Tribeca 2014: Writer/Director Angus MacLachlan’s Goodbye to All That

By Bryan Abrams

Writer-director Angus MacLachlan’s Goodbye to All That includes one of the more frank and pathos-free sex scenes in recent memory. Otto Wall (Paul Schneider) and Mildred (Ashley Hinshaw), who recently met on the online dating service OkCupid, sit opposite one another on chairs, naked. They are describing, with exacting detail, what they’d like to do to each other. Otto’s wife has recently left him, and he’s experimenting for the first time in his life with online dating. The scene is remarkably compassionate—neither Otto or Mildred are mocked or shamed for their desires, and, as the scene progresses, each grow more bold. They never touch each other. When the moment is over, they thank one another for a great experience—audience members could share a similar reaction with MacLachlan for creating a sex scene in which no one’s a prude, a slut, a creep or a cad. It’s just sex (in this case, it’s just sex talk), after all, and this movie’s got more on its mind that shaming its character’s very human desires.

Eventually Otto (Paul Schneider) and Mildred (Ashley Hinshaw) make their relationship physical.

It should come as no surprise that MacLachlan could write this moment; his previous efforts, including his screenplay for 2005’s excellent Junebug, reflect someone who likes to write scenes that many others would play for broad comedy or queasy humor, but which he turns into quieter moments imbued with real feeling. This is MacLachlan’s directorial debut, and the seasoned writer shows a steady hand and a way with actors that elevate even the small parts in this little gem.

Otto wife Annie (Melanie Lynskey) has left him because of an alarming lack of focus. This is at first shown in a bit of physical comedy—the very first we see of Otto is him completing a race and immediately tripping. We witness him stubbing his toe and smashing his shin into just about every available edge or table leg, and the final, truly dangerous example of his attention deficit is an ATV accident (with his daughter and a friend along for the ride) that brings about real damage to his foot.

Writer/director Angus MacLachlan, Paul Schneider, and Audrey Scott.

But Annie’s issues with Otto’s lack of attention go much deeper than his inability to negotiate his own child’s bedroom without incident, and this is the story that MacLachlan’s telling. Otto needs to interrogate his own lax style and find out what he’s been missing all this time. His love for his daughter Edie (Audrey Scott), the central relationship in the film, is the only thing that seems to keep him focused, yet even the projects he begins for her (creating a stone wall around a garden, for example), he can never seem to finish.

Like Junebug, Goodbye to All That is set in North Carolina. MacLachlan said in the press notes that he wanted to show “how people live in the south, in a mid-sized town…that we aren’t all working class, unsophisticated or cut off.”

Many of his actors here are southern: including his lead Paul Schneider, the always hilarious Amy Sedaris as his troubled boss, and Anna Camp (recognizable from her rococo turn as Sarah Newlin in HBO’s True Blood), who portrays the religious, sexually adventurous (and extremely conflicted) Debbie Spangler, another of Otto’s internet dates. “I wanted people to see that this story could be in Ann Arbor, Portland, Austin, or Omaha,” MacLachlan has said, “any city that wasn’t New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.” Goodbye to All That is set in Winston Salem, and there are many shots captured by cinematographer Corey Walter that are very beautiful. They shot the film in the fall, “a particularly beautiful one,” MacLachlan says, and the collaboration between this first time director, his DP (working on his first feature), and his first AD Scott Larkin created a perfect environment for the creation of a film that meant something to everyone involved. “[Corey] listened and understood when I told him that the humanity and compassion in the story was fundamental,” MacLachlan says.

MacLachlan’s desire for compassion is evident throughout—online dating, single parenting, even a summer camp reunion are given humorous but loving treatment. And the director’s way with actors is evident from the easy, natural performances—something he gleaned from working in the theater. “I believe that being educated and working as an actor for a number of years allows me to know it’s like,” he said in the press notes. “The one thing I truly felt confident of before going into this project was talking to actors.”

There is an undercurrent of compassion running through the film that makes the sadder, darker moments all the more heart rending. Otto is desperate to stay close to his daughter, but she no longer feels safe, or all that comfortable, in his new house. The fact that she overhears him with a woman one evening only strengthens her conviction to stay away. One of the touching, and heartbreaking, components of this father/daughter relationship is that this little girl worries about him. The question MacLachlan asks about their relationship is never whether or not Edie will question her father’s love. It’s clear she knows how much he adores her, so the question, a trickier one, is will he be able to learn from his breakup, identify what actually happened, and use it to foster a better relationship with his daughter. In short, will he ever learn to focus?

