As it is, “The Intouchables,” opening in limited release in the United States today (5/25/12), has sold more than 20 million tickets in France – in a country with a population of 60 million. When you factor out children, the percentage of people who have seen it is even higher.

It’s a figure that still boggles the minds of Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, the writer-directors of “The Intouchables.” They’ve had hits in France before – but none that sold more than two million tickets. And none of their films has been a hit outside of their own country.

“We’re more surprised everyday by news of its international release,” Toledano, 40, says, sitting in a conference room in the Tribeca offices of The Weinstein Company, which is releasing “The Intouchables” in the U.S. “The French response to the film was completely disproportionate to the size of the country – but I was even more surprised by the response in countries like Korea, Germany, Poland and Israel. Korea – that’s a country we don’t know at all. Over the past 10 or 15 years, French films have had no success in Korea. We’re surprised that this film has touched people so far away from France.”

The film is the second-highest-grossing French film in France’s history, behind the 2008 comedy, “Welcome to the Sticks.” Based on a true story, “The Intouchables” tells the story of Philippe (Francois Cluzet), a quadriplegic who hires a Senegalese immigrant named Driss (Omar Sy) as his caregiver. Driss, just out of prison for robbery, seems an unlikely choice – but he and Philippe develop a bond that goes beyond employer-employee, a friendship between two people who otherwise are marginalized by society.

The real-life characters on whom the story is based were the scion of a wealthy champagne-making family and Abdel, an Algerian immigrant. The fact that the directors changed the character from a North African to a sub-Saharan had to do with the relationship the directors had with Sy, a popular French comic actor with whom they had worked previously.

To French audiences, they say, an immigrant is an immigrant, regardless of color: “In real life, Omar has the same past as Abdel, in terms of his experience coming to France from Africa,” Nakache says. “For us, it was about the story – and we thought about Omar for that character.”

Adds Toledano, “In France, they are both in the same social group, which is referred to as ‘the young of the projects.’ And that social group is 90 percent Arab and black. To the French, there is no consequence to changing his country, if you have a good actor. In France and Europe, no one cares about that.”

But, even before its release, politically correct American critics were applying their own standard to the film, with a Variety critic accusing the film of turning Driss into an “Uncle Tom” character. The directors reject that notion, saying that Americans bring a different perspective to issues of race – or, in this case, see an issue of race where there is none.

“Black characters have a special meaning in the U.S.,” Toledano says. “Race is an ongoing question in America. The attack from a journalist about stereotypical images really hurt us. If anything, it’s a movie that shows no hierarchy in the relationship. Their relationship is very pragmatic; they each give the other something.”

“For us, this is like a fairy tale about contemporary society,” Nakache adds. Continues Toledano, “It was important for us to have a real story in this period of economic crisis. People want to laugh about something they can connect with.”

The film was bought for American distribution by Harvey Weinstein, based on a trailer, before the film had even been released in France. Now Weinstein’s company has plans to make an English-language version, with Colin Firth mentioned to play Philippe.

“The idea of remaking it is probably a problem of subtitles for American audiences,” Toledano says. “I think that, if people will come see the original, that would be enough. And they do have an opportunity to see ours first. We trust Harvey; he’s our partner. We think they’ll do something close to the original. But we’re curious how the American audience will respond to the original. It’s a big honor to have it released in America – that means a lot.”

He pauses, chuckles, then says, “Then I’d probably have spent my whole life going, ‘I wonder if I could have been a comedian.’”

He smiles – an expression that is equal parts kindness and subversion. Sitting in the lobby lounge of the 92nd Street Y-Tribeca, he’s a compact guy in a sweater, glasses and snap-brim cap – a guy who could be somebody’s dad (which he is). He’s just answered questions after a screening of his film, “God Bless America,” and he’s happy just to have gotten the chance to direct films at all.

“To make the films I want, I just have to live within my means and scale down my lifestyle – and be with somebody who’s cool with that,” he says.

“God Bless America,” available on VOD, opened today (5/11/12) in limited theatrical release. The film, Goldthwait’s latest, is a brutally funny takedown of contemporary pop-culture. Inspired by what Goldthwait refers to as a marathon viewing of the reality show “My Super Sweet 16,” it attacks everything from obnoxious shock jocks to angry TV talkers to the entitlement society that too much reality TV and self-esteem training has bred.

From Glenn Beck to TMZ to “American Idol,” no one is safe from Goldthwait’s razor-edged wit, which is informed by his unhappiness at the kind of things that pass for news in the world of the 24-hour news cycle. Indeed, he says, it seeps into our lives, whether we’re interested or not.

“Every week there’s a different equivalent of Charlie Sheen having a breakdown,” Goldthwait, 49, says. “I knew about Kim Kardashian getting married – and then getting divorced – and there’s no reason I should. I don’t have hostility toward Kim Kardashian – just toward the people who take that stuff seriously. Imagine being a grown adult and making a living reporting on the comings and goings of Snooki.”

In fact, a TMZ camera crew showed up one night while Goldthwait was filming a scene from “God Bless America” and tried to goad him into making a scene of his own for their cameras by asking, “Bobcat, how does it feel to be a has-been?”

To which Goldthwait calmly replied, “Which is worse – being a has-been or being the guy interviewing a has-been?”

Still, Goldthwait doesn’t want people to misconstrue what he’s saying: “Young people probably think I’m saying, ‘Don’t watch this stuff,’ but I’m not. I’m saying that people need to talk to each other and to really talk about themselves. Don’t just post a comment somewhere. Talk – instead of shouting at me with emoticons. Pick up a paper and read things that you wouldn’t necessarily click on if you were online.”

