Sweet, satirical 'Dreamz'

Filmmaker Paul Weitz goes from 'American Pie' to 'American Dreamz,' staying funny all the way

"American Dreamz" begins with the president of the United States reading the newspaper for the first time in four years. He is stunned by what he reads, by the welter of big events occurring across what suddenly appears to be a wide, wide world.

Equipped with a taste of knowledge, the president (Dennis Quaid being very airhead-y) assumes an interest in current events and holes up in his room to read more. His chief of staff (Willem Dafoe, hilariously transformed into a Dick Cheney look-alike) worries. To put the president back into the public spotlight, he gets him booked as a guest judge on the television talent contest "American Dreamz," which is captained by a bitter, self-hating judge (Hugh Grant spoofing "American Idol's" Simon Cowell), and where a showtune-happy terrorist lurks.

Written and directed by Paul Weitz, the topical satire takes comic swipes at the worrisome state of American politics and culture.

Weitz and his brother Chris co-directed "American Pie" and co-wrote "Antz," "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" and "About a Boy," which they also co-directed. Last year Paul went solo, writing and directing "In Good Company" with Quaid and Topher Grace. He also writes plays, several of which are staged off Broadway.

A big heart is a trademark of the Weitz films. Paul Weitz prefers to temper comic cynicism with authentic humanism, and in "Dreamz" he mingles the stings of satire with the poignancy of the human comedy. "You're actually supposed to care about the characters," Weitz says by phone from Los Angeles.

Weitz, 40, considers his new film politically loaded and possibly offensive to some. He recently screened "American Dreamz" for an audience in the Republican stronghold of Orange County, Calif.

How did that screening go?

It's a very odd movie because large parts of it play like a straight-out comedy. That's the vocabulary of the film, more than any movie I've done since "American Pie." Yet within that there's some fairly edgy political and social critiques. So it's very interesting to see where people draw the line about what they're going to laugh at. We truly had no idea whether people would walk out of the theater or not.

But that certainly was not the case. In fact, it's almost disturbing because one of the characters is a really incompetent terrorist who loves showtunes. He's sent off to Orange County, where he waits to be activated. He becomes a contestant on "American Dreamz," which puts him in a position where he has a chance to blow up the president, who's going to be a guest judge on the show. All that stuff the audience had no problem with.

How do you think it will play in Texas?

I think people will get a hoot out of it. Comedy can be a pressure release so you can think about things in a slightly different way. The best quote I've heard about the movie came from a guy in a focus group. He said, "I stress out about the issues in this movie all the time, so it was really great to laugh at them for a couple of hours."

It seems like you're taking a whack at the whole zeitgeist and the strange superficiality of American culture.

The movie's called "American Dreamz" and it's spelled with a "z" not only because it's the title of a TV series in the movie, but also because it's a denigration of the whole concept of dreams. Having a dream is the core of American identity. It's the indisputably great thing about America. My question in doing the movie is: If we are all having these dreams, does it make it impossible to deal with reality? There are a lot of situations in the world and life that aren't black and white and you can't just wish them away. You can't just wish that Iraq would be ready to have a democracy. You can't just wish that if you remove a dictator everybody's going to rise up and applaud.

And with the movie you're conflating those particular dreams with the delusional dreams of stardom that consume us.

Exactly. We are supposedly a country at war, but we're all going about watching "American Idol" and having not all that different a time than if we weren't at war. I observe the weird juxtaposition of reading the newspaper and then tuning into "American Idol" and getting really upset when Constantine gets voted off, and then wondering where my head was at. But in a way, that's also the salvation of the country, our level of optimism.

You didn't write this film with your brother Chris. Are you guys divorcing as a writing team?

Yeah. I did "In Good Company" on my own as well. There came a point after "About a Boy" where Chris didn't especially want to make films of the same medium-small scale. Obviously the most important thing is we're brothers and we love each other. But we started to feel the pressures of work were making it impossible to hang out and be good friends. Also, there's simply things I'm interested in that he's not interested in, and you can't drag someone into it.

In 2003, your brother told me you two were leaning more and more toward drama. "Our movies get less and less funny as we go along," he said.

I don't think that's the case anymore. To be honest, this is by far the most serious film that I've been involved with. But it also happens to have the most laughs since "American Pie." It's utterly idiosyncratic. I can't imagine anybody else making this in the studio system. I can't imagine anyone wanting to make this movie.

Do you feel any way responsible for the glut of junky teen-sex films that "American Pie" has inspired?

I really love "American Pie." It came out at an interesting time, right after the Columbine killings, when people were blaming film and popular culture for the degradation of American youth. They started cracking down on kids going to see R-rated movies, including those rated R for sexuality. It brought into question American's attitudes toward sexuality.

I really stand behind "American Pie" because I think it empowers its female characters. Even though it's about four dumb guys trying to lose their virginity, the female characters are always in control of the situation and there's some acknowledgement that a girl should be able to enjoy sex as much as a boy, that it's not just about fulfilling male needs. I really care about that film. If it spawned any bad films, I do apologize.