Spotlight: 16-Love

  • The Making of 16-Love

    Q & A with Adam Lipsius

    1. How did you come to be involved in the film? Did you specifically want to do a tennis movie?
    I met Ilyssa Goodman almost exactly two years ago, on November 8th, 2009. She produced “A Cinderella Story,” from a script written by the amazingly talented Leigh Dunlap. Ilyssa told me about another project she was developing with Leigh, and the next morning, at about 6 am, it arrived in the hotel room where my wife and our two little kids were staying. This beautiful script.

    Linda, my wife and partner, and I tore into it. We were passing pages back and forth, chuckling to ourselves but needing to keep it down to keep the kids sleeping. And it worked until page 68, when one of them woke up the other, and they both needed love.

    So then, in addition to passing pages, we were passing babies back and forth, each of us getting 5 minutes to inhale as much script as we could before the other one needed an assist. It was kind of like pro wrestling, pee-wee style. We’d tag-team the other one to diaper or feed or entertain a wiggly creature; but neither of us wanted to put the script down.

    That morning, we decided that no matter what WE were going to make this movie. We sold Leigh and Ilyssa on the idea. 2 months later, we had a deal. 6 months later we were shooting. And now 2 years later, it’s coming out for audiences everywhere. We couldn’t be more psyched.

    As for the tennis, hell yeah! In addition to being a great metaphor and all that stuff, the fact that this was a tennis movie meant we could make it kick-ass! Seriously. Where a lot of low-budget indie folks were passing on this script because it was too much action, Linda and I figured that the tennis was going to make it even more amazing. And we just had to be smarter about shooting it.

    Luckily my old next-door neighbor, Alan Caso, the guy who shot “Six Feet Under” and “Reindeer Games” and a bunch of other seminal stuff, is a softy for chick flicks. But when he read the script, he actually thought of this as sort of a chick-flick/action-flick, and that was the secret sauce that makes “16-LOVE” look so good.

    2. The actors are often shown playing the game, and quite skillfully at that. Did they have to go through a training period, or did you cast people who already had a background in tennis?
    We lucked out on the tennis front, because everybody had some experience. Susie Abromeit who plays Katina Upranova was a top-ranked junior as a kid. She trained with Chris Everett alongside Andy Roddick and Maria Sharapova, and her tennis was off-the-hook. Chandler had played for years growing up, and despite his modesty, he’s so quick to the ball and with such good reflexes that with a few months of training he was playing like a pro. Lindsey came to this project with a very physical background and she took advantage of both tennis coaches we had on our team, plus all of the amazing resources down at La Costa Resort and Spa, to develop fantastic form. Plus, shooting 10 days on tennis courts and staying at La Costa next to their courts, meant that no one on the cast or crew could resist hitting the ball around after we wrapped, pretty much every day.

    3. Did you have a specific look and energy you wanted to capture while filming the actual tennis scenes as opposed to the quieter, more emotional scenes?
    You’re going to laugh when I tell you the movie look we were ripping off in “16-LOVE.” It was “Slumdog Millionaire.” Seriously. About 5 days before we shot, Alan Caso, our amazing DP, has this revelation that our movie needs to look like “Slumdog Millionaire.”

    I was terrified. He calls me up one night and tells me this, and I get out of bed and find a Blockbuster to buy a copy of the movie and watch it to figure out just what the hell he’s talking about. And I watch it again (it’s an amazing movie), and I still don’t know what he’s talking about.

    The next morning, we have a very serious conversation about the movie, but he makes it make sense to me. It’s not that we’re going to film urban squalor or strap the camera to the top of a train. It’s that we’re going to happen to be there when the action happens.

    Instead of staging everything so that it’s perfect and precise and predictable, we’re going to open up the world for our actors to inhabit. We’re going to invite the audience in, but put them behind the door or over the shoulder or by the hot dog stand so that they’re stuck behind the wheeling weenie machine.

    It freed our actors to breath. It freed me to keep the cameras rolling to find the moments (one way to open up your world is to bring in a ton of cameras — we had 2 Reds and 2 5d Mark IIs rolling most of the time), and it infuses every scene, not just the tennis but the personal exchanges and the relationships between these fantastic characters with immediacy and intensity. And we’ve got “Slumdog Millionaire” to thank for it.

    4. What are other films that influenced you telling this story?
    Obviously if I keep talking about “Slumdog” everyone will stop reading, so that’s the last reference, I swear.