He pauses, chuckles again, and says, “I sound like the old guy saying, ‘Get off my lawn.’”

Goldthwait, a Syracuse native, broke through in the early 1980s with a group of comics – including Emo Phillips, Jerry Seinfeld, Judy Tenuta and the late Sam Kinison – who rode a revival of reenergized and inventive stand-up comedy. He began landing acting jobs – in films like “One Crazy Summer,” “Burglar” and, most visibly, the “Police Academy” comedies – while continuing his stand-up career.

His stand-up persona was, at a minimum, distinctive. His hair and eyes in wild disarray, he blended a mix of growls, yelps and shrieks with pointed observations about the world around him. But the persona – the guy who screamed and looked like he was having some sort of fit or seizure onstage – eventually got in the way of the material.

Goldthwait still does stand-up on occasion, principally to support himself while making movies: “But I jettisoned the persona a few years ago,” he says. “I wrote an act that was mostly story-telling.”

There are those among his contemporaries who still work the comedy circuit: “A lot of them are still on the road – and you can make a living,” he says. “They’re like classic-rock bands, playing state fairs. I could do that; but so many places just want you to be a nostalgia act.”

He launched himself in 1992 as a film director with “Shakes the Clown,” which a critic referred to (and Martin Scorsese once referenced) as “the ‘Citizen Kane’ of alcoholic clown movies.” He subsequently directed 2006’s “Sleeping Dogs Lie,” which he jokingly refers to as “the dog blowjob movie,” and 2009’s “World’s Greatest Dad,” which starred his long-time friend Robin Williams.

But he has no illusions about his ability to crack the mainstream with movies as dark, smart and edgy as his.

“When I first had a movie at Sundance (“Sleeping Dogs Lie”), I had meetings with a lot of people with production companies, who had projects they wanted me to do,” he says. “But I think it’s kind of clear that I have to stay out of the studio system. I can’t imagine that they’re in a big hurry for me to join.”

He’s also spent considerable time directing live TV, including Comedy Central’s “The Man Show” (which starred Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla) and “The Jimmy Kimmel Show.”

“That prepared me to make movies on this budget,” he says. “When you’re on the floor, you’re making split-second decisions. Now I’m quicker to make decisions because I know what I want.”

His goal – aside from making a good movie – is simply to make something that does well enough to permit him to make another one. He hopes to make a film based on the Kinks’ album, “Schoolboys in Disgrace” and has several other scripts in various stages of readiness.

“Sometimes I watch my films and to me, they’re all flawed,” he says. “You just hope you’re getting better. I don’t know what I’ve learned from the past ones. I just hope to keep writing and making all different kinds of movies. The people I look up to make all different kinds – but you always know who made those films.”

“I have three or four balls in the air right now – and I’m usually writing two or three scripts all the time,” Linklater, a still-boyish 51, says, sitting in a Manhattan hotel. “I have a huge backlog of projects – probably eight or nine that are viable. I used to be able to dig in my heels about what I wanted to do next. Now, it’s about whichever of the three or four projects I have ready to go can get financing.”

“Bernie,” based on a true-crime story from a small Texas town, is a film Linklater knew he wanted to make when he first read the Texas Monthly story about the case in 1998. He attended the trial of Bernhardt Tiede, the mild-mannered assistant funeral director charged with murdering Marjorie Nugent, the rich widow who was his companion, and even visited Tiede in jail after he was convicted.

“But the movie didn’t happen because, in 2000, when I wrote it, no one popped into my mind in terms of casting,” Linklater says, “so it wasn’t on my fast track.”

After Linklater made “The School of Rock” in 2003, he mentioned the script to the film’s star, Jack Black: “Having worked with Jack, I thought there was an element in Jack that would dial into Bernie, that Jack could relate to,” Linklater says. “Once he and Shirley (MacLaine) and Matthew (McConaughey) signed on, we had enough steam to get it made.”

The film tells a true story and was shot in Carthage, Texas, the small town where the real events occurred. It even incorporates real residents of the town, talking to the camera about Bernie (though most of their remarks are scripted).

“This story reflected a lot of what my own small-town life was,” Linklater says. “I think about my mom and her friends. There’s always a lot of personality behind their opinions. So that gossiping group is like a Greek chorus, at the conceptual-storytelling level. With Bernie gone and Mrs. Nugent dead, these people were all that was left to talk about their take on the story and the characters. And believe me – in Carthage, everybody has an opinion about whether Bernie killed her or not.” (In fact, Tiede confessed to the murder and is serving a life sentence.)

Linklater met Tiede after corresponding with him in prison: “Really, the only people who write letters anymore are people in prison,” he says. “Bernie wrote these beautiful, flowing letters. When I met him, he wasn’t some charming psychopath. He’s a genuinely sweet guy who did one bad thing. And now he’s a model prisoner, doing all these positive things in prison.”

Linklater burst on to the scene with 1991’s “Slacker,” and has directed more than a dozen features since then. His credits run the gamut from low-budget indies (“Tape,” “Waking Life”) to studio comedies (“School of Rock,” “Bad News Bears”). He’s learned to work the system so that he’s always ready with a script and a cast, should the money suddenly show up.

“Right now, I’ve got a few things that are right on the cusp of happening,” he says. “We just have to see how the planets line up. I wish I could say I was already in post-production on my next film that would come out in the fall. But that’s not the case.

“It used to be that the industry would say, ‘OK, we can scrounge together the money to get this made.’ Now, when you say what you want to do next, the industry says, ‘We don’t care.’

