Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in Taylor Sheridan’s “Wind River.”
Director Marc Webb made sure that his team scouted the Algonquin Hotel’s Round Table restaurant as he planned his coming-of-age drama “The Only Living Boy in New York.” After all, writers and publishers are among the story’s main characters, so what better place to set a scene than the place where literary legends like Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley used to down cocktails while trading quips? In the end, the location didn’t make the cut: too dark and too much dark wood.
“The story’s a little bit of a pastiche when it comes to the New York literary world. It’s not a realistic depiction of it . ... It’s a fantasy. It’s a fable,” Webb, 42, says during a recent phone call. “I wanted to create a story about New York that was the New York I imagined before I ever came to New York . ... It’s not a realistic, gritty, Martin Scorsese vision of New York. It’s the vision of a kid from Wisconsin who imagines what New York might be.”
Along with this spring’s “Gifted,” “The Only Living Boy in New York” marks Webb’s return to intimate storytelling after helming the gargantuan “The Amazing Spider-Man” (2012) and its 2014 sequel. Named for a Simon & Garfunkel song, it is the tale of 22-year-old Thomas Webb (Callum Turner). (The shared name is coincidental — Thomas is named for Charles Webb, the author of “The Graduate.”) An aspiring writer, he becomes friends with new neighbor W.F. ( Jeff Bridges), a novelist, just as he discovers a secret of his publisher father Ethan (Pierce Brosnan) that he fears
will damage his bipolar mother Judith (Cynthia Nixon).
Webb, who began his career making music videos, first encountered the script by Allan Loeb even before making his 2009 debut feature “(500) Days of Summer.” He wanted to direct it then, but lacked the experience to get the job. It seemed like a lost cause when he signed on to make the two “Spider-Man” movies. But while he was still making the first of those blockbusters, the property came back into his life, and the producers were willing to stand by until a hole opened in his schedule. The long wait paid off in the casting of British actor Turner, who would have been too young for the part had Webb been able to make the film earlier.
“You need an actor whose body can straddle those two very different stages in life, that boyish charm and the kind of masculinity that he’s hopefully growing into,” Webb says. “Callum is a supple actor in that way.”
Another casting coup for the director was Bridges, an actor long on Webb’s bucket list. Beyond that personal ambition, the filmmaker wanted what Bridges could bring to the part of an alcoholic writer, a man who appears like a kind of throwback to the Beat Generation, a Charles Bukowski figure but with a sweeter nature.
“Jeff actually listened to Bukowski to get some ideas about speech patterns,” Webb says. “W.F. is a drunkard. He’s a real serious alcoholic, and that has deeply affected his ability to maintain relationships.
“They’re two very, very lonely people who speak the same language,” he adds of Thomas and W. F.’s unusual, generations transcending friendship. “They’re talking about these books and they can finish each other’s sentences. There is a real warmth. I think we all crave that . ... W.F. gives such interesting advice to Thomas. I wish someone had told me that when I was 22 years old.”
After his experience helming two large Marvel productions, Webb admits there is something to be said for making smaller films. He could concentrate on the characters and their relationships, and he enjoyed the small, quiet rehearsals. With the movie’s modest budget, he did not have producers looking over his shoulder. Fan sites weren’t engaging in constant speculation as they had with “Spider-Man.” “The Only Living Boy in New York” cast became friends and hung out together on their off hours.
“We became kind of a family. It was like when you’re putting on a play in high school and you get really close with the cast,” Webb says. “I just needed to get back in touch with the simplicity of it . ... It’s certainly been some of the most fun I’ve had.”
The movie’s cast became friends and hung out together on their off hours.