"The Spectacular Now": The Making of the Next Great Coming-of-Age Movie Classic

Director James Ponsoldt and actors Miles Teller and Dayo Okeniyi discuss their heartbreaking new film.

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Image via Complex Original
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Growing up is like staring at a blank document. You know, when you're procrastinating on finishing the college admissions essay that could potentially make or break your future chances at anything. It's fucking daunting. You feel like you've got a deadline to figure everything out, and if you miss it, you're destined to become a nobody. You'll end up an alcoholic working at Wal-Mart and dodging your 10-year reunion, due to the fear of complete embarrassment. Sounds a little melodramatic? Come on, remember how you were in high school? Everything was the end of the world.

That's when you'd pop in movies like The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, and Almost Famous. They were comforting nudges that reminded you everything was going to be OK. Who cares if you're stuck at home on a Friday night while every other cool kid is at party? There's a reason why people get so nostalgic for those films, and it's directly tied to the feeling of hopefulness you got when you were just a 17-year-old shit watching it. They showed there was more to life to look forward to.

Nowadays, a kid would be hard pressed to find the same kind of film to represent his generation that didn't include vegetarian vampires, shapeshifting creatures, and whimsical wizards. Sincerity over spectacle seems to triumph at the box office. 

Luckily, however, there's a new film that finally calls for a return to the days of the great American coming-of-age movies: The Spectacular Now.

In director James Ponsoldt's take on Tim Tharp's young adult novel of the same name, fantasy is sidelined, relegated to the anime one of the characters reads. Adapted into a screenplay by (500) Days of Summer writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the film doesn't shuttle its characters' pain in a dystopian anti-hero or masochistic bloodsucker. It does so through the everyday guy and girl, Sutter Keely and Aimee Finecky. 

Played by an endearing Miles Teller and the refreshing Shailene Woodley, Sutter and Aimee find themselves falling in love at the end of the senior year of high school. The problem is, neither of them knows exactly what that means, as neither of them have figured out this whole business about loving themselves yet. Therein lies the greatness of The Spectacular Now—and just the reason why Teller and Woodler earned the Sundance Film Festival's U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting. More than a love story, the film is about confronting yourself head on, embracing all of your mess for what it is.

Complex recently sat down with Ponsoldt and a couple of the film's stars, Miles Teller and Dayo Okeniyi (who plays Marcus West, the boyfriend of Sutter's ex Cassidy, played by Brie Larson) about the making of the movie, their own high school days, and where The Spectacular Now (out in L.A. and N.Y. tomorrow, and nationwide on Aug. 23rd) fits in a YA landscape overrun by mythical creatures.

 

RELATED: The 25 Best Actors in Their 20s
RELATED: The 25 Best Actresses in Their 20s
RELATED: The 25 Most Anticipated Indie Movies of Summer 2013 

Written by Tara Aquino (@t_akino)

"The Spectacular Now": The Making of the Next Great Coming-of-Age Movie Classic

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Growing up is like staring at a blank document. You know, when you're procrastinating on finishing the college admissions essay that could potentially make or break your future chances at anything. It's fucking daunting. You feel like you've got a deadline to figure everything out, and if you miss it, you're destined to become a nobody. You'll end up an alcoholic working at Wal-Mart and dodging your 10-year reunion, due to the fear of complete embarrassment. Sounds a little melodramatic? Come on, remember how you were in high school? Everything was the end of the world.

That's when you'd pop in movies like The Breakfast Club, Say Anything, and Almost Famous. They were comforting nudges that reminded you everything was going to be OK. Who cares if you're stuck at home on a Friday night while every other cool kid is at party? There's a reason why people get so nostalgic for those films, and it's directly tied to the feeling of hopefulness you got when you were just a 17-year-old shit watching it. They showed there was more to life to look forward to.

Nowadays, a kid would be hard pressed to find the same kind of film to represent his generation that didn't include vegetarian vampires, shapeshifting creatures, and whimsical wizards. Sincerity over spectacle seems to triumph at the box office. 

Luckily, however, there's a new film that finally calls for a return to the days of the great American coming-of-age movies: The Spectacular Now.

