FEMME FATALE
This year’s Little Film That Could might sound like a sobfest but, for director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon and his young cast alike, the tragic tale proved a cathartic, life-affirming experience...
me and earl and the dying girl
Director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon Starring Thomas Mann, Olivia Cooke, R.J. Cyler, Nick Offerman, Connie Britton ETA 9 September
Every year at the Sundance Film Festival, there’s one indie that unexpectedly breaks out, from The Blair Witch Project to the decidedly different Beasts Of The Southern
Wild. Last year it was Whiplash, this year it’s Me And Earl And The Dying Girl. Starring a cast of newcomers and helmed by a guy best known for directing American Horror Story and minor met a-slasher The Town That Dreaded Sundown, the film at first made few blips on festival-goers’ radars. Its sell in the programme (a “poignant coming-of-age tale peppered with hilarious graphics”) didn’t help...
“It was like, ‘High-school cancer movie’!” says director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon of the unfortunate marketing spiel. “A lot of critics went, ‘Oh, we’ll see it later...’” But after a packed auditorium of 1,400 met Me And Earl’s Park City premiere on Sunday 25 January with tears, laughter and a standing ovation, the fuse was lit on a hit. A bidding war for distribution rights ensued, one distributor offering a Sundance-best $12m, and it became the must-see movie on everybody’s list. And that was before it nabbed both the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize on the closing night.
Needless to say, it was overwhelming for Gomez-Rejon. “I get choked up thinking about it – it truly was a dream,” he says down the line from Chicago, the latest stop on his Me And Earl promo tour. “The reception was so bizarre, so positive... There’s something to be said for having zero expectations. It was very emotional.”
So what was it that made Sundance attendees so effusive? Were they wooed by the film’s inventive visuals, the animation, stop-motion and captions? Perhaps it was the hip deadpan humour, the Brian Eno soundtrack, or the film’s refusal to adhere to high-school-movie clichés? No; more than anything, people responded to its boundless heart. It’s telling that the word “emotional” crops up so much when TF talks to Gomez-Rejon and his cast about Me And Earl – it’s the perfect adjective for a film that, by its director’s own admission, defies easy categorisation. “It’s a hard question, it’s the one I dread,” he admits when pressed to describe the film. “It is what it is – a high-school coming-of-age film about cancer – but I hope it’s a real emotional journey you can bring your own narrative to, certainly in the last 30 minutes when it becomes a visual and sensory trip.”
Tiptoeing along the knife-edge of humour and heartache, Me And Earl centres on Greg, a self-confessed loner whose main passion is for movies. Along with his only friend, Earl, he spends most of his time filming goofy spoofs of his favourite movies, e.g. A Sockwork Orange,
Pooping Tom and Don’t Look Now Because A Creepy-Ass Dwarf Is About To Kill You!! Damn!!! Greg’s forced out of his cinematic comfort zone when his parents strong-arm him into hanging out with Rachel, a girl he barely knows who has just been diagnosed with leukaemia. But don’t expect a tear-stained re-run of The Fault In Our
Stars; staying true to the book on which it’s based (by Jesse Andrews, who has adapted it himself for screen), Me And Earl is less interested in romantic relationships than it is in the complexities of friendships.
After a gruelling audition process, GomezRejon finally settled on Project X’s Thomas Mann and Oldham-born Olivia Cooke for purely platonic teens Greg and Rachel. “They had beautiful chemistry together,” he says, “and it didn’t lead to an expectation of a love story. That would’ve been the end of the movie, if all of a sudden people are anticipating them having sex at 80 minutes in. It’s about a deep connection and acceptance, being transparent with another
person. Maybe in five years it would be an amazing love story but, right now, it’s something much more important.”
Cooke – who’s been impressing TV audiences in Psycho prequel Bates Motel, as Norman Bates’ best friend – agrees. “We auditioned together and I really wanted it to be Thomas – it had to be him, otherwise it wouldn’t have been the same film,” she says in her amiable Mancunian accent, a far cry from the middle-American lilt she adopts in Me And Earl.
As well as the unconventional relationship at the heart of the film, Cooke also seized upon the chance to play a teenager who “isn’t selfconscious, which is how all teenage girls seem to be written. She’s just very happy with herself, rather than, ‘Ugh I’m too fat! I’ve got bug eyes!’” It was also important to Cooke that Rachel should not be portrayed as a victim: “She’s everything but the cancer, and she wouldn’t want to be seen as a cancer victim.”
