"Moore Than All Right"

In the last decade, more films centered on gay people have been made now than ever before. Many of those films, like Far From Heaven, A Single Man or Chloe have the unlikely correlation of featuring actress Julianne Moore, however, she plays it all up as entirely unplanned.

“I think its coincidence,” she says, “I mean there are stories about people and I guess I’m more drawn to human interest stuff. I think it’s always a loaded question when people ask about gay filmmakers and stuff or ‘queer cinema’ or that kind of thing. I’m like I think I’m really reluctant to go there because I think it’s divisive.”

“Anytime you talk about gender politics or sexual politics or race or any of that kind of stuff, right away, you’ve put people into different camps and made them separate,” Julianne continues, “And I think mostly that we are human and that our themes are universal and we find that again and again and again.”

Whatever the case may be, the 49 year-old has continued to be a voice for the gay community as well as society at large with her latest film, the comedy/drama The Kids Are All Right. In the film, Moore plays Jules, a lesbian who along with partner Nic, played by Annette Bening, is raising a family. She says it’s the family dynamic aspect of the film that drew her most to the film.

“I think it’s a wonderful portrait of a family and more so of a long-term relationship of a middle-aged marriage,” Julianne believes, “These women have been together for almost twenty years and they’re not the same people when they met. They love each other, they’re committed to each other, they’re family, but it’s a challenging, challenging…any long-term relationship is super, super challenging.”

Julianne also notes that another thing that drew her to the film was the fact that filmmaker and co-writer Lisa Cholodenko, who is gay herself, puts all mere mention of sexuality

"Moore Than All Right"

in the film on the back burner.

“Lisa, I think, as a filmmaker and as a person, is tremendously humane and nonjudgmental and accepting of peoples’ variations and foibles and discrepancies and things,” she says of her, “I love that she doesn’t go, oh, are you straight now? And she goes no. That’s the last thing on her mind. Life is much more complicated than that than I think the movies give credit to.”

Moore says that she felt little need to research same sex families in order to play the role of Jules.

“I don’t think I needed to really talk to anybody,” she believes, “I don’t think that’s something that’s so difficult to understand. I think the movie is laid out in very human terms. Who you are to your partner? How do you connect to them, or the problems that you run into, the mistakes that you make.”

“Certainly, at this point in my life, I’ve known a lot of people, been in a lot of situations, seen, not everything, but I’m not innate for anything anymore,” Julianne continues, “I really liked Jules. I was really interested in her amorphous kind of qualities and how desperately she’s searching. I really liked that. I found her compelling.”

Julianne says she feels that same sex couples are much more commonplace in American society today than one would think and it’s become more and more of a non-issue as time passes on.

“I have lots of friends who are in same sex families and they’re not any different than heterosexual couples,” Moore notes, “It’s all the same, same stuff. That’s sort of inclusive in that. My kids live in a world where they have friends that have two dads or two moms or two dads or two moms that are split up with other partners, so it’s even more baroque iterations of modern relationships. So it’s something that’s pretty common in a younger generation right now.”

“I don’t know because I

"Moore Than All Right"

don’t see everything,” she adds, “I really don’t. I have no idea actually what’s out there in terms of that stuff, but it’s true, it does make it a non-issue. People always ask this question about whether or not movies influence culture and I say I think more than influence, they reflect it. So this movie can exist in this way with the presentation of a couple as a non-issue, because this is what’s happening in the world, now all over the United States certainly.”

Julianne says she’s instilled her sense of nonchalance about what constitutes a family with her own children.

“I don’t tell them they’re different,” she says, “They’re not. They’re not different. The families are no different. I think that’s what the beauty of it is, that these kids are growing up in a world where you might have a mom and a dad or you might have two moms or two dads and you’re the same. You are loved and cared for and sent to school and washed and dressed and all that kind of stuff. And in terms of family life, people go from kids’ houses to kids’ houses and it’s all the same sort of stuff.”

