JH: Faber.

HJ: That's right. Faber. Sorry.

JH: Named after the pencil that was on my desk—Faber pencils. Had the first name, and I'm just looking around like, Faber, that's sounds great, done. I have to like it, and it has to be easy to type. 'Cause I'm not the greatest typist. Nothing with a "q."

Where did the idea for him come from? Ultimately, I really wanted to write a story about fathers and sons—fathers who are missing, fathers who have left, surrogate fathers, fathers who have died&ellips; if there's a heavenly father, what's up there? With your relationship there? So, towards that end, I needed someone who would kind of unify all those stories, and could be the person who was asking the central questions, and to whom the central questions were being asked.

That being said—although that sounds far more lofty than anything I had in mind I think when I sat down and struggled through a page at a time—I also wanted to make fun of New Age psychobabble. And I've read a lot of those books. Some of them are really good. Even the ones that are terrible, you can find something in them, right? Oh, and let me be clear, I'm not like Mr. Spiritual Book Guy. Every film festival I go to, people are like, "I just read this book and I really want to talk to you about it." It's like, "Hey man, you know what? I've read other books too. Not just these." I like A Course in Miracles—terrible title, amazing book, virtually impenetrable, written by a woman who found herself getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning and just writing this stuff down. She was then (and died) as a complete atheist, and there's no way for a human being to on their own write down what she did. It's just amazing.

HJ: Was that an inspiration for—

JH: Yeah, that idea, the irony of that. A Course in Miracles, the theme of it is: nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists, herein lies the peace of God. It's a thousand pages long. It's stunning. And to write that and not believe in anything at all? Those two states coexisting was fascinating to me&ellips; and then I like to tell jokes.

HJ: Going back to fathers, you mentioned fathers was a major theme in the movie—fathers who have left, fathers who have died, a possible heavenly father. Was there a certain statement you were trying to make about fathers or father-child relationships in the meeting of all those different fathers?

JH: The only statement that I'm attempting to make in the movie is this—whatever God is, it seems to me that He works through other people. That's all I know. And "know" is in quotes. Although people talk a lot about God in the movie, I don't want to see&ellips; some "godly" movie. Those are usually totally boring to me. I want to see a fun, entertaining movie. Neither I nor the movie make any definitive statements about anything, because how could I? What? Does John Hindman know something all the sudden? So, I wanted to show three people who get better because they know each other. If you look at the movie, you have people at every stage of life—you have the little kid, Alex, who's, like, seven, then you've got Lou Taylor Pucci's and Kat Dennings' characters who are in their early twenties, you've got Lauren Graham, Jeff Daniels, then you have Kris's dad. Showing all those people at every stage—without there being an infant—getting what they need, though not what they thought they wanted, from another person in the story, enabling them to get where they need to go.

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