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March 24, 2015
Interview: Sam Jaeger Goes from 'Parenthood' to PTSD in the Harrowing 'Plain Clothes'
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Sam Jaeger stars in 'Plain Clothes' which he also wrote and directed.

During six seasons, Sam Jaeger stole the hearts of viewers with his sensitive portrayal of Joel Graham in NBC’s Parenthood, which saw his character go through emotional ups and downs that made him beloved by viewers who felt they knew him in real life. But even while the show was on the air, Jaeger was also leaving his mark in films, with supporting parts in features like Catch and Release, Her, Inherent Vice, American Sniper and a leading role in Take Me Home which he also wrote and directed. He went back to the director’s chair for a harrowing short called Plain Clothes in which he plays Cole, a police officer dealing with PTSD.

Flawlessly executed and acted, the short film was made available on YouTube and Vimeo, in order to reach as many viewers as possible, and should be essential viewing in times when the police force is under such public scrutiny. We had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Jaeger about the intentions behind the film, how it relates to American Sniper and how he felt about people turning their back on Joel during Parenthood’s controversial fifth season.

The one complaint I have is that Plain Clothes is so short.

(Laughs) Well, by its very nature, we figured we’d make a short film. So I’m sorry that from its very inception it was disappointing to you.

Were you planning at all on expanding Cole’s story?

Yeah, it’s a discussion we’re having right now, we’ve been talking to a number of networks about possibly expanding it into a series, maybe make a feature out of this, but we’re still in the early stages of that. The response we’ve had is that, like you said, people want to see more of that world. I think that means we’re onto something.

How was the process of writing Cole?

It was interesting, I didn’t expect to write Cole. He came from some conversations I’d had with soe officers I know well and hearing their story I thought it was something I hadn’t seen. We talk so often about the struggles the military have, but rarely about the struggles the police have, like balancing their work with their home lives, they don’t go away for months at a time and then have to adjust, they come home every night. To me that was a really interesting for a film, so I wrote it pretty quickly, did some re-writes, and I had spent so long making Take Me Home that I liked the idea of doing a short film.

sam jaeger 2Why did you make your film available for free?

We just felt like the film festival is great for filmmakers who want to get their name out, but thanks to Parenthood my name is out, so what was most important to us was that the people who would benefit from a short film like this would have immediate access. We’ve had a police trainer already ask us if they could use our film as part of their training, and that’s the reason why I wanted to make it available for everyone.

Why do you think that PTSD, which is a serious mental issue, is discussed so little in popular culture?

That’s a good question, strangely enough, I think it has to do with the mentality of the officers, in both the military and the police;  they’re trained to keep up, protect themselves and in order to keep this up, I don’t want to isolate female officers, but I think there’s something of a mentality of masculinity, where men are not allowed to show or process their emotions, and I think that’s a pretty slippery slope. I want my film to be the start of a conversation about this.

I agree and I believe American Sniper was aiming to address this, but then it got turned into a big political, controversial issue and people didn’t talk about the PTSD elements in it.

Yeah, it’s been so much about the personal storyline of Chris Kyle and that takes away from what I feel the movie did really well, which was talk about this, you see some really harrowing stuff, and in the conversations I’ve had with officers about the things they see, I realized that it’s a really hard thing to walk away from at the end of the day. There’s a reason why the police divorce rate is 80%, it’s hard to balance, and all the scrutiny on officers right now should make us look at how they’re trained. Officers have a job that needs to be done, and I think it’s an important one, so we should make sure they’re mentally healthy.

Would you say that visually your film was inspired by Clint Eastwood’s work?

I didn’t really have any specific references, we talked about the tone and the mindset of this character, so we came up with this dark, washed out world, I kinda wanted it to feel like a hangover (laughs), all the colors a really drained out of everything, that’s where the film begins and bringing some color back at certain points was important to us. I’m honored you saw some Eastwood in it, he’s one of those guys who’s worked a long time because he knows what he’s doing and has a very specific voice.

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Sam Jaeger with Timothy Simons (L) in 'Inherent Vice', with Erika Christensen (R) in 'Parenthood'

I’m really curious about how you dealt with Joel’s transition in Parenthood, he went from being a perfect man, to becoming kind of a dick.

The conversation that I had with [showrunner] Jason Katims in season five, was that we’d had four seasons of Joel being a sweet guy, but essentially not having much of a backbone, and not having many flaws, so I felt we were doing a disservice to men everywhere. Jason came back with this storyline of Joel moving out and I think he felt that we may have gone a little too far, but at the same time I’m glad we told that story instead of going through a very polite journey. It took us two years to develop that story but in the end I think it paid off, people watching felt Joel was returning to his normal self, but also the relationship had been improved through that. I also think it’s interesting, because they were very young when they got married, and there’s a time when couples get tested later on, so I’m glad we showed that. It was hard in the filming of it, to separate from what we were doing onscreen, I don’t regret anything about it, but it was hard to do.

The show made everyone cry all the time, do people come up to you and talk about this?

Oh yeah, that’s the thing we hear most often, “we cry every episode”. I don’t think that’s what the show set out to do, but they told very powerful emotional stories and I think that’s why Parenthood endured, you could sit down and feel the reward of trying to be a better husband, wife, son.

After doing all these dramas it was so refreshing to see you in Inherent Vice. That scene with Timothy Simons is so hilarious. Are you looking forward to doing more comedy?

Tim and I had so much fun in that job! I’ve also been working on a show called The Button, it’s a comedy with Danny Pudi from Community, it just feels like the total other end of the spectrum. Totally absurd, really dark comedy, incredibly stupid, but it’s a really cool world we’re in the middle of creating, so it feels nice to do something other than going to work and just sob uncontrollably.

You can watch Plain Clothes below, for more information on the film visit: https://plainclothesmovie.com/

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Written by: Jose Solis
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