In director James Ponsoldt's take on Tim Tharp's young adult novel of the same name, fantasy is sidelined, relegated to the anime one of the characters reads. Adapted into a screenplay by (500) Days of Summer writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, the film doesn't shuttle its characters' pain in a dystopian anti-hero or masochistic bloodsucker. It does so through the everyday guy and girl, Sutter Keely and Aimee Finecky. 

Played by an endearing Miles Teller and the refreshing Shailene Woodley, Sutter and Aimee find themselves falling in love at the end of the senior year of high school. The problem is, neither of them knows exactly what that means, as neither of them have figured out this whole business about loving themselves yet. Therein lies the greatness of The Spectacular Now—and just the reason why Teller and Woodler earned the Sundance Film Festival's U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting. More than a love story, the film is about confronting yourself head on, embracing all of your mess for what it is.

Complex recently sat down with Ponsoldt and a couple of the film's stars, Miles Teller and Dayo Okeniyi (who plays Marcus West, the boyfriend of Sutter's ex Cassidy, played by Brie Larson) about the making of the movie, their own high school days, and where The Spectacular Now (out in L.A. and N.Y. tomorrow, and nationwide on Aug. 23rd) fits in a YA landscape overrun by mythical creatures.

 

RELATED: The 25 Best Actors in Their 20s
RELATED: The 25 Best Actresses in Their 20s
RELATED: The 25 Most Anticipated Indie Movies of Summer 2013 

Written by Tara Aquino (@t_akino)

The Making of the Movie

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In 2008, author Tim Tharp's The Spectacular Now was just another book in the Teen Fiction aisle of your local bookstore, located rows below Stephanie Meyer's Twilight and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. But there was a difference: Tharp's novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Drawn to the book, screenwriters Michael Weber and Scott Neustadter adapted it into a screenplay the same year. What resulted was a five-year journey to the big screen that was well worth the wait. 

James Ponsoldt: "I was approached by the producers and the writers soon after Sundance 2012, when I brought Smashed there, and they just said, 'Hey, we really love your movie. Would you be up for reading this script?' I hadn’t thought that I wanted to direct someone else’s script before but I respected Scott and Mike, and I hadn’t read Tim’s book but I heard it had been nominated for a National Book Award. I heard it was amazing. So I said sure and gave the book a read in a hour. It was one of the fastest things I’d ever read. I just went on this complete roller coaster with the characters."

"I felt like I’d always had this interest in writing about adolescence and the stuff I dealt with in high school, but it had always felt really memoir-y, too naked, to make autobiographical. When I read the script and the book, I was like, 'Oh, man, they basically wrote my story.' I had to meet with the writers and everyone involved. I told them I wanted to do it, but I would want to do it in a very, very personal way. I wanted to shoot it in my hometown, shoot it in 35mm, shoot it with very specific actors, and they embraced it."

"When it comes to casting, your hope is that the right actor comes along and they obliterate your previous idea of what the character is, but also add more depth, texture, and nuance to the point where you suddenly you can’t imagine it any other way. That's how I felt about Shailene and Miles. I had in-depth conversations with the two of them because it was just really important to know everything about them and to see how we could feed that into the film. I put them in touch with the production designer and art director and tried to make the bedrooms of the characters have little things that were important to Miles and Shailene specifically."  


 

When it comes to casting, your hope is that the right actor comes along and they obliterate your previous idea of what the character is, but also add more depth, texture, and nuance to the point where you suddenly you can’t imagine it any other way.—James Ponsoldt


 

"Ultimately, the character of Amy is different from the screenplay and the book because of who Shailene is and what she brings to it, because of her value system. She is a very unique person. For the two of them, I wanted to embrace that different part they each innately have."

"It was hugely important to keep the feel of the film as realistic as possible. The very first conversation that I had with the actors was that this isn’t an escapist fantasy about the boy or girl next door. I told them I wanted it to look and feel real and natural, like their characters go to a public school in middle America. They're not wearing the trendiest jeans, they're wearing hand-me-downs. They're worn out because it's the end of the school year and maybe they bought them last August. And they don’t go to school wearing a bunch of makeup.  Some actors might not be down for that, but these actors totally were."

