Actor, and now director, Chris Messina is in Seattle for the first time to promote his directorial debut Alex of Venice. We’re talking outside of a coffee shop about a block away as his movie is playing to a packed Harvard Exit Theater during the penultimate day of the Seattle International Film Festival. He’s appeared in dozens of films: Argo, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Julie and Julia, Greenberg, plus he’s seen regularly on television programs “The Newsroom” and “The Mindy Project.” For a character actor, he has a certain cultural ubiquity, recognizable by most people from at least one of his television or film projects, including 2012’s Best Picture. But Alex of Venice is the movie we both want to talk about.

Alex of Venice is a low-budget, character driven film that involves workaholic lawyer Alex (played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in a quietly powerful performance) whose husband George (Messina) abruptly leaves. Her life is being pulled apart by an irresponsible sister, a son who needs to be taken to and from school, and an actor father (Don Johnson) who is appearing in a Chekhov play while his memory is fast deteriorating. It’s a film that most people can find some way to empathize with the characters. It’s not a perfect film, but it’s a gem of a film anchored by some impressive acting performances.

Chris Messina talked with us about the film, convincing Don Johnson to appear in it, and what’s next for him and the future of Alex of Venice.

How did you become involved with Alex of Venice?

I did a movie called 28 Hotel Rooms with Matt Ross, and Electric City produced that film. They knew that I wanted to find something to direct. A few months later, they came to me with the script. It was a different film. It was a collage of all of these different characters in Venice. At the core was a family that was very interesting to me. The writer, Katie Nehra, and her partner, Justin Shilton, we went through the script and took away the collage and centered on the family. We drew up a new outline and they wrote a new draft, which was a lot closer to the film that you saw.

We kind of hit some roadblocks and we hired another writer, Jessica Goldberg, and she kind of cracked the script open for us. It was a long developing process, but we had a great team of people.

What I really enjoyed about this film is that it’s kind of a post-love story, so it’s not a meet-cute love story and it’s something we don’t see a lot in films: the real-life struggles of someone trying to put their life back together.

It really is a slice-of-life film. I find that when the audience goes in knowing what they’re watching, in terms of her life, knowing that she’s trying to put the pieces back together, and nothing huge really happens. I find that audiences enjoy it more going in, rather than expecting something major to happen. For example, her husband leaves her and she becomes a bank robber. That doesn’t happen in this movie. That’s what we set out to make: a character-driven slice-of-life film. It’s very quiet.

Those are the movies that made me want to become an actor: character-driven movies of the seventies that I watched over and over again.

It reminded me a lot of Kramer vs. Kramer in that regard.

That is one that we referenced all the time. (Director and co-writer) Robert Benton watched the film and gave me notes. It’s pretty spectacular that he took the time to do that. We were lucky because our producer because our producer, Jamie Patricof, happens to be friends with Robert Benton and he offered to give the script and one of the cuts to Robert and I said, “sure but I’m nervous about what he’s going to say.” We knew we were copying Kramer vs. Kramer because there are a lot of similarities, but it’s a reversal. I’m the Meryl Streep character and Mary Elizabeth (Winstead) is the Dustin Hoffman character.

Now that you mention Mary Elizabeth, I thought she was phenomenal in the role of Alex. Can you talk about how she became involved with the film?

The script got to the part where a lot of actresses wanted to play the role. I got to read and meet a bunch of terrific people. I had been a fan of Mary’s since “Smashed.” I saw her in that and thought she was amazing. She came in and read and she was fantastic. It was clear right away that she was Alex for me. Not only is she so good, but she has a very easy quality that I think any director would love to work with. She’s a team player who brings all of it everyday. We didn’t have trailers. We would say, “The sun looks good over there, let’s jump in the car.” I needed an Alex who was going to be a leader and show by example: this is the kind of film we’re making and I’m up for some running and gunning. Mary was amazing. The trick with Mary was staying out of her way and not saying too much. She did that performance on her own. I was able to capture.

I enjoyed that performance because there were so many choices she could have made in that character, but she played such a subtly great performance.

She’s like Michael Jordan. The producers and I said that we could move on after a take, but it’s so much fun to watch that we would want to watch her over and over again. She was spectacular. I would work with her again in a second.

Her performance has gotten a lot of nice reviews and I’m happy about that because she’s such a nice person and she’s so good in the movie. There are a lot of performances like this that are very subtle and not a lot of huge fireworks that go off. I was hoping that writers and critics would recognize her for her subtlety. And they are and that’s very, very nice.

Now that the film has played SIFF, what is going to happen next with it?

I think we’re going to go to Europe for another festival; we’re just trying to figure out which one. We have a bunch of distributors that are interested so we want to find which one the right one is. I think it’s a movie that will probably have a small life in the theater but a nice, long life on Netflix and iTunes. I think a lot of these size films that I’ve done as an actor, it is years later that audiences find them on their computers or On Demand. That’s okay, I just want people to see the film because I’m really proud of it and I’m proud of the performances. I think Don Johnson is amazing in the film.

I do too.

I had to pretty much beg him to do the part. I kept going back after him. He’s at a place in his life where he doesn’t need to do anything. He’s not going to make any money and going to work with a first time filmmaker is a risk. I think the part was written beautifully and it’s a chance for him do something different. I tried to tell him that and finally he said yes. He came very prepared and very dedicated. He set the bar very high and he was really great to work with. I’m proud to what he did.

