Writer-Director Nicholas Jasenovec Breaks
Through:
Behind the Success of Paper Heart
By
David Mendenhall
To the surprise of traditionalists, the highly
original “hybrid” documentary-narrative feature, Paper
Heart, snagged the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2009
Sundance Film Festival. It also netted critics and audience kudos,
played several other festivals and is being distributed both
theatrically and on DVD/BluRay. Paper Heart was co-written by
director Jasenovec and the film’s star, Charlyne Yi.
The movie follows actress/performer Charlyne Yi on
her quest to learn about love via the making of a documentary. As
Charlyne conducts several interviews with real life, everyday people
around the country, her own personal life is transformed when learns
more about love than she imagined. (The story also involves Yi’s
relationship with popular actor Michael Cera). The result is a funny,
thought-provoking and heart-warming look at love and celebrity in the
modern age.
Indie Slate caught up with director Nicholas
Jasenovec at the Los Angeles Film Festival last June after a
screening of Paper Heart, where we discussed the genesis of
the film, its comparison (or lack thereof) to that other
hybrid-reality project, Borat, and what it was like to win an
award at Sundance.
Indie Slate: How was the project conceived,
and how did you and Charlyne make it a reality?
Nicholas Jasenovec: It kind of all started
with Charlyne. When I first met her, she would ask me if I knew of
any married couples, people who have interesting love stories that
she could talk to, but she never really told me what it was for or
anything. Then, after knowing each other for six months or so, she
mentioned that she wanted to make this documentary about love and
that’s why she was asking.
She also asked me for my help... we were going to
co-direct — just a traditional documentary. In talking to her
about it, though, it came out that she was really interested in doing
it because she didn’t believe in love and didn’t think it
was something that she was ever going to experience. I felt that’s
kind of important, that should be part of the film. And with who
Charlyne is, in terms of being a performer, a unique personality, she
should be on camera. The audience should go on this journey with her.
And then we realized it would need some sort of narrative,
through-lines, some sort of arc, even if it were a documentary. The
obvious thing was for her to meet someone and fall in love while she
was making the movie, because you can talk to as many people as you
want, hear as many stories as you want, but you’re not gonna
understand love until you’ve experienced it yourself.
So we came up with the idea to sort of script this
relationship, the storyline, because we couldn’t guarantee that
would just naturally happen while the cameras were rolling, you know?
But we wanted it to feel that way. From there we told our managers
and agents about it. We knew we weren’t gonna script anything
because we wanted the whole movie to feel like a documentary so we’re
gonna outline a storyline and then kind of improv scenes based on
that outline. We put together a pretty bare bones
presentation/outline and went around and pitched it to studios, to
independent production companies, to financiers — just
everywhere. Once we found someone interested in giving us the money
to do it, we went ahead from there.
IS: In terms of pitching and getting it
sold, was it difficult getting the meetings initially?
NJ: I think Michael [Cera, who also stars
in the movie] and Charlyne were obviously attached by the time it
went out to people when we were looking for money, and I was attached
to direct. It wasn’t too hard to get the meetings, [but] we
went to a lot of places. We even went to Fox and Universal, and just
independently wealthy guys who like movies. So it wasn’t too
difficult to get into the room.
The problem was, so much of it was the unknown.
What were we gonna find when we started rolling the cameras, and what
footage were we gonna capture, and how were we gonna put that
together? I’m sure that there was a lot of doubt about that.
And even we were a little unsure. But we did quite a bit of planning
and were able to answer every question, and we ended up having about
three or four people who were interested in financing it. But there
were different terms with each one, and we went with the one where we
had a kind of freedom. There was a time when it looked like we were
gonna make it with a studio, but making it the way we wanted to make
it, and everything, that just wasn’t going to work out in terms
of budget and control. And so [the studio] route ultimately didn’t
work.
IS: What was the production budget like?
NJ: Two producers, Elise Salomon and Sandra
Murillo, were involved pretty much from the beginning. Even before we
were pitching, they had already helped us draw up a budget and pretty
much figure out based on what we knew we needed to do, what we had
come up with… there were [actually several] different versions
of the budget. The one that we ultimately went with was the
million-dollar budget, but we had one that was as low as half a
million, and I think even lower than that. But those were kind of
like, the back-up budgets, you know, like if we can’t get the
full million, then we’ll make it for that.
IS: So you had options for the investors.
NJ: Yeah, ‘cause there were
definitely some people who were interested in making it, but for a
lot smaller amount. So ultimately we went with the one that would
give us the full amount that we felt was necessary to tell the story
we wanted to tell [and allowed us to] retain enough creative freedom
to discover the movie as we were making it. I mean, I can’t
imagine what it would be if we couldn’t have that, just because
so much of the story was written in post.
IS: How did you find your production team…
the DP, for example? And what did you shoot on?
NJ: Almost the whole production team is
based on pre-existing relationships. Jay Hunter, who I’ve known
for a while, is the DP. Originally I met Jay through Ryan Brown, an
editor who I’d met when I worked at a post house. Ryan had been
sharing a house with Jay and a bunch of other guys. Jay’s a
pretty established DP, especially in the ‘reality’ world.
But we shot a couple shorts together, and he was by far the best DP
that I’d ever worked with — really easy to work with, and
smart, had a lot of great ideas. He just brings a lot to every
project.