“I got pretty lucky. I got a lot of films made that wouldn’t have been made without the independent film boom of the ’90s. I’d hate to be starting out now. It’s a tough time to get backing, to make a cultural impact, to even get your film shown in theaters. I’m not complaining; you do your best within the system.”

Sitting in the press lounge of the Tribeca Film Festival, where he was talking about one of the films he had in the festival, “Any Day Now,” Dillahunt noted that, when he first started working professionally as an actor after getting out of grad school at New York University, he did a lot of comedic roles.

As a result, it took a while for him to get cast in bad-guy roles because casting agents only saw him playing benign, funny characters. But when black-hat roles came, they weren’t just bad guys but truly evil types, made to seem more so because the boyish Dillahunt, 47, did and said absolutely frightening things with a smile that accented his Tom Sawyer-choirboy good looks.

He did it particularly well as memorable recurring characters on such TV series as “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” “Life,” “Burn Notice” and, particularly, David Milch’s “Deadwood,” in which he played not one but two different – and chilling – characters during the show’s three seasons.

So when he auditioned to play Burt Chance on the Fox network’s hit sitcom, “Raising Hope,” which just finished its second season, Dillahunt found himself running into a new obstacle.

“For the first time in a long time, I had a director express concern whether I could do comedy,” Dillahunt says with a chuckle.

No longer. Dillahunt’s Burt is one of the show’s many highpoints – a man-child content to struggle and aspire while running his own lawn service and thinking of get-rich-quick schemes like yogurt in manly flavors (beef stew?) that would be marketed as Brogurt.

But Dillahunt couldn’t be farther from Burt Chance territory with “Any Day Now,” Travis Fine’s new film based on a true story, which won the Heineken audience award for best feature at Tribeca last week. In the film, Dillahunt plays Paul, an attorney in 1979 Los Angeles who is not quite out of the closet when he falls for Rudy (Alan Cumming), a drag performer. When Rudy tries to become the guardian for an abandoned teen with Down Syndrome, Paul must argue the custody case in court and runs directly into the kind of discrimination that would-be adoptive parents who are gay still face.

Where Burt tends to blurt whatever’s in his head, Dillahunt’s character in “Any Day Now” tends to come out with perfect citations of legal precedent, to be the voice of reason to Cumming’s voice of passion.

“It’s fun to work with dialogue like that,” Dillahunt says. “It’s sort of how it was on ‘Deadwood,’ when I was playing Francis Wolcott and would have these incredible speeches. Somehow, because they’re well-written, they flow off the tongue. It’s fun to express yourself in different ways. You hardly ever get to do things like that.”

Dillahunt, who grew up in Washington State, went to NYU’s graduate school to get an MFA. But he claims he got a new lesson in acting from working with Isaac Leyva, who plays the teen at the center of the film’s conflict.

“He was probably the best actor on the set, to our shame,” Dillahunt says. “The thing that was so valuable to me was that he was so filled with joy at the whole process. It was his dream to be in a movie. And his emotions are right there, so close to the surface. It shamed me. I’d get caught up in minutiae of the business or be dissatisfied with the way things were going. You get cantankerous and start to micromanage.

“And then you get reminded by this boy why you started doing this in the first place. It helped the dynamic of the movie. There was a real danger of falling into sentimentality or stereotypes, which would make the movie easy to dismiss. But Isaac – and Travis, the director – helped us tread the fine line between sentimentality and keeping the emotions truthful.”

The continued conservative bias against gay adoptive parents (including laws prohibiting it in Florida, Mississippi and Utah) was one reason Dillahunt wanted to be part of the film.

“I can’t believe how long ago the ’70s were – you wouldn’t think this would still be a debate,” Dillahunt says. “That this is still an issue almost 40 years after the fact is disappointing. I’m sure there will be people who have no interest in this message. And I’m not sure how powerful a film is in spreading it. I have to believe it is.

“I’m sure the fact that the protagonists of the film are two gay men could make it a hard sell. But, on paper, you wouldn’t think this film would even get made – and we did that. So maybe the battle is old hat. I’m just pleased to be making even a small contribution to the argument. I’m proud of it.”

Dillahunt went to the University of Washington with the intention of going into journalism: “I was a stud on the high-school newspaper and journalism was what I was going to do,” he says. “In a lot of ways, writing is a similar discipline to acting. You have to examine character and psychology – except, as an actor, you do it live. There’s a similar itch being scratched.”

Indeed, he had never considered acting: “I was painfully shy,” he says. “I still am.”

But when his older brother was killed in a drunk-driving accident at 19, “something like that knocks you off-kilter. I still majored in journalism, but I kind of drifted through college. I was on a whole other path.”

He signed up for an acting class, thinking he might shift his focus from journalism to playwriting. And the lightbulb went off.

“I thought, ‘Here it is’,” he says of acting. “I’m sure it was therapeutic for me at the time. It was a place where I could hide from the reality of my life. I was still hiding, still running. I’m lucky that I love it because there was also this conflict: Is it alright that I love this so much when I came to it at that price?”

By the time he got out of NYU, he had an agent and began to work in theater almost immediately, even as he started to land film and TV work. One highlight: playing Bertram Cates, the high-school biology teacher arrested for teaching evolution, in a Broadway production of “Inherit the Wind” that starred Charles Durning and the late George C. Scott.

“I’m actually in a Hirschfeld for that,” he says with obvious pride, referring to the famous ink drawings the late cartoonist Al Hirschfeld drew for the New York Times. “There’s Charles Durning on one side, George C. Scott on the other – and I’m right by George C. Scott’s butt. I’ve even got two Ninas in my sleeve.”

