Charlie McDowell finds his own identity

Director Charlie McDowell (in baseball cap) works with Mark Duplass on the set of The One I Love.
Director Charlie McDowell (in baseball cap) works with Mark Duplass on the set of The One I Love.

You may never have heard of director Charlie McDowell before but you probably know his family. His father is A Clockwork Orange star Malcolm McDowell, and his mother is Newport-born Oscar-winner Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard). His stepfather is Cheers and C.S.I. star Ted Danson, and his sister, Lilly McDowell, has appeared in Sons of Anarchy and the 2008 film Made of Honor. Even his girlfriend is Hollywood gold -- Oscar-nominated actress Rooney Mara (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Side Effects).

"Growing up, I was always associated to them, so I really went through a time where I wanted to find my own identity and my own voice," Charlie McDowell says. "That was always really important for me. People who grew up in the world where I grew up can go two different directions. They can either go in the direction where they rely on their family for everything. Or they can go the opposite direction and sort of prove that they are their own person and their own voice. And I kind of went in the direction of that. I kind of wanted to make a name for myself."

McDowell is emerging from his family's long shadow with his debut feature The One I Love. After a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival this year, the independent movie has opened to appreciative reviews and with a solid limited release ($55,000 in nine theaters) and Video on Demand ($500,000) opening.

Not My House, Not My Wife

Much of the appeal to the tale that McDowell and screenwriter Justin Lader have put together is that it's a relationship drama that defies easy classification. A married couple (mumblecore king Mark Duplass and Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men) find their relationship stagnating, so they take the advice of their eccentric therapist (Danson) and go to a mountain retreat.

Soon after their arrival, the two learn this location, while scenic, isn't terribly therapeutic.

The One I Love can't easily be described as a comedy, drama or a mystery. In fact, it's best to stop talking about its plot altogether. McDowell states the film wouldn't have worked if the twist were all it had to offer.

"For us, The One I Love is a real, grounded relationship piece, but then you have a sort of fantastical thing going on. But I had to make sure that it stayed honest and grounded in the characters, that it didn't feel like just a cartoon-y movie," he says.

"We give the best version of who we are when we start a relationship. We put on our shiny coat, and we also adapt to other people. And it's such an interesting thing that all of us do. And then all of the sudden, the dust settles, and then it's like, 'Wait a minute! You didn't used to do that. I thought you were this person!' I think that that's such a universal theme that people can really relate and connect to. And then how do we take that story and make it into something that we haven't seen before while keeping ... to that universal theme and idea."

Even though the movie has only been publicly available for a couple of weeks, McDowell recalls that viewers have been returning.

"It's interesting. It is a movie that's fun to view a second time just because there is this hook and this reveal early on. There's a lot of the movie where you can re-watch and sit there and start to piece together what we were doing and saying. It is something where people have come up to me and said they've seen it a couple of times to really understand it and also ... because it has an intricate plot with twists and turns. And there are these little details that we don't spoon feed the audience," he says.

Charming, Not Charmed Life

Alert viewers can spot several nods to McDowell's youth throughout The One I Love. His mother can be heard leaving a message on Duplass' voice mail, and the film was shot near the director's boyhood home of Ojai, Calif., which is roughly an hour and a half from Los Angeles.

That said, "If my mom hadn't been an actress, I probably still would have had her do it because it felt like a mom leaving a voice mail message."

While McDowell fondly remembers visiting sets during his childhood, he's quick to point out, "There is this idea with some people where one of my parents makes a phone call to someone, and I can magically make a movie, which is so far from the truth. I don't think it's an advantage or a disadvantage."

He also adds that having roots in Arkansas has helped him keep his bearings. His mother and his cousin co-own the South on Main restaurant in Little Rock.

"I've really seen [Arkansas] change. I've seen amazing restaurants come in, a lot of work in downtown Little Rock. It's become such a cool, rich, vibrant city. I just love the people. In LA, you get kind of caught up in this kind of industry bubble, and you're with a lot of people who don't seem real. They seem sort of fake. It's hard to live it. It's sort of like Groundhog Day. You're sort of living the same thing over and over.

"In Arkansas, I feel that people are just sort of genuine. There's nothing sort of put on. Whenever I go back there, it's sort of like hitting the reset button for me just as a person to be around people who are just nice for the sake of being nice."

McDowell says he'd love to present the film to a Little Rock audience but has a wedding to attend. People curious about the mind that executed The One I Love can check out his popular Twitter feed (@charliemcdowell) or read his semiautobiographical book Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story. The book contains incidents in the director's life that are the polar opposite of attending a premiere or an award ceremony.

"For me, Dear Girls Above Me was a thing where I started it just as a way to vent. I was on Twitter just sort of venting because I had these sort of loud girls living above me, and for whatever reason, I just couldn't go up and tell them to be quiet. I started to vent about it online, and then I realized that people started to kind of relate and connect to what I was saying," McDowell says.

"But I'm like everyone else in the fact that I've got annoying neighbors."

MovieStyle on 08/29/2014

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