ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What have you been up to?
Whats the backstory of the film?
The short was an exercise for Columbia University for the MFA program.
Credit: Angela Weiss/Getty Images
In the first year at Columbia, they do this exercise where you swap scripts with another student.
I had cast those actors and worked with the actors.
I found [actor] Tom [Bell], who I love.
Did you speak with your Columbia classmates before making the feature?
No, it was entirely mine.
It was my script to do what I will with it.
There was, especially with the actors in the original short, so much creation in the moment.
As the show airs, what has been your level of participation?
Have you kept tabs on the conversation?
I have a go at avoid it as much as I can.
Ive had to watch all of the episodes to get to do the inside the episodes thing.
Its a little bit frustrating to see the way that things have been altered to suit the drama.
The show isnt like a piece of journalism.
Its more of a dramatic presentation on its own.
Was that a compromise you made with yourself going into it?
As a filmmaker, you had to be aware of that.
Yeah, it certainly was.
I was very reticent to get involved from the very beginning.
I was about to be making a short film with a producer friend of mine named Ilan Amouyal.
Ultimately, I had to make this short film that the Farrelly brothers wrote.
A big part of the show was your adjustment to making a feature.
Do you think that the pains of that adjustment were unavoidable or enhanced by the show?
The nature of the show… its hard to know what elements were put in place to create drama.
Its just kind of crazy to have such a short pre-production and such a short writing period, everything.
I really feel that making a feature film is not really all that different from making shorts.
Its really just taking more time.
In a production sense, its usually pretty similar.
When you came onto the show, you hadThe Leisure Classin your back pocket.
Without the show, do you think that the feature would have ever come to fruition for you?
Im not sure.The Leisure Classwas something that I had just been working on…
The structure of it seemed to work for us at least.
That really is the great thing aboutProject Greenlight.
Theyre giving this opportunity to someone who wouldnt get that otherwise.
Do you think you did it?
JM:Im very happy with the movie.
We were trying to make something that was unusual.
I think we achieved that, and Im happy about that.
I dont like to philosophize too publicly about all of the meanings of the film.
I think that thats important to leave to the audience, but Im pleased with what we made.
How do you think people watching the production happen will affect how they view your film?
Sometimes those things are fighting against what may have been the initial conception of what its trying to be.
My personal preference for movies is not the factory-made, industrialized, homogenized franchise studio films necessarily.
Ignoring the budget, it felt like you were thrown into a microcosm of the studio system.
Did you regret the 35mm fight in light of the car crashing not going as planned?
It was very possible for us to have done that without even asking for additional money.
I think it was decided to not let us go through with it.
Are you feeling the effects of the show?
Has the plan changed from what you were doing before the show?
Now it seems very possible to get another movie made.
At the moment, Im getting a lot scripts sent to me that Im not very interested in.
The things that Id like to pursue are the ones Im developing myself.