    The fact that we’re co-invented from the creators of “A Cinderella Story” informs our choices; but our tone differs from that fantastic film. Talking to Leigh in pre-production, she made me watch “Sixteen Candles” again.

    Talking with Chandler in pre-production, I made him watch “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” “The Breakfast Club” is a real parallel, and if you’re picking up a Hughesian theme, you’re right.

    I wanted these characters to be people you know who react to stimuli and need things truly, rather than types who advance a plot. There are lots of formalistic films that are fantastic, but I didn’t want to make a 90 minute sit-com.

    In “16-LOVE” our characters breath, they’re hungry and in love and sad sometimes and determined to help the people they care about get what they want. It’s a bit more primal than you’re average teenage love story, and I’m proud of that.

    5. This is your first feature film. How was this a different experience than the shorts you had done previously??
    My last film was about a man who confesses to a murder he didn’t commit (“4° (Four Degrees)”), because he has secrets he can’t acknowledge out loud. His haunting shame destroys him and takes down our system of justice at the same time.

    So, it was pretty much identical shooting “16-LOVE.”

    Okay, not entirely similar. All right, very different.

    This was bigger. My last batch of jobs was commercials where we’d have a day or two to get 30 seconds. On this movie, I was doing about 5 pages each day. Our biggest day, we did 8 and 7/8 pages, about 1/10 of the whole script, because of a hole we’d dug when the cameras went down the day before.

    And there was action. And there was love. And there were honey wagons and logistics.

    But you know the biggest difference between back in film school and this job: my kids. Having Dorothy and Eli in my life has changed my view of the world so radically that I can finally connect with other people.

    I was a megalomaniac back in film school, whereas now I’ve probably progressed up the human ladder to benign despotism. And with the actors and the DP, I’m almost a real person. Finally. I hope nobody’s rolling their eyes at me, but my kids have honed my humanity to a reflex, and they have made all the difference, personally and professionally.

    6. You found such a young, vibrant cast that has such strong chemistry with each other. What was the casting experience like??
    This is something I shouldn’t write down, but when Lindsey Shaw walked into our casting session I had no idea who she was. She was just this bundle of jangly vibes in knee-high socks, a tank top and shorts she’d borrowed from Bruce Jenner after the 1976 Summer Olympics.

    In all fairness, she had no idea I was the director. She assumed I was just the dude running the camera… so it was destiny.

    She did an Ally scene beautifully. Fighting her way through the moments, finding a connection in that room (and those casting rooms are from the 3rd Level of Hell) that was startling. And then she finished and apologized for sucking. Seriously. She was agitated and said she could have done better. So, needless to say, I fell in love right there. And then I made her read a different part in a Spanish accent, and she gamely went along (though she’s secretly hated me every day since).

    Chandler and I met up at a Tennis Court, and I made him beat me to within an inch of my life.

    You have to know this about Chandler, he’s a really nice guy. Nicer than nice. Genteel, even. He grew up in a suburb of Atlanta where people will smile at you regardless of the situation. I suspect the muggers from this part of the world are still friendlier than most clergymen from just about anywhere.

    So, he keeps apologizing; and I’m like “shut up already and play,” only I’m drowning in my own sweat and gasping for breath, so it probably sounded like that armadillo in Rango after being run over by an 18-wheeler.

    After an hour, I get off one nice chip shot over his head after he rushes the net, and we call it a draw. Like I said, he’s very nice.

    Then we sit down for coffee, by the beach at the Four Seasons (where we were playing), and this very nice guy is desperate to read with me because he’s already off-book. He doesn’t even have the part, and he’s got the entire script memorized. Seriously.

    But instead of reading, he tells me the story of how he asked his girl-friend to prom. I couldn’t do his chivalric tale justice if I tried. It involved baked goods and scavenger hunts and elaborate conspiring with his friends and fording rivers as the tides have risen just to make her see how much he loved her. It was such an epic tale told with abashed understatement and heart.

    He was utterly, entirely NOT the person I’d envisioned for this role (easily charming and effortlessly suave), but he was so much better. He had so much heart, that I had to have his heart be the heart of our love story. I knew then and there that we couldn’t make this movie without him.

    I never even let him read.

    Everybody else in this cast has an equally elaborate journey to the movie, but I’m freezing and have to finish this thing up, so you’ll have to buy the DVD for the director’s commentary if you want to know more.

    7. What resonated with you about the story?
    I loved that it wasn’t just a regular love story. I loved that the characters had internal obstacles to overcome, that they had to be worthy — to make themselves worthy of love to make their story and our movie full.

