Glamour: How did you and Jen go from friends to producing partners?
Kristin: Tootsie and Terms of Endearment were two of our favorite movies, and that's how we eventually started talking about forming a company together. We loved the movies that make you laugh and cry and feel connected to other people.
Glamour: What are your tips for working with your best friend?
Kristin: That's a great question. It's very challenging, and I don't typically recommend going into business with friends. I would say that the reason we've been successful at is because we started with a foundation of pretty intense, unconditional love. We had that very, very strong bond. We've been through life experiences together that bonded us that was tested and true. There was that, and we agreed that the friendship would always come first and if it got weird, we would stop working together because we're like family. We want to grow old together, so we had an understanding that we wouldn't do anything to damage the friendship.
Glamour: Like what exactly?
Kristin: It's important to keep your individual identities. We have a company together, but I'm excited for her and her own things that have nothing to do with me. I show up for that and cheer her on as much as the stuff we do together, and she does the same for me. There is no competition or jealousy. If you have that, I think that is the only way the foundation can work in a healthy way. There has to be an unconditional love and no judgement. When a misunderstanding happens, you have to be able to talk it through and always keep things clear.
Glamour: You started Plan B Films with Jen and Brad Pitt in a garage. Explain!
Kristin: We did it very quietly. It was me in my garage in Ojai, where I was living at the time writing books. Brad and Jen and I spent a fair amount of time together, and we started talking about working together, at first on a documentary, and then it evolved into features. We went on vacation one time, and they said, "Let's start a company!" So my husband and I and my baby moved to Ojai from Washington State. We started the company very grass roots in my garage, and the plan was not to announce anything until we could build material and projects.
__Glamour: Once Plan B was open for business, what projects did you gravitate towards?
Kristin__: We started to develop some really interesting material. The Time Traveler's Wife started in that garage. The Departed started in that garage. A Mighty Heart is right there, before I moved [back] to L.A. And then the company started to take on a real shape and the mandate was to find entertaining commercial films that had a purpose and a compelling theme. They tended to be the harder-to-get-made films.__
__Glamour: How hard was it to transition then from Plan B to Echo Films? Did that feel like a divorce itself, or is that just considered par for the course in this business?
Kristin__: Yeah, absolutely. My philosophy was...I loved the projects we were working on, and I love Plan B today. I'm truly a fan of Plan B, and they have gone on to build that company into something I greatly admire. They have fully realized the vision.
Glamour: You produced Cake with Jennifer, and then Tumbledown recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival with Jason Sudeikis, under your own Hahnscape Films. What was the reason behind breaking out on your own?
Kristin: I was really needing to write, and I needed to write under my own banner. Going back to the point of a healthy partnership—because Jen is first and foremost an actress and a producer—it was a way to create some balance, so I always have a place to put my creative energies when she's busy. So we work on things that we both fall madly in love with and say, "OK, let's use Echo as the channel to do this." Then there are other things I fall in love with that I want to do, which is why Hahnscape needed to be born—to do both.
Glamour: You're married for quite a while. What relationship movies are your favorites? Which one got it right?
Kristin: The Break-Up was really insightful. Leaving it open-ended was a huge thing for Jen to hang on to for the ending. And that lemon scene and the I want you to want to help me' is such a classic, interesting dynamic that I've seen in a lot of my friend's relationships—and mine too. You're arguing about the lemons, and it's not about the lemons. It's two great people that just keep missing each other, and it's such a true interpretation.