Short of Schneider, the film is dominated by a fantastic female cast. MacLachlan has credited his casting director Mark Bennett, who found the aforementioned Audrey Scott, Ashley Hinshaw, Anna Camp, Melanie Lynskey, and Amy Sedaris. You’ve also got brief but  memorable turns from Heather Graham and Heather Lawless who help to round out a formidable female cast. When talking about casting his leading man, MacLachlan said that he wanted an actor who truly liked women. Perhaps this is why the sex scenes seem so refreshing; the dynamic is two people enjoying one another, not two people engaged in a conquest or a game. Even the one truly batty character, the religious, confused Debbie Spangler, is given more dimensions by the end of the film than you’d find in many, many other movies.

Goodbye to All That is charming without being cloying, sexy without being sexist, and funny without being cynical or mocking. Not bad for a first time director, but not surprising consider that director’s MacLachlan.

Goodbye to All That: FilmStage Review

Written and directed by Angus MacLachlan (best known as the writer of another observant indie gem, Junebug) sets his story in suburban Winston Salem, NC; this is a place that feels like a small-enough town, perhaps inspiring Otto’s turn to online dating following the reappearance of an old fling, Stephanie (Heather Graham).
Recently divorced, Stephanie courts Otto and they get together for a fancy dinner and a one-night stand that lasts until she has to speed off to work. Otto is further infuriated to learn Annie has been unfaithful in their marriage and so he takes to OkCupid for a series of trysts that seem all too indulgent; each woman is more beautiful than the next. 

Goodbye to All That is a richly observed human comedy with scenes that border upon perfection, but one wishes sex was treated with the same level of observation. To achieve a realistic level of a sexual experience with all the humor and awkwardness that matches that of the emotional reality elsewhere in the film, you may need to make an NC-17-rated film. Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac it is not, but other comedies have explored sexual awkwardness in very funny ways that ring true (Michael Lehmann’s 40 Days and 40 Nights is the first that comes to mind).

Otto’s relationships include Mildred (Ashley Hinshaw) a 20-something that is looking for a no-strings-attached kind of fling, one that first includes the simulation of virtual sex in Otto’s kitchen, followed by a potentially schizophrenic nurse’s aid Debbie Spangler (Anna Camp). Debbie is an odd bird, referring to herself in the third person and meeting Otto at church, after which she comes prepared for a date with a bag full of sex toys. Adding some third act tension for Otto, he meets a woman from his youth, also recently divorced and played in a beautifully restrained and powerful performance by stand-up comedian Heather Lawless.

The broader comic sex scenes did break the spell of the restrained portions, although Schneider’s Otto admits he is both aroused and overwhelmed by the attention after a long dormant period with wife Annie.

Paul Schneider on Awkward Sex Scenes, Taking Risks, and His Tribeca Movie Goodbye to All That

by Katey Rich

Paul Schneider never thought much about acting, and even now, with a Jane Campion movie, a sitcom, and a critic’s award under his belt, he’s not sure he can call himself one. As a film student at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he started acting as a favor to friends and decades later has found himself with an idiosyncratic acting career, saying he turns down roles he knows would pay better in favor of smaller, more intimate films, like the current Tribeca Film Festival entry Goodbye to All That.

Playing Otto Wall, a North Carolina man who is left adrift when his wife (Melanie Lynskey) suddenly asks for a divorce, Schneider is a gentle but spacey spirit opposite a series of comic turns from actresses, including Heather Graham and Anna Camp. The film’s many sex scenes—Wall turns to OK Cupid post-breakup, naturally—are at turns hilarious and cringingly awkward, and Schneider credits director Angus MacLachlan for creating a comfortable set that made it possible. Speaking over the phone last week, while walking his dog and occasionally scolding him to stop sniffing dead things, Schneider talked about his strange road toward acting, the “spiritual coincidence” that led to his role in Campion’s Bright Star, and how he proves to his female co-stars that he’s not a “sketch-ball.” Goodbye to All That screens tonight, Wednesday, and Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival. 

VF Hollywood: According to IMDB, your nickname is Otto—which is also the name of your character in this movie. Is that a deliberate inside joke?
Paul Schneider: That was the credit I gave myself on a film that I directed. [2008’s Pretty Bird]

Oh, so it’s not like an in-joke about your nickname?
There is an in-joke. Autopeotomy is the act of cutting off your own dick. That was an expression of the mood I was in, after I finished. I think that one took a year off my life.

