by W. H. Bourne
Writer Tom Gormican is a poster child of our changing industry. His directorial debut, That Awkward Moment, releases nationwide in theaters on Friday, January 31st. While writer-directors have become more commonplace, it’s important to note that this will also be Tom’s first produced credit. “This script was the top comedy script on the Blacklist of 2010 and it didn’t sell! People kept saying studios don’t make movies like this anymore,” says Gormican.
Determined, Gormican took matters into his own hands.
“We got it to Zac Efron who read it, called me and said he wanted to do it,” explains Gormican. “From there, my (producing) partners, Andrew Conner and Scott Aversano found Treehouse Pictures who had just done Zac’s last film At Any Price and had also done Arbitrage before that. We put the financing together with them and we made it independently. We sold it to Focus after we had finished it.”
Zac Efron as Jason in That Awkward Moment
Tom makes the process sound simple, but his accomplishment is rather amazing. “You have to wear a million hats these days when you’re trying to go from script to screen,” continues Gormican. “Any way you can get to the actor, you should sit down and talk with him about the project. If you’re not directing, talk to the director about why the subject matter is important, why it’s in the public zeitgeist. All of these things will help you get the movie off the ground. But I also believe that good scripts will not go unnoticed in this town; it’s just a question of how big you want to make it.”
“It’s difficult to make a movie, and it’s a long process,” says Gormican as he explains the importance of directing what you write. “Having a personal connection to the material does two things: it makes it easier to go through that process particularly when things aren’t going well; it can also help you talk to the people you’re going to need around you while you’re making the movie. I felt that it was important for these actors to know that I had written the material and had a personal connection to it. It made them feel more comfortable when we were going to make the movie.”
That Awkward Moment is the story about three friends each trying to come to terms with an interpersonal relationship. It blends buddy comedy with romantic comedy through a weave where each of our male characters Jason (Zac Efron), Daniel (Miles Teller) and Mikey (Michael B. Jordan) pursue a girl.
Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B. Jordon play best friends in That Awkward Moment
“It started off as a single ender about Zac and his character,” explains Gormican. “Then as we added people on, we had to make it a three ender about these three guys and each guy has his own girl. And they also had the relationship between each other. So it got a little complicated to weave that together. In all screenplays, you have to be economical about the choices that you make because you have limited real estate on screen. In this script, we had to be even more so because you’re trying to give an arc to three different guys and their relationships so there’s four different arcs in the script. Structurally, that got a little challenging. Of course the big question mark is when it all gets up on screen, will you be able to track it all? One of the ways to help that is to get very charismatic, memorable actors and put them in those parts.”
“The best things I have written have been heavily outlined and carefully thought through before I go and write the script,” continues Gormican. “I actually outline and card and break the script down that way. Mostly, after I have written the first draft, I will get with producers and we will re-break it down. We usually blow the movie up twice and do about twenty five passes before we get to the (official) first draft.”
Even when you direct what you write, you still tend to get notes on your script whether it’s from producers, actors or studio execs. Gormican was no different. “Most of the notes we got were character-centric notes,” explains Gormican. “We really tried to walk a fine line on making an unlikeable character likeable and making decisions that really didn’t push the character too far in one direction or the other. A lot of the notes had to do with the tone of the script and the character pieces and the way we pulled them back from that line when we thought the audience might lose them.”
Zac Efron’s character portrayal of Jason is a great illustration of what Gormican is talking about.
Jason is captivated by Ellie, played by Imogen Poots
“Jason’s a good guy making bad decisions, and I think that’s why we cast Zac because he is a likeable person,” says Gormican. “I think that comes across despite his intentional jack-assery. I think he instead comes across as a guy who’s refusing to grow up and realize what relationships actually are.”
