By Carlos Aguilar.
Jesse Andrews
Stepping out of the writer’s solitude into the unavoidably collaborative nature of the filmmaking process, Pittsburgh native Jesse Andrews discovered that sharing a story as a film rather than a novel has its own set of benefits and pleasures. As a young aspiring writer Andrews recalls his work had an overly serious tone but with little substance to warrant it. With two finished novels that he could not get published, Andrews reassessed and decided to pursue young-adult fiction.
His first published work, released in 2012, was Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, which he was then given the opportunity to adapt for the screen by industry heavy-hitter Dan Fogelman. Following an awkward teenage film-buff who is forced to befriend a classmate diagnosed with leukemia, the story resonated with director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon, who was eventually chosen from a number of filmmakers interested in the project.
Unlike most relationships between screenwriter and director, Andrews and Gomez-Rejon collaborated throughout the entire production, which translated into outstanding authenticity and a profound connection between the source material and those in charge of recreating its ingenious and heartfelt charm for the film. Part of it is due to the fact that Gomez-Rejon decided to shoot in Pittsburgh, and to use Andrews’ childhood home and the high school he attended for Greg, the protagonist played by Thomas Mann, to exist in.
Andrews was in L.A. recently as part of the film’s promotional tour and we chatted with him about the book that went to become a Sundance smash hit, and that will almost certainly become an audience favorite when it opens in theaters this weekend.
Olivia Cooke as Rachel and Thomas Mann as Greg in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
You were obviously more than familiar with the characters and the tone of the story, but writing a screenplay is a different feat. What was your approach and how challenging was it?
I had a lot of help and that made it a lot easier, especially from Dan Fogelman, who was a producer on this. It was his idea for me to write the script. He was approached about the film rights, and he had the insane idea to let the author take a crack at it. He made himself really available to me. He was this kind of generous mentor, Yoda figure in my life. We went through a lot of drafts together.
Early on it became about, “OK, let’s just make a good script,” but the more people that came on board, especially once Alfonso came on board, I thought, “I’ve already gotten to tell the story once on my own in the book, and I don’t need to do that again. I am not the one steering this ship, nor should I be. I just want to facilitate as much as I possibly can and allow all of these people to maximize their own contribution to this. “
I know it’s a cliché to say, “Everyone that worked on this was incredible,” but really, everyone who worked on this was incredible! [Laughs]. Not just talented, but so generous and thoughtful. That made it actually very easy to not be defensive or protective. I also think it’s a lot easier if you’ve written the book.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, by Jesse Andrews
What made you decide you wanted to write a unique teen novel like this? Where did the original idea for the novel come from?
I wanted to write another novel, as I had written two that were completely unpublishable. There weren’t very good, like a serious-young-man-with-nothing-to-say kind of novel. I had two of those and they took me about six years [Laughs]. Then I realized that I wanted to just write something that actually rewarded the reader for reading it, and the way I wanted to do that was to write something that was funny.
But I didn’t want it to be fluff either. I wanted it to be about something hard, something not funny at all. My grandfather was terminally ill when I was preparing to write this third book, and I was thinking about the exchanges you have with someone who might not be here that much longer. The regret you feel about not saying the right thing, no matter what it was.
You want those exchanges to somehow contain your entire relationship with them, and then that way you’ll get closure, but that’s impossible and you never will. It’s always going to be a process. There is always this engagement that’s never over even when they are not around anymore. I was going through it to some extent as I was pretty close to my grandfather, but watching my mom and the rest of my family go through it too made it very present in my mind.
Someone told me that maybe I could write stuff for teens. I started reading teen books and I realized that this was the form for me to try to make that “thing” because the teenage world is very funny.
Did you discover anything new about these characters while writing the screenplay that wasn’t in your mind when writing the novel?
Yes, in the movie you learn more about the characters because the movie is not in the first person. The book is in the first person and it’s narrated by someone who hasn’t yet learned to pay attention to other people. That’s why the glimpses of Rachel and the other people in his life are really incomplete, really partial. He is often trying to present them in funny ways. In the book we don’t really see them as they are, we see them as he is presenting them. In the movie you see more of them.
I was writing more dialogue for Rachel and I was finding out more about how she talks and the things that have happened in her life. Then when Olivia came on it was necessary to write even more and to make her more of a realized character. It’s a credit to Olivia’s performance and to Alfonso’s direction. That was one of the major notes that he had for me when he came on board. He said, “I want to know more about this character, lets talk about her.” That was the first thing he did. I answered his questions, and some of his questions I didn’t have the answers to and I realized I needed them. I really found out a lot more about everyone because I had to write more stuff for each of them.
Olivia Cooke as Rachel and RJ Cyler as Earl in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
When you sat down with the book to rework for the screen how did decide what elements or moments had to stay and what thing needed to go or be changed? Were you too emotionally attached to the material at first to make such decisions?
You know, in some ways I wasn’t that emotionally attached because I knew this book was already out there – the book exists. Nothing that gets lost on the way from book to film is truly lost because it’s still in the book. I already got to tell the story once on my own.
Were you very specific about the visual style or the look of the film when writing this screenplay? It definitely has its own visual language.
