SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
The new film "Omaha" begins at dawn on a day in 2008 as father wakes his children - a young son, Charlie, and a daughter, Ella - to go on a road trip.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OMAHA")
JOHN MAGARO: (As Dad) Pretend that there is a fire in the house, and we have to get out as quick as we could. What would you take with you?
SIMON: They bring a picture of their mother. Charlie brings some toy cars, Ella, some books, and, of course, their dog. We begin to glean from half sentences that their mother has died and their home is being repossessed, and they're going to Omaha. John Magaro stars in the film directed by Cole Webley, and they both join us now from our studios in New York. Thanks so much for being with us.
MAGARO: Thank you for having us.
SIMON: Let me begin by asking you, what made you want to be a part of telling this story?
MAGARO: Well, I think anyone who sees it will know as soon as they're finished watching it. And that was pretty evident in the script that Cole sent me. It kept me turning the pages, and I fell in love with it by the end and left me shattered and devastated. And I knew right away I wanted to be a part of it.
SIMON: We see both small signs of father's abiding love and his desperation on this road trip, don't we?
MAGARO: I mean, I think that's a very common quality in parents, even when they're doing well. You know, everyone, except a very few fortunate ones, have to worry about the bills and the mortgage and, you know, keeping a budget. This is obviously much more extreme than that. But as a father myself, even though it's very different than my situation, I was able to find some sort of parallels and commonality there - that unbreaking love that you have for your children and wanting what's best for them and at times worrying that you're not capable of offering that.
SIMON: We should explain - this, of course, happens during the 2008 financial crisis when a lot of people in this country were in a bad way.
MAGARO: Yeah. And I think that's where Dad is at in this. He's pushed into an unknown place for him. So he's making a lot of decisions that aren't great. All the while, he's still trying to do the best he can. But as you watch the story, you see all the trauma inside of him.
SIMON: Let me ask you about the two young actors, Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis. They're just fantastic (laughter).
MAGARO: Yeah.
COLE WEBLEY: Amazing kids.
SIMON: Well, what was it like to work with them?
WEBLEY: You know, finding those kids was, to me, what set the movie on its path. Molly was a gem that we found when she had just moved to Los Angeles and auditioned for this movie. She's not American. She came in and just like a trained actress at, you know, 9 and 10, really, really played and personified that role of Ella.
Wyatt, on the other hand, was just the imperfect and the beauty of childhood and unbridled passion that was - well, let me just say - never bridled. And we just were able to kind of build a movie around his spontaneity - and to me, is a little bit of the magic sauce of what makes the movie and the family come alive on screen.
SIMON: Let me ask, respectfully, did you ever worry about burdening these two young people with too much emotion?
WEBLEY: Yeah. I - every day. It was important to me the kids, Molly and Wyatt, had the best kind of summer camp of making a movie. You know, I have four kids, and this was on my mind a lot. You know, I think for Wyatt, we never got into the complexity of the story, and he - it's not like he ever read the script. He really just understood the context of the journey and who these characters were. And he fell in love with the people, Molly and John Magaro. I mean, it was like he was having this make-believe and having fun.
And when there are some heavy scenes in the movie, we were sure to really break form and turn it into kind of a party as soon as we cut and really, really establish it was make-believe. You know, I'm sure that it was tough because Molly - she sourced a lot of kind of sadness of leaving her dog behind in Australia. And - but she was so trained. Her mother's an actress. She was able to kind of work between those lines, I believe. But it's something we did. We talked about it a lot, and we were worried about it every day of protecting kind of, you know, these kids from any lasting memory of that.
SIMON: John Magaro, the father in the story is, as they say, a man of few words. How do you depict what's going through his mind with so few words?
MAGARO: I mean, that's what you want to do as an actor. I'm a believer that more can be said without language than with it. So when I get a script that allows me to do that, I find that an exciting challenge. I also feel like - and I've done this before with Kelly Reichardt films, where she lives in a world of limited language, where it's a very austere world as well. And that's what this was, too. I think it trusts an audience when it's that way, because it allows them to put on their own thoughts and feelings and, you know, interpretation into the eyes of the actor. And if you're given the room by the director, which Cole did, you can say less, and it will be evident on film.
SIMON: As clips go, I've asked our producers to play (laughter) just some sounds of pure joy. And this is when the father scrapes together some last bits of cash and takes his children to the Omaha Zoo.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "OMAHA")
WYATT SOLIS: (As Charlie) Aw.
MOLLY BELLE WRIGHT: (As Ella, laughter). Charlie, can you say what?
WYATT: (As Charlie) We're going to pet them.
SIMON: You know, they see otters and zebras and giraffes, and you find yourself thinking, well, maybe they'll be all right. Maybe they have family in Omaha. Maybe he's going to a job - the father is - in Omaha - maybe, maybe, maybe.
WEBLEY: Yeah. When I hear those clips, I just feel joy. I mean, that's a great score by Christopher Bear. And I think of those kids and what we shot those days. Ultimately, this film can ask some big questions, but that wasn't why I made it. The social backdrops, the conversations about why in America this happens with such wealth. How does this happen with our communities? And those are big questions and things we should ask, but I wanted to paint the picture of a real family. And when you play those clips, I'm just so proud of those kids, what they gave for it, what John did to help humanize this fictional family, but hopefully walk away with the recognition that there are real people who are going through stuff every day.
SIMON: Cole Webley has directed, and John Magaro stars alongside two great young actors, Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis, in the new film "Omaha." Thank you both so much for being with us.
WEBLEY: Yeah. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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