So what made you connect with this Otto and take the part?
There was a logic to the character’s psychology. His problem is that he can’t see what’s really around him. And of course he’s a graphic artist. Some of the visual artists I know are really great people and can be frustrating, because their head is in the clouds. It’s hard to make plans with those people; it’s hard to get them to show up on time. I’m sure people would say that about me too. I started acting because my friends and I made a film, and we didn’t know any actors. I just thought I could get us out of there with a lot less fuss and a lot more quickly. I started acting because of practical reasons, and then I kept acting because after our first film, I had an agent and a lawyer and all of a sudden, I found myself ahead of the game in a discipline I didn’t know much about. Ever since then, I’ve been bristling up to stereotypes that people have about actors.

Do you think of yourself as an actor now?
When I was waiting tables I didn’t think of myself as a waiter—this is the moment in my life when I’m waiting tables. I worked at a kiddie amusement park, driving a train for kids. At that point in my life, I didn’t consider myself a train conductor. Acting is something that I do occasionally. I wrote and directed a movie, and I didn’t necessarily think of myself as a writer and a director. I have some kind of reticence in saying, “This is me, this is what I’m doing.” Maybe because I still don’t know what that thing is.

You have a variety of awkward or tough scenes in this movie, from very frank sex scenes to heavy-duty emotions to a very verbal sexual encounter. Was there one in particular that was the toughest?
They’re all tough I guess for different reasons. It’s not like I get out of the shower and see myself in the mirror and think, That guy has got to be in a sex scene. The main thing is just getting over the fact that you’re going to be lying next to people that are far more attractive than you. In some ways I’ve done that my whole life, so it’s not that big a deal. I don’t know how other guys do it, but I think it’s good to chat with your co-worker before you get going, and let them know, “I’m not sketchy, I’m a good guy, I’m not going to try to fuck you afterward.” Basically you’re not a sketch-ball.
You’re bonded in the way that you’re both on film alone, no one else on set is on film, it’s just you. All your shit is hanging out, good, bad, and ugly. And it’s impossible not to be intimate, when you’re being intimate. Of course in some ways it’s artificial, but unless you’re given really specific direction, you kiss the way you’re going to kiss. When I kiss someone, that’s how Paul kisses them. You can’t hide everything.
In this instance we had Angus, who having been an actor was really comfortable speaking with actors. You need someone to sit down on the bed with you and touch you on the shoulder, to not be afraid of the physicality. Often times you find male directors who, once things get a little bit emotional or intimate, they dive behind the video monitor and call “Cut” and “Action.” Essentially, part of the reason they became directors is they want to manipulate life, but they don’t really want to be a part of it. They cast a gorgeous woman who they secretly have feelings for, and from some remote location, they manipulate what they want her to do. That’s a terrible director and a terrible human being. But then there are the great directors out there, like Angus, who are evolved enough to sit down and touch you on the shoulder and say, “Guys, this is great.” It’s intimate and it’s naked and it’s uncomfortable for everybody, and I feel like if you’re ballsy enough to say the words out loud, it makes for a lot less question marks and sideways glances.

So in this movie, Otto takes the risk and changes a lot of things about his life. Do you feel like you’re doing that at the similar point in your life?
Maybe the risks I’ve taken are the ones where I’ve said no to movies I don’t really believe in that might be better paydays or better exposure. There are actors out there who feel like you’ve got to take every opportunity and never say no. I couldn’t disagree more when it comes to me. It’s hard to make movies, it’s hard to act, it’s never something I felt like I was born to do. Whether or not the movies I’ve been in are all incredible successes, or even successful in a small way, at least I know that the people who made the movie, their heart was in the right place. The rest is up to the universe.

