Q&A: Writer-Director Chris Weitz on What He’s Learned from Growing Up (and Older) in Film

THE CREATOR scribe takes me on a tour through his family’s long Hollywood history, the evolution of his craft, and the balance he’s finally found as a filmmaker

“Do you think that’s the silent film actor Conrad Veidt, star of THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, standing next to your grandfather in the photo?”

This is not kind of email I send every day, but, for a cinephile like me, it made my morning. The B&W photograph it was referring to was one of several that filmmaker Chris Weitz sent me to include in my latest artist-on-artist conversation, each a little piece of his family’s long history in Hollywood. This history goes back to the nineteen-twenties and includes an eclectic line-up of international characters ripped from a Wes Anderson film. It culminates — at least for now — with Chris and his brother Paul Weitz, who together broke into the movie business as screenwriters before directing AMERICAN PIE (1999) together. The high school sex comedy — which I adore, as you’ll read below — led to the pair writing and directing a handful of other pictures together, including ABOUT A BOY (2002), before they began working apart (they still run a company and produce together…