Dillahunt became a prolific presence on TV, finding regular roles in series like “Leap Years” and “A Minute with Stan Hooper” before scoring as two villains on “Deadwood”: Jack McCall (who murdered Wild Bill Hickock) in the first season, then as the hired killer Francis Wolcott in the series’ second year.

“I was just lucky that David Milch and I got along so well,” he says. “The first guy was so disfigured and filthy that it wasn’t hard for me to look way different to play the other guy.”

Yet he went from that to “The Book of Daniel,” a short-lived series in which he played Jesus Christ, who appears to a troubled minister played by Aidan Quinn. He was an alien abductee on “The 4400,” a doctor on “John from Cincinnati,” a vicious Russian gangster on “Life,” an actor whose appearance is appropriated by a cyborg on “Terminator,” a murderous former spy on “Burn Notice.” And now he’s playing Burt Chance on “Raising Hope,” using his hiatus from the series to make films.

For the moment, his focus is on “Any Day Now,” which comes out of Tribeca looking for a distributor. In it, Dillahunt wears his hair (a wig, in actuality) like an uptight lawyer who has grown it out to fit the fashion of the ’70s. Did Dillahunt ever have a comparable haircut back in the day?

He laughs and says, “I remember in seventh grade I took great pride in the fact that I looked like Shaun Cassidy. It didn’t help me get a girlfriend, though.”

They’re here to talk about “Darling Companion,” which opened Friday in limited release. It’s Kasdan’s first film since 2003 and only his fourth since 1994’s “Wyatt Earp.”

But Kasdan, first into the room, is already telling stories about Kline. On the relatively low-budget comedy-drama, the cast would be retrieved from its hotel each morning in a van and, Kasdan says, as they were driven to the location, Kline would start a monologue that seemed endless.

“Kevin never stopped talking and he was hilarious,” Kasdan says. “The cast loved him. Although, once in a while, Diane Keaton or Dianne Wiest would say, ‘Can’t you shut him up?’”

Kline, entering the conference room, quickly defends himself, saying, “It was some bizarre altitude sickness. Really, I was so jazzed just to be working with these people. And we were all in this big van, like we were on ‘The Big Chill.’ So I had a captive audience. Although I was told to shut up a lot by Dianne.”

“Darling Companion,” which opened Friday and was written by Kasdan with his wife, Meg, pictured above, is about a married couple – played by Kline and Keaton – whose marriage is tested when the husband loses the wife’s dog. It’s the sixth film on which Kasdan and Kline have collaborated since Kasdan made his directing debut in 1981 with “Body Heat.” Indeed, as Kline reveals, they met for the first time when Kline auditioned for the “Body Heat” role that ultimately went to William Hurt.

“What I liked about Larry is that he’s so real – that’s what made me love him even when he didn’t hire me,” Kline says. “He was so unpretentious.”

“He wasn’t right for ‘Body Heat’,” Kasdan says. “But I was quite taken with him. When we started casting ‘The Big Chill,’ he was the first person I wanted to see.”

Since then, they’ve made five more films together: “Silverado,” “Grand Canyon,” “I Love You to Death,” “French Kiss” and now “Darling Companion.”

“At this point, we have a wonderful short-hand,” Kline says, adding with a chuckle, “We don’t speak. We text.”

“Experiences pile up,” says Kasdan, who has three Oscar nominations for screenwriting. “I may not have gotten wisdom over the years, but I have gotten experience. Things become less daunting; the whole conversation is easier. It’s always hard to make a movie – so it’s great when you go in the morning and see a face from your past and you know it’s not going to be any harder than it has to be.

“I also like the fact that, with Kevin – and with the rest of this cast – it wasn’t about the extra things, like the trailer or makeup or hair and wardrobe. We have difficulty at times getting to a place we can agree on but we’re all working hard. It’s not about ego or some old gripe. You know you have great tools at hand. For me, Kevin has played a cowboy, an Italian, a Frenchman, a lawyer, a doctor – he’s able to do anything and be funny doing it.”

Says Kline, “I love the way Larry writes and directs. I love how he trusts the actors. We have similar senses of humor and he teases me mercilessly. The bottom line is that I trust him, which is probably what an actor needs in a director. I’m comfortable enough working with him that I can say, ‘Well, I really feel strongly about this.’ Like the white pajamas in ‘I Love You to Death.’”

In that 1990 comedy, based on a true story, Kline played an amorous Italian, whose angry wife (Tracey Ullman) hires a pair of dimwits (William Hurt and Keanu Reeves) to murder her unfaithful husband. In the film’s funniest scene, after Hurt and Reeves supposedly have shot a drugged Kline while he was passed out in his bed, Kline comes walking out, slightly loopy but seemingly unfazed, wearing a pair of white pajamas which, when he turns around, reveals a large bloodstain on the back, though he gives no evidence of having been shot. Kline thought the white pajamas were too obvious; Kasdan convinced him otherwise.

“Bill Hurt could not stop laughing when we were shooting that scene,” Kline says. “He kept cracking up. And he’s not exactly your giddy actor on the set. Bill Hurt is not Mr. Silly.”

Kline and Kasdan were part of a reunion of the cast of “The Big Chill” at a tribute to the film at this year’s Santa Barbara Film Festival.

“Thirty years after the film was made, all the jokes still played exactly right,” Kasdan says. “People related to it exactly the way we hoped they would 30 years ago.”

Says Kline, “I related to it more than ever. It was almost prophetic, in its predictions about what celebrity culture would become. I was surprised at the teenagers in the audience who said they loved the movie. But it’s about friendship and generation and growing up. That’s why it still holds up.”

