Marc Webb has made his name directing music videos for some of the world’s most successful artists including Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Weezer, Fergie and Miley Cyrus. Webb finally breaks onto the big screen this summer with the romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer, which played at this year’s SIFF and opens Friday. The movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel and its full trailer can be found below.
Recently, I was lucky enough to talk with the director about his first venture into filmmaking, why he chose this particular project and the state of rom-coms.
Brian Zitzelman: Why did you decide for (500) Days of Summer to be your first film?
Marc Webb: I read the script a little over two years ago and it was something that, when I got it from Mason Novick, one of the producers, he said that it was kind of a romantic comedy thing. I wasn’t interested in doing that at all. It’s my least favorite genre. I picked it up one day, the title just stuck in my head. I read it and I was like, “These guys feel the same way I do about this.” I just felt this would be really fun to do. There were a couple fun technical things, the animations and split-screens, that I felt I knew how to do. Some of that stuff I also felt I could enhance. I felt personally connected to the material.
BZ: How much of that stuff was in there already? There is obviously the musical sequence but there is also the split-screen sequence where he (Gordon-Levitt) has “Expectations versus Reality.”
MW: That was not in the script originally. The dance sequence was originally a parade with Mayor McCheese and Grimace waving, with Hall and Oates coming in at the end.
BZ: Was it literally Mayor McCheese?
MW: Oh yeah, there would be people high-fiving. I worked with the writer’s and wanted to do more of a musical dance sequence. McDonalds turned us down. They said they didn’t want their food to be associated with sex or something ridiculous. So, we just ended up inventing that. Then, the split-screen thing, well, there was a split-screen sequence but it was not that particular one. I pitched this split-screen opening sequence - the Regina Spektor thing - which we did. We thought how could we make a motif of this or use it somewhere else. Than Scott (Neustadter) and (Michael H.) Weber (the film’s screenwriters) pitched the expectations and reality thing, which is really the embodiment and theme of the movie. The world you expect colliding with the world you live in and encounter. It was a really elegant way to describe that. As a whole, it was a really collaborative process. The story is based on Scott’s relationships and then there was some stuff we all contributed, but it was all us sort of working it out.
BZ: Was it collaborative from the onset?
MW: After the first draft I read of the script. To me, the soul of the movie is the last two scenes, which remain unchanged. Scott and Weber did such a good job.
BZ: It does have a great ending with that twisted joke. As for romantic comedies, is there anything you like about them in general or have a fondness for?
MW: There are some that are just great like Annie Hall or L.A. Story, I f*cking love that movie. Me and You and Everyone We Know is a great one. Then there other ones I just have a little soft spot for. It just seems lately I feel they have done nothing particularly strong. There is a form that people like to follow and they feel if they mess with that form they are going to lose the magic. I’m not a box office analyst but I think they tend to do pretty well.
BZ: They tend to have the same formula as horror movies. You make them for fairly cheap and get a set return.
MW: I imagine that is the case.
BZ: So what do you dislike about romantic comedies?
MW: It’s lies. It’s not lying, it’s that they have nothing to do with my experience. I think Will Smith is one of the most charming, likable humans on Earth. So, I watched Hitch and I enjoyed spending time with him. That said, this fat guy (Kevin James) waxes his back and then dances and suddenly he’s dating a model. I just thought, “You’re lying. You are outright lying, that does not happen.” If it does it’s usually pathological It doesn’t end well. So, that part of it doesn’t ring true to me. It doesn’t happen the way it does there. I am not saying that movies have to be real all the time but they have to dance around with the truth.
BZ: Yeah. You’re film definitely has an escapist element to it but also captures the fleeting elements of love and the way it can tear you apart.
MW: We wanted to show both sides of that without becoming kind of turgid or cynical. We wanted it to be fun, a pop movie that you can dance to, so to speak. To make it accessible without having a being totally full of sh*t. There is an element of wish fulfillment. I think the ending, people read it in different ways. I don’t think it’s a cop-out ending. Sometimes even the writers and I have disagreements about what it actually means.
BZ: What challenges did you finding in making the film? Obviously it’s your first feature film, a full narrative compared to a music video. What surprises did you find?
MW: I think one of the hard things was actually getting the movie green lit. Getting someone to actually say yes to it. In fact, I don’t think our movie has yet been green lit. I have yet to get the phone call saying, “Okay, you got it.” Just to get that feeling that we were legitimately making this movie, it never got to that point except maybe when we began shooting, though even then we didn’t really know. So, that was very tricky. It’s just such a different beast. In a music video, you can always rely on the song. You can always rely on the music to evoke a certain feeling and you know what you have from the beginning of it. In a film, you’re creating this thing that has to survive on its own and that was tricky. Very frightening. You have a script that you start with that you feel is good but its objective is unclear.
BZ: You can give the exact same script to two people and it will play out so differently. Did you ever think of doing something a little less challenging. It’s a romantic comedy with heavy editing and time changes and split-screen.
MW: There is a lot of technical stuff but that stuff is fun. I’ve done a lot of that stuff for music videos for not a lot of money, so I’ve practiced with that. If it’s going to be a good movie it’s going to be challenging one way or another. I didn’t think of this as much in terms of the challenge of it, rather that it would be fun to do. There were other projects I considered but this is the one that stuck out. I remember after reading thinking, “Yes, I am going to make this movie.” One of those moments of clarity that happens so rarely, like Tom (Gordon-Levitt’s character) when he sees the girl.
