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Most well known for his work as the screenwriter of the painfully heartbreaking yet inspirational tale told in 2006's The Pursuit of Happyness, Steve Conrad returns to the big screen this summer as the writer and director of the new Weinstein comedy The Promotion. The movie brings to life the story of two assistant grocery store managers (Seann William Scott and John C. Reilly) in competition for one manager position. And through its telling, Conrad explores not only the crazy dynamics of competition and the quirky comedy of grocery store politics, but also the human reality of pursuing success, seeking stability, and continually learning in the process.

Blending clever comic lines with honest human emotion, the movie is one that truly acknowledges both the tragedy and comedy that is being human. It is both hilarious and touching, tragic and hopeful. And while the film may be getting mixed reviews, its ability to mix both smart humor and relatable human drama is one that has quickly elevated Conrad to the top of my list of directors and writers to watch.

Courtesy of a San Francisco publicist, I was able to sit down and talk with Conrad while he was in town for a local screening of the film. During our thirty minute chat, we spoke not only about the film, but about the life and the world that inspired it, the thoughts that went into it, and even the strange and interesting meaning behind haircuts and handshakes.

HollywoodJesus: First I of all, I loved the movie. I thought it was great. It made me very happy. And I also think you did a good job of just bringing the realism of that sort of difficult situation to life&ellips;

Steve Conrad: Thank you. You know, I was aiming for happy. And almost every other person I've talked to concentrates on the despair.

HJ: I mean, it is despair, but there's this hope that is also there.

SC: Oh without a doubt, it's all that I was really trying to write about. But in order to get to hope, you can't just start there. You have to wind up there. And you have to sort of earn a realistic way to it, like live inside of hope. So, I needed both sides of it&ellips; I mentioned this before, but it was a real life event that made me want to write the story. It was something in a [grocery store parking] lot. And I really came to admire this kid that I saw, trying to perform the task of asking a gang to get off the lot. You know, it didn't work. But, he didn't give up. He went back to work. And I just wondered, what was it about his goals that would allow him to undergo this sort of challenge every day, and a rewardless sort of challenge? So, I started the story to give him an ending that had some hope and some ugliness to it. So yeah, that's really cool. I've been surprised not to hear about that yet.

HJ: I think it's a very inspiring story. And I think the idea of needing these goals to get through things is so true. Do you have any thoughts on what some of those goals might be for all of us? Do you have any goal in your life that you look to to get through things? When you have troubles in your work, when you have a hard day, when you deal with situations that you'd rather not...

SC: Oh yeah, sure. You mean like days when you get like a zero start?

HJ: Or you're on set and nothing's going right.

SC: On those days it becomes a charmless job. It has many charms ordinarily. The most pronounced one being that you get to have a job where you just deal in make-believe all day—which is really childish in the very best sense of the world. You can just make things up all day, and just play around with your friends. And it's a joy. So, in that sense it's a great job. But when things don't go your way, and you have lost your control over it—whether that be to read bad criticism or to watch boxoffice failures—it becomes kind of a charmless job. Like you have the opposite of that make-believe. You have your work being evaluated by other human strangers, who, I don't know, sometimes have their own interests in mind.

So you go from being in this really childish environment to being in this really adult environment. Getting through the second one is the challenge. But, I guess that it's the same for me as it might be for anybody else. You use it as a means to create a private life that provides you with meaning and rewards, like taking care of your loved ones&ellips; Many people my age have found themselves in the positions of having to take care of their parents. But what a reward that is. I mean what a beautiful thing to be able to do. Seann may not tell you as much—maybe I'm speaking out of turn—but I know that Seann plays a large part in the functioning of his family life.

HJ: I've heard about that.

SC: He's got terrific brothers and an amazing mom. And they spend a lot of time together. So Seann's able to fly them with him to places. Like his Mom's going to be here tonight, for the screening. So Seann's able to add some charm to his life because he works hard. And his mom gets to see more of the world than she might because Seann works hard. And I know that of all the things that have come Seann's way that are meaningful to him, that's the most. And I don't have a life that has that kind of exaggeration that Seann's does, but it's been really meaningful to me that I've been able to pay for school for my kids. And like in the movie, pay for a house in Chicago where we don't hear our neighbors.