“When something you’ve done keeps going like that, well, I’m thrilled and delighted,” Kasdan says. “It’s a shock – and a delight.”
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Not much, says actor Guy Pearce, whose newest film, “Lockout,” opened Friday.

“The thing I enjoy about being in remote places is that there are no distractions,” Pearce, 44, says. “I love the idea of having three months to just think about one thing. It’s hard to shoot at home – with the house and the dogs and the banking. It’s far more distracting – and not as fair to my wife.”

In “Lockout,” Pearce plays Snow, a disgraced CIA agent in the future who, on his way to prison for something he didn’t do, is drafted for a brutal mission: He must single-handedly rescue the president’s daughter, who is stranded on a maximum-security prison orbiting Earth – on which all the prisoners have escaped.

The film was written by its first-time directors James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, a pair of Irishmen about whom Pearce says, “I was impressed by them.” To play an action hero, Pearce (a teen-age bodybuilding champion in his native Australia) began lifting weights and eating a special diet to bulk up so he’d look formidable on camera.

Getting back into the body-building regimen wasn’t easy: “I certainly didn’t have the enthusiasm for it that I did as a kid,” Pearce says with a smile. “And I’m far more skilled at it now. I used to go at it a bit hard. I’m far more wary about my ligaments and tendons.”

Pearce was already acting onstage, about to start a TV career as a teen, when he was first attracted to weight-lifting: “My mother would go to the gym and I’d go with her when I was 14 or 15,” he says. “I’d do circuit training – and I instantly became fascinated by how one’s body changed through training. There was a body-building gym run by a woman who was a runner-up in the Miss Australia and I started going there.

“I was fascinated in the same way I’m fascinated in the changes a sculptor creates. It’s an artistic form of creativity. And I had the energy at that age to be enthusiastic about the training.”

You can’t train, however, to be funny. Either you’ve always got a one-liner at the ready or you don’t. His character, Snow, does; Pearce, however, is not that adept.

“I really wish I did have that talent,” he says. “I can be funny. But under pressure, I tend to clam up. Although, with a vodka under my belt, I’m OK at a dinner party. But I’m better off when someone writes the lines for me.”

Pearce has been acting since childhood, finding TV and film work as a teen and jumping from Australian stardom (including one of the leads in the original “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”) to Hollywood (“L.A. Confidential”). He’s built a resume that includes everything from independent classics (“Memento”) to Oscar-winning hits (“The King’s Speech”) to Emmy-winning miniseries (“Mildred Pierce”).

He took a break from acting at 30 because, as he says, “I wanted to reassess. I realized I’d been living my life and career based on the decision of an 8-year-old. I wanted to see whether there was validity to that decision, to see if I did have the skills. I came to the conclusion that I did – maybe because there’s nothing else I’m able to do.”

The press book for “Lockout” brags that Pearce gained 50 pounds in muscling up for his role. Pearce, however, rolls his eyes at the figure.

“I don’t know where they got that,” he says. “It was maybe 20. And I took them off just as gradually as I put them on. I was able to decrease the amount of weight I was lifting and the amount of food I was eating. And I turned the exercises more toward cardio. My wife and I do a lot of walking. I find it’s great, for all sorts of reasons. It’s a good way to level out after an intense workout – like filming in Serbia.”

Moretti, whose award-winning films have made him one of Italy’s favorite filmmakers, was in New York to talk about “We Have a Pope,” his first feature in five years. The film, about a newly selected pope who has a crisis of confidence (or is it of faith?) and refuses the new job, is a change of pace for Moretti, whose films have tended to focus on the personal and the political.

But, as he noted in an interview, while he had seen numerous films depicting the conclave of cardinals that selects a new pope, he was tired of the clichés and wanted to offer a different take – one that allowed for doubt and, yes, humor.

Q: What is striking at the beginning of the conclave sequence is the fact that all of the cardinals are thinking, “Don’t pick me.” Where did that idea come from?
A: I don’t know what actually happens in the conclave. Nobody does. I know what I’ve seen on TV and in movies – and I didn’t want to show that kind of thing for the thousandth time. I didn’t want cardinals putting their own names forward, or intrigue or plots or power struggles – or groups of votes that move from one candidate to another. We’ve seen that all too many times. It may be the reality – but I found it banal and easy. I make movies to record a different possible reality.

I watched a lot of documentaries and did research. And in the research, I found that, frequently, once a candidate is elected, he never feels ready or worthy for the job. Supposedly even (Joseph) Ratzinger (the current Pope Benedict XVI) felt he wasn’t worthy. But, in my opinion, I don’t think there are many people who believe that Ratzinger didn’t feel he was ready or worthy.

Q: What sort of Catholic are you?
A: I’m not a believer. When I was a child, I had a modern Catholic upbringing. But I gave that all up over 40 years ago. I’m not bragging; it’s just a fact.

Not being a believer gives me a certain distance from the church and allows me to give humanity to the cardinals and the pope. What interested me was creating a realistic frame and then putting a story within that frame that was invented. So I reconstructed the Sistine Chapel to scale at Cinecitta and, within this realistic framework is the story I invented – the story of a pope who alternates between doubt, sadness and responsibility.

Q: How was the film received in Italy?
A: Before it came out, people were speaking about it disproportionately to what happened afterward. But I’m used to people talking about my movies without having seen them first. After it was released, at least people had seen it when they talked about it. It went over well in Europe, particularly Italy and France. People have expectations of my films, which I always try not to meet. Many people expected a frontal attack on the Vatican. But I didn’t want to do that. I believe cinema should surprise the audience; whatever they’re expecting is probably waiting for them at home on TV. Cinema should surprise people.