I would think that taking the role in Bright Star, doing a Scottish accent and acting opposite all these powerhouses, would be a pretty huge risk.
The reason I went to film school, I saw [Jane Campion’s] movie The Piano in 1993, and before that I hadn’t thought about being involved in film in any way. Then 12 years later, apparently Jane saw me in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and she called me up to do the movie. I think, cosmically the risk would be not doing that. You’d have to be pretty ballsy to say, “Hey, world, you just offered me the weirdest spiritual coincidence, and I’m going to say no to you.”
Certainly you’re right about fear being involved in that. I didn’t want to be the American dummy. I didn’t want to be the weak link in this very strong chain. You have these well-lauded actors—Ben Whishaw changed the way people saw Hamlet, after his interpretation on stage. I’m this redneck from North Carolina, I didn’t study this shit, I don’t know what I’m doing. But Jane created an atmosphere, and my co-workers created an atmosphere. It wasn’t a test every day. It wasn’t, “Is Paul going to do it?” every day. It was, “We’re going to do it together,” every day. It was one of my favorite experiences ever. Then I came home and nobody saw the movie, and of course, you feel kind of bummed about that. Then I left the country for a while, and I came back and apparently I had won the National Society of Film Critics’ best-supporting-actor award. There was no ceremony, there was no award, nothing was sent to me, it was just told to me in an e-mail. There’s some, I don’t want to say justice, but the world came back with a little happy ending.

More Reviews HERE

Goodbye to All That: Tribeca Review

The Bottom Line

A surprisingly sexy tale of emotional rebuilding.

Venue

Tribeca Film Festival, World Narrative Competition

Cast

Paul Schneider, Melanie Lynskey, Audrey Scott, Anna Camp, Heather Graham, Heather Lawless, Ashley Hinshaw, Michael Chernus, Amy Sedaris, Celia Weston

Director-Screenwriter

Angus MacLachlan

Paul Schneider plays a man reeling from an unexpected divorce in the directorial debut of "Junebug" scribe Angus MacLachlan.

NEW YORK — In his first film as a director, Junebug screenwriter Angus MacLachlan goes back to North Carolina for the story of a man blindsided by divorce. Paul Schneider shines in the role, stumbling through a dating world that has changed since his character got hitched, thanks mostly to social media. His turn is a fine fit for the seriocomic spirit of a picture that, while less distinctive than the earlier film, should have little trouble connecting with viewers beyond the fest circuit.

Schneider's Otto Wall is an avid runner who can barely cross a room without tripping on something. After he's injured in an ATV accident, his daughter Edie (Audrey Scott) asks mom Annie (Melanie Lynskey), "Why do these things always happen to Daddy?" "Because he doesn't pay attention" is the reply.

While Otto comes across as a very caring husband and father, clearly the film agrees with Annie's diagnosis. Otto is flabbergasted when she announces she wants a divorce — or, rather, when her therapist (Celia Weston) does, in a comically infuriating scene. The break is official before he can even process it, but a Facebook-enabled discovery that Annie had been cheating helps Otto get comfortable with the idea of dating new women.

Every divorce should be this hard: With seemingly no effort online, Otto has soon connected with three different beauties who want nothing from him but sex. (One of the women goes haywire later, but what's a breakup without a hot rebound fling with a manic-depressive?) While he certainly enjoys himself, though, Otto's confused by the lack of interest in deeper connections -- something MacLachlan clearly sees as tied to our present mode of friending. His need for something grounded is more pressing in light of his relationship with Edie, who is growing distant for reasons he can't peg.

Some of those have to do with Annie, and MacLachlan manipulates us a bit in order to make us blind in the same ways Otto has been: Otto's ex behaves with such cold self-absorption, kicking him out of his home and then expecting him to make everything easy for her, that we can't help but long for a showdown in which he makes her see how awful she's being. The film pointedly denies us this gratification, and eventually suggests we were wrong to want it -- that although we never witnessed his failures in the relationship, they were real, and his job now is to grow instead of vent his anger.

From this stance, even the most interesting of Otto's love interests — an old summer-camp girlfriend coping with losses of her own, played beautifully by Heather Lawless — is at best a catalyst, nudging him to be more attentive to the bonds he has before trying to forge new ones. The lesson may be too pat, but Goodbye is gentle in the delivery.

'Goodbye to All That' Clip with Heather Graham

Heather Graham, Anna Camp, and Paul Schneider star in Angus MacLachlan's drama about a divorced dad who starts a new life with his daughter.

UPDATED 04/21/2014

Tribeca Review: Tired of Formulaic Hollywood Romantic Comedies? 'Goodbye to All That' Is a Welcome Alternative

by Brandon Harris

Otto Wall, the person at the center of "Goodbye to All That," lauded playwright and "Junebug" scribe Angus MacLachlan's directorial debut, is a limited man — the type of man who just goes along with the flow, who doesn’t try to ruffle feathers. He's not stupid, but neither is he gifted with remarkable intelligence. He has a good job, an attractive if quite possibly overbearing wife (Melanie Lynskey) and an adorable, auburn-haired daughter who is quickly turning into a North Carolina methodist. He's lucky, at least until he isn't.

