Courteney Cox Finds Her Groove in the Director's Chair

Courteney Cox

Courteney Cox has spent so much time on camera in Friends, Cougar Town, and opposite her ex-husband David Arquette in the Scream series, that when she walks into a restaurant she's more than familiar, she's nearly a, well, friend.

The slender, smoky-eyed beauty, 49, shuffled over to a back table at a New York eatery in a painfully high pair of gladiator heels she clearly didn't purchase on the mommy aisle of Marshall's. Cox admitted she'd been up until the wee hours the night before at the Tribeca Film Festival premiere party for her feature directing debut, Just Before I Go. Today she was grabbing a salad between Tribeca screenings and smiling for a Midwestern tourist who popped by the table.

Cox has directed before: 10 episodes of Cougar Town and a made-for-TV movie, too. With this film, she produced and directed a quirky dark comedy that feels like her wheelhouse. Written by prolific TV scribe David Flebotte (Desperate Housewives), the story follows one Ted Morgan, a suicidal loser (Seann William Scott) as he slinks back to his hometown with a modest revenge bucket list only to find love and more than enough reasons to live.

Cox began the interview by grilling me: Who was that singing at the beginning of the movie?

[Blank stare] Pink?
That was Coco singing Elvis at the beginning of the movie.

Your daughter, right? Was Coco in the movie, too?
She sprays David [Arquette] with the hose.

So it was a full-on family affair, casting your husband, at the time, as the sad-sack father of five and cuckold.
David is a fantastic actor. He was in a movie called Johns and he was so great. I just knew how to pull something different out of him than maybe you've seen: he's funny, desperate and then really grounded. And full of sadness. He's a really complex person and there’s so much going on and he has such a good heart and that comes through.

Why didn't you take a role, maybe the one that Kate Walsh plays as Morgan's perverse sister-in-law?
I preferred to watch the actors and tell the story. Given our tight production schedule, we didn't have time for me to be in something. We would have needed playback. Cougar Town is different. When I directed Garret Dillahunt, who plays Ted Morgan's brother, in the TV movie TalHotBlond, the worst scene was the one I was in.

Why?
Because there was no one behind the camera looking out for me.

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Given all the actors that you've worked with, and could cast in the lead, why Scott?
His passion for this part was beyond everything that I could imagine. He really connected. This is why he wanted to be an actor. I'm not saying that he is Ted Morgan but he's more Morgan than Stifler [in American Pie]. He's reactive. He's subtle. He's dry. And he's not trying to be funnier than he is.

Considering your sitcom experience, how do you translate that comic timing as an actress to that as a director?
Being on a comedy so long, I'm used to letting actors just go and making the mood on the set freeing. We had very limited days to shoot, so I tried to let people be free and ad lib and take those moments and make the comedy flourish by cutting up. I also have to allow the actors the space to do drama, of not being afraid to push the envelope.

Speaking of envelope-pushing, Walsh has a perverse riff where her character gets up in the night and wanders into her brother-in-law's room and raises her robe and … it's something I've never seen before in a movie.
It's perverse. Her character is a sleep masturbator. Kate jumped in and went for it. I never had to say, 'Can you be louder?' She got the fact that she was playing a wife in a repressed situation and she was acting out. It's so original — and touching, too.

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No pun intended. How do you go about getting people to follow your instructions: Are you aggressive? Passive aggressive? Gently persuasive?
The most important thing is to be comfortable and be myself. I don't have a refined style. I say what's on my mind. I'm very dry and a little sarcastic. I can empathize with the actors, whether they need space or need to be encouraged. The actors trusted me. It’s just finding the balance. It helps when you cast people you know aren't going to be an a—hole.

When will you direct another feature?
I don't have anything right now. I'm not going to do action, or otherworldly action. My favorite movie was The Way We Were.

Now that you’ve directed a feature and gotten clout in TV as an actress-director, do you see the situation for women in Hollywood is improving?
Everything’s changing. We raise our kids differently. I see the confidence that Coco has. At 10 years old, she'll enter a room and completely take over. I had to fight against my own intimidation. She’s just not that speak-when-spoken-to little girl of our generation.

Photo Credit: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP