Interview with “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” cast

By Krystal Lau,
Bluedevilhub.com Staff–

Interview with Thomas Mann (TM), Olivia Cooke (OC) and RJ Cyler (RJC), the actors of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl,” which won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in US Dramatic Competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. Click here to read The HUB’s review.

Q: What drew you to this film?
TM: I think a combination of things. First, the script just felt more realistic than a lot of coming-of-age films. I’ve auditioned for every coming-of-age film you’ve seen in the last five years. This one felt different and I wasn’t annoyed by the characters at all and it was actually really funny. I like to embrace the stubbornness and even selfishness of teenagers, realizing that the world’s not about them […] I saw parts of myself in Greg that I wanted to explore.

Q: Which aspects of all of your characters do you think you related to the most?
RJC: The honesty in Earl.
OC: I felt like Rachel likes herself; I think that’s hardly ever depicted in coming-of-age movies. She’s not riddled with all these insecurities; she just thinks she’s a good person. She loves herself and that’s very important. You don’t have to be ashamed to say that you like yourself.
TM: At least for me, there’s sort of a satisfaction with feeling detached. It’s just must easier and safer to not put yourself out there […] There’s still times when you have to remind yourself to snap out of it and make real connections.

Q: Were these roles different from other roles you have played?
OC: The project on a whole was completely different, a complete departure for me and something that I was really searching for.

Q: On that note, could you describe some of the challenges you went through in portraying someone with cancer?
OC: You don’t want to approach a young girl with cancer going in like “she has cancer.” If you just do that, she becomes a victim and a tragic character and just very flat […] I wanted her to be strong, a beacon of heart. She has already become an adult and come of age by the time we meet her. She’s the one that wants to champion Greg on to realizing his full potential. I didn’t want the cancer to come across as false. I wanted it to seem as honest and real as possible. The part of shaving my head was a big cheat for me because it really helped me access emotions that I wasn’t aware that I held.

Q: Was balancing the comedy and the drama natural for all of you?
TM: Yeah, I mean I never approached the scene based on the genre. I felt very fluid and it all kind of makes sense because the way Greg deals with a situation is clumsy and awkward to watch him try to be sensitive to her situation. I think a lot of the comedy comes from that. He’s constantly trying to distract himself and her from what’s going on […] There’s a scene where he has to face up to it and he lashes out. I think that’s a big turning point for him.

Q: What do you think your favorite scene was to film?
OC: [The scene] that lasts for six minutes and goes on uncut with the same set up. It’s just me in the foreground and Thomas in the background and it’s just a scene that we’ve lived with for six months. It was mine and Thomas’s audition scene. We blocked through it the night before, we didn’t want to speak it again because we didn’t want to lose the emotions. We sat down and we did about four takes and then Alfonso says “that’s it, we’re done.” We thought he was going to go into more coverage and come in closer on Thomas or get some more angles, but that was it. He really just trusted us for those six minutes to live in the space. From the actors’ point of view, it makes us look really good.
TM: It’s like a dream come true to have the director let you live on that space for so long and not cut. It makes you feel really good.

Q: Do you think the opening scene of the movie was like a sequel to the Breakfast Club, in describing high school cliques?
TM: Sort of. The way I see it is that I always thought that was kind of false in high school movies–the perfect cliques. At least my experience in high school. I went to a huge high school in Texas […] I went to school with a lot of the same kids from kindergarten. Everyone kind of knew everyone. The jocks hung out with the stoner kids. I think it says more about Greg that he has to make sense of these people, not necessarily that that’s who they are. He sees high school as this chaotic mess and in order to make sense of it he has to put people in these boxes.

Q: What was the dynamic like on set?
OC: Everyone was really excited to be there. There was not one person that was doing it for the paycheck. Because we weren’t getting paid that much. But it was because we were completely enamored by the script and wanted to do the best job possible. Every single person on the crew was so stellar at what they did.
TM: Everyone was trying to push the movie forward and actively trying to make it better, which you don’t get a lot in movies because people are complaining a lot or phoning it in or just doing the bare minimum. And in this film everyone was adding in their own touch and Alfonso wanted everyone to be involved. It was a very collaborative process.
OC: And the best extras that I’ve ever worked with.

Q: What was the funniest moment backstage?
TM: [RJ Cyler] has this scene when he’s leaning back in a chair and all of a sudden his legs just go “fwoop.”
RJC: That’s not important.
TM: Nick with the cat was a fun day. We had to fire the first cat. You can’t teach a cat to do anything really[…] Nick actually ruined a take by saying “ow” because the cat was biting right there. *Motions to skin between thumb and index finger*
OC: Like punctured.
TM: Nick Offerman is a tough guy. If he’s saying “ow” in a take it’s probably pretty painful.

Q: As people out of high school, was it difficult getting back into that mentality?
OC: No, it’s not like we had to go stalk high school students. It was only last year […] I was only two years older than my character.
TM: I still pretty much related to Greg and if I tried to do a sixteen-year-old character it would come off very stereotypical and it would be like I was talking down to teenagers. I still feel like I’m 18.
RJC: You still look 18.
OC: I don’t think you look 18.
TM: Thanks.
OC: 19.
RJC: 19 and a half.
TM: 19 and three quarters. *Laughs*

Q: What was it like seeing the film for the first time?
OC: The first time you see a film you’re staring at yourself.
TM: It’s too much you’re taking in.
OC: You’re watching the acne migrate around your face and thinking you could have done that differently.
TM: And you’re looking at your posture. Why was I standing like that? I didn’t realize I had a double chin in that one scene.
OC: The second time was the best.
TM: When you’re watching with an audience that has no idea what’s going to happen, that’s when you truly see a film for the first time.
OC: And laughing at jokes that we’d become immune to and realizing that “oh yeah, that is really funny.”