Played with gentle moxie by Paul Schneider, in what amounts to his most memorable motion picture role since Dick Liddl in "The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford," Otto is clumsy and kind and more than easy to root for. He'll need it: Otto’s life begins to fall to pieces shortly after the opening frames. An athletic outdoorsman type - we first meet him as he completes a 5K - Otto is heading out on a camping trip with a friend and his daughter when the friend drives their off-road vehicle too fast and crashes in a nearby forest, injuring Otto's foot. While he's recovering, his pensive wife demands that he meet her at the office of her therapist (Celia Weston), who informs Otto that his wife wants a divorce, suddenly and inexplicably. Taken completely by surprise, Otto is cast out into bachelorhood, which he discovers is much different than it was when he was younger.

Entering the world of Facebook stalking and OKCupid profiles, Otto finds plenty of sex, but meaningful connections are harder to come by.

MacLachlan returns us once again to the mid-size North Carolina towns that were such an evocative backdrop for "Junebug," one of the great underheralded indies of the aughts. As in the previous film, a breezy tone and self-effacing but sophisticated visual style allows darker undercurrents to sit comfortably beneath the action, seeping out in unexpected bursts of emotion that unsettle and refocus MacLachlan's often symmetrical widescreen compositions. His brand of comedy grows out of the eccentricities of his memorable characters. Who can forget (among the few who saw it) Scott Wilson's father, who secretly paints birds, or the warehouse store employee, who watches the Panthers Super Bowl appearance over and over, hoping they'll win this time, or the outsider artist with a penchant for racist tangents and sudden prayers — all of whom made up the local color in "Junebug"?

This time out, MacLachlan presents a gallery of women, drawn with the detail and humorous intimacy often missing from portrayals of modern Western ladies in a film with a male protagonist. The movie launches Wall on a "Broken Flowers"-esque trip through his romantic past and the wilds of the arranged online hookup future, eventually suggesting that romantic happiness comes in many shapes and sizes, that being a good man and a sexual adventurist aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

After a quick fling with a recently divorced blonde whom he dated in high school (Heather Graham), Otto opens up a rotation of sorts: a redhead with a penchant for kink (Ashley Hinshaw) who wants little else but evocative sex ("you're kind of a disaster, but a one helluva fuck," she tells him without pulling a punch) and a pious blonde named Debbie Spengler (a terrific Anna Camp) who will make sure you never forget her name: She's always introducing herself ("I'm Debbie Spengler"), both in the bedroom and out. But even though she's a spitfire in the sack, be careful when you find her crying after a bible-reading session the next morning - where the film gets terrific comedic mileage out of revealing each female suitor's baggage and idiosyncrasies to great comedic effect.

Otto's sights are soon set on a long lost love interest from a summer camp he attended in high school, played with great emotional insight by the comedian Heather Lawless, as a woman who has also recently found herself single and nearing forty, mourning a dead child and looking for a new start. Not reinventing the wheel by any stretch, the picture wins us over to the idea that they ought to be together quite effortlessly, while Otto goes about cleaning up the various messes in his life; his daughter increasingly doesn't want to stay at his new house because of all his late night dalliances and his wife, who seems incapable of uttering a sentence that doesn't come across as a passive-aggressive reprimand and all too frequently changing the terms of their separation, is someone Otto needs to learn to stand up to.

The constituent parts of MacLachlan's film might not seem like much on their own; together they make up to a remarkably fresh and dynamic whole. "Goodbye to All That" is the type of romantic comedy that Hollywood makes (poorly) for female audiences all the time: Will our fetching but troubled heroine land Mr. Right?

Rarely does such a picture come along that asks the same questions for a man. Even rarer does one come along with this much grit, intelligence and genuine insight into the Western sexual mores of the 21st century. A paean to an age when lust is easy and love is as hard as ever, "Goodbye to All" That is the sort of picture that if you're not careful will charm the pants right off of you.

Criticwire Grade: B+

HOW WILL IT PLAY? A Tribeca Film Festival world premiere, "Goodbye to All That" is likely to find its way into theaters with a modest distribution plan but could find solid returns on VOD.

UPDATED 04/22/2014

Anna Camp On Putting Off Kids For Her Career

Your character, Debbie Spangler, is leading a little bit of a double life. And announcing her name all the time...