Most of my grown-up life, I've shared walls. And that means sharing your intimate moments with strangers. And I don't mean intimate to mean sexual. Reading a book is intimate, and if you can't get lost in a book 'cause your neighbors are drunk and making noise, then you're deprived of peace and quiet. If you're deprived of peace and quiet, then you, like, belong to somebody else. So, just working hard enough to earn enough to be able to create a little world for your loved ones, has been my biggest reward. 'Cause it wasn't always true; I went through a really cold stretch where I was just deeply deeply in debt. And I could really only get myself out of it. And that was really despairing.

HJ: This was before you had a family or when you had a family?

SC: Early in my family. I had a newborn, and my wife was in school. So, they were just lean challenging times that we got through. But we got through&ellips;

HJ: A few days after I saw your film, I was drinking some tea, one of those tea bags with the quotes on the tag. And there was one from Booker T. Washington, who I think Seann mentions?

SC: No, he mentions George Washington Carver, who has a similar place in history, in that the two of them were both human males born into more challenging circumstances that I will ever encounter, but they were both able to achieve. So I could have swapped them.

HJ: Well, the quote was: "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome."

SC: God, that is fantastic. I should have started the movie out with that quote. I've never seen that before.

HJ: Do you feel like that's true? Do you feel like obstacles contribute to what we are able to do, to what you have been able to do in your life?

SC: Oh absolutely, yeah; they are only who I am, what you get through and what you get past. I was a struggling writer in two ways. I was struggling to make a living, but I was also struggling to find something I could share with an audience that had any value. I was writing really personal stories that I couldn't earn anybody's interest by. Then when I started to write about the obstacles that I'd encountered in life, I found a way to connect to other people's lives that was really missing in my writing life before. So, I'm absolutely a creature of that. Looking at my obstacles without giving up, but trying to figure out some way to go around, go under, go over, go through. I think I'm writing about each one of those ways of dealing with your obstacles. Like in my new stuff, someone mentioned to me last night that analogy. It was my brother Mike. He said that in one of your stories, the guy goes right through them, in another one of your stories, he tries to go under it. It was really interesting.

HJ: Yeah, because we never stop running into obstacles, and you have to keep figuring out how to deal with them.

SC: No matter who you are.

HJ: I'm curious: The Promotion is very much about success—what success is, and almost kind of redefining it through its story. How do you define success?

SC: I guess, if had to come up with something, it would be something close to being able to be your own person, in the sense that you don't find your happiness by, like, obeying someone else. I just recognize these systems here, that sort of ask you to be part of team. And you're taught that a lot as a kid: like, that teamwork equals success. But I've found most of the meaning in my life from not being on a team, from resisting the instinct to be cool. I'll give you an example—Seann's haircut in The Promotion. I was aiming for the worst haircut of all time, in movie history. I didn't get it 'cause Forrest Gump's is pretty bad, and Sling Blade. But the worst one of all time— Did you ever see Regarding Henry?

HJ: It's been a while. I'm trying to think of what the haircut looked like.

SC: Harrison Ford plays a really successful New York businessman, who's smart, and then he gets shot trying to stop a convenience store robbery, and then he gets dumb. But somewhere after he gets dumb, he starts wearing his hair in this kind of Mo Howard bangs haircut, which I guess is supposed to symbolize a stupid person. So, he starts wearing his hair like a dumb guy. That's the worst haircut of all time.

HJ: That's what you wanted Seann to look like&ellips;

SC: No, no. What they were trying to convey, I think, is that this person lost the attention he used to pay to being judged superficially. And with Seann, I wanted a life that made such demands on him—which is essentially just paying his bills—that he didn't really have time to think about the way he might be being perceived. So, I asked him to just wear this really terrible haircut. And weirdly, success to me means, like, being able to wear a haircut like that and not feel like you're being judged by anybody&ellips;

HJ: I like that. Now, another kind of central concept of The Promotion is the idea of this almost all-consuming American rat race and just how difficult it is to exist inside of that. In other interviews, you've talked about your belief that how hard we work does not necessarily equal success, this job, or this amount of money. Is that a frustrating reality for you to believe in? And how do you deal with that?