Q: Can you describe what it was like to win at Sundance?
TM: *makes explosion sound* It was very surreal; there’s no way you can prepare for that. We were just excited to go.
OC: I kind of forgot that there were awards.
TM: I remember I was on a plane during the awards ceremony. And I landed in LA and I had 20 missed calls and texts and I was like “okay, we must have won something.” Alfonso texted me and was like “hello, where are you?”
OC: I got a text from him saying “OLIVIA” in all caps and I picked up his call in front of 7/11 in Vancouver and it was like 11 o’clock at night and I was crying.
TM: I was crying and excited on the plane and I was deboarding so it was very quiet.
RJC: I watched it and made my mommy and daddy shut off everything and was like “shut up” and put the laptop where the TV was and said “take it in.”

Interview with Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

Alfonso Gomez-Rejon was the director of “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl.” He has directed episodes of the TV shows “Glee” and “American Horror Story,” and was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Directing For a Miniseries for “American Horror Story: Coven” and Outstanding Miniseries as the show’s Co-Executive Producer.

Q: What were some of the differences between directing film and TV?
A: The pace and the intimacy and the time you have to prepare…When I got my first job with “Glee,” I had storyboarded everything very carefully and I was directing episode 17 so they had already done 16 episodes without me. It was just starting to catch. The TV works like a machine. One director is prepping, one director is shooting. And it just goes and goes… [When I came in] every crew member was standing against a wall and they’re like “who is this guy?” It’s so quiet and everyone’s listening to what I’m saying. And I start describing the shot that I want, and the director of photography was like, “Here’s some cameras, let’s hose it down,” and I knew at that point I had to win this battle because otherwise it was going to be a nightmare. It’s about insisting until you got it and it’s very much directing.
But in a movie you’re getting to know everyone little by little. Because I’m a personal assistant at heart I love everybody. I love being on set; it’s more comfortable; it’s like one whole family reunion as opposed to going to a party with strangers.

Q: Why did you choose to go into directing?
A: It was one of those things that just felt right. I was very young and I was watching a lot of movies and this was in the 80s… I loved movies and I loved that process and it was when my sister says, “you know you can make a living off of that” because she had just gone to New York on a school trip. It was just a moment of clarity. It made it very clear that’s exactly what I can do. And then I started experimenting and got quite comfortable with it; it was an extension of my imagination… I applied to NYU… And then I got in. That was a real test…I was very scared because I was a very young 17-year-old from a small town and you get there and everyone has these looks and these hats. To this day I still can’t pull off a leather jacket and I wish I could. And then you start seeing their work and you realize, “okay, they’re all talk.” And then you realize that you’ve been so worried that you’ve been behind in film history and you’ve been watching and learning by going to the library and reading and watching everything you could about movies. And you realize you weren’t so far behind and sometimes you’re ahead. You have a genuine interest in film history, which is so crucial. And then you start getting more confident. But that was a real test- could I succeed in a world that was so competitive?

Q: How do you think you made this film so authentic instead of evolving into something cheesy?
A: The script wasn’t cheesy. The challenge was how to translate that…it was about finding the truth in the scenes while you’re working them…
You have a boy and a girl in the same bedroom five minutes into the movie. If you don’t set it up the right way, shoot it or score it the right the way, people could just assume it’s going to be a love story and that they’re going to kiss at some point. So you try to find that balance and how you’re going to shoot it. At the beginning you see the frame is stretched, like these huge ten-millimeter lenses. Playful compositions and rhythms. But eventually the film becomes still as Greg learns to pay attention, the film becomes quieter and you make sure you have casting that brings realism to a drama. And when you finish the movie in editorial you make sure that a lot of thought goes into sound design and music selection so that it keeps it vivid.
Right when you think it’s going to go too far you push back, you don’t force an audience to feel you just give them an opportunity to come with you or not.

Q: What was the most fun/challenging scene for you to film?
A: The most challenging was the hospital scene. Because who I was at the end of the movie was very different from who I was at the beginning of the movie. And that was the last scene we shot, so I had changed. And also saying goodbye to everyone was very hard. It was very humbling to me as a director because that was the sequence that was very important to me to get right. And I prepared for and designed every shot. It was laminated on Velcro and all that kind of stuff. And we do one rehearsal and it doesn’t work. That approach was not the right approach to what was happening in front of me. It was going to look beautiful but it wouldn’t capture the emotion in front of me. And all these things you can’t plan for. The projector starts to play the movie and the light reflecting off camera, that relationship- that was another character- the flare. It was alive in a different ethereal kind of way. And all you had to do was be quite still. You realize you’ve been preparing for this and then you realize you’re all wrong. It’s very hard…but then, you find a rhythm to it. And you go faster and faster and faster and then you’re just in the moment. You start being in the moment and you start simply documenting…It was just very simple but also very emotional to go through. Watching Olivia’s performance and the music blasting… It was hard to get through that. That was the hardest because the approach didn’t work and we had to change it on the spot. Emotionally it was very hard to go through that and to say goodbye to everybody… Everybody came to the hospital and sat there on pillows and beds and sat there as the scene unfolded. We had fun all the time, even with the darker stuff. There was just a joy to be around them. [They were all] very funny and very real people. It was made with so much love.