Summer's time: Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel ("500 Days of Summer") greet reporters upstairs at the Sundance Kabuki Saturday night. (Photo by Tommy Lau/SFFS)
SFIFF52: Live at the festival--"Summer" springs into action
By Susan Gerhard
The SF International’s Centerpiece film, 500 Days of Summer, packed a springtime Sundance Kabuki on a rainy-drizzly Saturday evening. Clouds gathered outside, but predictions of a warm and breezy evening indoors in a rom-com-world laced with humor and melancholy were dead on. Marc Webb, debuting as a feature filmmaker, demonstrated his chops as a music-video producer in a time-skewed entertainment packed with resonant music cues, from a kooky Hall and Oates-inspired dance sequence, to a karaoke version of the Pixies’ "Here Comes Your Man." The audience survived its bouts of tears and laughter to ask fairly excellent questions of director Webb and cast Zooey Deschanel/Joseph Gordon-Levitt afterward.
Gordon-Levitt, who plays a very in-love greeting card writer out of touch with the reality of the relationship he is or is not in, told the audience he was instructed to remain very "real." Said Deschanel, "Affect upon style equals affected style."
"This movie could have too easily become a cavalcade of whimsy," Webb added. "Comedy is more about humanity than a punch line."
The threesome, on stage with SFFS Executive Director Graham Leggat, seemed extremely comfortable with each other and with the audience as they eagerly shared their process and thoughts on the film.
One audience member asked whether one of the turning points for Gordon-Levitt’s character in the film—when he realizes that he needs to get out of the greeting card business because it is selling lies about life—had any resonance for him in his real-life job of acting in another industry that sells fantasies.
"That’s why I want to do good movies," Gordon-Levitt answered. Later, clearly still reflecting on the question, he added, "Movies are important. The books I read and the music I listen to are how I make sense of the world." For which he received applause.
Webb stressed that he wanted to make this film pop and accessible as well as authentic. "It’s nice to have a beat you could dance to," but in a film that "hangs out with the truth."
The director, by all reports, had great rapport with the cast and innovative ideas to help them get in character. He distributed iPods with the music for each day’s shoot. "Whenever we weren’t recording sound, we were playing music to create atmosphere," he said.
About the book The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton, which appears twice in the film (by no mistake), a wry Deschanel said, "I haven’t read it, but it was recommended to me by Amazon.com. They think I would like it based on other books I’ve read."
Of the person the film may or may not be based on in real life, but whose name is mentioned in the opening titles, the director laughed, "She’s on Facebook. Whatever you do, don’t friend her."
More live festival reports—including Coppola on-stage at the Castro, "Proving Ground," the Midnight Awards and more, at SF360 Blogs.
topics: actors, q&a, san francisco international film festival, sundance, sundance film festival
05.03.2009