP: It’s based on an article about this millennial generation and how ski resorts used to employ people just for the season. It was sort of a transient lifestyle and people would just do it for fun, but because the economy is so terrible, a lot of these ski resorts are employing people that have Masters degrees in finance and are highly educated, but this is the only career opportunity the can get. It’s sort of a workplace comedy set at a small ski resort in Colorado that’s recently been absorbed by a big resort enterprise and how this generation of people that has been working at the resort is coping with the management change.
So it’ll have a consistent cast. It won’t rotate like the ski season?
GM: Right, it’s called “Moguls,” it’s at USA and it’s a workplace comedy like “Parks & Rec” or “The Office” with a core group of characters and a motley crew of assorted characters, and then week to week who comes through the resort.
Half hour or hour long?
GM: Half hour.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