Q: How has the satisfaction you take from making films changed from when you started?
A: The most difficult thing in the world is to understand things about yourself. But there are two things that were there at the beginning 35 years ago that are still there.

One is that I’m still curious to go and see other people’s movies. The other is that I still have the desire to recount stories I think about through cinema. These are still intact after all this time. Of course, in Italy, people now have more expectations from a film of mine. The important thing is to not let yourself be blocked or paralyzed by those expectations.

I will say that, 30 years ago, I was like a tank – I was really determined. Nothing was going to stop me. Now, when I write a film, I’m more critical and have more doubts. When I’m filming, I doubt everything I do. But I will say that the films I’ve wanted to make, I’ve been able to make.

Ed Helms understands comedy. But the kind of improv that writer-directors Mark and Jay Duplass do made him a little nervous.

“I’ve done a lot of comedy improvisation and this was nothing like that,” says Helms of his role in the Duplass brothers’ new film, “Jeff, Who Lives at Home.” “It was very different. Mark and Jay wrote a wonderful script and if we’d done it, word for word, it would have been a fantastic movie. But that’s not how they operate. They put their faith in the cast to internalize the scene and make it their own.

“So you have these mundane moments with damaged, arguably dull characters. Yet even the smallest moments were exciting if we felt like we got it right. It’s different from trying to get a laugh. There’s something beautiful in the smallness of it. Once you put the microscope on the little universe of this family, it keeps exploding, like fractals. It’s sort of intense and beautiful.”

Helms stars with Jason Segel in “Jeff,” which opens Friday (3/16/12). Segel is the title character, a 30-something stoner who lives in his mother’s basement and is searching for his place in the world. Helms plays his brother, a paint salesman in a failing marriage (to Judy Greer) – and their worlds collide one day when Jeff is forced to leave the house on an errand for his mother, even as he searches for a sign from the universe about a direction for his life.

The film is the next step upward for the Duplass brothers, their second studio movie (after 2010’s “Cyrus”). But they maintain the same hands-on, hand-made approach no matter what the budget.

“Jay and I are really excited about the place we’re trying to inhabit in the studio world,” Duplass says. “We’re making what we call mainstream-adjacent art films, and putting bigger stars and more stars in them. So you’ve got a film with Ed Helms, Jason Segel and Susan Sarandon at a fraction of what it would normally cost. They want to work with us because they know we’re obsessed with performance. They know that, if they have a great take but it’s not the one with perfect lighting, well, that’s still the one we’re going to use.

“And we do it at a fraction of the cost. For doing that, we’re getting unofficial tenure. We’ve never made a movie that has not made money. So, for the studios, it’s a lottery ticket: Even if it sucks at the box office, they’ll still make their money from HBO or DVDs or any of the other ancillary markets. So the movies don’t have to be mainstream.”

Indeed, Helms was surprised at what he’d signed on for, in a good way.

“It didn’t seem to be as big a change of pace to me as it turned out to be,” Helms says. “”I thought what a lot of potential movie-goers will probably think: Here’s Jason Segel and Ed Helms so it will be pretty silly. But that’s not how Mark and Jay Duplass roll. And God bless them for it. I was surprised and thrilled at what the whole experience has been.”

Indeed, Helms had never met Segel until the first day they worked together on the set: “We instantly found this fraternal vibe that informed our relationship for the rest of the production, on and off the set,” he says. “In comedy improv, you’re usually trying to find something to hook into that will inform all your choices moving forward in the scene. This was about trying to find the most real execution you could. Jason says he saw his job as doing nothing. It was a real learning experience for me – and what I learned is that less is definitely more.

“Like, just because the story tells you that you’re upset in a moment doesn’t mean you necessarily telegraph it. I thought of it this way: You can be standing in line at a theater and maybe the guy in front of you is going through a divorce and is completely broken inside. But you couldn’t necessarily tell it by looking at him. It’s the idea that we aren’t always emoting. What I felt trying to be real is like is about trying to be normal.”

It’s the way the Duplass brothers have always worked, beginning with the first short film they got into Sundance: “It started with us coming out of film school, obeying the rules, writing scripts we felt were like the Coen brothers and executing them – and realizing that we were making mediocre art, which was very frustrating,” Duplass says.

“One day we were sitting on Jay’s couch in 2002, really depressed. And Jay said, ‘What if we made a movie like we did when we were kids, shooting with our mom’s video camera? Just do what we used to do.’ So we decided to improv some relatable concept – and Jay said, ‘Last week, I tried to rerecord my answering machine message and it took me and hour and a half and I almost had an emotional breakdown.’ And I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ It was the worst-looking and sounding film you’ll ever see, just using a video camera with the microphone on the camera. There were two dead pixels in the image – and it was the first movie of ours to get into Sundance.”

When they took their first feature, “The Puffy Chair,” to Sundance and South by Southwest, they found themselves part of a movement that became known as “mumblecore”: do-it-yourself filmmakers who had crafted feature films on shoestring budgets using unknown and amateur actors.

The key to the movement, such as it was, was the advent of an affordable Panasonic digital video camera that came out in 2002, which shot video at 24 frames-per-second (the same as film) that could be transferred to film without noticeable degradation of the image.

“Suddenly you could make a great-looking film for no money,” Duplass says. “The term ‘mumblecore’ came to broadly define anything that was micro-budget. You no longer needed $50,000 to make a feature in 16mm. So there was nothing stopping a 22-year-old from making a feature film.”

While some filmmakers have rejected the “mumblecore” tag, Duplass found the label handy: “It was certainly valuable to us in 2005,” he says. “We were making $10,000 movies and the New York Times was writing about us.”

