There's a reason most film romances cut off after the guy finally gets the girl, and it's because after that comes all the tough stuff. Jay DiPietro's Peter and Vandy is principally concerned with studying those fraught parts of a relationship, and his time-shifting study of long-term lovers has two independent film darlings that are up to his challenge: Jason Ritter and Jess Weixler.
Ritter's finally overcome his status as "the son of John Ritter" to bloom into an indie leading man in his own right, while Weixler recently burst onto the scene with attention-getting performances in Teeth and Alexander the Last. Both actors have retained their easy chemistry long after shooting Peter and Vandy, which means their joint interview with Movieline was kind of a gigglefest.
My first quiz question to you is: Which of you has been to more Sundance Film Festivals?
JASON: I think I have.
JESS: You have. He wins. [Laughs] Give me one I can win!
Of course, Peter and Vandy came out at Sundance this past January, but another nonchronological romance -- (500) Days of Summer -- was there too. At what point were you like, "What the hell? Showdown!"
JASON: Zooey Deschanel and I went to elementary school together. Like, our parents were in Lamaze class. We went to high school and I've known her forever...I texted her at one point, and she was like, "Oh, you're going to Sundance? I'm going to Sundance? What's your movie about?" And I said, "It's sort of a love story told out of order." And she went, "That. Sounds. Like. My movie."
JESS: [Laughs]
JASON: When we got to Sundance, it was true that they were both love stories and they're both told out of order, but tonally, they're really different. In (500) Days of Summer, you're told every time exactly where you are in the relationship, whereas in Peter and Vandy, it jumps around and it's up to the audience to figure it out.
JESS: Also, I feel like (500) Days of Summer is 500 days, and Peter and Vandy is, like, eight years of a relationship. [Laughs] That's a different story to be told in that it's not about the falling in love, it's about the relationship.
Was it important for you guys to figure out the actual timeline of the relationship for your performances?
JESS: We just sort of figured out how many years had passed in between scenes and what we had been through, and then essentially shot the movie in chronological order so that we were getting to know each other as the characters were getting to know each other. We got very close, very fast and really trusted each other to share this intimate, psychological space so that by the time we got to the parts where we had to go at each other in a real way and take some big blows, we were able to trust each other to do it. It felt like we'd known each other much longer.
Neither of you had met before you got cast in this, and it always boggled my mind when two actors are cast as romantic partners before they've even met. Doesn't that freak you out?
JESS: Yeah! I was totally like, "Oh God, this movie's gonna live or die based on whether we have any chemistry." Jay just felt sooo sure of himself that he was like, "Oh, it's gonna be fine." [Laughs] And he just threw us together. We got lucky.
JASON: I was nervous as well. You're just so afraid that you're gonna show up and nobody's gonna be able to love you. [Both laugh] It was a scary thing, it wasn't like I could just trust my own sexual veracity. I was very, very, very nervous, but I was put at ease immediately at that dinner we had the night before shooting. Even the few conversations we had, I felt like a foundation could be created.
Jason, I know this film was adapted from a play by the director, but didn't Jay actually play your role on stage?
JASON: Yeah, he did, he played Peter. That made me really nervous as well, and at one point I made a joke to him: "I'm gonna do something on screen, and you're gonna say, "Oh yeah, great, but the way I did it on stage..."
JESS: "People loved when I did this part..."
JASON: [Laughs] But he really didn't do that. It was a really great thing he did by giving this character to me and letting me do what I wanted with it. It's a difficult thing. I mean, I see plays that I did in high school and I always judge the person who plays my part way more harshly. And, you know, I was in high school! It wasn't like I was Laurence Olivier or something. You become attached to these roles and if you feel like someone else is not giving to this character all that you gave to him, it's frustrating. It's like watching someone with an ex-lover of yours -- like, "Dude, be careful with her!"
Both of you have done a lot of films with first-time directors. What are you looking for out of them? How do you know they'll be able to come through?
JESS: That's a good question, because sometimes it's really tricky. You can be like, "Oh, I really like this person," but you're not sure if you're gonna grow from it. There was just something about meeting Jay where I felt like I could learn something from this and grow from it. He had a very specific perspective and it was written with truth and honesty inside of it. There was this feeling of wanting to play it out and do it, and the fact that this guy wrote it and spent so much time with it, it was hard not to trust him because he cared very much for these characters. It's nice feeling like your director actually cares about the characters in the movie and is rooting for them.
JASON: What I look for is that I want to make sure [the director] is someone I can talk to. What I'm really looking for -- and you don't know if you'll have it until you see them on set -- is a certain amount of fluidity. They need to have a willingness to have a conversation about any given scene so that if I'm having problems, we can have a conversation. "Should it change? Is it flat?" A good director is one who does allow me to change my lines and intellectually grab on to something, as opposed to just being told "Shut up and do it" the way they wrote it.
JESS: Jay was very receptive. He even changed that scene in the middle of shooting it, the break-up scene, based on how we had played it out and how the rest of the movie was working. We felt him form it to us.
JASON: I like to have a director who will set a parameter, but within that, allow us actors to play around. He's basically saying, "This is the playground, but that's the fence, so you can't run into the street." [Laughs] Sometimes you get so wrapped up in your own thing that you only serve yourself on a movie, so it's important that a director allows you a certain amount to play around.
So many of your arguments in the film -- in fact, nearly all of them -- start from the characters' good intentions, then snowball. You guys are playing out these fights over very long takes...how do you keep things fresh in those beginning moments when you know this argument has to come down the pike?
JASON: It's exactly what you said: No one wants to get into a fight. So if you can try not to in a scene, it makes it a more interesting thing for your character to try to not get in a fight. And then there's a slow wearing-away of your resolve and your insecurities are being played on. That's what happens in real life! You try to help your boyfriend or your husband tie his tie, and you don't realize that--
JESS: --no one ever taught him to tie his tie.
JASON: Right, and that he's already self-conscious about that and you're opening up a whole can of worms by being another person in his life that's telling him he doesn't know how to do something. It's all these little things that spread out, and it was great of Jay to allow them to play out fully.
JESS: And they're not overt. Like, most of the conflicts have been couched in all the daily stuff; it's all these little things that you wouldn't usually notice as being a problem. It's not the stuff where you'd usually say, "Oh, this is why we have problems. This is why we have fights." It's all so buried in there and comes out of our history. That's what you go for. You don't have to go for the part where we call each other assholes. [Laughs]