BZ: How important was the casting for you? Finding that right guy and girl.
MW: I think for this kind of movie you can’t cast them independently. You can’t cast person X and person Y. You’re not casting individuals as you are chemistry and a dynamic. You can think of a lot of bad combinations. (Deschanel and Gordon-Levitt) knew each other from a previous movie (2001’s Manic), which was a very different movie and you could tell they had a dynamic. I knew a lot of the magic was built into it, that sort of comfort factor.
BZ: They have a playfulness.
MW: Yeah and Zooey is a little bit more grounded and ethereal. They fit into those boxes quite well. It’s a testament to Fox Searchlight that they gave us the money to make a movie with people who aren’t really household names. It was cool to have that flexibility to cast the people you want.
BZ: I think Gordon-Levitt is an actor really coming into his known. He has shed that child-actor “3rd Rock From the Sun” stuff and now has Brick and Mysterious Skin. This makes a great segue for him.
MW: It’s the first, most straight up, conventional leading man figure for him. We’ll see what happens. People seem to really like him in the movie.
BZ: He brings a relate-ability and youthful energy to it without the annoyance, cloying element a lot of people do.
MW: He’s definitely not cloying. He’s a different beast than a lot of the people out there. There is the Apatow brand, which I think is brilliant, Seth Rogen is very fun and relatable, also very real. It’s a different style of comedy though. This guy is a little bit his own. We got to find our own identity here.
BZ: Is there a bizarre joy you guys are getting out of him playing Cobra Commander in GI Joe: Rise of Cobra? Was that before or after shooting.
MW: They were just finishing within days of him starting with us. Even that, Joseph loves to do physical things. He has an excellent command of his body. The costume for that was really appealing to him. I haven’t seen the movie but I am very interested to see what he did with it.
BZ: It’s surely different. All of his movies have been, with Brick and even The Lookout, which by no means got great reviews or box office. The way he uses his body is amazing and restrained.
MW: Very emotional too. There is that scene where he is in the mirror and shaving and can’t f*cking do it and it’s heartbreaking. When I saw it, I thought to be able to get there is so difficult. In Mysterious Skin he made some really interesting choices too, I am sure Gregg Araki (the film’s director) had a lot to do with it, but he was a very whimsical character. He has to be this brutalized prostitute but he was just a kid. He smiled a lot. That wasn’t the case in The Lookout or Brick and it a way he was the closest there, an analog, to our character.
BZ: You can certainly see that. Instead of the horrible incident that happened to you as a child in that film, in Summer he got into Joy Division too early. Too much Jesus and Mary Chain. How important were those music choices? You’ve got those two Regina Spektor songs and people singing The Clash. Were those in the screenplay ahead of time?
MW: The Clash was in the screenplay. Regina wasn’t. I had done two videos with her and I felt the lyrics jived with the story really well. I loved the idea of the lyrics being able to help tell the story. The Smiths was written in by Scott. Having done music videos for so long it was just part of my language to use music that way, It was the natural thing to do. We related to each other so much with music. I also think that when he hears that she likes The Smiths, you feel like “Hey, wow that’s a weird thing.” But it’s also a very superficial way. His sister says, “Just because she’s likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn’t mean she’s your soul mate,” and he responds, “Of course it does.” Which is sort of the point of the movie.
BZ: What was it like with Zooey Deschanel? She also has a lot of baggage with her, from She and Him.
MW: She chose her own song for the karaoke scene, the Sugartown song. She has her own connection to music that came out before she was born. She has this connection to the past in that way. She was born in the wrong decade. It was cool because working with these people with good taste and an idea about these characters was very important. Also, she has an innate “Zooey identity” that precedes things.
BZ: Yeah, I know a lot of people have been worried about that going into the movie. I’ve read early buzz and there’s the, I believe A.V. Club termed, “Manic Pixie Dream Girl.”
MW: Oh yes, the MPDG.
BZ: She’s certainly a big example of that.
MW: There is the Williamsburg Vegan Blogger, the WVB, which I put them in that category. They’re not the only ones who can use acronyms. Well listen, the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”...
BZ: It’s a type of person that exists.
MW: Well it exists and its also part of literature that has always existed. What was Beatrice to Dante? You know what I mean? Eve was that to Adam. It’s just part of what she represents and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. We are often beguiled by creatures that we endow with powers that aren’t real. You expect this girl to be the answer to everything and its not really the case.
BZ: I don’t know if that was intentional or not but it sort of subverts the notion of her being that.
MW: You’re exactly right. There is a consequence to that. In a lot of movies they use that type but endorse that pair. The reality is that when you get involved in a situation like that you get f*cking kicked to the curb. It’s a misappropriation. You’re not seeing the reality of that person. That is one of the codes of the movie. He falls in love not with her but the idea of her. There is a moment in the movie where she’s relating a dream she had and he just sort of fantasizes about it. He interprets it as, “I’m getting access.” You don’t really get to know her if it was a mature relationship, which it’s not.
BZ: It’s said great by the narrator at the beginning. Where it’s a story about love and not a love story. What do you have next then? I know there’s an upcoming Green Day video (“21 Guns”).
MW: Well there’s the Green Day video to finish and something with Zooey. I mean, there is a few things but nothing locked up.
BZ: Anything film related?
MW: Yes. The deal isn’t closed though and I can’t talk about it yet. There are a few things but it’s probably a ways away, which frankly is a bit frustrating. I want to get back to work. Have to get this movie out first and get it taken care of and see how it goes.
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