The façade of a picture-perfect couple explodes in Director Jay Roach’s dark comedy, The Roses.

Roach’s reimaging of Danny DeVito’s 1989 film, The War of the Roses, tells the story of Ivy and Theo Rose, a couple with seemingly successful careers, a loving marriage and great kids. However, a tinderbox of fierce competition and hidden resentments emerge when Theo’s career nosedives and Ivy’s own ambitions take off.

On September 21, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Roach discussed the making of The Roses during a Q&A moderated by Director Jason Reitman (Saturday Night).

During the conversation, Roach revealed what he learned from Director Sydney Pollack.

“I was inspired by Sydney Pollack. He was a hugely influential person in my life. He gave me the break to do Recount. He was doing Recount, got sick and he said, ‘Hey, why don’t you do this?’ No one had ever given me a chance to do drama or politics which I really was interested in doing. But if you look at [Pollack’s] films we were just talking about, Jeramiah Johnson all the way to Tootsie and Out of Africa, he didn’t feel the need to stamp some visual style on it that made it uniquely his. He just served the story and that is all. If there is a story I really love, I’m going to try to not just get into it but become the benign cult leader of that story. That’s gonna be the scripture. I’m gonna get everyone else to drink that potion, those rituals that go with that story.”

Roach’s other directorial credits include the feature films Bombshell, Trumbo, Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Meet the Parents, Dinner for Schmucks, The Campaign; the movie for television Earth to America; the pilots for the television series The Brink and High Desert. He was a nominee for the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Mini-Series for his 2017 film All the Way. He won DGA Awards in that same category for his 2008 film Recount and his 2012 film Game Change. Roach has been a member of the DGA since 1996 and serves as the Chair of the DGA PAC Leadership Council, as a member of the Theatrical Creative Rights Committee and as an alternate on the Western Directors Council.