Jennifer Jason Leigh in Margot at the Wedding Ken Regan/Courtesy of Paramount Vantage

To what degree, then, would the wedding itself be an extension of the characters' relationships?
Well, yeah, the wedding and the countryside. I think their perception of the neighbors is completely influenced by what's going on in their own heads. The movie never tells you who the neighbors really are or aren't. It's Margot and Pauline and Malcolm and Claude's perception of them. And so that's another example of a sort of outer-world stuff that is certainly influenced by whatever the psychological makeup of the character is.

Your choices of music are intriguing. How do you make selections for your films?
Well, I'm always listening to music, and when I'm writing, I'll maybe have a play list. It's now on my iPod — it used to be on like a CD or something — but songs that feel like the movie in some way, or maybe just songs that I am liking at the time. I'll listen to them maybe often while I'm writing. But those songs don't often end up in the actual movie. They tend to be more about just creating an atmosphere around myself while I'm working.

Almost like an inspiration.
Yeah. And in a way it's sort of like what we're saying about the movies, it's — there's not even a direct inspiration, it's just something that feels organic. And so then when I'm done, I might have some of those songs that I might want to try in the picture. And sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I find once the movie is cut and I'm thinking of music, it often becomes something else. Because I'm often using music as source, it's stuff the characters who are in the movie are listening to — which isn't always my taste even. But I have to remain open to that. So in this case Malcolm is listening to Alice Cooper and Gilbert O'Sullivan and Steve Forbert. It's all music I really like. But it's different than what they're listening to, what the kids are listening to, or what Pauline or Margot might be listening to.

How is it working with Jennifer? Do you collaborate to any degree while the whole thing is in pre-production in terms of the dialogue and in terms of some of the choices that you're making?
I'll show Jennifer all the drafts that I'm working on — and this was true even on Squid — and she has terrific feedback and ideas, which I'll just steal at will. And so yeah, Jennifer's a great knack — even though she was an actor in this movie and obviously there was a part that was her part, she has a great knack at being able to see the movie as a whole. And she's very unselfish in those ways. It's not about more Pauline. It's about what makes the movie better. And so she's my secret weapon. I take advantage of that all the time.