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"    Bizarre but true: One of the best movies of 2013 was, for all intents and purposes, a romantic comedy. In Enough Said, Albert (James Gandolfini), at once snuggly and super-sexy, has an electricity with Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) that feels so real and exciting. Both are divorcees raising teenage daughters, but they have another thing in common: Eva has just become friends with Albert&amp;#039;s ex-wife, Marianne (Catherine Keener). We talked to writer-director Nicole Holofcener\u2014of Walking and Talking, Lovely &amp;amp;amp; Amazing, and Friends with Money fame\u2014about this terrific movie, available on DVD and Blu-ray now. I&amp;#039;m going to gush a little: I loved this movie. It was a rare romantic comedy that was actually romantic and funny.  Oh, good! [Laughs] I think that sometimes, romantic comedies have to be really broad, and that the plot of people falling in and out of love or whatever is not enough. Enough Said had that stuff, but I wanted it to be fun and funny while also grounded in reality. I never thought about it being a romantic comedy, but I&amp;#039;ll take &amp;quot;romantic comedy&amp;quot; over &amp;quot;geriatric crap.&amp;quot; James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus had such amazing chemistry. Did that happen right away? I think so. The first time we got together, it was not a disaster. They liked each other, had a mutual respect, and I think they both really wanted to do something like this movie. They both have really good senses of humor, so it&amp;#039;s not like Julia would crack a joke and Jim didn&amp;#039;t know what was going on. James died unexpectedly before the movie&amp;#039;s release and didn&amp;#039;t get to see the finished film. What did his friends and family think? They loved it. He could have seen it\u2014his agent saw it, and hopefully told him that he did a good job and that the movie wasn&amp;#039;t a stinker. His family has been amazing, and they&amp;#039;ve expressed a lot of gratitude for [the film] depicting him in a way that they felt was close to who he really was. They&amp;#039;re glad to have that on film for their kids to see, and [hearing that] that was really gratifying.      Catherine Keener&amp;#039;s role is smaller than her roles in your past films, but she has been in so many others. Is it intimidating for other actors to walk into the dynamic that you two share? Yeah, I think they were nervous about it. Julia said, &amp;quot;Oh, no, you&amp;#039;re not gonna leave me out!&amp;quot; [Laughs] So we made sure that we did not leave her out when we&amp;#039;d talk on set. It&amp;#039;s nice to have Catherine around\u2014I think she reassures other actors. It&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Relax, this woman knows what she&amp;#039;s doing.&amp;quot; And if there was another actor giving me a hard time, she would really protect me, like, &amp;quot;Back off, she knows what she&amp;#039;s doing.&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s happened on sets before? Only in a very subtle way, with some actors who maybe hadn&amp;#039;t seen my work or have never been directed by a woman before. Catherine has my back. In the movie, Albert and Eva are both preparing to send their daughters off to college\u2014and they&amp;#039;re more terrified about it than either kid. You haven&amp;#039;t experienced sending kids to college yet. So is this all anticipatory dread? Completely. I have 16-year-old twins\u2014the older they get, the less freaked out I am because they are already becoming more and more independent, so I imagine that by the time it actually happens, I&amp;#039;ll, you know\u2026 You&amp;#039;ll be ready? Well, I don&amp;#039;t know about that. [Laughs] Like the daughters in the movie, I was a kid who couldn&amp;#039;t wait to go to college. I think my mom thought I was going to have a harder time, and was almost like, &amp;quot;Why don&amp;#039;t you miss me more?&amp;quot; I called my mom for three weeks straight, bawling. Oh, my God! [Laughs] I was so not ready. Once I made a really good friend I was fine, but until that happened, I was a mess. In fact, I don&amp;#039;t know anybody who had as hard a time as I did. I&amp;#039;ll probably be writing about that one day. It was really traumatic for me. I was a baby. Was this movie at all based on your life? I realized retrospectively that Tavi [Gevinson]&amp;#039;s character was [based on my life]. When I was going away to school, I had a friend who took a liking to my family just a little too much. We couldn&amp;#039;t get her out of the house. It took me saying to my parents, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t want her here. I&amp;#039;m feeling replaced.&amp;quot; She probably knows who she is, and I didn&amp;#039;t know that I was writing about her, but I think that&amp;#039;s what I was doing. Tavi, who is the teenage editor-in-chief of Rookie magazine, was wonderful in that role. She&amp;#039;s a great little actress. I know, I know, she does too many things really well. She was just really natural. She got it right away. She was pretty nervous, but she was great. I think she&amp;#039;ll probably do a lot more acting. Eva and her daughter have a very natural physical relationship; they were very cozy. True. My mom, my sister, and I were like that; we&amp;#039;d scratch each other&amp;#039;s backs, get in each other&amp;#039;s beds. How do you get that kind of intimacy from your actors? I don&amp;#039;t know. [Laughs] I guess I cast the roles properly, because nobody got uptight about it. But it&amp;#039;s certainly driven by someone like Julia playing the mom\u2014she just sort of encouraged that. You&amp;#039;ve been making movies for 20 years. How do you feel like you&amp;#039;ve changed as a director? I&amp;#039;m still very much me. I suppose I&amp;#039;m less inclined to be embarrassed about me. In the beginning, I felt like I had to act like I knew everything, that I was supposed to know what filters and what lens to use in each scene. Now I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Fuck that!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m focused on the actors. I know I want a wide angle here, I want a lot of depth here; it&amp;#039;s more collaborative and I&amp;#039;m happier to say, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m more confident and more experienced; those two things go together\u2026 and I&amp;#039;m smart enough to admit when I don&amp;#039;t know something. It&amp;#039;s less stressful, and in general, I wasn&amp;#039;t very stressed on Enough Said. Filming is a funny combination of having a good time and not being able to wait until it&amp;#039;s over. It&amp;#039;s like you&amp;#039;re running a race. It feels good, but you&amp;#039;re most excited about the finish. Exactly. It&amp;#039;s exhausting, and your life kind of stops while it&amp;#039;s happening, but there&amp;#039;s nothing quite like it. The fact that I get to write and direct my own personal story is an amazing thing. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/news/a16800/nicole-holofcener-enough-said/>