A keen cinephile, Gomez-Rejon – who was personal assistant to Martin Scorsese and the late Nora Ephron before making his own movies – turned to films such as ’70s classic
Harold & Maude for inspiration on how to tackle a compelling relationship that doesn’t end in candlelit serenades. “That was my goal for this
"The goal was to make a movie that balanced sweet, sour and bittersweet"
movie, to make something that balanced the sweet and the sour and the bittersweet, and to have those emotional currents running simultaneously,” he says. The ‘audition’ taster reel he showed to the producers to sell them on its style featured Harold & Maude heavily, as well as clips from the Making Of docs Burden Of Dreams (about Werner Herzog’s beleaguered
Fitzcarraldo) and Hearts Of Darkness (on the never-ending lensing of Apocalypse Now), and the films of Mike Nichols. “I saw it again recently,” Gomez-Rejon says of the reel, “and it’s very much in keeping with the spirit of the final film.”
As the film shies away from a conventional love story, much of the passion in Me And Earl stems from Greg’s love affair with movies. Over the course of a single day, Mann and a “small crew” shot 20 short films and an additional 42 DVD sleeves were designed for Greg’s impressive back catalogue. “We got in the van with all the costumes and the props, it was just me, Alfonso, R.J. and the two secondunit directors,” explains Mann. “My favourite was probably Don’t Look Now. I love that movie and I liked wearing the wig and moustache – I think I kind of looked like Donald Sutherland.”
While shooting over just 24 days in Pittsburgh last July, Gomez-Rejon actively fostered a family mood on set. Filming almost entirely on location
(Rachel’s bedroom was the only set, built in the gymnasium of a local high school), the production used writer Jesse Andrews’ childhood home as Greg’s house and the familial feel was boosted by the presence of a seasoned adult cast. Nick Offerman and Connie Britton play Greg’s parents, with Offerman ( Parks And Recreation) on reliably hilarious form as a laidback dad who puts unorthodox food on the dinner table. “This guy’s wearing a kimono; like, what’s that all about?!” laughs Gomez-Rejon. “And of course underneath the kimono he’s wearing a Saul Bass t-shirt. There’s always a film reference somewhere!”
Of all the parental parts, Molly Shannon as Rachel’s boozy mother caused the most hilarity on set. “I probably had the most fun shooting the scenes with Molly,” says Mann. “She’s so funny, without having a mean bone in her body. She’s drunk in a lot of the movie, so she’d do this thing where she’d spin around before every take so she’d stumble about, and by the time we’re shooting I’ve already started laughing. I ruined a few takes.”
Laughs were never in short supply during filming but one scene pushed the cast to their limit, a bust-up between Greg and Earl that ends in tears. “I couldn’t stop crying,” admits R.J. Cyler, who makes a confident cinematic debut as Greg’s bestie. “We shot it a couple of times and the whole time I was really emotional.” Mann agrees: “I think it was harder for people to watch us! With R.J., it was like a valve you couldn’t turn off – the floodgates opened and this uninhibited emotion poured out of him... It was amazing to watch, and it’s my favourite scene in the film.”
Me And Earl was clearly an emotional experience for all concerned but it was most affecting for Gomez-Rejon. The film represents a dramatic shift in direction for him, his CV previously consisting mostly of horror; according to the director, the change was brought about by the death of his father, with which he was struggling to cope when he came across the script for Me And Earl.
“I had avoided dealing with it and just threw myself into the work,” Gomez-Rejon says. “I was directing a lot of Glee and American Horror
Story – and enjoying it, it gave my life structure – but I knew I was avoiding something and it was killing me, little by little. This was an opportunity to fix it. That sounds really pretentious but I wanted to use the film as a way to work through something and leave something behind, to incorporate that loss into my life and move on. To face it and make something of it – to make a film about it, not unlike [ the one] Greg ends up making for Rachel.”
It ended up being a cathartic experience, especially as Gomez-Rejon couldn’t help but see himself in Greg. “I could see in the beginning how I wasn’t unlike him in high school,” he says, “but it’s really in the second half of the film – the denial, the confusion, the child-like qualities of trying to understand something and avoiding it – that Greg became somebody I understood and wanted to be in the end and that’s why I fought so hard to get the job.”
Just a few months after the whole Sundance experience, the runaway train that is Me And Earl
And The Dying Girl shows no signs of slowing down. It’s out this month in the US, three months before it arrives in the UK and just five short months since it made that awards-grabbing debut in Park City, Utah. For Gomez-Rejon, there’s no going back.
“This was an opportunity for me to speak from the heart, to celebrate movies and also find a way to process loss and do it through humour,” he explains. “Doing something personal put everything into perspective and now, everything I do, I want it to have a personal hook.” It’s an approach that definitely struck a chord with his cast. “It’s the sort of film that I hope makes people want to create,” nods Mann. “It’s all about the ferocity of teenage creativity and how that manifests itself.”
And, of course, how sometimes the littlest films can have the biggest heart and impact of all.