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Jonathan Levine has wasted no time in showing that he's a versatile director. With his first feature, the slasher film ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE, a critical hit amongst the horror community (and still awaiting a release date), Levine followed it up on the opposite end of the spectrum; a marijuana fueled, coming of age drama about a young dealer's summer of love and friendship. With Sir Ben Kingsley in the lead, Levine has given a love letter to his youth and to the city he grew up in. Levine returned to New York City to promote THE WACKNESS, and sat down with the Crypt to talk about casting the film, why he felt he had to make it, working as an assistant to Paul Schrader, securing the music rights, what he likes and doesn't like about horror, and many more in this Crypt exclusive.
JONATHAN LEVINE: How are you today? COLONEL’S CRYPT: Very good, and it’s also good to see someone the same age as me. JL: The cliché is 30 is the new 20 but that’s awesome. CC: With THE WACKNESS, what was it about that period in your life that was so drawn to you? Was it just your age or was it something else? JL: I think that when you’re just graduating from high school, there’s something very significant about it. Regardless of what your personal experience is, it’s a time where you are being exposed to all sorts of different things, whether it’s a blossoming sexuality, or your first drink, or your first time you fall in love. Even in the social structure of it, I hated it. It was really lost and I think that’s around the time where I was trying to find my way. Why 1994? Mainly because of the music and the ability to look back at that time because it hasn’t been done yet and put it through that nostalgic lens. CC: This is a very New York movie. Was it particularly meant to be a New York movie or could you see it in any other town? JL: I like to hope it could’ve taken place anywhere but with that said when you’re telling a story like this, you have to infuse it with as much personal detail as possible. I hope that it is accessible for people who don’t know the specifics of the story, they can connect with their own summer that they fell in love or some older mentor that they have a morally emotional arc of the story. I like to think that these characters can exist somewhere else but you have to write what you know and this is very much what I knew. CC: What is it about New York that you find so fascinating? JL: All the classic things, you know? The cultures that come together and the fact that after living in LA for a few years, the fact that in New York you walk places where you are confronted with other cultures, other economic status, other races, the whole city is such a unique place and having grown up here it’s like I have so many personal connections to it. CC: Were you always interested in filmmaking? JL: I’ve always been into filmmaking. When I was a kid growing up here, my friends and I would pick up camera and play around when I was 12. I’ve always been into it and then I got the opportunity to study it. I’m pretty down to earth and I’m not into a lot of the bullshit and I think that’s why I’m really happy to have met all these actors because you never know. There’s all these egos all over Hollywood and we had a rule that none of that would go on the set and we didn’t have that. The normal person would think with Sir Ben, Famke Janssen, Mary Kate Olsen, and Method Man that someone would be a dick but they’re all cool and dedicated to their work. It’s really inspiring, especially seeing it in Kinglsey that they’re so down to earth and that they won’t let anything get in the way of their work. CC: You started out as an assistant to Paul Schrader. How did that come about and what was it like working for Paul? JL: It was cool. I really didn’t do it for very long but it was awesome. TAXI DRIVER is one of my favorite movies so the ability to be near him and just kind of listen. He was just finishing AUTO FOCUS but it wasn’t like I was collaborating with him. I was getting him coffee and scheduling his appointments but to be around him and see what he was like, see things from his perspective, how he wrote and how he talked to people. It was a great lesson for me. He’s a very special person, very interesting, very unique voice, very cynical and funny, and so as I start making more movies, that’s one of the weird things about being young and doing it because I don’t really have anyone to talk to for advice because there’s not a lot of people my age who haven’t yet made a movie so it’s nice to have the experience working with him so I can at least have that perspective that he taught me. CC: What was the best bit of advice that he gave you? JL: He never sat me down and gave me advice, it was more of stuff I learned. What I learned is that you have to stay true to your own voice and you have to be vigilant about it. You’re always going to be plagued by self-doubt that is exasperated by the system and you have to be vigilant about your own work and stay true to your own voice as a filmmaker. That’s a huge lesson. CC: What was the budget for THE WACKNESS? JL: Six million. CC: How much of that was spent on the soundtrack? JL: I don’t exactly know the number, less than a million I know that, which is really cheap for the type of music. We got this relationship with Sony/BMG early on and they hooked us on to a lot of stuff. I was very happy that we got such cooperation from the hip hop community. CC: How did you pick the music for the script? JL: I wrote a bunch of shit into the scripts. Can I say shit? CC: You can say whatever the fuck you want. JL: Nice. I wrote