After playing to enthusiastic audiences, including us, at the Sundance Film Festival, Me & Earl and the Dying Girl was picked up by Fox Searchlight, and won the awards for the U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and the Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic. You’ll get to see it for sure, but while he was in Sundance, we got to talk to director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon for a preview of the now upcoming movie.
Based on Jesse Andrews’ book (Andrews also adapted the screenplay), Me & Earl and the Dying Girl is about a high school film nerd, Greg (Thomas Mann). Greg and his friend Earl (RJ Cyler) make their own spoofs of movies, but not comic book blockbuster movies. They tackle the arthouse hits of Herzog and the like. When their classmate Rachel (Olivia Cooke) is diagnosed with Leukemia, Greg’s mother forces him to hang out with her. They become legitimate friends though, and ultimately have to face mortality together.
If the art movie spoofs didn’t convince you it’s a comedy, hopefully some of our questions about dancing goth kids will.
Related: Sundance Review: ‘Me & Earl and the Dying Girl’ Kills It
CraveOnline: I was a big fan of your Town that Dreaded Sundown. Your camera really seemed to put us in the slasher movie. Was that your intention with that one?
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon: Sure, it was a movie about a town defined by a movie, so it was in some way also a celebration of movies, but obviously a much darker one.
So is Me & Earl and the Dying Girl the next level of using the camera to put the audience in the world of the film?
Not intentionally. It was a different approach. I always considered it a personal film and a way for me to express my great love for my dad and also to celebrate movies and give thanks to all my heroes and mentors. I never thought I’d have a chance to do that again. So the fact that he was a filmmaker gave you an opportunity to really be expressive, certainly at the beginning and have a good time with that energy and have it be very stylized and controlled. As the movie progresses, it becomes looser and still.
One of the most important scenes is one static shot, right?
Yeah, because I think at that point, the biggest thing was how to shoot a young boy and a girl so that people didn’t just assume it was going to be a love story. It wasn’t a love story so I didn’t set it up so that the audience expected that. Once you have that fun energy and editing patterns and humor, and you understand that this was about a deep, deep connection, maybe in five years it would’ve been a great love story but not now.
As we get towards the end of the film, you could really earn those two shots and you accept them for what they are and why they need each other and not expecting anything more than that. When we got to that scene, it was one of the most important scenes in the movie. It’s a crucial turning point in the story. I knew that that was originally going to be a master shot with more shots to follow that would tell the story of her now an adult and making this enormous decision with Greg behind her, still kind of the child.
The performances were so good and obviously Jesse’s words were beautiful, but it just felt right. To start cutting into that felt like I was going to fabricate something and manipulate something, but I just wanted to trust that this was all I was going to need and I moved on without shooting anything else.
What is your thing with whip pans?
[Laughs.] Well, they stop but I love the precision of them. I love literally directing an audience to look from here to there. I love the humor to them and the energy that they have and that was really the beginning of the film, this very childlike energy that’s Greg. Then eventually it becomes still. It becomes softer and quieter and looser. It’s a technique that I love just like I love the zooms. It’s a fun way to direct an audience to look from here to there, also to infuse a bit of energy to a scene. I love the precision of it and it’s fun to shoot it because you never get it right until you do and everyone cheers.
Were all of the art movie spoofs in the book?
No. Some were, of course, but I saw it as an opportunity. Jesse and I opened that up so I could have an opportunity to pay homage to all of my heroes in ways that I would come up with the references and Jesse would write these incredible titles and then we’d work with Ed Bursch and Nate Mash to shoot them in a way that felt still like the hands of two 17-year-olds. Nothing too high tech. Just very simple but a way to pay homage. It was a movie that opened you up to the Criterion Collection so you could do anything you want. You don’t have to be the pop hits, the top hits of movie history. It could be obscure films.
I think Aguirre the Wrath of God was in the script but you can’t go into Herzog without doing The Burden of Dreams: The Making of Fitzcarraldo because it’s one of the greatest movies about the making of a movie. And I had used that in my mood reel that I used to get the job to direct this film because I love the making of. So it was about finding these other layers of films within the film and also a way to celebrate filmmaking, and really my heroes and mentors I’ve been lucky to have.
Are there full length movie spoofs for the DVD?
I think some are longer. The Complete Lack of Conversation which is The Conversation is that long zoom. It’s basically timed out to the exact scene in the original film but I would just stop my movie if I tried to use it in its entirety. Some are much longer, sure.
Can you do stop motion on an iPhone now?
You can do stop motion on an iPhone, yeah.
I didn’t know that. Has that changed things for young animators since they don’t have to get a Bolex camera anymore?
Ed Bursch and Nate Marsh did the stop motion animation, so they could probably better answer that question than me. The spirit of it just had to feel like it came from two 17-year-olds in Pittsburgh.
I also love movies about dealing with grief because I think it’s so healthy for us and many people want to avoid it. Do you relate to that?
I do. I needed to do it for personal reasons because I was having trouble dealing with it. It had basically closed me off in a way that I had become a person that was not really who I wanted to be but I couldn’t process it. I would watch Harold and Maude over and over again trying to find some insight into all of this. So when the script came along, I saw it as an opportunity for me to express it in a way that was very, very personal but hopefully universal.
