With his dreams of rock and roll stardom long shattered, Londoner Gary (Martin Freeman) now lives and composes commercial jingles in New York City. He is not happy with his life and it is beginning to take its toll on his relationship with Dora (Gwyneth Paltrow donning long brown hair and brown eye contacts).

This depression begins to manifests itself in Gary’s dreams. There, in the recesses of his subconscious, appears a vivacious vixen called Anna (Penelope Cruz). A manifestation of advertising tropes, his love and fear of Dora, and his urge to control his life, Gary sees Anna as a sort of salvation. Soon he lives to dream, alone with Anna, in his insufficiently soundproofed world now, “reeking of paralysis.” This further takes a toll on Gary and Dora’s relationship until Gary realizes you can never get what you really want, but you can surely lose what you had.

Written and directed by Jake Paltrow, The Good Night mediates on the will to power through fantasy. Gary would rather sleep his way into bliss instead of waking up to the everyday struggles one must endure in love and life.

A satisfying feature debut by Paltrow, we spoke to Jake about his film, dreams and staying awake.

Los Angeles Journal: Why did you want to make this film?

Jake Paltrow: I don’t know if it’s a desire so much as it came to me and I couldn’t ignore it. I woke up one day from a very fulfilling dream I had where I was thinking, “If I could just go back in for a few more minutes everything would be a lot better.” I felt that was something a lot of people have experienced. I liked the idea of exploring that idea and kind of dramatizing that emotion.

LAJ: Beyond the wish to dream on, what other ways do you identify with Gary?

JP: Escapist ideas are rooted in depression, addiction, and these kinds of things. I felt like this was a way of essentially dealing with it, to delve into your subconscious, to heal some of these things. My main character has a lot of pain in him.

LAJ: What challenges were there in directing your older sister?

JP: There were no challenges with her. Gwyneth is an actor who likes to put herself in the hands of directors in general. She subverts her whole screen persona to do the dark hair and the brown contact lenses, which was a lot of work and painful every day with those contact lenses on.

LAJ: What is the reasoning behind Gwyneth/Dora’s look? The “obvious” thing would have been to contrast a blonde-blue eyed Dora against a brunette-brown eyed Anna.

JP: That’s too conventional. I can’t tell you how many friends of mine breakup with a girl and then end up dating a girl who looks exactly the same as the last girl. The psychic imprint of the last one almost makes you incapable of branching out into some sort of new esthetic.

LAJ: A psychic imprint that manifests in Dora’s voice occasionally coming through Anna’s mouth.

JP: That’s exactly right. It’s subtle. The idea behind that was essentially the kind of things he wants from or wants to hear from Dora. That conflict becomes stronger and the regret that maybe he did not give everything in this relationship.

LAJ: In the two primary relationships, the men take for granted what they have. Then they lament the loss. What was the motive behind that? Why do guys behave that way?

JP: I don’t know. If I knew the answer to that question I would be a billionaire. All I’m trying to do is reflect on it. I don’t have any answers for a subject like that.

LAJ: How can we take the idea of a dream as an idealized state and apply it to cinema and fashion? We get these images of women, who in real life do not conform to our preconceived idealized notions derived from manufactured images.

JP: Absolutely. Maybe it’s less about movies…It’s about images in advertising, pornography and giving people a kind of false idea without fully exploring an emotional journey. That’s what’s dangerous, that feeling behind advertising. You know, “Drink this beer and you’ll get laid” [Laughs]. Those are potentially dangerous. Most people can see through that, but there are those who can’t.

LAJ: Can you talk a moment about your use of space and architecture in the film?

JP: In general I like formally made pictures. There are very few close-ups in the movie. That’s just the kind of things I respond to in other people’s movies. As you develop as a director, especially when you’re young, you’re just collecting all these ideas from the directors you admire. At a certain point you kind of hope they meld into your esthetic.

As far as architecture I always liked that stuff in 8½, La Notte.

LAJ: Beyond Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, can you pinpoint a few directors who have had a major influence on you?

JP: ]Krzysztof] Kieslowski, Woody Allen, Bertrand Blier, [Francois] Truffaut, Louie Malle, [Steven] Spielberg, [Stanley] Kubrick. When you’re young and you’re taking it in it’s like God. It’s light.

LAJ: Why use a car to put Gary into a coma?

JP: Once he plays that song for Anna, I wanted the movie to move into a sense of the conventional. All of a sudden it’s a kind of a cheesy environment. Then it goes to Dora to try to rectify something. It’s kind of a romantic comedy and he gets hit crossing the street. It’s about annihilating that kind of conventional thing. The ultimate goal of the movie is that if you want a perfect relationship you better end up in a coma dreaming about it. It’s just not going to happen. These kinds of relationships, if you really want to make them work, have to be fought for.

LAJ: Lastly, what do you think about these interviews where you talk about your work? Do they serve the work? Should the work speak for itself?

JP: They can serve the work if they’re things you feel you didn’t make. This is a very interpretive kind of movie. There are movies that are interpretive and there are movies that are not interpretive. The process of talking to people like you, who actually help people see things in a film they wouldn’t have seen before, helps.