SC: Oh, absolutely. There's only one way. And it's just not giving up. You... create a sense of meaning that doesn't rely on winning the lottery... you can create a more peaceful environment out of your household. It could be like owning a pet. In this movie I did, The Weatherman, of all the things it's about, for me it's about why people have hobbies. I did an interview at UCLA, and they asked me what that movie was about. And I said it was about how a guy finds a hobby, and then how that hobby provides meaning to his life. I think everybody was surprised that that's really what I was writing about. But it's essentially only what I was writing about. But that hobby thing for me, it just means you choose to kind of control your life a little bit, rather than letting life control you. And you can be controlled by our myths, totally controlled by our myths, like we have all these American myths I think should be scrutinized. Like, early to bed, early to rise, that myth. It's not true, it simply isn't true.

In order to make your way here, you've got to depend on some faith, for sure. In the movie business you just meet wealthy people who pay for movies, wealthy actors. I used to think that the income-to-intelligence quotient, that they were related somehow, but I lost that apprehension a long time ago. Lucky guy-to-money is for real. But then, I also realized something else, which was heartening, 'cause that was disheartening. Money-to-happiness isn't true. But there's an underthing to that, too&ellips; if you don't have money to buy the things that you need, there is little room in your life for joy or cheer or privacy. And it's the world that I was writing about when I wrote The Pursuit of Happyness, and it's essentially the world that I stayed in for The Promotion&ellips; Debt, it just steals all of your quiet moments; it steals your sleep, it steals your distraction. If you can pay the bills without running into debt, then I think you're having a successful American life. Then it's time to like buy a guitar and play the guitar, or it's time to, like, buy a cat... a way that that can give you peace and quiet&ellips; but if you can't do that, I really think that there's no hope of being happy. If you owe $11,000, there goes your joy. It's so easy to fall into that trap now&ellips;

HJ: You mentioned just now these American myths, and in the movie you very much deal with the whole notion of the American rat race—this push to be at the top, this almost overzealous drive for the best job and the biggest salary. Do you think this needs to be changed? And what do you think would need to happen to change it?

SC: Yeah, I do. I think family life could change so much of our sense of what's valuable. In John's case, he wants to learn how to dance with his wife. And in their version of reality, they have to go and pay for dancing lessons. And dancing lessons meaning that you're going to go and buy lessons from someone who's trying to run a business that sells dancing lessons. But there's another way to learn how to dance, and that's to learn how to dance from your parents who knew how to dance. My parents don't know how to dance 'cause all they did was work. So, I was raised by people who worked primarily. We didn't have time to learn how to play the guitar or sing. Little was handed down to me except a real appreciation for Literature that I got from my mom and my dad.

But I think if there was a family life [like] I'm trying to create in my life, which has, like, charm in it, with the arts. Like my kids play music, and they're learning how to dance. We're just trying to make a little world where there's free fun, and not fun you have to pay for. We live in Chicago, in a large part, because our awesome park is free, and our zoo is free. It just struck me as a city where there was some community spirit that wasn't tied totally to making a buck. And then we're trying in the day-to-day running of our household to just create a little orbit of its own where we have our favorite movies that I own, and we watch them repeatedly. And then—my wife is responsible for this more than I am—we get our books from the library and not from a bookstore. So, my kids will read them in a hungry way 'cause they know we're not going to keep them forever&ellips; just turn the volume way way down when we go into our house. I'm trying to teach my son that he will get such great reward from knowing how to play the guitar versus playing video games. He'll be able to play the guitar when he's 70, but he probably won't want to play video games, I hope, when he's 70. There's a way that all this stuff ads to a fuller, happier human being.

So, we just try to pay attention to that way of spending the hours of our day. And it has very little to do with money&ellips; once the bills are paid. But I really make that distinction, 'cause if they're not paid, nothing else matters except that. The level of challenge just goes through the roof, and it deprives you of everything. And there are fewer of us who are free from that than there used to be. When I was a kid, you'd get a little help from your mom and dad, but somehow those days are long gone.

HJ: You've mentioned things you do with your kids and your family, and a large part of The Promotion is about these men living and working as a part of their families. Do you feel like your sense of contentment, of value, of what your life is about and what gives it meaning is something that changes when you have a family?