“If something is not presented, if they don’t experience it, it’s different,” Moore continues, “Kids will say, ‘Oh, yeah, so and so has two dads or so and so has two moms,’ but they don’t ask questions about it. That’s what interesting and that’s very clear. When we play the game of Life, especially when they were littler, they would say, ‘Mom, am I going to be married to a boy or a girl?’ and they would decide each time. But it wasn’t a given like that that there would be on.”

Moore says that the film’s matter-of-fact way it tells its story came from the real-life experiences of the film’s creators.

“Stuart [Blumberg], our co-writer, that’s how he and Lisa [Cholodenko], they were friends, and

"Moore Than All Right"

they were talking together about maybe working together on something,” Julianne recalls, “And Lisa was talking about kids and these two lesbian mothers.”

“Lisa was thinking about starting a family with her girlfriend, maybe using a sperm donor,” she adds, “And they’re talking about this script and Stuart was like, ‘I was a sperm donor in college.’ And this is how they kind of started writing on this.”

Julianne says that her character’s son Laser, played by Josh Hutcherson, and his desire to seek out the identity of his parents’ sperm donor was an inevitable course of the process.

“It’s not new,” Moore says, “They knew it was going to happen one of these days. That’s the nature of adoption and sperm donors and surrogacy and that kind of stuff for people. I think every parent that enters into that knows they’re making a family when the children may later say, ‘Hey, I want more information about this.’ I think these moms are no exception. They know that it’s coming one day or might come. It doesn’t mean that they welcome it, but it’s the reality of the way they created their family.”

Moore says that she enjoyed playing ping-pong with her young co-star.

“Oh, my gosh, he’s so much better than me!” she says, “The great thing is I’m not supposed to be. He’s like, ‘Right, mom, OK,’ but I did improve rather quickly. I’m not terrible, but Josh is much better than me. I warmed up pretty quickly.”

“He said, ‘Wait a minute,’ cause I really thought I was going to blow,” Julianne continues, “I thought I was going to be terrible and I adapted. He was like, ‘You’re better than I thought.’ But it wasn’t a trick, it was genuine surprise on my part.’”

Another particular aspect of the film that shouldn’t be made much ado about in terms of sexuality, according to Julianne, is when her character Jules begins having an affair with the sperm donor Paul, played

"Moore Than All Right"

by Mark Ruffalo.

“It’s an affair in the strictest sense of the word,” she believes, “What she gets from Paul is some validation. She’s someone who doesn’t have a lot of self-esteem and doesn’t know who she wants to be with. She’s parenting these kids for the last 18 years and they’re trying to figure out what direction her life is taking and she doesn’t feel particularly seen at this moment.”

“She’s really got some issues and Paul is the first one who’s saying, ‘Hey, you’re really talented. You’re so good. Look at you,’” Moore adds, “So it’s about that kind of a connection that they’re both having. In terms of it being anything more than that. It really isn’t and Jules is very, very clear that it isn’t. I think she’s enjoying the sex, but that doesn’t constitute a relationship.”

Moore says she is optimistic that despite the rocky triangle that emerges among Jules, Nic, and Paul, she’s confident that Paul will remain with the family.

“I think he’s in the family,” she believes, “I think that’s the most remarkable thing about this tale is that the kids are not finished with him. He’s not finished with those children. Those mothers are not evil. Everybody’s going to find a way to co-exist and they will. It may not be perfect, but I think it will progress.”

Finally, Julianne shares the next film released that she will be in.

“I had just finished and wrapped up a comedy with Steve Carell,” Moore reveals, “Crazy Stupid Love, that’s what it’s called, and he’s great, so tremendously gifted. The kind of person that you ask for advice, you’re like, ‘Can you help me with this?’ Really, I just adore him. He’s a wonderful, wonderful person. [It comes out] next year, sometime. I like funny, that I really do. This is special, this was really, really special.”