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 an
d 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 perspec
tive. 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] j
ust 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 happe
n 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 se
rendipitous 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 li
ke 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 chara
cter. 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 me
mber 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 lit
tle strange? A BlackTree Media Production Produced by Jamaal Finkley http://www.blacktree.tv

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