a bunch of shit into the script. I’ve helped clear music for a short film I did and my first feature so I know how difficult it could be. I actually wrote songs I thought I could get and we ended up being able to get even bigger songs so that’s usually the opposite of what you can work with. We were able to get better shit and that was because we had the soundtrack relationship with Sony/BMG and also because we were the first people to really use this music in a long time for a movie. I think we got a lot of good feedback from the hip hop community that we’re hopefully turning people on to this era of music. Hopefully it will reap benefits further down the line for a lot of these artists. The feedback when we tried to get these songs were great, I didn’t think we’d get Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” or R. Kelly, all this stuff. As far as picking it goes, once we knew we were working with the Sony catalog, we would just try a different bunch of stuff. I knew I wanted a song from Nas’ “Illmatic,” I just didn’t know what the song would be but I knew that “Illmatic,” that was an album that I played over and over and over again in my room in high school. I also wanted some Biggie songs as well. I tried not to write it into a corner. I wanted to keep it in that framework as much as possible. Fox Searchlight is doing a movie on Biggie so there was one song I couldn’t use which was a little disappointing. CC: Why do you think that 1994 was such a pivotal time for hip hop? JL: Artistically, whether it be film or music, it was definitely a very vibrant time. People were doing new things and different things and I think anytime someone’s trying to do something new, it’s always pivotal. When was the last time someone tried to do something new with music? It’s been a long time. That in itself is really exciting. As far as the city, the old New York was bumping against the new New York. Times Square was the perfect example. That area was just starting to get corporate and so it those factors that made it such a great time for me. CC: It’s funny because I remember all that being that I’m not a humungous fan of hip hop. JL: What music did you listen to? CC: I was more into the grunge sound. JL: Yeah, that was cool too. Nirvana and Soundgarden were excellent. I steered more towards Smashing Pumpkins and Weezer as well. CC: I feel that 1994 was also a great and pivotal year for film as well. Being that you were just getting out of high school with the ambition of becoming a filmmaker, would you agree that it was a great time as well? JL: Definitely. The interesting thing about 1994 was that was the year that FORREST GUMP and PULP FICTION were battling each other. FORREST GUMP was the audience friendly film while PULP FICTION was the counter culture outsider film. They’re both great films though I particularly enjoyed PULP FICTION a lot more. CC: How many students in your film school wanted to make movies exactly like PULP FICTION? JL: You had that too? CC: Oh yeah. JL: That’s so funny. I remember the first couple of days, we were all talking about what wanted us to become filmmakers and everyone said PULP FICTION. For me it was DO THE RIGHT THING but PULP FICTION really did inspire a lot of rip offs but it also inspired people who wanted to be filmmakers as well so it’s cool. CC: How did you decide on Josh for the lead role? JL: I didn’t know anything about Josh. He just walked into the room one of probably six dozen actors I saw. He just walked into the room and did his reading. It was a revelation to me in his authenticity to it as well as his vulnerability. I didn’t know anything about his show but now I see it all the time. I can’t flip through the channels without seeing it but I’m not in the target demographic of the DRAKE & JOSH show but it’s interesting because now that I watch it, I kind of fuck with him about it. I go “Dude you were up to some crazy hijinks today.” CC: Would you look back at this as a hip hop movie or a coming of age story? JL: I don’t know. I’d like to think that the spirit of hip hop is something that we tried to convey in this movie. I definitely would not be upset if it was classified as a hip hop movie because I think a lot of what the Ben Kingsley character and Josh’s character identify with in the music is the stuff we wanted to do on the macro level in the movie itself. Hip hop has a spirit and a soul that transcends music. It’s more of a state of mind. I hope in some way that that soul comes across in the movie. CC: How did the idea for the ice cart cover come across? JL: I don’t know. That for me was such a summer thing and I thought that’d be a fun way for him to get through the city. I actually always wanted to do that. Not do weed but have an ice cart. I thought it would be a cool way to spend some lazy summer days walking around with an ice cart. CC: Was Ben Kingsley always the first choice for Dr. Squires? JL: Yeah, he was the first person we offered it to and without him we wouldn’t have had a movie. We were lucky to be able to get to him and he read it so quickly and said yes. I didn’t write it with him in mind, we had a huge list of actors, the usual suspects and then some which would be exciting but Ben was always at the top of list for two reasons; one because he’s fucking awesome and two because he’s not the type of person you would normally expect in this role. I think that for me as a director is really exciting to see him in a new light. We’ve seen him do all these types of things but we’ve never seen him do this before. That’s what excites me about his work in this film. CC: THE WACKNESS is in a way being promoted as a stoner movie. Do you consider this to