SC: Yeah, sure. You start to live outside like your body. Before you have a family, you live in this universe of one where you're definitely the most important person in it. But then, you have a family, and all of a sudden, the insults that your son takes or your daughter takes, they hurt more than the ones you take. So you feel all these blows from the world that aren't landing on you; they're landing on your family. And then you feel this happiness that happens to them, too, that isn't aimed right at you. It's funny, people kind of look at having kids as if it's going to narrow your life, but it's only made mine more charming.

HJ: For this film or your body of work in general, what do you want to be giving to people? What do you want them to come away with after they've watched one of your films?

SC: Well, I definitely know with The Promotion, I want to have conveyed a sense of joy at what might have seemed like a small accomplishment, but if you live it through the lives of our characters, you will feel like it's a really significant and very important accomplishment. I was hoping that people might find the occasion to celebrate some of their own personal achievements in a world that is different than the world of superheroes or bank robbers, in a world they might recognize. But it's also extreme and exaggerated, because of the urgency of it all.

You know, this movie used to be called Quebec. I always liked it, 'cause it just felt a little more personal. And then, we couldn't clear it, so we had to come up with a different title. We thought of The Promotion. And I thought, in some ways, it's a little too literal, we could find a more artful title. But then I got home, and I went to do this check, see if someone has this title. And I just figured there would have been 15 movies called The Promotion, like from all over the world&ellips; In the history of worldwide filmmaking, in 100 years, no one's ever made a movie, even a short, called The Promotion. And I thought, wow, it's essentially how most of us spend most of the waking hours of our day.

HJ: Trying for this promotion.

SC: Right. And for some reason, it's gone sort of unexamined. It's a hell of a presumption to think we made a definitive version of it. We didn't. But I do think that we made a movie that demonstrates how important and what a high it can be to have these expectations that you can meet and come through in a manner that continues to make you proud about the sort of person you are and how you treat other people. And it's the reason that I came up with the whole gymnastics thing, just to try to get under it in a way that you just felt this sense of glory that is usually reserved for like Rocky movies that can be farfetched. Well, I thought there might be like a movie that's not farfetched that makes you feel like that. It's when I'm most awake, in these more urgent moments&ellips; like when you don't want to miss somebody's birthday, or that joy you feel at finding that perfect birthday gift for someone who's really important to you and how you can't wait to give it to them. It feels huge. So I wanted to do that.

HJ: At the very end of the movie, Seann's character says, "Was I the better man? I don't know, but I felt like a man." What does that mean to you? What does it mean to you to be a man, in work, in the movie business, in your family life, in life in general?

SC: That's a bigger question than I was prepared for, and probably one I'm going to continue to try to always figure out.

HJ: It made me think of how we conduct ourselves in relation to other people.

SC: Yeah, the line before that is, "At the end of this thing, I still think I could shake his hand." You know the handshake is fascinating. Do you know how it started?

HJ: No, I don't.

SC: This might be an urban myth. Apparently it started as a way for people who met in the field of battle, when they were going to negotiate a truce, to figure out if the other person had a knife in their hand.

HJ: So it really wasn't very trusting.

SC: No, it wasn't at all&ellips; But what we did with it is we turned it into this weird social convention. One day I was at the bus stop, and I met this dude, and we shook hands. And I thought, what a weird little thing to grasp and then squeeze another grown man's hand. It's such a strange thing to do. And probably I would prefer not to do that, 'cause it's so intimate and weird. But somehow it caught on. We've continued to use it as a way of taking the edge off of life, as a way of saying, through this weird little symbol of squeezing each other's hands, we all live here together. And if we forget that, it going to be a cruder, harder, worse world. So, I will squeeze your hand, and you will squeeze mine, and then let's see what happens.

So, I just became fascinated with the handshake concept. It's huge in my new movie. I have this movie called Make a Fist, and it's got some action aspects to it, it's got a lot of fighting in it. But it reduces to this question of, like, we have hands that we use to shake and then also to make fists with&ellips; It would be lovely if when we shook each other's hands it was an earnest gesture of basic goodwill. That sounds good to me. And how nice to choose that as a gesture in life, to say, you can look me in the eye, I'm going to touch you, and in that touch, I'm going to say to you, I respect you, I'm going to work around you and I'm going to work with you, but I'm not going to go through you. I think that's what a handshake says.

HJ: I'm going to think about a handshake now every time I give one.

And with a handshake and a smile, we said goodbye.