For Helms, who grew up in Atlanta, “Jeff, Who Lives at Home” is the latest in a rising career that has seen him go from being a struggling stand-up comic to a correspondent on “The Daily Show” to a regular on “The Office” to the star of the comedy mega-hit “The Hangover.” Helms has written a couple of films he would like to act in – and is hopeful that there will be at least one more season of “The Office.”

“I was a comedy nerd who was hooked on ‘Saturday Night Live’ at a young age,” he says. “When I first started, my parents thought it was just a phase for a long time but they were remarkably supportive. Still, I think they were a little bewildered for a few years. But my dad was a huge ‘Daily Show’ fan so when I got that, he felt, alright, this is working. My parents came to Los Angeles for the ‘Hangover’ premiere and afterward, my mom was tearing up and I thought, oh no, she’s really offended. But she said through the tears, ‘That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.’”

The exceptionally prolific Duplass has no fewer than four other films in the pipeline, including “Your Sister’s Sister” and “Safety Not Guaranteed,” both of which he acted in, and “The Do-Deca-Pentathalon,” which he and his brother wrote and directed, set for summer release. Another film, “Black Rock,” which he wrote and produced and which was directed by wife Katie Aselton, played at Sundance. Plus he continues to star in the FX comedy series, “The League.”

“Yeah, I’m a bit of a workaholic – definitely Type A,” he says. “But at this point, we’re out of scripts. We were able to make five movies in six years because we kind of stockpiled them. Now the drawer is almost empty. My wife is having a baby in a couple months, so I guess we’ll do some incubating this year.”

But that kind of recognition makes the Israeli-American filmmaker uncomfortable, or so he says. His film – about a dour Israeli academic who is mistakenly informed that he’s won a major prize that, in fact, is intended for his son – deals with the cost of acclaim and the similar toll that comes with not receiving it.

Cedar, born in New York but reared in Israel, lives in Tel Aviv. He sat down to chat about his film when he was in New York last September, shortly before its premiere at the New York Film Festival. Here’s our conversation:

Q: Where did this idea come from?
A: There was a specific thing that triggered it; the story evolved as it was written and took shape over eight months. It was more than a year after my previous film, which did pretty well. I was working on something else that collapsed. I couldn’t find any story that seemed worth it. I thought I wouldn’t be able to come up with a project that would be something I could stand behind.

Then I got a call from the cultural attaché at the Italian embassy in Tel Aviv, saying I’d received an award from the Italian government in recognition of the 60th anniversary of Israel. I didn’t feel good about it; it sounded suspicious to me. I asked who else was getting this and the list included several serious, accomplished Israelis.

Then it dawned on me: They were not calling for me but for my father and somehow had called me by mistake. And while I was waiting on the line to find this out, that’s when the idea for this film dawned on me.

As it turned out, the award was for me, as strange as that sounds. It was an award that made me feel there was some kind of mistake, that I was getting an award I didn’t deserve.

Q: Why did you feel undeserving?
A: Recognition is a big part of anyone’s ability to work. There’s always a price. Either you feel embarrassed that you need it. Or else you feel that it must not be that prestigious if they’re giving it to you. Everyone who gets an award has a suspicion that there’s been a mistake, that you’ll be found out as a fraud. Plus, everybody is skeptical in Israel. Nothing is a big deal, especially if it happens to someone else. Prestige has to be supported by actual content.

Q: Well, your film is in the New York Film Festival, which is pretty prestigious. Don’t you feel you deserve to be in the New York Film Festival?
A: Absolutely not.

Q: It seems as though these are scholars combing the texts of the Talmud, looking for tiny errors.
A: The notion of a mistake – it’s the enemy. It’s a virus that contaminates everything. There aren’t many in this film. We did a good job. Personally, I like mistakes. They lead to the best places. I want to keep myself open to continuing to make mistakes. A happy mistake is a way of life.

Q: How much did you know about Talmudic philology when you started this project?
A: I didn’t know what a Talmudic philologist does. When I started to understand it, it became very relevant to my life. These are people with a limited world, focusing on tiny details that make it controllable. The big picture is too much of a mess. When you focus on the details, you have the illusion that you’re in control of something. They devote their lives to this. In terms of their methods, my personality is very devoted to this work.

Q: How so?
A: To a philologist, text is a big part of life. They have total respect for the written word. It’s more than respect; it’s reverence for the printed word on a piece of paper. That’s close to the value system I grew up with.

Q: Like the difference between writing a script and making a film?
A: The difference between the written word and oral interpretation is significant in my life. When you want to convey an idea, you find a way to make it interesting and relevant. But you do that at the price of shifting the focus or neglecting some parts. It’s passing an idea on in entertaining form. Something that’s written is stuck and has no flexibility. There is something rigid about the written word. We need both. That’s part of what the film asks.

Q: And the difference between the father and the son?
A: The son is all about interpretation. The father is about reaching verifiable conclusions: What was the text?

Q: You were born in New York but grew up in Israel after the age of 6.
A: My parents left New York for Israel. I was born here. I try to give my kids a sense that they belong here and so we visit. But we live in Tel Aviv.

Q: What did your father do?
A: My father is a biologist.

Q: Given the dynamic between father and son in your film, I’m sure people wonder how close it is to your relationship with your father.
A: My father is not the character in the film. People know he’s not. The story is more my nightmare than reality as father and son. What if I turn out to be a father who is bitter at his son’s success? My father saw the film when it played in Cannes. My parents never asked to read the screenplay. Before the Cannes screening, I reminded him of the importance of self-humor. And when he saw it in Cannes, well, as a father, I know it’s a rare thing to have that kind of moment.

