We have a 1-1 interview with the director and writer of "The Wackness" starring Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck!...
Jonathan Levine has a bright future ahead of him. The young director and writer of the uniquely wacky dark comedy "The Wackness" offers viewers a refreshing shot at coming-of-age stories and relationships. With release date around the corner and his prior project "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane" hopefully seeing theatres in due time (at the current time set for August '08) we sat down for a 1-1 with the full-of-live personality.
Peter Dimako:
Before we get into the film questions, if you don't mind, can you talk a bit about yourself. Where do you hail from, how did you come into the film career and was this always what you wanted to do from a young age? D
Jonathan Levine:
"It is something I always wanted to do. As long as I can remember, I think I was like...twelve was the first time I picked up a camera. I would just make little movies with my friends and every chance I got I would go to the movies, in high school there was a class for making movies, I would do that. In college I studied in visual art production and a lot of that was filmmaking and when I got out of college, I took a couple of jobs in New York, sort of conjunctionally related to the film industry. And then I decided to go to film school and that was really kind of where I got the opportunity to start really making some stuff and progressing."
Peter Dimako:
You won an audience award at this year's Sundance Film Festival for "The Wackness." How many times had you been to Sundance and can you talk about the experience in general? This must have been such a boost for you, confidence-wise.
Jonathan Levine:
"I had never been, I had heard that it was...all the things that everyone else hears...it's really exciting and glamorous and crazy and fun and it was all those things. The best thing about it is that you get to show your movie to an audience for the first time and the audience is receptive to independent film, to new indie stories and voices. It was very exciting for me. But it's cold...everyone got sick. I managed to avoid getting sick but my girlfriend spent the whole time in bed."
Peter Dimako:
So how did "The Wackness" come about? What inspired you to make this dark comedic SLASH romance of a young guy "who officially never had sex" and is trading dope for therapy? How long has this project been in the making?
Jonathan Levine:
*laugh*
"Well, I started writing it at film school. We had a developing class where once you're out of film school they wanted you to have a feature script and this was one of the ones I was working on although I never finished it in film school, but I started working on it. It really just started with that idea of these two characters, the Kingsley character and the Josh Peck character connecting over these therapy sessions That was I think about 2003, 2004 and then over the next few years I was working on other stuff and I kept coming back to it and kept developing it in the background. And the more I worked on it, the more I liked it and the more felt like you know, it was coming from the right place, coming from a very personal place and so I kept at it and once it got to a reasonable kind of length and once it was something I felt comfortable showing to people...then I got more notes. The feedback I got was really very good and I managed to get it to the people who had financed my first film which was a much lower budget independent film and they liked it and they agreed to go ahead with it."
Peter Dimako:
What inspired you to go for 1994? Is that a special year for you in particular?
Jonathan Levine:
"You know, like the character in the movie, I graduated from high school that year. I think everyone sort of likes to look back at their high school years with fondness and nostalgia and I hadn't really seen a movie that had done that yet. But beyond that, once I started writing it, I realize that there were all sorts of other things that happened in that year, other than me graduating from high school you know? The music, Giuliani being Mayor of New York for the first time, the OJ trial, Kurt Cobain suicide...just a whole bunch of things that I thought made it an interesting backdrop to set the story."
Peter Dimako:
Let's talk a bit about casting. Josh Peck is a really talented actor and he has a few projects he's currently working on. What convinced you to cast him and was there anyone else you had in mind? Was Ben Kingsley the first to come aboard this project? What about the rest of the cast?
Jonathan Levine:
"Well Ben Kingsley was the first person, while I had gotten the movie to financiers, we needed an actor of his caliber to sort of justify the budget. Of course we were very excited to work with him because he's, you know, one of the greatest living actors around. So he came on first, then once we got him we set up a start date and started looking for the younger actors. We looked at tons of people and Josh and Olivia both came in and they just both felt like the right choices. As soon as I saw them I really knew...they really were the ones to combine a really authentic kind of feel along with getting the humor of the characters and allowing us to sort of empathize with them."
Peter Dimako:
How much did the story of "The Wackness" change from its inception?
Jonathan Levine:
"I think it was longer, but beyond that it didn't really change much, it was really the same spirit and same central premise and the same characters and the same dilemmas...you know basically the process of writing and rewriting was really about kind of formulating a plot. You know, the feeling and the tone and the perspective, that was always there, but it was really just about kind of grafting a plot onto it without having it feel kind of too kind of plotty or contrived or anything like that. I really did want it to feel like a lazy summer movie."
Peter Dimako:
Can you talk about the day-dreaming scenes?
Jonathan Levine:
"Originally, the whole first act was really...you know...a lot of these kind of fantasy sequences and digressions into this guy's head and then as we kept cutting it, we realized that not, while the film is primarily from Josh's point of view, it really is a split point of view with the Dr. Squires character. So I think it was nice to have those sort of little brief surprises through the movie rather than sort of the original intention which was very much like this consistent style that was peppered throughout the movie."
Peter Dimako:
What was the budget for this? This can't be a $20 million film (as indicated on IMdb). What was the budget?
Jonathan Levine:
"No! Not at all, I wish! Where does it say that? I think it says it on Wikipedia."
Peter Dimako:
No, it's on IMDb, and I thought $20 million, that's...
Jonathan Levine:
"Man, if I had $20 million there'd be explosions and robots. It cost like $6 million."
Peter Dimako:
Can you talk a bit about "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane." It's an indie slasher pic and quite a jump to "The Wackness." - Note: we had just added in posters from the film a few days prior to this interview.
Jonathan Levine:
"It's kind of like a teenage high school movie meets slasher movie. We sold it at Toronto a couple of years ago and now it's being distributed by a different company and hopefully it's coming out in the states before the end of the year, although they changed the release date so many times that I'm so hesitant to talk about it just 'cause I don't want to be wrong again. But, I'm very proud of it, I think people will like it when it comes out...whenever that may be. I'm hoping before the end of the year man!"
Peter Dimako:
Any future projects we're not aware of?
I'm adapting a book for Sony for this spy novel called Echelon Vendetta and I'm finishing up that script right now. I'm not sure if that's something I'm going to direct or not but that's what I'm working on right now and then just talking to nice people like yourself, getting the word out about the movie and then hopefully taking a couple of days off."
Interview took place at 10:30 AM EST on June 27th, 2008. This interview is also available here.
Audio is available on request for verification purposes to authorized professionals only.
The Wackness (2008) (Released date: July 3, 2008 (Limited Areas))
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