I didn’t think about it being universal. I really was thinking about myself which is horrible to stay but I really had to deal with this and this was a way to do it through humor. I could really hide in Greg and do it through humor. The film was so funny and it was the best way to honor my father because he was the funniest person on the planet. To honor him through humor but also go through the stages of grief with Greg and come out the other end, putting myself together after being able to express himself with a film and make a personal statement the way Greg does. Hopefully, if it worked, the whole movie would be that version of that.
I understand when Rachel says she’s ugly, that she feels that way. Do you wish she could see herself the way Greg does and we do that she’s still beautiful?
If you think about it, someone like Rachel, she’s so honest but she’s also one of these girls that isn’t concerned with being popular or anything like that, so it’s not like she’s part of the popular girl group. She’s a boring Jewish senior girl subgroup 2A. In doing the research with a lot of doctors, especially one doctor at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburg. Also doing my own separate research at UCLA, all these teen wings for cancer, for a girl to lose her hair is one of the most traumatic things, more so than it affects boys because they identify so much with that. So it is incredibly traumatic, so of course she would see herself as ugly, like any 17-year-old would.
Did you actually choreograph the goth kids dancing in the background?
Yes, have you seen this video on YouTube? So Jennifer Eve Who did the beautiful costumes for it, in her research for the Scott Mayhew look found this YouTube video of German industrial dancers, and it was so hysterical. We were all at a group dinner, and we couldn’t stop laughing, so it was like that’s it. Not only are we going to get a group of kids all dressed as goth kids, but we’re going to have them performing on the steps. Why not?
It’s based on reality and it’s so absurd but it added such a great little subgroup to it, but it’s based in reality made it not such a stretch, but it added just enough humor before we switch gears in the next scene which is Greg going up to her house after she’s gone through chemo. So it was inspired by research for costumes, but the video was too good to not want to parody.
Are you going to do any work on “American Crime Story” or “Scream Queens?”
I haven’t been asked and right now I’m just trying to enjoy this moment and seeing the movie from here on out, to see it in theaters and then figure out what I’m going to do next. It’s nice to have this moment. I wasn’t expecting it. Last year, after Town That Dreaded Sundown, a movie that I really love, that was very painful to go through. When no one saw it, I really didn’t think I’d have a chance for anyone to hear my voice again. So the fact that people are embracing this is a big deal.
I wasn’t aware Town was a painful experience. Wasn’t that also a test run for the industry to see you can finish a movie and then the next one might be on a bigger scale?
I like them both very much but the fact that people are going to have a chance to see this one is wonderful.
Have people not discovered Town on video yet?
One of the great things about being at the festival is meeting other directors who have seen it and really enjoyed it. It was a very sobering part of my life as a filmmaker working on that film, but I loved shooting it and I love my cast so much. I feel like I failed them that it didn’t hit the screens in the way I really wanted it to. So that was very hard so it’s nice to come back with this and be able to talk about how great they are in that movie because I really do love them. We lost Ed Hermann recently and Ed Lauter. One of the greatest parts of shooting Town was taking Ed Hermann out to dinner and hearing stories about Warren Beatty and Reds. So the fact that I got to direct him makes that movie quite special.
So as a Criterion fan, what is your movie watchlist?
Oh God, really? They’re all out there. For me, Powell/Pressburger. Everything about Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Tales of Hoffman, the restored version is being re-released in February I believe. I was lucky enough to see it at the New York Film Festival and it changed my life, and it’s in the film. They’re watching Powell Pressburger. So everything by Powell/Pressburger. Everything Scorsese. Everything Scorsese. Mean Streets really changed my life and made me want to be a better filmmaker, or be a filmmaker and tell personal stories. So everything by him, he can do no wrong.
Even New York, New York?
Especially New York, New York. That is some of his most beautiful filmmaking. The Honeysuckle Rose sequence in that is gorgeous and then the actual number of New York New York is amazing. It’s a Cassavetes movie stuck in a Vincente Minnelli musical. It’s incredibly daring, so maybe some people consider it, I’m not going to say failure, but the fact that it tried to do so much, you have to embrace that and love that about Scorsese. He’s always taking risks.
I’m a big fan of One From the Heart which was Coppola doing a similar old Hollywood musical.
I love that. I saw that before Town over and over again, the stylized version of it. I was going to do some of the silkscreen stuff. I did them once and it didn’t make the final cut of the movie. Theatrical lighting cues, I love his filmmaking.
Did you need to get clearances for all the movies, or does parody protect you?
Sure. Parody protects me on some but Herzog gave us the rights, Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker. Everyone signed off on their usage, and parody does protect us.
You say gave you the rights, so they didn’t charge licenses?
Obviously something like Taxi Driver, of course there are licenses you have to pay. Scorsese was kind enough to sign off on the use of his voice. He has two commentaries from Taxi Driver and Tales of Hoffman in the movie, you hear his voice. Everything was clear obviously because the lawyers would never let us put anything on screen unless it was completely cleared.
The other thing you should probably list is all the short films by Charles and Ray Eames. There’s just so much. We’re going to hopefully come up with a website that has access to all the references so you can go out and discover them.
I was always a movie buff but I wasn’t this highbrow as a teenager. Now I regret I didn’t explore them more when I had more time to just watch stuff.
It’s not too late though. I saw Tales of Hoffman projected at the New York Film Festival and I had tears coming out because it feels so fresh and it’s all new, so it sets the bar that much higher. You remember how little you know. It just keeps you so incredibly humble because you know nothing when you see the stuff that’s been done before.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