Q: How did you get involved in filmmaking?
A: I was directing shows in high school. I was always going to do something in entertainment. I wasn’t accepted to film school in Jerusalem. So I spent some years at Hebrew University and then tried NYU. I was able to arrange the financing and the idea of spending time in New York was something I wanted.

Q: So you have dual citizenship?
A: I have two passports but one identity. My home is in Tel Aviv but I’m not a stranger in New York.

Q: Do you dream in Hebrew or English?
A: Depending on what I’m dreaming about, sometimes I dream in Hebrew, sometimes in English. I write a journal that’s in English but I write my scripts in Hebrew.

Q: Why?
A: Having to talk about ideas in one language and then translate them into another helps me think about them in a different way. That’s the philological part of what I do. What is the meaning hiding behind the words?

Q: What kind of response did you get from actual philologists?
A: At the first screening in Jerusalem, I invited the scholars who helped me; they’re not characters in the film, but they helped with my research. And one of the responses I got from one of them was a question about the credits at the end: “Why was my name listed where it was? The list wasn’t alphabetical, so what was the meaning of the order?” I told him that, in fact, they were listed in random order and he said, “Nothing is ever random.” And he’s right.

Q: This is your fourth film. How did it do in Israel?
A: The film is in its 20th week in theaters in Israel, which is a big surprise. It turned out to be a solid box-office performer.

Q: What is the Israeli film industry like?
A: Right now the Israeli film industry is extremely dynamic. There’s a government fund in Israel that supports 15 films a year, out of about 75 features that get made. And they offer not more than 70 percent of the budget.

There’s a sense that, in order to get attention, you have to do something extraordinary. It’s a good stage we’re in. The bar gets set higher and higher.

Q: Any interest in making a film in the U.S.?
A: I’d like to make a film here but there has to be a story I know how to do. That’s a big issue for me. I’m not against making a film in Hollywood or Europe. But I’m not going to waste the credit I’ve gained on something that’s not acutely important to my life.

You don’t make too many films in a lifetime. I can’t afford to make one that’s not crucial to me or not fun or doesn’t pay well. Nobody’s getting rich making films in Israel. If it improves the quality of life for the people around you, that’s something.

Gelb, 28, is sitting backstage during a screening of his film, “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” waiting for his chance to have a conversation with the audience. The film, which has been playing the festival circuit, hits theaters March 9.

The film focuses on Jiro Ono, unassuming and routine-driven despite being proclaimed the greatest sushi chef in the world. His Tokyo restaurant, Sukiyabashi Ono, has a mere 10 seats – and three Michelin stars. Reservations must be made a year in advance – and the meals start at $400.

“I originally wanted to make a film about three or four of the best sushi chefs in the world,” Gelb says. “But during my research, every chef I talked to said that Jiro was a living legend. When I ate his food, I was floored by how delicious it was. He turned out to be this inspiring, compelling figure. And the film became about more than just sushi: It’s about the value of hard work, family and the quest for perfection.”

Gelb’s film looks at the life of Ono, now 87, who works in his restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district everyday. It charts his early life – when he was essentially sent to work as a child by his parents – through his early years as an apprentice (his own apprentices have to work several years before he even allows them to try cooking eggs). And it looks at his family: specifically, his older son, Yoshikazu, now in his 50s, who has worked for his father since he was 19 and will eventually replace him.

Gelb got to Jiro through Masuhiro Yamamoto, noted Japanese food critic who was a friend of Gelb’s father (Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera): “Yamamoto convinced Jiro that I didn’t have an agenda,” Gelb says. “Jiro had gotten frustrated over the years at journalists who already knew what story they wanted before they even met him. But I wasn’t interested in that.”

Working with a small crew, Gelb spent two separate months during 2010 filming Jiro, his sons and his restaurant (though he was not allowed to film during meal service, given the price of the food and the long wait patrons had endured for a reservation). Between the shoots, he worked with his editor to start assembling the film, then went back to shoot what he felt was missing.

The high price of a meal at Jiro’s, Gelb says, comes from the fact that “you’re paying for the best fish in the world, prepared by a man who has spent his life perfecting the way to prepare rice and fish. It’s the work of a true master. It’s absolutely the best fish; the overhead to serve a piece of toro could be up to $100. Plus real estate prices have skyrocketed in Tokyo. His restaurant is in the basement of an office building, near the subway entrance. But, per-foot, it’s the most expensive real estate in the world.”

Gelb was introduced to sushi by his parents, who took him to Japan as a child: “My parents would feed me cucumber rolls as a kid,” he says. “I’ve loved Japanese culture and food ever since.

“I look at people like Anthony Bourdain, who travel around the world eating the most outrageous food. I thought it might be interesting to make my job eating the best sushi in the world. And, honestly, I hadn’t seen a film about sushi. There had been nothing that told the human story behind sushi in a cinematic style.”

As he filmed Jiro at work, Gelb gained a new appreciation for both the difficulty and simplicity of the work he did.

“One of the biggest surprises to me was the importance that’s put on the rice,” he says. “The fish and the rice are of equal importance. After you eat Jiro’s food, you immediately understand why. When the rice is done correctly, it brings out the flavor of the fish. That’s one of the reasons it’s so delicious. The rice is supposed to be body temperature. The vinegar and the rice and the fish work together. It’s a combination of elements that create a balance and you taste the purity of the fish.

“There’s a space between the flavor when the fish and the rice’s flavors are combined. The essence of sushi is finding that balance between the fish and the rice.”