***Spoiler Alert Begins Here***
Gormican faced an additional challenge with the script. Mikey, Michael B. Jordan’s character, doesn’t get his girl in the end. “We were always dealing with the fact that who wouldn’t want to be with Michael B. Jordan? There were challenges with that. I think with Michael’s charismatic character, we wanted to show that it’s not always guys who don’t want to be in relationships,” explains Gormican. “And I think it was an important point to make that sometimes people just grow apart and fall out of love. I think for those ‘Type A’ people who just keep working and working and working at a relationship, they need to realize that sometimes no matter what you do you can’t make someone love you back. You just can’t do it. And I think that’s what Michael’s character is supposed to illustrate. The challenge was integrating that into a story that was predominantly comic. That was my biggest challenge as a writer and director was managing that tone and making it feel like a fit to the same movie … going from boys being boys to boys being in situations that could potentially affect the rest of their lives.”
***Spoiler Alert Ends*******
Boys will be boys!
Of course DIY, usually means producing on a very tight budget and Gormican’s That Awkward Moment is no exception. “We didn’t have a rehearsal schedule,” says Gormican. “This was a very, very low budget and we didn’t have rehearsals. We had one or two days where we all got together and read the script. I would talk individually with the guys at night, but it was very rare where we could all get together.”
“There are two or three lines of improv in the entire movie that I wanted to do, but it was all a very tightly controlled script,” continues Gormican. “I would re-write the lines and give them back to the actors. We shot the movie in 24 days. I had 12-15 minutes per angle to shoot. I did not have time to improv, and frankly I just wanted them to stick to my script. As soon as I got the performance I wanted and the tone I wanted, we had to move on. We just didn’t have the luxury of time on this thing.”
Production value is easy to see on the screen given the budget. “Below the line was 4 million with the total budget being around 8 million,” explains Gormican, “and we shot in Manhattan and a couple of days in Brooklyn. The script takes place here, and it was very important to me to shoot here because of that. We did get the New York tax incentive on the project which helped.”
Some say that the final polish of the script occurs in the edit suite. For writer-directors, sometimes it is a lot easier to make sure you have control over that last polish. Gormican definitely exemplified this.
Zac Efron (R) with writer-director Tom Gormican (L) on the set of That Awkward Moment
“I was in the editing room for every second of every edited frame, explains Gormican. “I know some directors don’t work this way, but I was very specific in that room as to what I wanted. For example, at times, I was slowing down the audio and the video. It’s very important to me, and luckily, my producers gave me a very long edit where I could explore every avenue. I think what we’ve come up with is the best version of the movie because we didn’t leave any avenue unexplored.”
Financing and distribution are often the biggest challenges for independent film even if you do have named talent attached. “Film District had read the script while we were in development and had offered to buy the script then, but we didn’t sell it at that point. We went out and made the movie and then came back to them after we had instilled in it everything we thought it could be,” says Gormican. “We always had Peter Schlessel and Film District (which is now Focus) in mind for distribution because we loved what they did with some other unorthodox movies like Drive and Looper. They have an amazing marketing team.”
“We were fortunate that we had luck or skill in casting the movie,” explains Gormican. “We decided not to go to a film festival and just showed them (Focus) the footage and they decided to pick it up. Once we had finished it and they had watched it, we then became extraordinary partners. We did big public screenings (market research). When those results came in, it determined the scope of distribution.”
Miles Teller as Daniel
Gormican is at an exciting point in his career. Repped by WME, 3 Arts and entertainment attorney Michael Schenkman, he recently completed an adaptation of Emily Post’s Etiquette for Warner Brothers and his next directorial endeavor, a heist movie set in Macau is also set up at Warner Brothers. His comedy Save the Date is moving forward at Sony with Neil Moritz producing under his Original Films banner. Based on his career trajectory, Gormican had some suggestions for upcoming writers.
One Sheet for That Awkward Moment
“I think the biggest advice I have is to not chase trends because by the time you finish your script that trend may have changed. Find something that is actually meaningful to you; something that might even be painful to write about often times will generate the best material that is meaningful for people to connect to. I’ve found that most scripts that have launched careers have been like this,” says Gormican. “The idea is that if you believe in the product, if you have a connection to the script, you’ll do your best work. And don’t focus on your fails. Remember this script was the top comedy script on the Blacklist and it didn’t sell!”
That Awkward Moment released nationwide in theaters on January 31, 2014.