We shot on [Panasonic] VariCam. We shot a little
bit on an airplane and at an airport, and so we knew we’d have
to be very discreet, because we weren’t gonna be able to afford
to do that the normal way. Jay went and developed his own settings
for the VariCam —we were trying to emulate a Super16-style doc,
you know? Even though we were shooting video we wanted [it] to feel,
sort of, like [the original] cinema verite films.
IS: It felt like film, watching it, so I
had to ask…
NJ: Yeah, we hear that a lot… It’s
a testament to the work Jay did. And we didn’t do him any
favors. Half the time we were walking into a location two minutes
before we shot, like in Lubbock, Texas. We didn’t have time to
light or anything, so it had to be shot mostly like a traditional
documentary. But most people don’t know this, and I think it’s
‘cause Jay was so good working at that speed and really
adapting to each location. I can’t say enough about the job he
did.
IS: What was your preproduction and
production schedule like, and how did you find those great people to
interview?
NJ: Casting director Eileen Kennedy had
worked in the doc world before with some pretty well-known directors
like Michael Apted and done some documentary-based commercial work
with those guys. But she also cast traditional narrative stuff. She
had experience and was a friend of the producers.
Before we scheduled [the cross-country trip] from
L.A. to New York, Eileen did a couple weeks of L.A.-based prep work
to find some of the people. But then she went out a couple weeks
ahead of us to these cities and towns along the same path and just
talked to people. Maybe they weren’t right for the movie but
maybe they had this friend, and she’d go and she’d talk
to them. Basically every night starting a week before shooting we
would get five to ten videos a day of people she had met and
interviewed that day. And we picked our subjects that ended up in the
film. There are maybe only three or four we used that didn’t
end up in the film for various reasons. But the prep was definitely
pretty rushed. We had to start shooting by a very specific date
because we had Michael for one weekend; we could shoot him in Toronto
that weekend, which was the only thing he was needed for before we
came back to L.A. I mean, really, from the minute we got the money in
the bank, I think we did about three, maybe four weeks of prep.
Everything else was kind of done on spec leading up to it. Again, a
testament to what Elise and Sandra did.
IS: When did you wrap?
NJ: We still had a week of shooting in the
middle of editing. Technically we wrapped shooting in July of 2008,
and then we officially finished the film in September or October of
2008, and submitted late to Sundance. We got into Sundance, played
there in January, and then Overture came on board to distribute the
film.
IS: That happened at Sundance?
NJ: Kind of, like, immediately after
Sundance — the week or two after Sundance. And they gave us a
little bit of money to go back and do a little bit of editing. We
shot one more scene.
IS: Congratulations on your award at
Sundance. How did you feel about that whirlwind kind of experience?
NJ: It truly is… it’s an
amazing thing to be a part of. And it’s not all — and
this is nothing to with the actual festival itself, just all the
stuff that goes along with being a part of that festival — it
was a series of extreme highs and lows, you know? Everything that had
to do with the festival was so much fun, so fantastic. It was dream
come true to go. But there’s all the other stuff that goes
along with it, like doing press and dealing with, like “are we
gonna sell our film?” And who’s interested in it? And
unfortunately, with Michael, the paparazzi were a big thing. Michael
couldn’t leave the condo without basically being followed
around by 20 people, so it was a very weird experience in that
respect.
But everything that had to do with the festival
and my seeing the films and being a part of that community and that
scene was everything I hoped it would be. First of all, everyone that
works for Sundance was awesome — all the programmers, all the
coordinators, all those people who are so much fun to hang out with,
and helpful and really took care of us. And then just getting to show
[the film] to the Sundance audience was pretty fantastic. We had a
really great reception. We didn’t anticipate winning anything.
And when we did win something, and it was the screenwriting award, I
mean, it was a shock. Probably the least-expected thing imaginable.
And we felt a little weird about it, just because of how little
traditional screenwriting went into making of the film, and it felt
like it was a pretty controversial award for us to win.
IS: At the Q&A [after one of the
L.A.F.F. Paper Heart screenings], you made an interesting
comparison that I had thought of as I was watching it, which is,
without any spoilers, the Borat comparison, just in terms of,
perhaps, structure.
NJ: Yeah, when we were editing and had all
of this footage, we did go back to re-watch Borat just to see how
they made it work. It’s definitely a different approach, a
slightly different style. For [Borat], it kind of works, like,
Borat acclimated himself to America, learning things he needs to
learn to make it. But for ours, there wasn’t really necessarily
any narrative stuff going on in the interviews, aside from certain
ones Charlyne had, where she’s in the story. So we really had a
lot of freedom to kind of organize all those interviews. There was a
big giant puzzle, and we tried a lot of different patterns. Things
definitely felt right in a certain order, and if we would move one
thing, it would completely effect everything else. So it [came out]
slightly different from Borat.
IS: What’s next for you as a
filmmaker?
NJ: Charlyne and I are working on a TV idea
with this guy Jake Johnson who played me in [Paper Heart].
We’re writing this show which, unfortunately, I can’t say
too much about right now. Hopefully we’ll get to shoot that.
We’ll see. I’m also reading a lot of scripts. There’s
one I’m pretty excited about, but no guarantees or anything.
And Charlyne’s writing a movie with Paul Rust (Inglourious
Basterds, I Love You Beth Cooper) that’s gonna be awesome….
Paul’s extremely talented.
IS: Paul’s hilarious.
NJ: There’s a very strong group of
like-minded friends who are all doing really exciting things. Some of
them have already broken through, some of them are on their way, and
everyone’s so supportive and helpful. We couldn’t have
done our film without the help of a lot of different friends. It’s
a cool community to be a part of.
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