Lisa Cholodenko talks The Kids Are All Right

As The Kids Are All Right prepares to open in limited release, interviews with the writer/director Lisa Cholodenko are appearing all over the place. Here are a few interesting ones to check out. If you want a nice short video piece, see Collider. In The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Louis Peitzman talks to Cholodenko about writing character and picking a title. Cholodenko points out, “So it’s sort of an ironic title, in the sense that the kids are kind of doing better than the moms, in a way. And it’s also a kind of a wink to the notion that gay people can’t raise healthy, psychologically healthy children. Like, the kids are fine. Don’t worry about them. They’re just right.”

Over at the Onion's A/V Club, Nathan Rabin talks artificial insemination and music. Cholodenko told him about the film’s soundtrack: “I knew there was going to be that Joni Mitchell thing at the end. Beyond that, I think I always knew that the beginning of the film would have a needle-drop. But I hadn’t found it. I didn’t write it in. I just knew that it wasn’t going to be score, and I knew it needed something kinetic at the beginning.”

And New York Magazine’s Culture Vulture raises the “O” word:"

It's unusual to have two women romantic leads. Who will get the Best Actress nom? How about both? For both, it's some of their most complicated and real work — realism mixed with the comedy — and I feel like their spirits really come through. As a straight guy, it really felt like a relatable story about anyone's marriage. That was the intention — just to get into the subtext and architecture of marriage and family and how it all works and what happens when some bomb gets thrown on it: How do you recover or not recover? You never really know until you’re tested, right?