I haven’t seen him in a lot of roles lately, so I think he’s at a point where he doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to.

No. It’s nice that he can choose with his heart. He’s not choosing with his wallet or with his career in mind, or wondering what it will get him. He was choosing it for the work.

I think he’s mentioned that it was a chance for him to get to do some Chekhov. He did more Chekhov in the film but it didn’t make it into the movie. There were other parts of the play, but it was hard to find where it was going to fit in.

That’s another thing I wanted to ask about. The film was only 86 minutes long, which I prefer. Was it hard to cut it down to fit a shorter running time?

It was. There was so much great stuff that I had to cut. That wasn’t necessarily to make it shorter but to make sure there was a straight through-line for the story. The tricky part is that there are a lot of people. I didn’t want all of those people resolved. It was Alex’s movie but they’re all going through changes. Some of them are changes that are inflicted upon them and some are there that they’ve sought out. But all of those changes are there to affect Alex’s change and her world and the heaviness on her shoulders. I needed all of them, but the balance of all of them… For example, there was a storyline with the sister-character Lily and her married boyfriend. It was great stuff and a great actor that played the role and I loved the scenes it was just another road that the movie went down that it didn’t need to.

The boy had a scene, in the original script, had gone and trashed a pond as rebellion to his mom. He had taken all of his notebooks and ripped them, and threw garbage. In that diner scene, he gets up and goes to the bathroom and leaves the diner and we’re looking for him, but he goes to the pond and trashes it. When we put it in the film, it felt non-realistic and a bit melodramatic. I didn’t buy it. It worked on the page, and that’s something I didn’t understand because I’m so new to filmmaking. It read one way and looking it at, it didn’t. A lot of smart people were giving me advice and nobody picked up on it. It doesn’t work and the story isn’t really about that. It’s not about rebellion.

I also felt like the characters were not really explosive, but more implosive.

Yes, that’s a really good point. It’s not the movie we made.

I think this [Harvard Exit] is a perfect house for the movie. It’s contained and small.

To ask about another acting performance, did you always know you were going to play George?

They gave the script with that in mind. I kept going back and forth. I was nervous to do it because how am I supposed to do both (act and direct)? Is it too much to take on? I tried to get out of it at the last minute but I’m glad that I did it because one day I’d like to direct myself in a larger role. It was one to dip my toe into.

I watched [Ben] Affleck do it in Argo, but their budget was a little bit bigger than ours. He would go to the monitor and watch playback and adjust his performance accordingly. He’s super-smart and a super-talented guy. We didn’t have playback so I got my friend Matt Del Negro, who is a great actor, to come and direct me on screen. He did me a huge favor. If you came to the set on those days, you would think he was the director. I would tell the DP what I wanted and set the shot and go away and prepare as an actor and Matt would direct me.

I think you deserve a lot of credit for playing a character whose flaws are omnipresent throughout much of the film.

I didn’t want anyone to think “this guy is the bad guy” or “she’s the good girl.” I wanted them to be human. George might not be doing it the right way, or he’s doing it the only way he knows, but he wants to change and this is what he does. I tried not to judge him or any of the other characters. As an audience member reading the script, I liked all of the characters and as a director, I loved all of them. I wanted the audience to understand all of them. It’s life. Change is gorgeous but it’s painful.

What are the contrasts between working on a smaller movie like Alex of Venice, and more of a bigger movie? Two that I loved that you were in were Julie and Julia and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, for example. They might not have been enormous but probably were bigger Alex of Venice in terms of budget, etc…

I’ve been lucky to work in a lot of different genres and mediums and budget sizes. They all have their plusses and minuses. They are all very different and very similar. The smaller budgets are faster – 21 days – but we had a lot of control. I made the film I wanted to make. My producers, Jamie Patricof and Lynette Howell, gave me extraordinary notes and they let me make the film I wanted to make. There wasn’t a studio or financiers. For a first time filmmaker, I was very fortunate. I heard stories from friends that were more difficult, everyone wanted to tinker with the film and make cuts. I think with the bigger the budget, the more pressure that is on everyone to deliver a result. I think that’s great and there’s room for everything. For my first film, I didn’t want the pressure that this has to be a gigantic sell and has to be number one at the box office. We’re out to do something else. I like all different types of things. When I’m in a big budget something, I want to do something low budget and when I’m in a low budget, I want to do a big budget. To have the luxury and the luck to go back and forth is really great.

What is coming up next for you?

I’m shooting “Newsroom” for HBO and then around July 29 or 30, I’m going to shoot season three of “The Mindy Project” on Fox. I’ve been developing other films that I would want to direct, going slow. One thing that I did that was incredibly stupid was that I shot an entire season of “The Mindy Project” while I was editing this film in my trailer. It was way too much to take on. Of course, everything suffers because of it. Next time I plan to direct, and I hope to do it many more times, I will clear the slate and make sure I have time for everything to breathe. I’m trying to find what to do next. I have a bunch of ideas and some writers that I’m working with, but it’s all in the early stages. Right now, it’s fun to be touring around with the film. I’ve never been to Seattle and it is gorgeous here and the people are so kind. If it wasn’t for my amazing family back in Los Angeles, I could stay here for a very long time.