"The cast has a fierce dedication to honesty. No vanity. That was so vital. I want the audience, whether they’re 50 or whether they’re 15, to either see themselves or people that they know in the film. I want them to be reminded of what it's actually like to be a kid and cut through all this B.S."

Miles Teller: "The script was so good. I knew that I could play this part because I knew that I was very similar to Sutter. I was kind of like that charismatic guy who’s friends with everybody.  If you strip away our differences—I always knew I would be successful and go to college and my parents are still married—I could understand him. There's always stuff you deal with that no one knows you're going through."

"I bombed the first two auditions, but then it came back when James was attached to direct it. We set up a meeting at a bar to get to know each other. It was only supposed to be for 30 minutes, but we ended up drinking and hanging out for like two hours."

"James is a great man. A lot of directors will sit in a booth or they’ll sit a hundred yards away from you during filming, but James would just be right there in the scene. I think that all the stuff that we were feeling, like if something wasn’t working, James picked up on that. We really had this sense that we were all trying to tell a story together."

"When I saw the final product, I thought it was awesome. Rob Simonsen did the score for the movie and he just added so much to it. If you were to watch our film without his score, it would feel completely different."

Developing the Cast Chemistry

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James Ponsoldt had a brilliant crop of young actors in his hands, actors who had been nominated for Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards. But when it came to get them to do turn on their talent in front of the camera, his direction was simple: be your 17-year-old self again. 

Ponsoldt: "I really loved [Miles and Shailene] as actors before this movie—that was the big thing. I love Shailene in The Descendants. I love Miles in Rabbit Hole. I knew what they were capable of as actors. I loved their take on Sutter and Aimee, but I encouraged them to collaborate with me. I told them, 'Whatever strikes you as dishonest or could be better or more specific, even bits of dialogue that you feel more comfortable saying another way, tell me.'"

"The film was reimagined by everyone involved and how they came together. Shailene and Miles and all the other actors were on the same page about each scene, and then in it, it was just about trying to create an environment where we could just be free and play. Be spontaneous. If they’re walking and talking in a scene and someone walks into a tree branch, just respond to it. Just embrace what’s happening and just listen. I tried not to get in their way because they were figuring it out on their own, shaping it together."

Teller:  "Shailene and I didn’t have any rehearsal or anything. We met and just talked about what felt right in the scenes. Athens is a nice little town. We filmed in the summer, so there were no classes going on really, so we just kind of got to hang out. We'd go hang out, walk around, get food, and go thrift-shopping."

"Shailene is certainly different than most 21-year-olds. She is different from a lot of actresses that I’ve met and that I've worked with. She is very comfortable in her own skin. It was the Golden Globes, where most actresses would just be so vain and glammed up—not that Shailene wasn’t dressed up, but she had toe shoes on underneath. I don’t know another actress who wouldn’t wear heels. You wear heels. But that's just who she is. She is very strong in her convictions. She could be talking to, like, Nylon magazine, but she'll spend the whole time talking about GMOs (genetically modified organisms) because thats what's important to her."

"Aimee Finnecky could've been your stereotypical nerd, but Shailene is so unique that she couldn't not make it her own."

Okeniyi: "When I first got out there, Brie Larson and I had one dinner together. Brie hit me up and was like, 'Hey what’s up? We are supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend. We probably should go eat something.' And we went out and got sushi and hammed it up. Then we met up with Miles and Shailene and we went to this really cool seafood place. That was the only time we all met, but it was instant camaraderie."

"When everyone is really truly in love with the material, that is what happens. When people are just there clocking in and clocking out, it is not the same. All of them are just super affable people and it is hard not to like them. Yet their professional at the same time."

"And it was dope. Athens, Georgia's a college town. University of Georgia is the number one party school in America. They have rows and rows of bars, so Miles, James, and Mike Webber, the writer, and I just did a little pub crawl."

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Growing Up

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Growing up sucks. It's hard. It's confusing. It's weird. And that doesn't even begin to explain it. Thus, when it came to making the film, it became important to finding a cast and crew that would be able to empathize with that completely, in whatever way, shape, or form they could.

