| The Wackness - Johnathine Levine on being 'Real' |
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Jonathan Levine calls "The Wackness" a
"second first film." In a way, he's speaking
for his whole cast. While Levine is making
his debut as a writer after helming the much
buzzed-about (but still unreleased) teen
horror comedy hybrid, "All the Boys Love
Mandy Lane," he hired an eclectic cast for
his latest film that includes Nickelodeon
staple Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby ("Juno"),
Method Man, Famke Janssen, Sir Ben Kingsley,
and in case you hadn't heard, Mary-Kate
Olsen. It's an unusual ensemble for an
unusual coming-of-age story of a teen (Peck)
who forms an unlikely friendship with a
psychologist (Kingsley) by trading marijuana
for therapy in 1994 New York. It's clearly a
personal story for Levine, but it's not an
autobiographical one, though both he and Peck
both sweated out sticky summers in Manhattan,
listening to Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa" a
generation apart. Now, the two have
collaborated on a generational anthem of
their own that bridges the gap.
Even though this is set in a very specific
time and place, there's something very
universal about it as a coming of age
experience — was that something that really
came out in the script for you?
Josh Peck: No question. Granted, in '94 I was
eight years old, rocking shoes with lights in
them and watching "Power Rangers," but I
think the universal thread throughout the
movie was the plight of Sir Ben's character
and my character Luke, their disillusionment
and cynicism and not having the support
structure that most of us come to lean on. It
seemed to me that Luke, at 18, was just
becoming a man, but what constitutes [that]
— experiences? Relationships? You can go to
war and you can vote, but what does it really
mean? That's initially what drew me in.
Jonathan Levine: Everything crystallized once
he walked into the room. Even though a lot of
this character comes from my personality and
my own experience, I had no idea of what [he]
looked like or how he carried himself. It
wasn't necessarily about the time period. I
was constantly impressed by the ways in which
[Josh] was making this character his own and
in doing that, it allowed me to have a little
distance, a little perspective.
Did you find it easier to write from personal
experience,or was it something that you
looked back on and realized you had injected
more of yourself into than you initially
thought?
JL: The latter, definitely. I wrote and I
wrote and I wrote, this very digressive 140
page first draft [that] just came from the
lack of my censoring myself. Looking back,
[I'd say] these are the themes I'm working
with, this is what I should magnify, this is
what I should cut.
I was Paul Schrader's assistant for six
months before I went to film school, and he's
very much about knowing what's going to
happen on every page before you even start
writing dialogue — the entire plot and
character arcs are mapped out. When he would
leave the office, I'd sneak looks into his
old files and there'd be the yellow piece of
legal paper with a handwritten "Page 10 -
Travis meets Iris." (laughs) But this was a
serendipitous thing; the more I wrote, the
more it felt like the right thing to be
doing.
Jonathan, you've mentioned in previous
interviews that you wanted the Notorious
B.I.G. on the soundtrack because his music
was a deeper than he's given credit for. From
the title on down, "The Wackness" seems like
it might be a pretty superficial movie, but
Ben Kingsley signed on after comparing his
character to Falstaff. Was it your intention
to make something that worked on both those
levels?
JL: For me, the number one goal was always to
entertain people, make them laugh and make
them feel for the character. But the more we
give the audience the cues that they're used
to, and I actually learned this on "Mandy
Lane," the more you're able to subvert that.
You can do more if you're safely protected by
both the genre and by giving the audience the
traditional things that they want.
I'm an audience member as well, and I don't
want to be bored or overtly preached to,
either, but I think that ["The Wackness"] was
a great forum in which to ask deeper
questions than you would normally expect from
this type of movie. You hope at the end of
the day that the whole is greater than the
sum of its parts, and I think that if you
have it in the story, and I was aware we had
it in the story, then that's a good start.
I remember David Gordon Green getting
criticized for "All The Real Girls" because
people were saying oh, he's too young to be
nostalgic. With "The Wackness," was going
back a decade a little strange?
A BlackTree Media Production
Produced by Jamaal Finkley
http://www.blacktree.tv
Tags : filmmaker reel interview trailer Johnathine Levine Wackness Hip HOp |
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Affichage : 1898
Durée : 329 s |
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