When I write scripts, to the extent that I even have, I really don’t like to legislate the camera from the script. To me that’s what the director brings and I don’t want to tell him how to do his job or tell her how to her job. I want to instead describe what the tone is, obviously the dialogue has to be there, and I need to know what the actors or these characters are doing, what they are going through.
When someone says something, I’m more interested in writing what the character thinks of it rather than writing “We close-up on his face.” Maybe it’s a close-up, maybe it’s not, that’s for the director and the DP to decide because they are way better at those decisions than I am [Laughs].
The film is a balancing act in terms of tone throughout. You have a lot of comedy but near the end you pack it with all these powerful emotional moments. It also deals with a delicate subject, so how do you know how much is too much, or how funny can you make it?
Exactly. That’s a hard question to answer, it’s a good one, but the answer is really that you just tinker with it day after day, month after month, and eventually you hope that it is right. You are relying on this little barometer that you have inside of yourself, this gage. Is it working? Is the balance correct? Your gage will tell you, but maybe it’s out of sync with everyone else and then you’ll get a horrible response from other people. You just have to hope that it’s lined up with hers, and his, and theirs. It’s an act of faith.
RJ Cyler as Earl, Nick Offerman as Greg’s Dad, and Thomas Mann as Greg in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
When you saw the finished film, did the characters and the places looked like you had imagined when you first wrote it?
I didn’t let myself imagine too much because I knew it would be different, but I supposed I did imagine it a certain way a little bit, and of course it looks very different from that. Although in some sense, the house that I grew up in and the high school that I went to, those are places that I return to in my mind. When you are writing anything, you try to make it as free as possible for the script because who knows what’s going to be available? But if I’m writing about a high school, even if it’s not in Pittsburgh, even if it’s not a public school like the one I went to, you still see glimpses of your own, and to actually see it on the screen is surreal, it’s quite difficult to describe how that feels. It’s jarring.
How much of your personality is in Greg, Rachel or Earl?
There is me in all those characters, and probably the most in Greg because he is the narrator. Actually more than I’m personally comfortable admitting, but my family and friends think, “Yeah, that’s kind of how you acted in high school.” I’m definitely in Earl as well in terms of his sense of humor, but I’m not as well adjusted as he is. Earl is almost a little aspirational for me. Then Rachel is the strong person who can make a difficult decision, but who contains a multitude of emotions. She has all these unexpected things about her. There is some of me, some of my sisters, some of other people I know in all the characters.
RJ Cyler as Earl and Thomas Mann as Greg in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Greg makes it clear that this is not a touching romantic story, but were you ever tempted to go that route and make it just that, a touching romantic story?
Never. Right from the start I didn’t want any romance because that’s the expectation. You have a guy and a girl, they are both 17, they are both in high school, they are both straight, and it’s so hard not to go there. There is such a powerful tide that they have to resist, then they get together, then they have a fight, and then maybe they get together again, and that’s your story. No, I’ve seen that so many times, I don’t need to make my version of that. I wanted to make something different. When I think back to high school and girls, I had friendships with a lot of them, certainly more friendships than romances. In some ways the friendships were the much more interesting relationships and I never got to see them in a movie or a book. So I thought, “What if I do that?”
I know a lot of the spoof movies in the film are some Alfonso’s favorites, how much of your movie preferences growing up made it to the film?
The book looks more like my movie diet growing up. I just watched whatever was in front of me. Alfonso has a much more rigorous, thorough and incredible knowledge of film than I did, as a result the characters in the book are not as totally absorbed and marinated in great film as they are in the movie. Growing up I watched the stuff that was in front of me and some of that was super dumb and some of that was really rich unexpected stuff, like Werner Herzog.
The Fault in our Stars, by John Green
What’s your opinion about the comparisons between your book and another young-adult bestseller, The Fault in our Stars by John Green? Is it unavoidable?
These works of art will always orbit each other, especially when one becomes the massive hit, bestseller thing that it became. You are sort of orbiting that planet and it’s hard to escape it. It’s hard to be talked about not in comparison to that other thing, so that can be tough.
But on the other hand, it also means that this is a meaningful cultural phenomenon, people write about it for a reason right now. Cancer is this sort of post-modern villain or post-post-modern villain. But there is always more to say about something. You can make an infinite number of works about any subject.
A book like that is sort of a rising tide because it brings attention to other ones, but what’s hard is that we obviously weren’t chasing that and sometimes there is a perception that that is what was happening. He wrote his book when I was writing my book, but I had no sense that it was about to come out, and then two months before mine came out, his came out.
Do you plan to continue writing novels or have you decided to work exclusively as a screenwriter now?
I have been doing both. I have a second book coming out spring of next year, another teen book called “The Haters.” I’ve also written a few screenplays since Me and Earl and a couple adaptations. One is just a speck that we took to some directors, among them was Steve Chbosky, and he said, “I’ll produce if you direct it,” so now I’m going to direct it.
In the film Greg employs this technique to avoid people, which he then recommends to Rachel, which is to enter a subhuman state that freaks people out. Do you ever use this in your personal life and does it work?
[Laughs] Yes. It’s awesome, works every time. People leave. They just don’t want to deal with you.
Thomas said that when he read the description “enters a subhuman state” he didn’t know exactly what it meant. It could be anything.
Yes, I didn’t show him or tell him, “This is what you do.” I wanted to see what he would do.
