Mike Mills knew he needed a star to make 'C'mon C'mon.' Joaquin Phoenix answered the call
TELLURIDE, Colo. — Writer-director Mike Mills is a deeply sensitive person — "too sensitive," he'll tell you. So as thrilling as it was to see his new film "C'mon C'mon" have its world premiere at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival, he didn't have the easiest time getting through it.
Already a bit freaked out by the idea of being around so many people in the middle of a pandemic, Mills stood in the back of the theater, looking for signs that the audience was on the wavelength of his tender, open-hearted story of a radio journalist named Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) who forges an unexpected emotional bond with his precocious nephew, Jesse (Woody Norman), during a cross-country trip.
"I can talk myself into thinking everything's broken," Mills says two days later over coffee. "I kept feeling like I was seeing glitches or the sound was going out. It was like I was tripping hard, I was so anxious. You really don't know if it's going to work at all or if it's like you're speaking Russian. But the audience was laughing,
