NewEnglandFilm.com

Six years writing for Seinfeld, four Emmy nominations, one Writers Guild Award, two People’s Choice awards, one Lucite plaque from the American Dermatological Association. What other marker does a writing team need to get their pet project off the ground? For Gregg Kavet and Andy Robin, it took a pass on a pilot from TV execs, writing their first original screenplay, wrangling production money, then having it fall through three times, and finally, a producer who told them they were shooting in New Hampshire in November. Period.

Funny, right? Well maybe not funny ha-ha but funny in how much it sounds like the long and unpredictable journey every independent filmmaker takes when trying to make the ominous "first feature film." Seinfeld or not, it is still hard work. Live Free or Die, which they wrote and directed together, is also about the struggle to bring a small-town New Hampshire legend to life, so to speak. The legend is John "Rugged" Rudgate, a wannabe hoodlum who sells speakers from the back of his van. He sees an opportunity to scam an old high school buddy, Lagrand, and the two become intertwined in a series of darkly comic events.

Erin Trahan: Tell me about your ties to New Hampshire.

Andy Robin: I was briefly the Governor of New Hampshire, then I spent a few years as a US Senator, then a State Senator, it was kind of the reverse of the normal path. No, really, I lived in New Hampshire for a couple of years, in ’98 – ’99, and went to summer camp there for five years growing up.

Gregg Kavet: I grew up in Massachusetts. My parents had house in Vermont and New Hampshire was where we stopped for fast food. For a place I’ve never lived, I’ve been there more days than any other state. I’m very fond of it.

ET: You met in college, right? Have you been working together ever since? Why?

Robin: We lived across the hall from each other as freshman, at Harvard, that mediocre school. I was really trying to get into Haverford. I didn’t apply but they didn’t express any interest in me, either. The silence was deafening.

Kavet: Yeah, we kind of started writing together in college. We made fun of a lot of things, tried to get kicked out a lot. Doing comedy alone is tough. If you have one other person laughing, you know what’s funny.

ET: What is the career path to becoming writers for Saturday Night Live and Seinfeld? How did that happen?

Kavet: Andy was really up on working in television. Out of college he submitted to SNL. I was convinced it was going down the tubes and wanted no part of it and instead went to work for consulting firm. It wasn’t at all funny but did get us a ton of George stories. Then Andy started bothering me a lot to work with him.

ET: Usually you two are writing. What was it like to be behind the camera, composing shots, directing actors, and now pounding the pavement for your first feature film?

Robin: In TV, as writers rise up through ranks they are called producer, not like a line producer in movies, but involved in all aspects of production. From very early on in Seinfeld we helped cast, helped edit. We were even on the floor as a producer, getting actors to perform. As we transitioned to film, we were coming from that point of view.

ET: According to Live Free or Die, New Hampshire is a cold, gray, backwoods place with rusted vans, smoky diners, and bad clams, all with a yearning to be something bigger. I thought only Massachusetts had such a chip on its shoulder. Do you think it’s true of all New England states?

Kavet: New Hampshire is one of these places that in every way should be fine with itself. It’s between Maine and Vermont, which are both beautiful, but New Hampshire is too, some parts even more so. But there’s such a feeling of not being able to compete. Even the motto, it’s really aggressive, it’s trying so hard. You cross the border and the first thing you see is the state liquor store. It feels like a state that encapsulates Rugged so well. He’s trapped in small town environment. He wants to be big without knowing or seeing there’s a way out.

ET: Yet despite all of Rugged’s bungling failure, there is something noble about his quest.

Kavet: Absolutely. For us, it’s the whole hero concept. We applaud people who want to be bigger but fail.

ET: You shot on HD over three weeks in November 2004, in the town of Claremont, NH. Was November part of the script or just dumb luck?

Kavet: We wanted that look. There’s a feeling in New England in November. It’s the ugliest time of year. The leaves and leaf peepers are gone, there’s less light, you get the feeling you’re really stuck there for a while. The first week we shot entirely outside, never above 39 degrees, 12-hour days, people not getting paid much, it was hard to keep the crew from quitting!

ET: Did you work closely with the New Hampshire Film Commission?