    It’s funny, having said that out loud, it actually sounds like the heart of every love story. Maybe it really is just regular that you have to invent love new and fresh every time. And not just in new relationships (that’s almost easier, isn’t it? – it’s so fresh and hot, where’s the challenge in making that work?), but in your everyday relationships, too. You have to be willing to discover what you love in the people you love and uncover your own resistances –every day.

    In “16-LOVE” there were so many relationships being put to the test: between Ally and Farrell, Ally and Rebecca, Farrell and his friends, Ally and her dad, and the best part of the movie for me was that these relationships went wrong and not just right. Characters screwed things up. They were mean or callous or oblivious, sometimes.

    And they had to figure it out for themselves. Maybe that’s not such a revelation, but I identified with their struggles. It was so immediate to me the first time I read that script — these wonderful people have so far to go, and it was our job to get them there.

    8. What was the most challenging/rewarding part of making the film?
    The worst thing about making this movie was that we didn’t have a hundred million dollars. Some days it felt like we didn’t have a hundred bucks or a hot cup of coffee.

    We just came up with ways to get that location, or entice that actor or lure, finagle or wheedle our way across the finish line. The best thing was that our poverty didn’t stop us.

    Seeing the movie now. Finished. Gorgeous. With amazing contributions from everyone up and down the line — and I mean everyone: our cast killed themselves to live truthfully in imagined circumstances. They inhabited these characters, and that’s an enormous sacrifice to make.

    Our crew worked so effectively and efficiently, allowing us to make our days, every day. And that started with Caso and his camera team. G&E busted ass every day, wardrobe, the vanities – since everybody cared, it allowed the team to be more than just the sum of our parts.

    And in post we got amazing favors. Russ Howard’s score is fun and unobtrusive and intuitive and illustrative all at the same time. Phil Azenzer, our colorist from Picturehead, and the whole team at Picturehead and Audiohead, not to mention C5, saved our lives any number of times and gifted us a movie that feels monumental.

    It’s hard for me to watch “16-LOVE” and not flash back with gratitude to the months and moments and generosity that made this kick-ass movie possible.

    9. You get a very nuanced and adult performance out of lead, Lindsey Shaw, who is most famously associated with being on the Nickelodeon show “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.” How did you help her get into character?
    Lindsey was a revelation for me. She can do anything. And she will if you just get the hell out of her way.

    The smartest thing I did working with her was to make sure her French fries were hot the first time we had lunch.

    The next smartest thing was getting the core cast of friends (Ally, Farrell, Rebecca, Nate and Stuart) down to San Diego a little bit early and making sure they explored their narrative relationships by filling in the dots and improvising the necessary events of the movie that didn’t happen to be in the script.

    The next smartest thing was taking all the actors out to play miniature golf the day before we started shooting.

    I let Lindsey know that I would make an ass out of myself in a public place if necessary to give her what she needed. I let all of them know that they could trust each other to be there when the cameras and lights were switched on and the madness ensued. And I made sure that when all else failed they each had some real friendship to draw upon, some moments of truth when everything on a film set is shouting fraud at the top of its lungs.

    Consequently, all of the actors were free to be. As really and fully as they could. And since Lindsey is one of the smartest and most honest people I know, she delivered amazingness as a result.

    10. Can we expect another project from you in the near future??
    I’d love it if my next project was something really amazing, like inventing a new solar panel or curing cancer. But, we’ll probably just make another movie, because I’m not focused enough to pull off something like that.

    There are a few projects we’re pursuing.

    We just optioned a fantastic comic book called, “Nanny & Hank, Retirement is Hell.” It’s about an elderly couple who have to babysit their grandkids, manage life with artificial hips and absentee attention spans and misplaced dentures all while warding off angry vampires because Nanny & Hank were just made undead… in their 70s. It’s a kick-ass story about mortality and morality with fantastic characters and an amazing world. I’d like that movie to be out by the end of 2013.

    When I was in college I did my thesis on Dr. Seuss, and I’ve been fantasizing about doing a movie about his time in the Capra Film Unit during World War II (but Johnny Depp may have beaten us to it). And there’s a science fiction story we’ve been negotiating over option terms about for over a year.

    Plus, I’m dreaming up a script that’s a little fun and filthy — probably something that nobody will ever read. AND we have another film for all audiences in the works called “Knox Chase on the Case.”

    Yeah, I don’t think there will be too much slacking at Uptown 6 now that “16-LOVE” is done.


    January 24th, 2012 | jwilka |

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