She loves stating who she is. She wants to be seen and validated. The most fun thing about playing her is that she's committed. She’s committed when she’s being sweet, she’s committed when she’s regretful and guilty in the morning, and she’s committed when she’s having sex. She’s all over the place, but she’s committed.

I like to play people who start out as one thing and throughout the story, it’s revealed that they’re completely different.

UPDATED 04/25/2014

Tribeca Review: ‘Goodbye To All That’ Starring Paul Schneider, Melanie Lynskey, Anna Camp and More

As the broken, but not defeated Otto, Paul Schneider, who deservedly just won the Tribeca Film Festival award for Best Actor, turns in his best performance since his breakthrough role in David Gordon Green’s “All The Real Girls.” Your heart pours out for Otto Wall struggling to keep it together, but his terrific turn never asks for your empathy. A top-notch cast of indie characters actors surround him: Melanie Lynskey plays his ex-wife; Heather Graham appears as an old flame raring to go; Ashley Hinshaw is a fuckbuddy from the internet; Michael Chernus is a friend in enraptured disbelief to hear about his newfound sexual conquests; Anna Camp (“Pitch Perfect,” hysterical here) plays a rather looney new paramour. And the movie also features excellent turns by Audrey Scott, Amy Sedaris, Celia Weston and especially Heather Lawless, as a childhood girlfriend, whose soothing presence despite her own life calamities opens him up to the further possibilities of life and how to survive.

The joys of sex also play an unexpectedly large element of Otto’s recovery and these scenes, raw and sensual and refreshingly well-handled are just as complicated, funny and well-drawn as any of his other life experiences.

Shot in rather basic form with straightforward lighting, “Goodbye To All That” is not going to impress the visual, form or style cinephiles of the world. But it really shouldn’t matter. The content is tops. And as an astute and empathetic portrait of human crisis, resolve and survival, it’s a wonderfully authentic and perfectly touching one. [A-]

Ashley Hinshaw, Melanie Lynskey, Anna Camp, Heather Graham and the Ladies of ‘Goodbye to All That’

In Goodbye to All That, a new movie from the writer of Junebug, Otto can pretty much pin-point the moment he realized his marriage was over. It was probably right around the time he and his wife went to see their marriage counselor, who proceeded to inform him, “Your marriage is over.” It’s not a moment a person — or viewers — would forget quickly.

“A lot of the film was inspired by incidents that have happened to very close friends of mine,” says Junebug scribe and first-time director Angus MacLachlan. “I think anybody who’s married has fear that sometimes they’re not keeping their eye on the ball until something out of the blue comes up.”
Paul Schneider (All the Real Girls) plays Otto, a somewhat oblivious graphic designer who finds himself back in the dating pool after his wife (Melanie Lynskey) stuns him with her intention to leave him. But technology presents a bevy of new romantic opportunities — and pitfalls. Otto discovers Facebook and OkCupid and has a series of online-instigated encounters with old girlfriends (Heather Graham), savvy online daters (Ashley Hinshaw), and surprising suburbanites (Anna Camp).

“Otto ends up meeting these people in a way that seems much easier to him than it had been when he was younger,” says Schneider. “But I think he comes to understand that these technological advances are not shortcuts towards a traditional relationship, like a new backdoor into a land that he was familiar with. It is in fact a door to a land that he is completely unfamiliar with.”

MacLachlan resists direct comparisons to director Phil Morrison’s Junebug, which was also set in North Carolina, the home state of both MacLachlan and Schneider. That film was more about the inter-dynamics of a family, whereas Goodbye is really about a man learning to deal with the women in his life. The director concedes that this film, which will premiere April 17 at the Tribeca Film Festival, is perhaps a tad lighter than Junebug, but with laughs that are never at the expense of the characters.

Schneider though MacLachlan was a special director, especially since he’s found that not all directors have his ability to connect with actors. “When you’re me and you’re desperately trying not to look like a refrigerator next to Heather Graham, I need help,” he says. “I don’t need expertise. I need someone who is not afraid to sit down with two actors for a sex scene and speak explicitly and directly to them about what he wants — and not be afraid of it and hide behind a monitor and expect two human beings to try and read that person’s very embarrassed mind.”

Modern online love and sex scenes with metaphorical kitchen appliances will have to wait. Below, watch the painful moment when Otto realizes his marriage is kaput.