Author: Teen tale hits home

Some of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was filmed in the childhood home of Jesse Andrews, who wrote the film’s screenplay and the original novel.
Some of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was filmed in the childhood home of Jesse Andrews, who wrote the film’s screenplay and the original novel.

"I wrote two books before Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and they weren't published, and they shouldn't be published. They're not very good," says novelist and screenwriter Jesse Andrews.

"There's something about writing about Berlin [where Andrews lived and worked for a time] that made me slip into this much too experimental kind of grandiose, just kind of formally anarchic place that did not produce readable fiction."

Andrews seems to have remedied that challenge by setting Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and the script for director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's (Glee) film adaptation of the book in his hometown of Pittsburgh.

The movie, which won the Audience and the Jury Awards at the Sundance Film Festival this year, was actually shot in the house where Andrews lived from age 7 to adulthood, and the "Me" in the film's title, Greg Gaines, walks through the same high school Andrews and pop artist Andy Warhol attended.

"I went to a big, melting pot inner-city public school that's a lot like the one Greg [Thomas Mann, Project X] and Earl [RJ Cyler] and Rachel [the dying girl, played by Olivia Cooke from Ouija] go to," he says. "And I'm really happy that was my upbringing because I got to grow up with kids who didn't look like me and whose families didn't look like mine.

"If you grow up there, you know it's not the center of any universe, except for southwestern Pennsylvania, and yet this is the place where art is made and interesting stuff has been made. It feels like this place that does punch above its weight culturally."

When asked why the city that provided the inspiration for George A. Romero's zombie movies worked for him when Berlin didn't, Andrews replied, "I felt like I had never seen my high school or my neighborhood in a book. It felt like unexplored territory that I could contribute to a culture that was not terribly overexposed."

If the now-defunct school, which closed in 2008, provided a filming location and inspiration, Andrews says, returning there as an adult was unsettling. "There were lesson plans still on the chalkboards from the last day of school in 2008. It was a very strange feeling to walk those halls," he recalls.

A Different World

Before one could accuse Andrews and the other filmmakers of plagiarizing his life, it's worth noting that Greg's mother (Connie Britton, Nashville) works for a nonprofit, while Andrews' is librarian.

"We're different, but we're probably not as different as I would like to believe. I've had friends and family tell me afterwards that they felt like they were seeing a version of me both on the page and on the screen.'' The truth is somewhere in between, Andrews says. "We both have a habit of saying awkward and inappropriate things."

In addition, Andrews and Gomez-Rejon had to make extensive changes to the novel to create a workable film. The sometimes frank discussion of Greg's sexual frustration had been toned down for a PG-13 rating and Greg, who in the novel describes himself as "chubby" three times, is played by the svelte Mann.

"It's true, although I'd draw one distinction there, which is that the character tells you that he doesn't look anything like Thomas Mann. What you learn about Greg in the book is through that character's own self-discomfort and his own self-loathing. I like to think he isn't the schlubby, weird-looking Groundhog Day dude that he says he is. He's probably kind of more normal looking than that," Andrews says.

"When you make a movie, you are required by unwritten fiats to make every character 50 [percent] to 200 percent more attractive than they would be in the real world. So, Thomas is the product of that calculation."

That's true. Even Alfred Hitchcock's villains are more attractive onscreen than they were in the books for Strangers on a Train or Psycho.

High School Confidential

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl hits screens in the wake of movies by and for teens like The Fault in Our Stars, Twilight and The Hunger Games. That said, Andrews wasn't trying to ride a wave with either his book or film.

"There's this really cool boom sort of going on in teen fiction and in the movies that are based on those books. It's a wonderful thing," Andrews says. "But then there's a lot of this trend chasing that happens with that, but I think we're telling this story more in spite of that trend than because of it. Alfonso never told his agent, 'Hey, give me all the teen scripts that you've got.' If anything, he was kind of reluctant to do that after already exploring a very different teen world and a very wonderful one in Glee."

Andrews says that adolescent struggles frequently resonate for adults, especially with someone like Greg, who becomes oddly empathetic by trying unsuccessfully to avoid any emotional connection to his best friend Earl, whom he calls "a co-worker," and Rachel, whose leukemia might not be treatable.

Andrews says, "He doesn't want to be vulnerable. He fears vulnerability. And so in a way, because he feels too deeply, although he'd never admit that, feelings for him are so intense that he tries to sterilize them and live in this invulnerable place where he's not going to be challenged by that. It's a sort of paradox."

Good Taste

At least the lad has good taste in films. Greg and Earl make a series of bizarre parodies of films like Midnight Cowboy, A Clockwork Orange and Aguirre, the Wrath of God that came out decades before they were born. Perhaps it's Andrews' way of saying there's hope for the young men, especially in their love for Aguirre.

"That was a movie I saw as a teenager because of my older sister. She was in college and said, 'This movie is great.' I remember thinking, Jesus, my older sister is cooler and more interesting than I thought she was," he recalls. "Before, she had just been this older sibling. I was kind of afraid of her, and now suddenly, there's this glimpse into a totally different side of her. That's everyone. They have inexhaustible richness inside of them. You'll never be done learning about it."

MovieStyle on 07/03/2015

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