When Jake Johnson and his longtime collaborator Joe Swanberg decided to embark on another film together, they knew one thing right away: they didn’t want to do it in Chicago. “We wanted it to feel different and like we had grown up,” says Johnson, who first starred on the set of Swanberg’s Windy City. Drinking buddies In 2013. The result is The sun never setsAnchorage, Alaska, drama about a woman caught between her divorced boyfriend with children (Johnson) and her ex (Corey Michael Smith) who has recently returned to town. They eventually cast Dakota Fanning in the lead role in what Johnson described as Swanberg’s “most mature film yet.” The two stars talk to THR About their new project, which will debut as a sales title (UTA) at SXSW. What was the first conversation like about this film?
Jake Johnson Joe called me and said he had an idea inspired by his real life that could work for a movie. We started fleshing it out, and then my agent at UTA suggested Dakota, and we freaked out.
Dakota Fanning When the three of us met, it really meshed in terms of personality and creativity. I’d never made a movie this way before, and as much as Joe likes to use improvisation, they promised me it would feel like a real movie. There’s never a point where you don’t know what you’re shooting. So my friends were like, “Aren’t you scared?” But I was at peace with it.
Jake, have you ever heard the story of Joe’s love triangle?
Johnson I had. We clearly imagined and enhanced everything. I try to play it lighter than Joe did in real life. For Joe, it was sad, but when I heard it, I found it funny. This was also a collaboration, and when Dakota came out, it evolved even more.
Fanning When we first met, I told them some crazy dating stories. I offered my perspective as a 31 year old woman navigating dating men and what I want and what I’m looking for.
There’s a scene where your character ditches the first date because she’s seeing Corey Michael Smith’s character. Has this happened to you before?
Fanning I never gave up on a date, but I lied and said I was going home and instead went and met up with friends.
How did filming in Alaska impact the production?
Fanning Alaska was a big draw for me because I always wanted to go but couldn’t find why. The sun doesn’t really set, which didn’t bother me, but it did bother Jake.
Johnson It’s 11 at night and you see the kids on the playground. There’s a scene where my character is on a date, and we go outside a bar and it’s like noon. But it was late at night, and there were drunks harassing us. You’ll drive home from the bar and see the atmosphere of bar time in broad daylight. We shouldn’t see all these things, they should be under the cover of darkness.
Fanning I’m not an outdoorsy person, so that was the difference I embraced. My character, Wendy, works on a construction site. In Los Angeles, it would be unusual to see a young blonde woman on a construction site; I can’t stress enough how unusual this is in Alaska.
Besides the new location, how did it feel different from Swanberg’s previous films?
Johnson We did more for this goal in terms of budget. What we’ve been excited about in the past is how we can make things on a limited budget and how we can counteract the overspending of Hollywood. We really thought of it as fun, punk rock. But now, I wanted to be a part of allowing Joe to be more than just an independent filmmaker who can do everything for free.
Fanning It was still punk rock.
Johnson But you get to a point where you say, “Well, we’re too old to live in a truck like this.”
What does the success of this film look like to you?
Johnson Well, Dakota said that if this doesn’t do better numbers than the Marvel movies, then it’s a failure. “Ma’am, you are a perfectionist and I have great respect for you,” I said. But, really, when Joe and I asked ourselves [whether] We’d have to write personal checks and finance a movie again, and the goal was to make a movie without real financiers or studios giving notes and messing with it. The real goal is to do it our way, and if we can find an audience that really connects with it and loves it, that’s a huge win.
This story appeared in the March 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe.