Ponsoldt: "I don’t meet very many people who say, 'Oh yeah, middle school and high school were completely easy and free.' It wasn’t for me. It was a lot of trauma. People accumulate scar tissue. I think most people were loved too little by their parents or too much, or they had their heart broken, or they were a heartbreaker And now they seek to numb the pain through what? Through working too much, through taking pills. I think people create elaborate systems of coping to deal with everyday life, and I love that. I relish in that. I think it makes us more alive and more human that we have a basic survival mechanism."

"Life can be painful, but there’s also real joy in life, and I guess I like hopeful films about damaged people. I think we’re all damaged through growing up. It doesn’t come from a place of judgement for me. It's just so curious to me the different ways people can be damaged but try to make themselves better."

"I was definitely a bit of class clown, like Sutter, but then I was also in all the honors and AP classes. I graduated above a 4.0. I played drums in a band for a while. I also played saxophone in jazz band. I was president of Drama Club. I played baseball. Me and my friends threw the parties. I was homecoming king. And I just always had a bunch of different groups of friends. My friends in class weren't the same ones i did theater with and they weren't the same ones I played sports with. I’m still best friends with all my guys from high school."

"My parents were always supportive of me. My mom actually set up my auditions for Julliard and NYU. I went to NYU. I didn't even have any realistic dreams about that. I just wanted to go to FSU and be with my buddies and hang out. I didn't think theater school was a possibility until my mom made it one."

Okeniyi: "I went to school in Nigeria. It was a boarding school so we wore uniforms. Then, you'd watch American TV and think, "Oh my gosh, they got to wear whatever they want to schoo!" And we couldn’t leave class until we were dismissed, right? But in American movies, as soon as the bell went off people would just jet out. In retrospect, that was so disrespectful, but I wanted to be one of them."

"The thing I never got was the cliques. I’d watch American movies and they'd separate the jocks, the art people, and the goths. I did plays and I played basketball. I was all over the place. From my perception as a student in Nigeria, I liked that about my school."

"But when I actually came to school in the States, it wasn’t that bad, but expectations were filled, for the most part. The only thing that kind of shocked me was how much kids in America take for granted how much awesome stuff they have. Just take for example the food. I go into the cafteria and they have hot dogs, burgers, and pizza for lunch in school! And kids are like 'I friggin' hate school food.' Dude, this is a feast! Are you kidding me?"

A Look Back at the Art That Inspired The Filmmakers

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Finding Its Place in the Young Adult World

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Recall the coming-of-age films in the past five years and what do you see? Vampires, werewolves, and teen mercenaries trying to survive in a dystopia—all characters detached from the real world. James Ponsoldt has personally made it his mission to bring the typical American teen back into the movies. 

Ponsoldt: "We had a screening in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago and afterwards a woman came up to me and she was like, 'My daughter just wants to talk to you for a second. She's 14 and taking a summer film class.' Her daughter asked me about genre and which one I think this movie fits into. I get that people would probably call it a 'teen movie,' which sounds really generic and flattens it out, but I told her it was a romantic drama with some humor in it, and instead of adults starring in it, they're teenagers."

"I realized that my favorite movies are about young people. Breaking Away, Splendor in the Grass, The Last Picture Show, and even Say Anything—they’re really complicated. They’re just simple stories but about complicated people dealing with real things. It doesn’t patronize them. It doesn’t simplify or dumb down the story just because their characters are 16 or 17. In fact, I think it's tougher to be living in that time. You get your heart broken but you don’t have the life experience to contextualize it and know that you’ll get over it. You think that you’re gonna die. So it's bigger than life."

"The success last year of Perks of Being a Wallflower was kind of a heads up to a lot of studios that are making vampire or werewolves movies that young audiences are actually smart and really want to see their lives depicted with honesty and integrity. I hope they’ll be more films like this. They are really important to find when you’re in your teenage years cause I think that they can help save your life. You want to feel less alone in the world. You want to feel that someone else is dealing with all the crap you’re dealing with. It's really important to have those touchstones. My hope is that The Spectacular Now becomes one of them."

Advice

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