ReelzChannel.com talks to the director of Dan in Real Life.

Peter Hedges is a people person.

Once a writer who spent a large portion of his time isolated in room with only his words, the writer of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (novel and screenplay) and the script for About a Boy has now decided that he simply likes people too much not to be involved with the actual shooting of the movie.

“When you write a nice line or you nail a scene, it’s just a tremendous feeling… That’s all still good. It’s harder and harder to just sit alone. I like being with people.”

With no less than 19 characters to keep up with in his latest film, Dan in Real Life, Hedges is getting his wish. The project is Hedges’ sophomore directorial effort after the acclaimed 2003 work, Pieces of April. Contrary to that film, which featured a brisk production schedule, a relatively small cast and shooting on HD cams, Dan in Real Life is a full-blown Disney production featuring one of comedies biggest talents on the rise, Steve Carell.

ReelzChannel.com sat down with Hedges recently at the Ritz in Marina Del Ray, California to discuss his sophomore directing effort, Dan in Real Life.

ReelzChannel: When I interviewed you in 2003 about your career as a writer, you mentioned your professor Sam Meisner telling you that “Anything in life worth doing takes 20 years.” When we spoke in 2003, you mentioned you had only recently passed that elusive 20 year mark. Where do you see yourself now in regards to this advice and is it something you still think of?

Peter Hedges: I think about it all the time. You get that question, what advice do you give to someone? I only give his advice. I just basically pass it on because it was such a touchstone for me because I really believed him and really believed he was right. I really believed those first twenty years of my career, I was learning. It was learning time. And I actually feel, maybe because I just believed him, but I do feel more accomplished now, more capable of doing what I set out to do.

RC: Do you still get the same enjoyment out of writing as you did at the start and whether you enjoy directing as much as writing?

PH: They are very different… I like getting to make things with other people. But that said, I’m so looking forward to this year. This is a year of writing. It’s already begun for me, except for the press I’m doing for this film. I’m back in my office and I’m just writing. I like going through that stage. To me, it’s going to be finding the balance… Having periods of writing and periods of directing and going back and forth. I don’t think I could do just one or the other.

My biggest nervousness is the two films I’ve made have been very special experiences. I don’t know how I’m going to handle it if one comes along and I don’t like the actors or they don’t like me or the script’s not ready… These experiences happen. There are some wonderful directors, heroes of mine, who are having really tough times on their films… If you make enough, you’re going to have a tough experience, but my experiences have been so positive that I’m more concerned about having such a terrific time.

RC: Peter Gardner (who wrote the initial draft of Dan in Real Life) said he likes being in control of the world too much to ever go from writing to producing again.

PH: If you really want control of the world, write a novel. The hard part there is, is anyone going to read it? But that makes sense. I went from acting to writing because I felt that I was always hoping to get a part, but [as a writer] I could be the arbiter of when I worked, when I wrote. I felt more in control. But I don’t think any of us are in much control at all. You at least feel it for a while.

RC: Going from the indie experience of Pieces of April to the studio driven Dan in Real Life seem as though they would be night and day experiences.

PH: In some respects, but in other respects, no. When they hired me [for Dan in Real Life] they wanted me to make my kind of movie. They were very clear about it and they never waive red. So what does that mean for me? While the idea was originally Pierce’s, I did enough writing on the script that it felt as if it were mine as well. It didn’t feel as if I were adapting some pre-existing work, but I’m fully cognizant and appreciative of the fact that he came up with this world. I just got to come and redecorate and add some rooms.

For me, it wasn’t a night and day experience at all. What made me realize I wanted to do this movie was, I had a great time making Pieces of April, but the happiest time for me were those days when I had the five family – Patty (Patricia Clarkson), Oliver (Oliver Platt), the two kids and the grandma. The reason was because for five or six days, I had the same actors… I thought, “Oh my gosh, if I do Dan in Real Life, I get to have nineteen people in a house…” So I thought, “I can do the same thing. I get to cast nineteen people and they’re there. And I’m gonna love them, each of them.”

RC: That’s not daunting?

PH: Oh, it was daunting, but when you get to hire Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney… These are some of my favorite actors that walk the Earth, so there they are! I hired the best people to be around me, people who knew more than I did about their prospective areas… The issue for me was making sure this was a story I had to tell. I wanted to tell it… Once I was able to get a hold of that I was able to post up pictures of actors that I would run to work to be with. In that respect, that’s what I had on Pieces of April. I loved my actors on both films and I knew they were gonna take and make moments beyond what I could have imagined. It was my job to create the safest environment so that those moments could indeed be manifested. So that’s what I did. It felt very similar to me, it really did…

RC: Was there a moment reading Peter’s original draft that stands out as the moment you knew you wanted to direct this material?

PH: I was just hired to re-write it to burn off four weeks of work that I owed Disney from another script that I no longer wanted to write. They sent me a box of scripts and said, “Pick one to re-write.” It was a job.

So I read it and what I remember feeling was that the script was an idea I wished I’d thought of. A bunch of family members in a house. I like writing about families. I thought for four weeks of work, I could help it. What I didn’t realize was that, once I got into it and started to do my thing with it, was it would become something I couldn’t wait to tell.

RC: Could you relate to this big chaotic family, because for some people a family like this might be a little hard to imagine?

PH: I know that we’re going to get slammed a bit for the idyllic family. For me, I wrote Gilbert Grape, I worked on About a Boy. I’ve worked on the new family, the broken family, the dysfunctional family, and I thought it would be refreshing. It’s not a film about a family; it’s a film about a guy in a family… This is about a guy who needs to heel. I think maybe the house made it feel idyllic and the people I cast made it feel idyllic, but to me, it’s a family that functions and I know a lot of families that do. What was more interesting to me was this guy and how would love find him again and how he handles it when it does.