be part of that particular genre, the stoner comedy? JL: Well I liked HALF BAKED. I also really liked HOW HIGH. That was the one where they smoke the weed that makes them smarter? That’s fucking brilliant. I don’t think it’s like that but the weed is there as a device. It’s there to serve a purpose. It allows me to explore some issues on how some people medicate themselves to cope and it also allows to lighten the move. It’s not a stoner movie but I also think it is integral to the plot and tone of the film and it tends to get a little more intense and emotional than those films so it’s not a stoner movie in that case. You know what stoner movie I want to see? WALL-E, that’s a fucking stoner movie! CC: Your first feature is a horror film, ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE, which I’m sorry to say I haven’t seen yet. Were you always a fan of horror? JL: I was always a fan of horror but more as a film goer than a filmmaker. It was never something I expected to do myself but I remember in college a few friends started an independent study on horror. It was basically an excuse to meet girls, smoke pot, and watch horror movies but we got credit for it. We watched a lot of 80s movies as well as I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, some 70s films that were pushing the envelope as much as they could. I really liked SLEEPAWAY CAMP and APRIL’S FOOLS DAY and all that stuff. I used to wear a Freddy Krueger pin because I was so into NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, I was a huge fan of the series. I would go see every NIGHTMARE film on opening day. Even when they got really lame at the end, the 3D one, I was so psyched about that one but it was disappointed. CC: Do you find that some of those films you loved as a kid, especially horror, you watch them now and realize that they weren’t that good to begin with? JL: That’s why I’m more of a film goer than a filmmaker for the genre because when I revisit these movies I think that I can take this idea and do it better. A lot of times the film connects with a certain thing in the audience that freaks people out. The movies around it don’t have to be good as long as the idea is good. There’s something so smart about the genre. There are moments in FRIDAY THE 13TH that are totally amazing. CC: NEW NIGHTMARE came out in the summer of 1994. JL: Holy shit, it did. CC: That movie was well ahead of its time. JL: That one is awesome. CC: Would you consider going back into horror? JL: Of course but it just has to be good. After MANDY LANE I got a bunch of scripts which were really not good. I think that it’s the genre that inspires the most bad scripts because you can do it really cheaply. You don’t need stars because the genre itself is the star. It’s a great first feature for many filmmakers so I think that as I continue to make movies, yes I would love to make another horror movie. I just have to find one that’s unique and one that comes from a unique perspective. I would love to. You could do so much shit and style in a horror movie that you can’t do in any other genre. CC: So you have THE WACKNESS which is a coming of age comedy after a slasher film in ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE. That’s a very drastic change. JL: It is and I want to be making movies for a long time and show different sides of what I can do. MANDY LANE was a film that a friend of mine wrote, a wonderful writer who I went to film school with. My job was to interpret it. THE WACKNESS was a very personal film for me and my job was to get that out on the screen. They both have unique challenges but when you make a horror movie, you get offered a bunch of horror movies. When you make a coming of age movie, you get offered a bunch of coming of age movies. My interests aren’t strictly towards one genre. My favorite film this year is IRON MAN. I’d love to do a superhero movie. I’m just a fan of movies and I don’t want to get locked into one genre. CC: Where do you see films going within the next five years? JL: I hope that independent film stays alive. I think it’s starting to cost so much money to make a movie that it’s getting a little scary out there for small, independent filmmakers but the guys who financed my first two movies, they’re still doing it and they’re committed to keeping it going. Sony’s also committed to keeping it going. I think that hopefully it goes in cycles and hopefully it will get back to quality. It’s all a financial equation but it all comes down to you have to make something of quality. Hopefully that will continue. I think we need to have a couple of $300 million dollar movies bomb. Nobody needs to go see them and that will help the people like me who will pour all of his heart and soul into a movie. CC: What’s next for you? JL: I am writing a book adaptation for Sony which is due in a couple of days and I’m going to be late for it. I also have a few ideas percolating along with this script that I’m finishing up with Sony. I’m writing my own material and I’m reading a bunch of script with the intention to direct off of someone else’s material. CC: Have you ever thought of going into producing? JL: I think producing is the hardest job. I think it is so hard and like any hard job you think you can do it better. I’ve been very lucky to find producers that I love and I’d rather just work with them. CC: Thanks for your time Jonathan and best of luck with THE WACKNESS and I hope to see ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE someday. JL: Thank you brother. Peace out. THE WACKNESS opens in theaters July 3rd (Special thanks to Caitlin Speed at Falco Ink) |
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