growth drama Movie Often fueled by clichés and lifeless moments that don’t match the real world.Stereotyping characters is often a ritual in these films, but the 2013 A24 film Now the spectacle Every effort is made to foster its character development and authentically address the deep issues facing teens today.Heartbreak, addiction and family hurt are all too familiar to many Now the spectacle It has made a legacy for itself as one of the most candid and truthful films of its kind.
The film opens with Sutter Keeley (Miles Teller) playing a constant alcoholic who is uninterested in his future and the unhealthy relationships around him. It’s not until he meets the quiet and withdrawn Amy Finicky (Shailene Woodley) that his life begins to unravel. to the end of the film, Now the spectacle Emotional and poignant throughout, blaming the tension and unease of growing up and finding yourself in the midst of the chaos of adulthood and the growing pains of your first love.
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The film is being directed by James Ponsault, who recalls how committed he was to keeping the film true to its characters, saying he wanted to make a film that was “honest, full of love, respectful of all characters” and kept in the ” Emotional reality.”
Growing up surrounded by theatre, art and photography, Ponsault has channeled all his interests into filmmaking. Ponsolt learned to write at a young age following his fascination with film, and over the years he has continued to incorporate a passionate writing style into his first films. When he was in high school, he started directing his own short films, which he recalls being “obsessed with,” even after he started film school. “My first feature film was originally written as a short script, and I decided to expand on it. It went to the Sundance Film Festival, and that’s how I started,” he recalls.
[Photo courtesy of A24]
Originally the award-winning novel by author Tim Sapp, Now the spectacle Re-adapted to a screenplay by writing duo Scott Neuderstadt and Michael Weber (500 Days of Summer). When Ponsalt learned about the novel and the script, he immediately sympathized with the script.
Resetting the location of the original script to his hometown of Athens, Georgia, the neighborhoods and landmarks featured in the film are places of personal significance to Ponsolt’s upbringing. He produced an 80-page outline collage that constructed the worldview for his film. “many things [Sutter] I think that’s why it resonated with me,” recalls Ponsolt. “I had hoped and planned to write some stories about a 15 or 16-year-old kid, touching on topics like substance abuse and complicated relationships with parents. . ”
what the first day of shooting was like Now the spectacle?
it is hot. I remember we were filming in Athens, Georgia, where my parents still live.like july and august… all i remember is the heat [Laughs.]. In the hot summer, everyone sweats profusely. You embrace it; you acknowledge and embrace the world you photograph. It’s important to me that they look and feel like real teenagers. In real life, people have sweat stains, acne, and all that stuff they have… I want it to look and feel like real kids.
Is it intentional to make the scene both vague and familiar?
My goal was to feel very local to someone from Athens, Georgia. You will know many places. That way, it makes a lot of sense to you. For the vast majority of viewers who are not from that place, I hope they feel something universal. Athens is a university city. This is where the University of Georgia is, but if you’re a teenager, you don’t necessarily experience the freedom of being in college. You’re still living under your parents’ roof. These kids grew up in the suburbs, not the big cities. It’s not the middle of nowhere, but they still don’t have the freedom of adulthood, so they live within the parameters of the adult world and try to carve out their own lives.
What was your involvement in the casting process like?
We auditioned hundreds of people for all the teen roles.For the role of Sartre, it is indeed hundreds of people. That’s probably every male actor between the ages of 15 and 25 or 26 that you can find in the English-speaking world. We auditioned everyone under the sun, and Miles really came out on top. Shailene is awesome.I was this posterity. The adult roles are what I really like about actors from different fields… life is more fluid than comedy or drama. It tends to be somewhere in between, so it’s important to me that the film contains all of these emotions, and that we have the right cast to support that.
Why Now the spectacle Still have such a strong fan base 10 years later?
I think there’s something very common to a lot of what happens in the movie. For many dynamics about friendships, about first loves, romances that go bad, relationships with overbearing parents, relationships with parents who are not there but you mythologize and turn out to be flawed, toxic relationships, toxic masculinity and ego-drugs ; all of these are the parts of the movie that connect with people.
For me, I resonate with stories when there’s truth and honesty at the heart of the story, between central relationships. When a film does these things well, I can project myself into it as a viewer. I always try to make something that is honest first and foremost, and with respect and respect for the characters. I think stories about young adults can often come off as cheesy or condescending because they don’t take into account the complex emotional inner lives that adults are exposed to.I try to see it as a complicated romance, not necessarily healthy between two complicated people [because] people around them.
The slightest change from the novel to the film, the most obvious difference is the ending. Why is it important to explore new endings?
I think there’s hope for a realistic ending, but maybe with some openness and more towards hope than despair. At the end of the movie, there are two characters on screen who are not very old, but who definitely have a history between them — a complicated history. Their expectations of each other may be different, and while we the audience may like the idea of them being romantically together in a certain way, we may also know that’s not good or healthy based on our own age and life experiences as viewers. Or if they meet again 10 years from now, maybe they’ll be different people and might need some real soul-searching.
As far as Sartre is concerned, he may need to do a lot of growth and self-examination before he can be good for others. Just because he drove to pick that girl up, doesn’t mean they should be together. A lot of people ask me, “What’s next?” I don’t mean to be cautious, but I ask “What do you think?” I do think it’s a bit like the Rorschach inkblot test for toxic relationships. At the end of the film, they’re two 18-year-olds who still have a lot of life to do. What happens next, who knows for sure?
What would you say to someone who feels like Sutter and can’t escape themselves, or what would you say to someone who, like Amy, can’t find themselves?
In either case, I think you have to respect yourself and realize that you deserve to be loved. To love others and fall in love, everyone has this dignity. How you treat yourself, how you treat others, and how you allow yourself to be treated is worth examining. Respecting yourself is really important, just because someone is giving you attention doesn’t mean they deserve your attention or your time.
[Photo courtesy of A24]
Do you have the most memorable memories from the making of the film?
We spent a summer shooting this movie, and it felt like camping with the cast and crew. We were able to put our hearts into this film and spend time together, but in the evenings and weekends, we all became very close, and I am very good friends with many of the people who made this film with me, I am today Still continue to work with them.
How did you react to the reception and release of the film?
We’re trying to be honest about doing something that we really care about, and it’s very humbling to see the way it connects with the people in the room at the first screening [at Sundance], and then when we screened, more people seemed to laugh and cry with the movie, which was really exciting and gratifying, very inspiring.As a young cinephile I would read [Roger Ebert’s] Amazing review, he is one of my favorite movie critics. There’s a film festival in Illinois called the Overlook Film Festival, which Roger Ebert curated himself.he chose Now the spectacle He tragically passed away a few years before the festival, so the film released in 2013 was his last choice and the review he wrote for the festival Now the spectacle This is the last review he wrote while alive, so all of this is deeply humbling and meaningful. It’s an honor and humbling to be able to make anything, and making something that connects to other people is something that everyone dreams of and I’m really grateful for that.
What’s the transition from filmmaking to TV series like Apple+ Originals been like? shrink?
I was so excited to be part of a show like this last year daisy jones and the six and shrink, being involved with it from the beginning and being able to shoot them close to where I am now in Los Angeles was really rewarding, and I’m excited to see how these shows connect with people. Lately I’ve been working on a brand new Marvel show that’s completely different from anything I thought existed in the Marvel universe and I was working on it until the writers union strike started and I joined the writers union and the director association. So now I spend most of my time walking the picket line in the studio. I was and will be back with a movie that I’m in pre-production on, I don’t plan on making it until the end of the year, hopefully it stays on track when everyone gets back to work.