Kavet: They are really eager to have stuff going on, and were encouraging early on. We came out and found everything we needed. [The town of Claremont] certainly never had a film crew before so everyone was questioning what this would mean. There were three car accidents because of people looking at us while we were shooting. That got the police upset, but one guy connected in town smoothed everything over. From then on, the police let us use police cars, did stunts for us, gave us free offices for production staff.

ET: What a surprise to see Paul Schneider, mister romantic lead from All the Real Girls and 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, stealing scenes as the stiff-necked, sub-intellect Lagrand. How did you know he could pull it off?

Kavet: He was the first person we cast. We had been bouncing around names. I guess some producers mentioned him or knew him, we were like ‘yeah.’ He did a great job. I showed the film to bunch of friends in LA and he was there but it took people an hour to recognize him. It’s a credit to him. A lot of people can play themselves.

ET: That was an impressive move when Aaron Stanford (who plays Rugged) threw a bag of (salt? sand?) under the tire of his van as a makeshift parking break. Was that a special effect? How many takes?

Kavet: That’s one of those catching lightening in a bottle of any filmmaking. The van really did have a broken emergency brake, he pulled in, it rolled back, and somehow he managed to stop the van. Everything about that shot was completely real. We waited till we got the shot, then we started rolling on the ground, laughing.

ET: You had originally conceived of Live Free or Die, or something close to it, as a sitcom. What did you lose and what did you gain from making an independent feature?

Kavet: Television and film are really different mediums and we look at them differently. TV is more a day in the life, a new situation of what’s happening that day. Film is always about the biggest thing in life. It’s the difference between talking to someone on the phone everyday versus talking to them once a year.

ET: Your directors’ statement says, "These days, lots of comedies are about one high concept idea you can jam into a title and pepper with set pieces." What did you mean?

Kavet: You go in to pitch a movie, and they want it described in a sentence, like The 40 Year Old Virgin. The beginning, middle, and end, it’s all there. The bulk of laughs come from that one idea. Then there’s a collection of these things called set pieces, things that will be funny in a trailer or ad . . .

ET: Like ripping hair from a chest?

Kavet: Yes. It’s not a matter of bashing that film, but this kind of thinking limits what movies are made, and makes it very hard to do organic and funny as a result of plot. If you see a scene deep in Live Free or Die out of context, you don’t know the background about the characters and what makes it funny. For us there’s an appeal to having something you have to build to.

ET: Speaking of earned laughs, what is funny now as a result of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm?

Kavet: What I always took as lesson from Seinfeld is that you don’t need likable characters. Likable characters pull people in, but dislikable people are funnier. I think we thought that would spread more, that people would be much more willing to take those risks. We wrote a pilot called Enemies about two guys who hate each other. We pitched it and it came back with comments that were really positive, ‘We love this supporting character, we love this, but the two main guys seem like they don’t like each other.’ That may be the only project we completely walked away from.

ET: How much did your affiliation with Seinfeld benefit this project? 

Robin: Jerry was a big fan of the script, came to early read-throughs, and was a big moral support.  But our Seinfeld credit didn’t make raising the money to shoot much easier. 

ET: Tell me about the festival circuit. You won SXSW, this summer you went to the Woods Hole Film Festival and the Newport International Film Festival. You premiere in New Hampshire this month at NHFX. Is this the best system for showing and seeing independent film?

Kavet: Studio pictures don’t get an audience reaction. For comedy it helps to see people react. Doing Seinfeld, there was a difference between what you shot on stage and the finished project. The scenes that are not shot live rely on editing, so it’s hard to get the audience’s final reaction. With festivals, it was terrific. You knew. The people watching had no notion what the film was about going in. I felt like it was the most honest reaction. And it’s different at different festivals, different in different parts of the country. What works in New England doesn’t necessarily work elsewhere.

ET: So are you going forward as TV writers, filmmakers or both? 

Robin: Directing is a lot of fun so we’d like to do more of it.  Getting to do a bunch of shows without having to stop and raise money for each one is a really nice aspect to the TV world.  Probably we’ll try to do both TV and film projects going forward.

Kavet: Having gone through it I understand better how difficult it is to see something all the way through, to get a major release, and next time I’d be a little more business-like in making some of the decisions.

ET: Are you two the inspiration for the writing duo of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip?

Robin: Haven’t seen it yet.  But since we’re the only writing duo in Hollywood history, it’s a good bet.